yeah its just something i heard often around here for a time.
'No more marriage! No fanservice! Why isn't like the old games were nobody talked to each other!?' etc etc
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Campaign for More Male Same-Sex Romances in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Thread starter Pau
- Start date
'No more marriage! No fanservice! Why isn't like the old games were nobody talked to each other!?' etc etc
Good post, this is what these calls for more Three houses inclusivity should have been like. I unfortunately believe that patches and DLC arent happening, but raising awareness for future games is a beneficial and positive endeavor. Infographics and snappy hashtags are good ideas and we should be trying to bring games journalism into this
There is potentially a lot of lead time required to pull it off by Feb. Think about how early Valentine's stuff shows up at stores. It goes into the works (design, production, distribution) probably around now.
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This is a good point. Anyone who knows Japanese and wants to translate and help with drafting a statement, we'd love your help. I can add a more specific call for help in the OP. This thread isn't getting a lot of traction, so maybe we can reach out to other areas at some point?
Yes, if you play as F!Byleth, you can romance Edelgard. Other noble characters can have same-sex paired endings, just not with the player character.
Thank you for your detailed response! This is all super helpful.
We are literally powerless to impose actual change in this or any of Nintendo and Intelligent System's products. The most we can do is give feedback. Thus, this campaign is about giving targeted feedback. I honestly don't see much of a difference, creatively, between asking for additions in a product that is out, but still in development (because of patches and DLC) and asking for additions in a later product. Creative vision is dynamic and constantly evolving and subject to numerous forces from a variety of external sources. I don't know why some people treat it as this sacred, static thing where the (single) creator exists in a vacuum. I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree about our perspectives on creative vision.
In terms of goals, I think just letting it be known that this is a topic of conversation among queer fans of the game is a top priority. If they can put out an update still then that's great, but as long as they realize that including more m/m romance pairings is a thing that fans are asking for and acknowledge that and take it as serious feedback, then I'd be happy.
I feel like that is the game we got already. Outside your dance partner being your highest opposite sex support (which, I think they should patch to be whomever is your highest support or let you pick one of each maybe), not a whole lot going on romance wise.
It is definitely important that we stay on Nintendo and IntSys's asses about this. While the representation is better than Fates, it is definitely leaning more into male gaze territory due to the prevalence of wlw relationships vs mlm relationships, and the single true mlm relationship offered in the game is a by-the-books effeminate male.
I don't care if they can't make any changes for FE3H (even though they could easily patch in a few more options like Claude since most character interactions with Byleth are gender neutral) but I would definitely want them to take these things into consideration for the next new FE title.
I don't care if they can't make any changes for FE3H (even though they could easily patch in a few more options like Claude since most character interactions with Byleth are gender neutral) but I would definitely want them to take these things into consideration for the next new FE title.
Huh thats really odd. I wonder if they had some changes to the MC while making the game as it also feels rather odd how silent he is considering both Robin and Corin.
Can we please leave off this nonsense about anything being "imposed"? No one is proposing legislative action to force Nintendo to include same-sex romances.
That said, while specific targets are good, it might do more harm than good to organize around a goal as unrealistic as getting the base game patched. There's also the risk that all the energy would be expended fighting claims that a gay agenda is being "imposed". Targeting future content seems like a better idea to me.
Then again, I'm a straight guy who avoids social media as much as possible, so what do I know?
Where? Optional S rank supports come at the end of the game then there is a paragraph epilogue at the end of who paired up. What main story scenes are these? I wouldn't describe that as bigger than it's ever been. It's the opposite considering how heavy awakening/dates leaned into kids and actual pairing up.
In this game 'romance' is purely inconsequential fluff at the end of a game to wrap up character beats which honestly means it should have been so much easier to give same sex options considering there is only one voice over to record. And some of the supports one could interpret as leaning that way already too. It's a shame but hopefully this leads to some change in the next one
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I'm talking about the scenes where
Jeralt gives you the ring, the goddess tower stuff, and the part where you choose who to give the ring to. All of those take place during the main story and are directly related to the romance stuff.
