Valdfellgar
Banned
It is progress compared to past FE games though, and while not ideally where it should be, I'm sure the next FE will make greater strides as long as Nintenfo gets the sense people want more diverse representation.
Nintendo Removes Controversial Fire Emblem Fates Conversation
- Thread starter Tom Nook Sawyer
- Start date
It is progress compared to past FE games though, and while not ideally where it should be, I'm sure the next FE will make greater strides as long as Nintenfo gets the sense people want more diverse representation.
Scientist Supreme!
Banned
I dunno, they don't want to offend conservatives either, so gay marriage would have to be a switch you turn before the start of a game. Same applies to the next Tomodachi, btw.
Maybe several switches for fine-tuning.
Oh yeah, I also checked up on Not-Tharja on the wiki, she doesn't have other female mates (but the cross-dressing boy, hm…
.I doubt it. The implementation in Fates feels like they didn't want to do it in the first place. What with the negative stereotypes and being restricted to being in one game unless you pay for DLC.
Valdfellgar
Banned
This game is newer than Tomodachi, and has more diverse options for relationships than FE Awakening. They of course don't want to offend, that's Nintendo's thing, but they're clearly making progressive steps, baby steps, here.
I mean, gay marriage isn't turned on by a switch now, that'd be a step backwards, I think you'll just gain a few more options each game.
Yeah I mainly see this as Nintendo's first baby steps into the world of progressiveness. Really baby steps. Small baby steps.
I have hope that eventually, maybe after a few games, there will be more LGBT characters. I don't think it'll happen very soon, but I do think it'll happen eventually. Didn't they say something about the next Tomodachi Life having possible gay marriage, or at least that they're going to try to make it more inclusive?
I meant a potential Tomodachi sequel.
Well I can imagine some parents getting angry when their children are exposed to the idea of gay relationships. I bet Nintendo can too.
Rhajat
Thats an actual character?
I could have sworn this is just a fanmade version of Tharja
Valdfellgar
Banned
I think they did, but don't quote me on it, I never really followed that game. That said, people need to remember that this aspect is a new game feature for FE. Meaning to Nintendo they're trying it out, seeing how people feel, and then will decide as to whether to push the new feature harder or not.
To them it's the same as any new item in Zelda or costume in Mario: did people like it? If yes then they'll include it in the next game and next and even expand on it if it's possible. Nintendo moves slow, in everything they do, we know this. It's just about being patient with them but also encouraging them to go farther with it.
Yeah, that's a real character. She appears to basically be Tharja personality wise too.
Steve Youngblood
Member
I'm not entirely willing to commit to the idea that it reads like date rape, but I've maintained since the beginning that it just seems bizarre and frankly stupid. I think sneaking in the magic powder without consent is a little tone deaf when targeting a Western audience, but my biggest issue is mainly just with the previous portrayals, and the fact that the conversation provided after the fact doesn't really provide any insight that the character is actually interested in men. She seems to love him in spite of him being a man only after she fell in love with him when she saw him as a woman. And she still seems interested in women based on how the conversation plays out.
And sure, sexuality is a spectrum, so it's not as though even if we concede that she may primarily be interested in women that she can't fall in love with a man. But my biggest issue with it is that her interest in women is just seemingly portrayed as some comedic trait and not genuine. Sure, cute girls make her weak in the knees and arouse her, but that's just played for the laughs! She's only willing to go so far as to take girls out for tea; she doesn't actually want to have sex with them. But she will marry a man. It's just... awkward and stupid as opposed to being comedic from where I'm sitting.
I'm not sure how her other romance options play out, but I'm told that at least one of them involves her hooking up with an androgynous male because he seemingly looks enough like a woman for her tastes. I think even a minor change like allowing her to hook up with a female version of the avatar player might make her plausibly bisexual and make the situation less odd and frankly kind of gross.
Her name is an anagram of Tharja.
Valdfellgar
Banned
Sounds to me like it's going to be a tough marriage lol.
NeonZ
Member
The female option is a character directly based on the 2nd most popular female character from Awakening. She didn't keep the popularity of the original one (at least in Japan), but thinking that she was chosen in bad faith is just weird.
The male character, although having a cruel personality, has an unique ability (capture) and a very high profile VA, who recently is famous for a villainous role in the first place. In the end, he's the 2nd most popular male character who wasn't part of the Royal family (so, not part of the game's main cast).
I guess they didn't want to make the bisexual options one of the royal family members, but that seems to have been the only negative choice they made.
