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Petition to claim parity between homosexual options in FE:TH


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17 hours ago, De Geso said:

Less than 5 percent of the population in the US is some form of LGBT.

Out of 30-40 people, I would argue that you're pretty unlikely to find a "smattering" of them to be anything but straight. Maybe one or two of them, maybe three, but even then that would be unlikely.

You wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. Guaranteeing that at least x amount of characters are nonstraight is forcing diversity to appease a loud, small group of people.

Diversity isn't by the numbers, matching up 1:1 with a census (let alone a specifically American census). It's about adequate representation in media. Is there adequate straight representation in media? Obviously. Adequate female representation? Not for the most part, but it's been distinctly improving over time. Has there been adequate queer representation in FE? Not until FE15 / 16. People of marginalised groups should be able to look at a large cast and see at least someone who they can identify with. In a game with an avatar and romance options, someone to have them fuck.

Sure, you can wave around all the census data you want to decry this 'forced diversity' which... doesn't negatively affect you or your experience in any way. But, sweetheart? Something to think about: the genre's called fantasy.

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40 minutes ago, Crysta said:

Uh, what? Is there a diversity priority order or something? We can't do both at once?

It is definitely a prioriy oder. Just count All the racial, sexual, religious and cultural minorities you can think off. All of them. You will most likely count something between several dozens to a couple hundreds. Can a work of fiction represent all of them at once? If it's so big it has a thousand characters maybe, but everyone else has to pick and chose. So, why some of those have to be included(usually, those that are discussed by social right activist), but for others is perfectly fine to not do so? Why we are making a large deal out of the fact that there are not enought gays, but most people are ok whit Byleth being locked in a 20-25 years age range, despite the underepresentation of older people being omnipresent in the JRPG genre?

And if every last one of the minorities has to be there, are you sure you would like a world where every single work of fiction bend over backward to put as many demographics as possible?  My argument is not "you can't represent all minorities, so don't even bother" but more something like "just focus on the minorities you want to write it's not like you can represent all of them at once ". Personally i prefer a world where we can have both homogenous and diverse stories depending on what the authors want to achieve, rather than a world were every single work of fiction has to be Glee. 

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Characters, like people, can be several things at once. And honestly if every minority wants to make a petition asking for more representation in the games they buy, I'm not going to argue with them on why they shouldn't want to enjoy the games I play for the same reasons I do.

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2 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Why we are making a large deal out of the fact that there are not enought gays, but most people are ok whit Byleth being locked in a 20-25 years age range, despite the underepresentation of older people being omnipresent in the JRPG genre?

Because it's easier to pick the low-hanging fruit. Given the framework already in place and the lack of much gender-specific forms of address in all the existing supports, enabling more same-sex options is fairly trivial on both a technical and a writing level. Your comparison of the lack of options here is not equivalent to the lack of any customisation of Byleth's age (much as I'd like that), but to the age range of the romantic options.

In this regard it's still not fantastic, but there are a slightly more options here for someone wanting an older partner than there are for same-sex relationships. It could use some improvements, but unfortunately it's a function of how many older cast members already exist to even be candidates in the first place, a pool far smaller than the potential candidates for same-sex relationships.

Returning to the Byleth customisation topic though, there are a fair few more constraints in simply enabling it, not least the presence of Jeralt and your fixed backstory, and the timeline of the setting in general. Sexual orientation, on the other hand, is completely implicit and is essentially customised automatically with no manual input required. Again, low-hanging fruit.

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I signed, because why not.

I don't feel like complete parity is needed, but only having one token MLM option when there are 5 FLF options and dozens of straight options is such a huge disparity that it really drags down the game as a whole.

It shows a huge amount of thoughtlessness, at best. I expect better from wide release games in 2019. And its a shame, since it's easily my biggest issue with an otherwise really good game. Given the supports are generally gender neutral, and a large number of the CG's are as well, it would have been trivial to add more options. In some cases, locking the S rank to a particular Byleth was actually more effort than leaving it open. 

Edited by EJ107
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First of all, I would advise the author of the petition of sharing it in others forum and in some Fire Emblem group on Facebook.

Second, I find the male gay option insulting. I mean, 3 options (2 of them being old man and 1 is married) was already bad, but when you know that the older options

Spoiler

Are literally Queerbait, and a S Support has always meant marriage or a romantic confession. What would you feel if you S Supported Edelgard but you don't get togheter and you marry a generic man? Tell me you would be fine with it

It is insulting. I mean, I'm a woman so it doesn't directly affect me, but I think everyone can admit that they had chosen the worst options. Making Claude or Dimitri bisexual, or another students would have been a better option. 