Get out of here with your thinly-veiled homophobia masquerading as "muh creative vision" (a concept which, incidentally, applies to large-scale game development less than you believe it to, given the hundreds of people involved, the writers room, the developmental flux, the corporate pressures, the budget restrictions, etc., all of which infringe on "creative vision"). And Three Houses isn't a fully completed work, hence the laying out of the DLC dates in the coming year as goals for change, however farfetched it may be.
This is not a campaign to harass and force a poor little lone writer to adjust their personal visionary project. It's merely a signal to the large companies — and the many developers, producers, financers, and writers involved — that we, as a group, desire further representation. It's innocuous at worst, productive at best, for something that means a great deal to many people. Fire Emblem isn't homophobic Persona; it has a sizeable queer fanbase, in large part due to the series' longstanding history of gay inclusion, however sub-textual or controversial some may have been.
Regardless of your mincing of words, Three Houses has various m/m supports that are not-at-all-subtly romantic. It makes little sense in that context -- even ignoring the egregious and transparent inequality -- for the avatar not to be able to S-support said characters. Let's take the heterosexual avatar romance options: every single member of the opposite sex -- every one, including the conveniently bisexual same-sex options -- is romanceable, which needless to say is unrealistic. It's an undeniable double standard; the avatar is inherently a function of wish fulfillment... but only for certain audience members? Well, consequently, we have very right to voice displeasure at that as fans and customers.
Ah, but if we're bemoaning "creative vision," I guess we should go ahead and strip all corporate funding and influence from game development, consigning 99% of games to the happy fate of non-existence. What a weak and fallacious argument.
What should be the primary goal of this campaign?
I think awareness is the main point. Nintendo and lgbt+ community have a lot of overlap already, so I'm a bit sadden than this kind of thing didnt take off in the media as it should. Maybe that's because of the nature of this kind of games, we can see that even P5 with the absolute atrocious homophobia didn't even get that much attention in the media either. Maybe we can take the lessons learnt from the P5 case and see what works and what doesn't. As far as I know in Catherine, the transphobia got patched out in the new re-release for the west, didn't it? What made that kind of outcry work and why did it fail on the P5 case.
I think would be nice to start by looking at that, considering they are both Atlus and so we can compare the results more easily... But I admit I didn't follow the P5 outcry so closely so maybe they did do something about it?
I think awareness is the main point. Nintendo and lgbt+ community have a lot of overlap already, so I'm a bit sadden than this kind of thing didnt take off in the media as it should. Maybe that's because of the nature of this kind of games, we can see that even P5 with the absolute atrocious homophobia didn't even get that much attention in the media either. Maybe we can take the lessons learnt from the P5 case and see what works and what doesn't. As far as I know in Catherine, the transphobia got patched out in the new re-release for the west, didn't it? What made that kind of outcry work and why did it fail on the P5 case.
I think would be nice to start by looking at that, considering they are both Atlus and so we can compare the results more easily... But I admit I didn't follow the P5 outcry so closely so maybe they did do something about it?
Honestly should just have all character romanceable or not, in Three Houses atleast. In regards to "creator vision" argument, the actual romance ingame is post-game text whilst the relationships being built in the game are vague enough to not reference one's sex.
I can't recall if my character (female) has even been referred to with gendered pronouns
IIRC it's been they and them
for me, it's more the fact that if you're playing as a straight character, basically everyone of the opposite gender is down to date you
if you're already going to that fantasy, just let anyone date anyone
tbh I'd prefer they cut the player wish fulfillment dating fantasy stuff altogether and had more in depth romances between the non-protagonist characters but that's not the game they're currently making
IIRC it's been they and them
for me, it's more the fact that if you're playing as a straight character, basically everyone of the opposite gender is down to date you
if you're already going to that fantasy, just let anyone date anyone
tbh I'd prefer they cut the player wish fulfillment dating fantasy stuff altogether and had more in depth romances between the non-protagonist characters but that's not the game they're currently making
Your "target feedback" is to go back and change a released game. That's your starting point. Which is why earlier i said it seemed like the idea was not with it's heart in the right place. Feedback is good, it's needed. Quite honestly the only reason there was any progress at ALL in fire emblem so far was due to this very same feedback. So it's proven that it's being heard and it works.