Here are translated versions of two of her other romantic options, Foleo is the man who likes to dress with feminine clothing.
Soleil/Siegbert
http://pastebin.com/Y9pAeGXu
Soleil/Foleo
http://pastebin.com/mPyG72CG
What does popularity, VA, and abilities have to do with them not being bad choices?
Valdfellgar
Banned
Oh. Sorry, was unfamiliar with that game and how it worked. Maybe. I mean, I think Tomodachi is targeted at a different demographic than FE, so I could see progressive, diverse option changes taking longer to take hold within that series. I think each game series though needs to be looked at as its own thing, rather than Nintendo across the board. With different demographics being targeted the rate at which things change progressively will vary greatly. (Meaning Nintendo will be more willing to make progressive steps, larger ones, if the franchise isn't meant to target kids exclusively or the more general populace. Fire Emblem, while a growing brand for Nintendo, I think still sits as more niche to them than something like Tomodachi.)
Only real negative choice, is that the female option should have been a first genner, marrying second genners is skeevy!
Although I did end up having Corrin marrying Matoi in my Hoshido playthrough
Yeah God we have to make sure no one is made uncomfortable by including gays or something.
How horrible would it be of they did more than the nate minimum possible for inclusion
NeonZ
Member
If there were a negative intent behind choosing the two characters that would be bisexual options, they wouldn't have gone with a character directly based on a very popular one or another, that, although completely new and not part of the main cast, clearly was receiving a popularity push from a production point of view.
The entire design of the support system in Fates is basically tied to the 2nd generation aspect, and the homosexual options go against that. They aren't the only elements of the support system that were done with the minimum effort possible. Characters who don't have children of their own (for males), or don't have compatibility with all members of the opposite gender of the same kingdom (for females), have only one or two support conversations aside from the avatar's - or even none in Anna's case. And, aside from the two homosexual pairings, S rankings between 1st gen characters that wouldn't lead to children just aren't possible at all.
Steve Youngblood
Member
Different people are going to have different expectations for how quickly conservative companies make progress on matters such as these, but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt I think something like Soleil is a mistake. Maybe gay options everywhere is too risque for them, but the right way to take baby steps certainly isn't to include a seemingly gay character that isn't really gay, but only has those aspects played up for comedic effect.
Valdfellgar
Banned
If you're going to enjoy Nintendo IPs you kinda need to accept this. They're very conservative and careful in approaching their audience. They're like this in every aspect, not just sexual orientation. They'll get to where you want them to be (or not, I have no idea how far you need them to go in the end) but Nintendo moves slow, in everything, it'll take time.
And, I mean, I never said it would be horrible, in fact I'm for it, but you seem hell bent on being provocative so....
The way around this is to have multiple options and, this is the important part, have actual queer people contribute.
I pretty much have no sympathy for the "we have to take this nice and slowly" attitude towards equality.
Yeah. I would think screening LGBT characters with LGBT people (if they're not meant to be offensive) is just common sense.
Valdfellgar
Banned
Then you might be better off not bothering with Nintendo IPs for awhile? I mean, unless you work your way inside Nintendo they won't change fast enough for you. I'm sorry.
Its astonishing how often this doesn't happen
Steve Youngblood
Member
That's fine. I can respect that. But from where I'm sitting, my concern is not necessarily that they're not being progressive enough, but that what progress is there seems to come in the form of a "one step forward, one step back" approach.
There's also one that looks like Cordelia, named Matoi.
Yeah, the fact that her attraction towards women is conveyed in an immature sense is what gets me the most. It's treated like a phase before the "real" kind of relationship which is kind of fucked and somewhat pervasive in Japanese media (though definitely not prevalent as it used to be)
You are definitely on point in regards to letting her hook up with the female avatar; it wouldn't have been a perfect fix, but at least it wouldn't have been the salt in the wound. And the worst part is that their A support scene would perfectly segues into an S-rank support scene. In their A rank, she basically
tricks the avatar into flirting with her.
Yep. It should be easy to find people willing, we're not going to bite.
Simbabbad
Member
I really don't see the issue. There are around 100 characters in Fire Emblem Fates, latest surveys indicate homosexuals are about 3% of a given population, so two homosexual characters out of 100 are consistent with statistics, especially since you can make the avatar homosexual, we're then spot on. What's the big problem?
Also, I don't really understand the issue about falling in love with someone not in your usual orientation. It happens all the time.
A mountain out of a molehill, again.
