Jamie Barker (formerly known as Ashlynn "Ash" Barker, born June 8, 1991) is a non-binary transgender artist, musician and game developer based in Chicago, Illinois. She is the creator of the webcomics Fake Gamer Comics (formerly Fake Gamer Girl) and Chillzoo. Fake Gamer Comics is a mix of autobiographical and gag-a-day comic, illustrating Jamie's musings on various things, usually their gender. In 2021, she started a new comic called Chillzoo, a four-panel comic about the lives of eight roommates of various gender identities and species. They have also released a collection of comics titled Blu and Gralt
on their itch.io page.
Jamie is also a musician, as both a solo artist and as part of the indie rock duo Patty Meltz. She also made the video games Moon Pup 2069, Bunt Girl, Rebel Kitsune and Slime Date Maker. She has also done a podcast called Fake Gamer History Project.
In the summer of 2021, Jamie announced on Facebook that they were non-binary and would be going by the name Jamie, having previously gone by Ashlynn, and the pronouns they/them, with Fake Gamer Girl becoming Fake Gamer Comics as a result. Later though, she announced that they now go by either Jamie or Ashlynn, but still used they/them pronouns at the time. Near the end of November 2021, Jamie stated they are a non-binary trans woman and clarified that their pronouns are she/they and revealed their full name as Ashlynn Jamie Barker (but still preferring to be referred to primarily as Jamie) in December. More recently, they were sighted using only they/them pronouns but as of November 2022 now use she/they once again.
Read Fake Gamer Comics here, read Chillzoo here, listen to Jamie's music here and play their games here.
Tropes seen in Jamie's work:
- all lowercase letters: The majority of Jamie's online posts are rendered this way.
- Author Appeal:
- A lot of Jamie's characters are transgender, usually trans women. Doubles as a case of Write What You Know as Jamie lived as a binary trans woman for several years before eventually coming out as non-binary.
- Funny Animals are another favorite of hers if their games and Chillzoo are anything to go by.
- Puppy girls are another favourite of hers (see Little Bit Beastly below).
- Deliberately Monochrome: Raccoon Hat, an autobiographical comic Jamie made about a date she went on before she was out as trans, is entirely in black-and-white, perhaps due to the darker subject matter than her usual work.
- Funny Animal: Jamie has made a few characters of this type, such as the titular character of Moon Pup 2069 and half the cast of Chillzoo.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Chillzoo takes this up to eleven with its cast of humans, animals, a ghost and a robot.
- Little Bit Beastly: Jamie enjoys depicting herself as a puppy girl with dog ears and tail. This culminated in her creating a meme/blog page on Facebook called Trans Puppy Girlfriend in 2023, with a puppy girl as the Mascot.
- Meaningful Name: Bean from Chillzoo is a barista. In the same comic, there is Blip, a coder.
- Meaningful Rename: Fake Gamer Girl becoming Fake Gamer Comics after Jamie came out as non-binary, as the comic is largely from their perspective.
- My Eyes Are Up Here: Parodied in one of Jamie's Facebook statuses:
- Queer Colors: Her comics have a limited color palette consisting of pastel shades of blue, pink and purple. Whether this was intentionally to resemble the transgender pride flag could either be intentional or coincidental. Chillzoo is a notable exception though.
- The Shrink: Jamie visits one in this comic based on their own experiences in therapy, although he doesn't seem to take Jamie too seriously.
- Slime Girl: Played with. Slime Date Maker allows you to create Slime People of any gender, not just girls.
- Splash of Color: Some of Jamie's illustrations are colored like this, such as this one.
- Trans Tribulations: A common theme in Fake Gamer Comics, which has also been seen in Chillzoo.
- Wingding Eyes:
- The spiral variation has been seen on both Blip and Twink from Chillzoo after each stares at a computer monitor for too long.
- In the 2024 revival of Fake Gamer Girl, Jamie's clown-like avatar has X-eyes.
