Jennifer Diane Reitz moves through culture like a quiet constant, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden, always
shaping the space around her. Born in Oregon at the end of 1959 and raised in a childhood of perpetual motion, she
learned early how to live between places, between definitions, between what is permitted and what is necessary.
Science, fiction, music, and imagined worlds became not escapes but lifelines, ways of giving structure to a reality
that rarely offered her safety or recognition. Her creative work, from the early days of independent game design to
the formative chaos of the early internet, reflects this instinct to build worlds when none exist. With Happy Puppy,
she helped define how games were discovered and shared online, and with
Boppin’, she insisted that games could be strange, emotional, uncomfortable, and unapologetically adult. Her later
webcomics, especially
Unicorn Jelly, continue this refusal of simplicity, unfolding as living systems of myth, logic, and transformation that demand
patience and curiosity rather than passive consumption.
Alongside her work in games and webcomics, including the long-running
Unicorn Jelly
and other formally inventive projects, Reitz has consistently explored themes of identity, perception, and
transformation. As a trans woman who transitioned in the early 1980s under hostile social conditions, her personal
history is marked by resilience, conflict, and moments of profound crisis, but also by enduring partnerships and
chosen family. She later founded the website
Transsexuality
as an attempt to systematize and explain trans experience at a time when accessible information was scarce, a
project that remains debated and contested. Taken together, Jennifer Diane Reitz’s career forms a singular narrative
at the intersection of early internet culture, independent game development, and lived transgender history, making
her a compelling and sometimes challenging voice to engage with in conversation.

