Veggie Vigilantes: Queering Crime Tropes in Cosy Comedy Games

This paper offers a textual analysis of two games by the LGBTQI± Canadian studio Snoozy Kazoo, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021) and Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (2024), arguing that their cosy, comedic reimagining of mafia narratives subverts established crime tropes. Within a whimsical post-apocalyptic world of anthropomorphic vegetables, players take on the role of Turnip Boy, heir to a mafia boss, with goals framed around absurd acts such as tax evasion and bank robbery. Drawing on roguelite and bullet-hell conventions, the games prioritise defiance and moral inversion over mastery or control.

The analysis situates these games within a broader lineage of crime fiction, from films such as The Godfather and The Sopranos to video game series like Mafia and Grand Theft Auto, which often reproduce the glamour and violence of organised crime. In contrast, the Turnip Boy games use satire, slapstick, and "cute" aesthetics to parody mafia power structures, deflate authority figures, and critique capitalism through comic excess. The authors frame this satire as a vehicle of resistance, showing how humour and cuteness can make the danger of the mafia and themes of apocalypse and war more manageable and accessible.

A central argument is that the Turnip Boy mafia, the "Pickled Gang," is queer in its non-normativity: its members are literally vegetables, reject capitalism while accruing wealth, and reject blood-based kinship in favour of trust and mafia code. Turnip Boy himself refuses his father's legacy, opting out of both capitalist and mafia structures, which the authors connect to queer theory's concept of defying the cultural status quo. The paper contributes to queer game studies, cosy game scholarship, and research on videogame comedy, drawing on Ruberg's and Ruti's theoretical frameworks.