Guest Post: Glitch Girl! by Rainie Oet

Guest Post: Glitch Girl! by Rainie Oet

We are thrilled to host author Rainie Oet on the blog to talk about her Middle Grade debut, a book in-verse about neurodivergence, video games, and how some kids do not fit in the binary! Glitch Girl! by Rainie Oet is available now and with trans & nonbinary characters and written by a trans author, makes this a perfect book for the #TransRightsReadathon this week!

Glitch Girl!

by Rainie Oet
Published by: Kokila
on March 11, 2025
Genres: Contemporary, In Verse, LGBTQIA+, Middle Grade
Bookshop
Goodreads

“Each poem is as raw as it is beautiful.” —Alex Gino, author of ALA Stonewall Award-winning novel Melissa

A middle grade novel in verse about a young trans girl who uses a computer game to process an ADHD diagnosis, isolation, and her relationship to gender for fans of Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff.

J—’s life is consumed by the roller coaster video game Coaster Boss, and by the power she exerts over the pixelated theme park attendees. Her life outside the game, however, is less controllable.

Me.
I’m such a big space. I break the universe, a glitch.

She's navigating ADHD, the loneliness of middle school, and an overwhelming crush on a girl named Junie. J— is convinced that Junie sees her as who she really is, a person who isn’t “bad” just because she doesn't stay quiet and sit still in class. As a person who is realizing that the name she's been given doesn’t really fit her. And that maybe boy doesn’t either.

Glitch Girl! follows J— from fifth to seventh grade, from the beginning to the end of her obsession with Coaster Boss, and to the start of a new friendship. When J— meets Sam, a nonbinary classmate, she begins to realize that it's okay to not fit into neat, pixelated boxes.

Guest Post:

Op-Ed by Rainie Oet

After the 2024 presidential election, I’m very concerned about trans kids. All trans people. And, personally, I’m concerned about what it is going to mean for my safety to be one of a handful of very visible trans women writing books like this for kids. And, I think this book will be so important for trans kids that I’m filled with determination to stand tall and face whatever comes as a result of its release.

(from the game Undertale)

In Undertale, players have so many choices. But fundamentally, there are only two, repeating again over and over:

1. Apathetic violence, playing by the rules they only think the game is giving them, a false thinking that goes: “it’s a video game where I can kill monsters rather than care about them, therefore I must kill monsters.” 
2. Care, outside the bounds of convention, even when it is so, so hard; even when it would be so much easier to just stop trying, to just automatically click on “FIGHT,” the always-default battle menu option that then only allows for violence. Care requires consistently and conscientiously selecting the battle menu’s secondary option, “MERCY.”

In Undertale, effectively extending care, or “Mercy,” is hard by design. Attempting to do so makes encounters much more difficult for a player to survive. But as you play through the game, there is a building and building sense that: it is worth it. 

I think about a climactic scene that I won’t spoil here, where the player must make increasingly difficult maneuvers to save those that they have come to love. I think about the music that plays during that scene. The song is called “Hopes and Dreams,” and is also referenced in Ryka Aoki’s excellent YA science fiction fantasy book Light from Uncommon Stars, where a trans girl violinist plays an arrangement of that song.

In Undertale, the “Hopes and Dreams” scene begins with the text “It’s the end,” and then offers the player an antagonist who mirrors the route that they could have disenchantedly walked, of easy apathetic choices that ultimately made them forget who they were at their very core. For those players that endure and care through the difficulties of this scene, the game offers a cathartic fulfillment of all the love that players have put into the game, and, if you’re like me, all the love that you’ve put into life itself. Undertale offers a promise that, not just in the game, but in life too, it is worthwhile to care. Even though care is often much harder and much less default than apathy and self-preservation, it is still worthwhile to care.

In Undertale, some characters that are perceived as villains can be redeemed. I think that people often mistake redemption as the true takeaway of the game. For me, redemption is a red herring; the real takeaway is that everyone has the ability to love even when it is hard, and that it is worth it for you, the player, to do so. 

(from the ending of Glitch Girl!)

When I first wrote the ending of Glitch Girl! — where this past version of me gets access to puberty blockers and the freedom to transition on her own terms — I hoped it would be a PSA, like hey this option is available for you if you want it. Then, even as anti-trans legislation increased, I hoped that the ending could signal the near-futurity of a world where the trans kids reading this book would get to have access to their own lives. And even as the New York Times started and deliberately maintained a years-long trend that saw mainstream news media misrepresenting trans youth care; and even recently as some Democratic candidates began using anti-trans messaging in their own campaigns, I continued to hope for the nearness of the world where no trans kids would have to fight just to be themselves.

Now, I still believe in that world of abundantly accessible self-determination, but it seems much farther way in time. Now, the ending of Glitch Girl! feels like a beacon of what I personally am going to fight to survive to see—that time when trans kids get to just be kids, unscrutinized and warmly under the care of a world that loves them, that allows them to choose their own full lives, and celebrates them for it.

One in four trans kids attempted to end their lives in the last year, and according to that same source, 53% of trans kids seriously considered it (compared to 18% of cis kids). Anti-trans bans specifically were found to have caused a 72% increase in suicide attempts in trans people. Sadly, I expect these numbers to grow substantially now. When I say that books like Glitch Girl! are important, this is one of the very specific ways how:

Glitch Girl! is more than a beacon of a hopeful future that might seem impossible to the kids reading it now. It is more than a promise that, in their lifetime, the tide is going to come back in again. Glitch Girl! is a reminder to all these kids that they exist. That they are real. That it is worth it to live. And that living as a trans kid is messy, is painful, is silly, is sometimes deeply lonely, is sometimes deeply joyful, and it is also beautiful and collective. When they hold this book, they are holding a reminder that the world loves them. And wants all of them. That the world is better, so much better, for having them in it. And, because we are publishing books like this in the face of mounting resistances of all kinds to our right to do so, those kids will know that we are going to keep fighting for them. Glitch Girl! is just the beginning of what I want to do to support these kids, to give them a tiny vehicle of solace and joy, to give them a mirror of invisible pain, to give them instruction on how and why to survive. I plan to publish so many more of these books. I won’t stop. Because trans kids are worth it, infinitely and unconditionally. And it is worthwhile to care, because on the other side of that care are infinite possibilities for trans lives and trans joy.

Many thanks to Kokila for the gifted finished copy!




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