And let's not start talking about realism because it's not realistic that all the cast can potentially marry Byleth. 

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26 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Because it's easier to pick the low-hanging fruit. Given the framework already in place and the lack of much gender-specific forms of address in all the existing supports, enabling more same-sex options is fairly trivial on both a technical and a writing level. Your comparison of the lack of options here is not equivalent to the lack of any customisation of Byleth's age (much as I'd like that), but to the age range of the romantic options.

In this regard it's still not fantastic, but there are a slightly more options here for someone wanting an older partner than there are for same-sex relationships. It could use some improvements, but unfortunately it's a function of how many older cast members already exist to even be candidates in the first place, a pool far smaller than the potential candidates for same-sex relationships.

Returning to the Byleth customisation topic though, there are a fair few more constraints in simply enabling it, not least the presence of Jeralt and your fixed backstory, and the timeline of the setting in general. Sexual orientation, on the other hand, is completely implicit and is essentially customised automatically with no manual input required. Again, low-hanging fruit.

Both Byleth and Jeralt age is ?? And they don't age, you just need to remove the "20 years ago" and put an unspecified "a long time ago" instead.

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23 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Both Byleth and Jeralt age is ?? And they don't age, you just need to remove the "20 years ago" and put an unspecified "a long time ago" instead.

I'm not far into the game and while I've read spoilers, I'm still not fully clear on how specific they get with Byleth's origin, so I'm not qualified to make a definitive statement. I remember reading that they eventually state an exact age but I don't know if that recollection is accurate. I also don't know how much the other events of the gameworld would need to change, but assuming they're pretty fluid, I'd be fully behind making it more flexible. Like how New Vegas is completely open whereas Fallout 3 has you specifically pegged as someone who's just come of age, blech.

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1 hour ago, MaryQueen99 said:

First of all, I would advise the author of the petition of sharing it in others forum and in some Fire Emblem group on Facebook.

Second, I find the male gay option insulting. I mean, 3 options (2 of them being old man and 1 is married) was already bad, but when you know that the older options

  Reveal hidden contents

Are literally Queerbait, and a S Support has always meant marriage or a romantic confession. What would you feel if you S Supported Edelgard but you don't get togheter and you marry a generic man? Tell me you would be fine with it

It is insulting. I mean, I'm a woman so it doesn't directly affect me, but I think everyone can admit that they had chosen the worst options. Making Claude or Dimitri bisexual, or another students would have been a better option. 

And let's not start talking about realism because it's not realistic that all the cast can potentially marry Byleth. 

Why is lack of male gay options insulting? We can agree that homosexuality topic is still something people would argue over about, so IS/Nintendo probably would take the safer route - rather questioning the lack of it instead questioning the existence of it.

Edited by Garlyle
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31 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

 

I believe the person you replied to was insulted about the current male gay s supports, and not really the lack of availability of them.

Anyways... Even as an outsider, I can see why this would be insulting. For me, it seems that the M-M S Supports were just added into the game for the sake of having them available, as opposed to adding them with any sort of intention. Its kind of a cop out to say "we have these LGBT options for our characters but, all that gets thrown out the window in the end since they end up just being straight again." Also who thought it was a good idea to have a man who has a wife and child (the wife still alive, revealed in Gilbert/Annette's paralogue) to be one of the S supports (let alone one of the gay support options).

Idk even to me, the F-F supports just seem like they were there to have the Waifu options for players that wanted to go F!Byleth, due to the rift between the gay and lesbian options (mainly focusing on Linhardt/Alois/Gilbert vs.Edelgard/Dorothea/Mercedes, Rhea and Sothis make sense but that's a whole different story)since all 3 F-F options are the most popular units in the game (Mercedes I feel like is one of the more popular non-BE characters) while the M-M options feel like they were chosen from like a random number generator since they don't really make sense to me.

Edit- actually I guess I can kinda understand Alois since Alois is more or less loyal to Byleth (doesn't help that Byleth just married a random woman in their paired ending). However, I do feel that Linhardt being a gay option was intentional (not because he's a student).

Edited by Lunarly
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Who. Gives. A. Shit.

Marriage hes 0. Absolutely 0 impact on the game. It's a tiny cutscene at the very end of the game after there is no more gameplay and a panel of text.

Hur dur guess we need petition cause theres no black people in the game too!

Leave the fucking politics out of it. Best thing they did was get away from all the romance nonsense and back to their roots.