Also, I don't really understand the issue about falling in love with someone not in your usual orientation. It happens all the time.
A mountain out of a molehill, again.
Yeah, because homosexuals are some sort of alien tribe only a fellow member can understand. Give me a break.
Steve Youngblood
Member
To be clear, the reason why I've kind of dug in on this is just that I honestly did want to understand all the hoopla about this. I read about it a little when the Japanese version released, but I didn't really dive into it too deeply and wasn't sure of the translations that were floating around. So when this thread popped up, I noticed that some were dismissing it as misinformation based on a bad translation. A 30 minute video (30 minutes!!!!) was offered up as something that needed to be added to the OP so that we could stop besmirching the fine reputation of this product.
So, I rolled up my sleeves and watched the entire video that was going to debunk this whole faux controversy. And I walked away feeling like it only strengthened why people are taking issue with it. I get that cultural differences make it so that some things may just invariably get lost in the translation, but even watching the video aimed at debunking this where the person in question provided their own translations, everything about this just seems idiotic at best and insulting at worst.
If this isn't a topic that's important to you, then so be it. People understandably have their own priorities. But it seems pretty clear to me why people sympathetic to gay rights issues would take issue with how this character is portrayed. And the arguments for why it's not a big deal are basically just coming across as reassurances that there's all just a big misunderstanding here without any clarification on what that misunderstanding is.
Edit: Also, I tried to cover this with a recent reply, but I don't think the issue is so much that she's able to fall in love with someone outside of her primary orientation, but that she's not allowed to marry someone within her primary orientation.
Well you clearly don't understand.
Whole lotta empathy up in this post, I can see...
KirbYuuYuu
Member
Wait they seriously called her Rhajat?
I guess we know the naming template for all the other Not- characters thens.
Naiwo
I guess we know the naming template for all the other Not- characters thens.
Naiwo
Gay characters having children (through non reproductive means) = absurd
Having a kid with a 1000 year old dragon = totally sensible
No, Odin (whose english name is already confirmed to be Odin) Lazward, and Luna (Selena in english) are not anagrams. Only the Hoshido peeps in Japanese were anagrams. (and they seem to be going with anagrams for the english version.)
I'm of the thought that it could involve hairdye and adoption. I would imagine classes are taught, like skills. (except for things like Manaketes.)
Lalalandia
Member
Great now the office knows I haven't been working because there is nothing here that can make a person LOL like I just did
Dice//
Banned
Oof.
KirbYuuYuu
Member
Steve Youngblood
Member
Simbabbad
Member
Enlighten me.
I'm homosexual and in a couple with my boyfriend for 15 years now, and I couldn't care less about this given what I read about it. I've also volunteered in associations. Does that still mean I'm not "sympathetic to gay rights issues"?
You see, I happen to think you don't need a fictional love story to necessarily be the same as your own orientation to be moved. Out of porn, I actually can't think of any love story between men that I'd put in my top 10 (in that top 10, I have Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example) - including tearjerkers like Brokeback Mountain, which hardly moved me (yet, I saw tons of straight couples crying in the theatre, BTW).
Homosexuals are a tiny minority, and it's unreasonable to ask for a disproportionate representation in a mainstream product, especially when it'd ask as much work as it would in this case, and especially since love stories don't matter much in Fire Emblem anyway: basically, those stories are just there so you can farm genetically selected babies to fight in the next generation. All those relationships are phony anyway.
Sure, it'd be fun to play around with cute guys having a gay male orgy, like if everybody was homosexual, but I'm not sure it'd make sense to ask Nintendo for that sort of product. The overwhelming majority of people is straight, that's the way it is, and whether people like it or not, the two homosexual characters in Fire Emblem fit statistics.
Now, for this particular dialogue, maybe you're right, maybe I'd find it offensive. Yet, I have to admit I won't bother watching the video, especially since the sequence has been censored anyway, and because 99% of the times I looked into that sort of issue, it ended up making me roll my eyes at the victimisation. Since the people outraged are the same that find an accurate proportion to be some sort of scandal, I admit I assume it's the same for this dialogue. It's been removed without anybody asking for it, though.
Also, I happen to think artists should be free to do whatever they want, provided it stays within very broad limits. Asking for a disproportion of homosexual characters is misguided entitlement.
I'll tell that to my boyfriend.
Steve Youngblood
Member
I certainly respect your background and where you're coming from, but I think it's kind of disingenuous to accuse people of making a mountain out of a molehill when you've admitted to not bothering to understand the specific character and context in question.