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Alphabet Soup

What radical courage does it take to love in the face of hate? Through portraiture and personal narratives highlighting joy, belonging, found family and meaningful romantic and platonic relationships, KBIA’s Alphabet Soup challenges the notion that Missouri’s LGBTQ+ community is a monolith.Tucked away within the amalgamation of letters that makes up the LGBTQ+ community and the complex identities each represents is joy: rebellious, resistant, radiant. If you have a story you would like to share, visit https://tinyurl.com/LGBTQJoy or contact news@kbia.org.Created by Bailey Stover.

Willow Wilson: "There was... a line graph in terms of my transition versus the transition of my characters."

KBIA | By Reporter & Photographer: Bailey Stover, Producer: Rebecca Smith, Photo Editor: Nick Sheaffer

Published August 1, 2025 at 2:00 PM CDT

Willow Wilson sits on a chair in her living room on Friday, April 5, 2024, at her apartment in Columbia. When Wilson was selecting her name, she said she originally had nearly 100 names to choose from on a Word document. For a while, Wilson said she almost committed to the name “Rumor” because it had a “cool, sultry” and “femme fatale” feel. “But I eventually settled on the Willow just because I think Willow Wilson is such a distinctive name,” Wilson said. “It's kind of like [a] Peter Parker, Clark Kent kind of vibe. … Not to sound too egotistical, but that is a very main character name, and I kind of liked that. And I liked that it was very earthy and crunchy and kind of, you know, hippie, a little bit. So, I think Willow was kind of like, where I was like, ‘Yeah, I like that: Willow Wilson.’ That definitely sounds like a lady who's about town and making the most of her life.”

Willow Wilson is a transgender woman in her mid-20s. She spoke about the role – no pun intended – that Dungeons & Dragons has played in her transition.

Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.

Willow Wilson: There is essentially there is like a line graph, I would say, of the characters that I’ve played in the past.

The first character I ever played was a human male fighter because I was like, “This seems easy,” and then later, I went with a non-binary, very flamboyant, like, “Oh, darling” type tiefling character who used they/them pronouns, which were the pronouns I use at that time.

Then I immediately went to – the last character I played before the current game was a human woman, she/her.

And then the current character I'm playing right now, it's just this loud, colorful, rambunctious, barbarian, who uses any pronouns. I feel like that's kind of where I'm at now.

Very much that like, “Oh, human man, that seems, you know, whatever,” to just this technicolor nightmare of a person that who is just loud and very much themselves, and they don't care what people say.

I sort of discovered D&D through some various D&D shows thinking “This is extremely cool. This is very cool, like narrative thing I would like to participate in.”

So, when I got into college, I, you know, joined the D&D club, and a lot of them, surprise surprise were other queer people, which was great for me because I was just figuring out that I was one of them.

Multicolored plastic Dungeons and Dragons dice, which Willow Wilson was gifted from a friend, rest on a table in her living room on Friday, April 5, 2024, at her apartment in Columbia. Wilson said the friends she has made through the role-playing game have largely affirmed her in her queerness. “Reach out to people, like sort of find that community because I promise that you're never as alone as you think you are,” Wilson said. “I would say finding that community is very much integral to sort of figuring things out about yourself because you can see other people living their lives—or going through the same things you are in that stage in your life—and be able to sort of figure things out easier, because everything is always easier when it's with other people.”

I originally had a long list of names because I like to write, and I love coming up with character names.

So, I originally had had about I would say 100 names on this Word documents that I don't think I have anymore. It was a lot of like, really pretentious ones. It was a lot of Irish ones like Sarah, Shaw, Shavon, Maeve – things like that.

The one I was gunning for the most for the longest time was “Rumor.” So, I was like, “Oh, Rumor,” like, “that's a that's a cool, sultry like femme fatale type name.”

But I eventually settled on the “Willow” just because I think Willow Wilson is such a like distinctive name… It's kind of like Peter Parker, Clark Kent kind of vibe.

You know, not to sound too egotistical, but that is a very main character name, and I kind of liked that.

And I liked that it was very, like earthy and crunchy, and kind of, you know, hippie a little bit.

So, I think Willow was kind of like, where I was like, “That's, yeah, I like that, like Willow Wilson. That definitely sounds like a lady who's about town and, you know, making the most of her life.”

So yeah, there was definitely very much a line graph, I would say, in terms of like my transition versus the transition to my characters that I would play in those games.

KBIA News

Willow Wilson: Transitioning 'was sort of like unlearning that sense of shame I had about every aspect of myself.'

Bailey Stover

Willow Wilson is a transgender woman in her mid-20s and spoke about the process of learning and unlearning how to be a woman during her transition.