There is no "adding" if you are changing what is there. Adding would be literally adding new characters and maybe those new characters would have their own mini-storylines and that would be great. You would be expanding on the work that it's already there, making that world bigger and if those characters are already Bi or Gay then that would be a straight up improvement on the overall package. 3 Houses seems to be doing pretty good, so there is really nothing negative on expanding on it instead of focusing on the "next game".
Even if games are a collective work, you still have a director and a writer. There is a vision and a leader picking the way. There is collective input, but there is also a direction. It's not a shotgun blast of ideas scattered across a whiteboard. If you wanna evolve, evolve going forward. Not changing what's already there cause it suits what you desire best. Not only that it's not a genuine change, it only serves as a nod not a true acknowledgement. i would very much prefer to encourage a whole new storyline being added to that world making the overall game bigger and more fuller than to simply turn something that it's already in there into something else that was not there when they game was done.
Do you really need words explained or can you grasp basic comprehension ?
The suggestion that fans gather to request a change being made to a work completed is a thing that is being proposed here. Im simply mentioning that although the topic at matter is a good one, this way of going about it might not be the best one.
It really isn't complicated to grasp.
Hey, know what? Go fuck yourself.
If you read what i said and you come out calling me Homophobic, then you have your head deeply lodge inside your own ass. Grow the fuck up.
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That's very true. Even if we decide that we want to focus on a patch or DLC content, a Valentine's Day action keeps up the persistence. We can start planning for it now concurrently with the other activities.
I'm not a Persona or Catherine fan so I don't know much about this either. But I think looking into similar situations like this is a good idea. I'll try to read up on these in particular. If anyone else knows more about it and wants to chime in, please feel free. :)
When did you receive the survey? I hope they don't all go out at once and we still have time to encourage people to redeem the game/do the survey.
You're taking it upon yourself to come into a thread of LGBT people and allies politely and constructively requesting representation -- representation that already exists, mind, just needing to be extended to the already wish fulfilling player avatar -- and in your very first post, tell them why their goal is "coming from the wrong place," and why "creative vision" (a concept you have zero understanding of contextually, and I explained why) makes it OK not only for to LGBT inclusion to be minimized, but for homophobic content to be included, and you don't think your posts come off as homophobic?
Yeah, talk about someone being deeply lodged in their own ass, all right. Get some self-awareness and priorities during your ban.
What a bunch of bullshit.
No one gives a fuck about "creator's vision" except when it's convenient to justify a game catering to a white straight male audience and their perfect little fantasy world, where there can only exist what they want to see. If a game maker came and put out a big franchise game with a gay protagonist people would lose their shit, and I doubt anyone would defend the creator's vision.
Just stop using this hollow argument and admit you're not comfortable seeing queer people in media you consume.
I'm only a few chapters into the game, but there's nothing I've seen story/character development so far that would be broken if all the characters were made gay/bi. None of them seem inherently straight. I'd be fine with a blanket rollout that made as many characters as possible bi or whatever. Making them exclusively straight when theres nothing story-wise that demands it is an asshole move IMO.
I mentioned in the OT, regarding the data collection, that maybe they're collecting romance data too. If that's the case, I'll happily do a gay playthrough (#FEgaythrough ?) if it will up their stats on how many people chose to play as a gay male. If the number is inflated, they may take note?
As an ally I'm happy to help out in this issue. I don't use social media, but I'm happy do send some emails/letters/cards/whatever.
I mentioned in the OT, regarding the data collection, that maybe they're collecting romance data too. If that's the case, I'll happily do a gay playthrough (#FEgaythrough ?) if it will up their stats on how many people chose to play as a gay male. If the number is inflated, they may take note?
As an ally I'm happy to help out in this issue. I don't use social media, but I'm happy do send some emails/letters/cards/whatever.
Is it weird that I find the creative vision argument to be unintentionally damning? It's like, my vision is to have a game where the world is full of beautiful people who all want to bone you, but it's really important to me that just about all of them are 100% super straight.
Like, if this is a power fantasy thing where you can get whoever you want, okay. If this is a living breathing world where all of the characters have their own minds and are attracted to some people and not others, okay. But if you're choosing that line to flip between the two, it raises questions, doesn't it?