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31 minutes ago, Silent Hill said:

Who. Gives. A. Shit.

Marriage hes 0. Absolutely 0 impact on the game. It's a tiny cutscene at the very end of the game after there is no more gameplay and a panel of text.

Hur dur guess we need petition cause theres no black people in the game too!

Leave the fucking politics out of it. Best thing they did was get away from all the romance nonsense and back to their roots.

Have we been playing the same games? FE always has had politics in its games.

Doesn’t matter if it has zero impact. People do care about their S support romance whether you like it or not.

Edited by Hekselka
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4 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

Diversity isn't by the numbers, matching up 1:1 with a census (let alone a specifically American census). It's about adequate representation in media. Is there adequate straight representation in media? Obviously. Adequate female representation? Not for the most part, but it's been distinctly improving over time. Has there been adequate queer representation in FE? Not until FE15 / 16. People of marginalised groups should be able to look at a large cast and see at least someone who they can identify with. In a game with an avatar and romance options, someone to have them fuck.

Sure, you can wave around all the census data you want to decry this 'forced diversity' which... doesn't negatively affect you or your experience in any way. But, sweetheart? Something to think about: the genre's called fantasy.

I've already addressed most of this in another post, especially the bold sentence.

You are not entitled to feeling "represented" in every piece of media you consume or want to consume. If it is enough of a problem for you to reduce your enjoyment, vote with your wallet and don't buy the games until you think the "representation" is adequate.

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24 minutes ago, Silent Hill said:

Who. Gives. A. Shit.

Marriage hes 0. Absolutely 0 impact on the game. It's a tiny cutscene at the very end of the game after there is no more gameplay and a panel of text.

Hur dur guess we need petition cause theres no black people in the game too!

Leave the fucking politics out of it. Best thing they did was get away from all the romance nonsense and back to their roots.

What exactly is the ‘roots’? Are you sure you’ve been playing Fire Emblem or are you just ignorant of Marth and Caeda’s relationship. Or are referring to when there was no avatar character? If so, we can devote all our time on arguing whether Ike/Soren or Raven/Lucius are a couple. 

Romance have been present since the very first game. The only difference is that there is a character that is supposed to represent the player now. 

2 hours ago, Garlyle said:

Why is lack of male gay options insulting? We can agree that homosexuality topic is still something people would argue over about, so IS/Nintendo probably would take the safer route - rather questioning the lack of it instead questioning the existence of it.

Yes, the safer route was definitely to make dozens of straight options, 5 lesbian options, 1 gay option and 1 bait and switch option. Anyone paying attention to current social climate can see that what they did will be viewed as insulting.

And what exactly should we ask about existence of gay options in FE games?

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6 minutes ago, De Geso said:

I've already addressed most of this in another post, especially the bold sentence.

You are not entitled to feeling "represented" in every piece of media you consume or want to consume. If it is enough of a problem for you to reduce your enjoyment, vote with your wallet and don't buy the games until you think the "representation" is adequate.

Problem with voting with ‘voting with the wallet’ is that developers don’t know why every single person didn’t buy the game or why they wouldn’t buy a future installement.

People aren’t entitled but they do have every right to critique the flaw of the games and bring this up. Which is what people are doing in this thread.

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41 minutes ago, Silent Hill said:

Who. Gives. A. Shit.

Marriage hes 0. Absolutely 0 impact on the game. It's a tiny cutscene at the very end of the game after there is no more gameplay and a panel of text.

Hur dur guess we need petition cause theres no black people in the game too!

Leave the fucking politics out of it. Best thing they did was get away from all the romance nonsense and back to their roots.

It's not politics. It's literally just "make more characters that are x". People need to stop getting offended by minorities asking for representation. If it's such a tiny thing as you claim, why get worked up about it? 

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22 minutes ago, De Geso said:

I've already addressed most of this in another post, especially the bold sentence.

You are not entitled to feeling "represented" in every piece of media you consume or want to consume. If it is enough of a problem for you to reduce your enjoyment, vote with your wallet and don't buy the games until you think the "representation" is adequate.

This comment is so insensitive on multiple levels and I hope you realize how hurtful it can be. If underrepresented groups never fought for representation, movies like Crazy Rich Asians or Black Panther would never happen. Were the production of these two films because Asian and black people ‘voted with their wallets’?

If I were to vote with my wallet to ‘protest’ the lack of Asians with prominent roles in Hollywood films, I’d be watching maybe 1 film a year. Tell me, am I supposed to be satisfied with that because I’m not entitled to feeling being represented in Hollywood films? Should I just settle for watching films produced by Asian countries? 

