September marks the return of the game’s Rainbow Royale – a massively popular LGBTQ+ Pride event which includes new queer content and cosmetics for players. Last year’s Rainbow Royale included a variety of rainbow-themed items, emotes and sprays celebrating the LGBTQ+ community.
Dreamer’s projected arrival in Fortnite would mark the first time a canonically trans character has been added into the game.
Details of Dreamer’s appearance in the game were shared online by Fortnite leakers HYPEX, ShiinaBR and XTigerHyperX with information pulled from the game’s files.
And if it all turns out to be true, it wouldn’t be the first time Dreamer has made history.
The character became the first trans superhero to appear on TV when she first appeared on the (since-cancelled) Supergirl TV series, played by trans actor and activist Nicole Maines.
Dreamer – who goes by her civilian name Nia Nal – is a powerful superhero with the abilities of precognition, dream walking, astral projection and energy projection.
NEW COSMETICS & EDIT STYLES (Rarity might be broken) pic.twitter.com/zkmB7vHl1Z
— HYPEX (@HYPEX) August 30, 2022
NEW SKINS
(Credits: Me & @XTigerHyperX2) pic.twitter.com/7AdhQqZlvt
— Shiina (@ShiinaBR) August 30, 2022
— XTigerHyperX (@XTigerHyperX2) August 30, 2022
The leakers also revealed there would be new emotes, skins, sprays, music and weapon cosmetics.
HYPEX tweeted a video of Dreamer demonstrating some of the new moves being added to Fortnite, including TikTok’s “Jiggle Jiggle” dance and a death-drop move called the dip.
New Emotes (& Jiggle Jiggle TikTok Dance) pic.twitter.com/zGHOLE4c7A
— HYPEX (@HYPEX) August 30, 2022
Despite the arrival of new content celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, there have been reports that trans workers face a hostile work environment at Fortnite developer Epic Games.
A former Epic Games employee, who went by the alias Gregor, alleged their contract was terminated for raising concerns over how trans workers are treated.
Gregor claimed in a damning thread on Twitter that Epic Games fired him for “speaking out about their internal diversity practices for pronouns” despite the developer claiming it was because of his “performance”.
They later told TheGamer that Epic Games refused to enable Slack and Zoom options for employees to include pronouns in their names. Gregor added they had “two friends leave early from dysphoria/depression on a few notable occasions when they were misgendered publicly in large meetings”.