Like, if this is a power fantasy thing where you can get whoever you want, okay. If this is a living breathing world where all of the characters have their own minds and are attracted to some people and not others, okay. But if you're choosing that line to flip between the two, it raises questions, doesn't it?
Yep. Questions certain types of people aren't keen on being asked. These things are mutually exclusive:
(1) Avatar is able to romance everyone. In this scenario, the avatar is pure wish fulfillment.
(2) Avatar is not able to romance everyone. In this scenario, they, like other characters, have people who are "just not into them."
Opposite-sex supports are currently (1), and even all characters available for same-sex romance are also available for opposite-sex romance. Wish fulfillment. Same-sex supports are currently (2), with many characters professing homoromanticism in other supports, yet not being available for an S-support with the same-sex avatar. Not wish fulfillment.
So there's a clear double standard here: straight people get to partake in a romantic fantasy with whatever character they wish, while gay people do not. And it has nothing to do with the characters' sexualities or any sort of "realism." Straight people whinging about gay people asking for inclusion simply want to have their cake and eat it too, no questions asked.
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A good idea! It's quite the undertaking (my first playthrough was almost 70 hours) so I don't know how many people we can convince to do it. But to get the full story, you need to do four playthroughs anyways so repeat playthroughs are already expected. We can ask people to devote one of their S-ranks to Lindhardt to up the numbers, while also tweeting about it.
Thank you! Maybe there's still time to ask people to look at their emails and see if they received the survey, and if so, to mention more m/m romantic options.
See, here's what's puzzling to me. I'm a straight guy, that's perspective I can most easily look at things through, and yet I still don't really get why we as straight guys get anything from this current arrangement.
In Fire Emblem Awakening, I played as the male avatar. Since there's also a female avatar, I can think of it as that there were a bunch of supports in the game where all of the guys in the game were romancing me... but I didn't play as a female avatar, so even if that was something I was uncomfortable with (which probably wouldn't speak well of me either), that thought didn't really enter my mind when I was playing. If you add full gay options for the avatar, I can probably play the exact same way I did before and someone else can play in a way that's more comfortable for them. Even if I were to approach this from a purely selfish perspective, why would I want to waste the energy opposing this when I have literally no reason to care?
When I try to look from the development perspective it's similar. I can imagine a writer potentially having a reason to really want a straight relationship, like maybe they're writing something really personal and they want the characters to mirror people they know... but Fire Emblem isn't that, it's the standard harem anime smorgasbord stuff which is serving entirely to give you a bunch of different options to appeal to a bunch of different player tastes. The developers don't care about what relationship you choose so they leave it to the user. With that apathy in mind, what do they gain from more restrictive with opposite sex relationships? Giving the player fewer options isn't a selling point.
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Says who? lol, especially whether you like it or not it is a huge part of the draw for the series right now.
Sometimes I wonder if people deliberately forgetting about how Awakening literally saved the franchise from utter annihilation by Nintendo.
I agree with you, but Ellie from The Last of Us is gay and that didn't cause too big of an uproar. Granted, it's been a few years and i may be mis-remembering.
It's generally a bad faith complaint so they don't have to deal with confronting the inequality in a game.
The relationship aspect is obviously a huge selling point for many players, and anyone who says otherwise is being willfully ignorant.
But that sucks. Awakening was trash. Just give me good strategy and keep the story to the bare minimum. I'm ok if the characters are gay and have love interests, but I'd rather less focus on the characters and the story as a whole. That's why Advance Wars is so much better. It always gave me a basic ass story to skip through and great battles to enjoy.
just something i been hearing aroound here for awhile, fans get really defensive they dont want romance on their Fire Emblem
no more marriage!No fanservice! No kids! this isnt a dating game! why it isnt likethe older games? etc
You say that sucks, I say that's friggin awesome. Give me more characterization, more character development, more focus on characters please. I love good drama in my games, makes the whole experience that more complete. I am a sucker for romance too, so more romance is great! Been loving that in support conversations since the Fire Emblem 6 onwards.
Well "some" fans is the more correct term.
Anyways, it is undeniable that pairing/romances are a huge part of Fire Emblem now; more characterization for the characters too. And seeing the huge success of Three Houses, meaning actually a larger amount of people is more receptive to it then these "fans"... I see no reason why it would change.
In any event, I support more inclusion for the non-hetero coupling in this series too. I mean why not, more options for everybody is always a good thing. Helps the brand getting more "international" too.
I would say you're unintentionally conflating some things. Most "traditional" fans have no problem with romance in Fire Emblem; after all, romance has been in Fire Emblem for decades -- in the vast majority of games -- whether via support conversations, marriage, paired endings via support conversations, etc. These things are part of Fire Emblem, and not a whole lot of fans would deny it.
What some people wanted out (or improved, writing-wise) was the type of jarring S-rank marriages that existed in Awakening/Fates, wherein people had platonic supports that culminated in sudden proposals, then time traveling / hyperbolic time chamber children.
It was ultimately a writing quality complaint and/or mechanical criticism in those games, not an indictment of romance as a whole. Romantic supports that serve to deepen characterization are completely fine and virtually universally enjoyed in FE.
So yeah, romance is a consistent facet of Fire Emblem, and gay people want to enjoy that as an avatar too. And as long as the avatar is pure wish fulfillment for straight people, as I went into above, there's no reason why it shouldn't be for gay people as well.
I was replying to someone else. It's not that complicated is it?
You really dislike Fire Emblem spending more time with and giving greater focus to its characters? Like in Three Houses?
Man, that's wild. Like I get it, people like what they like, but for an RPG like Fire Emblem, more focus on characters for a stronger story/emotional payoff I think is the obvious route to take, if we talk about "improvement to the formula". I just don't understand the viewpoint that want it to be less, for an RPG game? I don't get it.
Anyways, I apologize, I suppose this is off-topic conversation.
I support the effort for Fire Emblem to be more inclusive for people that want them, and I will try to help in whatever capacity I can to achieve it.
I got into fire emblem and advance wars back on the gba at pretty much the same time because they were both super hyped and same developer and genre. I was more into advance wars because the focus was more on the gameplay and less on the story, or at least it was easier to pay less attention to the story for me and still get a lot of the game. I also just preferred the more modern military universe to the medieval style of FE but that's just entirely subjective I know. I do realize that even back then that the story and characters were a big part of fire emblem, but I didn't feel overwhelmed by it. I played all the gba, gc, ds versions of both series' and remained a fan of both but again always preferred Advance Wars. When I got to Awakening on 3DS though the series lost me, too much anime horseshit, too many systems to pay attention to, story that was too convoluted and hard to ignore, too much waifu crap... I'm well aware I'm in the minority and that the FE games are more popular than ever, and Advance Wars was taken out back and quietly put out of its misery. And that's fine. Not every game needs to be for me, don't want people to think I'm complaining or entitled or something. Was just replying to what you said, and yea it's probably not the right place in this thread for this conversation.
I'm all for representation, I support everyone getting their gay romance in the game if they can. Because the game does have romance options they should strive to be more inclusive with them.
This topic is literally about campaigning for male same sex romantic supports. I'm not sure it's the right place to air your general grievances against the series.
Why didn't you quote the person that brought up the topic I replied to though? I wouldn't have "aired my general grievances" if the other post didn't bring up what I specifically replied to.
*Gulp* that's a lot of play time... Though I imagine replays will be a lot quicker if skipping some cut scenes and you know where everything is etc.
Also, as a straight man, I am personally affronted and devastated that Claude isn't a same-sex romance option. He is dreamy.
Because they were pointing out a fact that is relevant to this topic, ie. that relationships are a key feature of the series, one that saved the IP from death, and now we'd like to see said feature be implemented in a more inclusive manner, hence this topic?
If you don't like relationships in FE, or you hate Awakening, etc, that's your prerogative, and there are other threads on this site that would be more suitable for you to bring up that discussion.
The characters make this game for me. If you replace them with generic medieval fantasy avatars it'd be mediocre at best. The best thing was the interactions, lore, story and all the secret stuff and paralogues. Gameplay was good too, and the mix of both is what makes the game so great.
You are telling me that these 2 posts here are direct commentary on the topic at hand and not commentary on the series or fandom in general?
If that's what you think then that's fine, but I respectfully disagree.
Certain people absolutely lost their shit with that TLoU 2 trailer.
I don't recall how things went with the first game but maybe it because it wasn't much of a thing in the base game.