 

Edited by zuibangde
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4 minutes ago, Book Bro said:

It's not politics. It's literally just "make more characters that are x". People need to stop getting offended by minorities asking for representation. If it's such a tiny thing as you claim, why get worked up about it? 

It's a bit funny seeing people overreact to something so simple really, it's as if it would KILL them if more gay choices were in this game. 

And don't even let me start on the "You aren't the target audience, so you don't get the right to complain" argument that I see whenever this topic gets brought up. 

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20 minutes ago, zuibangde said:

This comment is so insensitive on multiple levels and I hope you realize how hurtful it can be. If underrepresented groups never fought for representation, movies like Crazy Rich Asians or Black Panther would never happen. Were the production of these two films because Asian and black people ‘voted with their wallets’?

If I were to vote with my wallet to ‘protest’ the lack of Asians with prominent roles in Hollywood films, I’d be watching maybe 1 film a year. Tell me, am I supposed to be satisfied with that because I’m not entitled to feeling being represented in Hollywood films? Should I just settle for watching films produced by Asian countries? 

 

I really don't care.

The production of those films was because asians and blacks are a sizable market...you serious?

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27 minutes ago, Rose482 said:

It's a bit funny seeing people overreact to something so simple really, it's as if it would KILL them if more gay choices were in this game. 

And don't even let me start on the "You aren't the target audience, so you don't get the right to complain" argument that I see whenever this topic gets brought up. 

You have the right to complain, not the right to have those complaints validated. I'd accept the argument that you simply want it, don't try to push as if it's an improvement to quality or tapping into a sizable market, I'm sorry but it really isn't. I don't think I can say this any nicer and still maintain my message.

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18 minutes ago, De Geso said:

I really don't care.

The production of those films was because asians and blacks are a sizable market...you serious?

Ok, ok, let's all calm down a bit.

Here's what I'll say:

So far, I don't see any reason to not allow bisexual options, any more than genderlocked classes, as they just use exactly the same support writing, so there's basically no effort on the developers part. Similarly, skin tone is just a color, and literally can be changed in the shader without affecting anything else, so there's no issue there.

THAT SAID, discussing this is completely pointless as this is a game made by Japanese people in Japan. Arguing about market size, influence, the number of LGBT people in America, and so on a is completely pointless. Heck, in a recent article with IGN, the game developers themselves said they don't know why the series is popular outside of Japan, and they don't care.

Basically, there's not much point in getting angry or sidetracked here. Ultimately, who cares if you or the other person is right? It's not worth getting angry or offended over.

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53 minutes ago, zuibangde said:

Yes, the safer route was definitely to make dozens of straight options, 5 lesbian options, 1 gay option and 1 bait and switch option. Anyone paying attention to current social climate can see that what they did will be viewed as insulting.

And what exactly should we ask about existence of gay options in FE games?

I wouldn't call that insulting, more like disappointing to some people. Would you find a movie or book insulting if it'd not talk about all kind of social topics including gay ones? Don't think so, and why should Fire Emblem be different about this? I did not care to play with Fatesawakening, barely touched Tellius, and before that it wasn't really touched in this game as much as I noticed - not in support conversations at least.

As for your question, I don't know why we need to ask for gay options in FE games as explained above.

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14 minutes ago, CyberNinja said:

You have the right to complain, not the right to have those complaints validated

Um, I know? Which is why I hate when people try to play the "target audience" card to get people to shut up and stay silent.

14 minutes ago, CyberNinja said:

I'd accept the argument that you simply want it, don't try to push as if it's an improvement to quality or tapping into a sizable market, I'm sorry but it really isn't. I don't think I can say this any nicer and still maintain my message.

And also let's be real, if there is someone out there who won't buy FE16 becasue it has one mlm option, the chances are they also won't be too happy about 5 FLF  options being there as well. So I really don't think this has anything to do with the market side of things. 

Edited by Rose482
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1 hour ago, Rose482 said:

It's a bit funny seeing people overreact to something so simple really, it's as if it would KILL them if more gay choices were in this game. 

And don't even let me start on the "You aren't the target audience, so you don't get the right to complain" argument that I see whenever this topic gets brought up. 

I can't speak for others, but i am not annoyed by the gay option, i am annoyed by the aestethic ideal that "there is no x kind of people" is a fair criticism to a work of art, whose purpose is to be beautiful, not to be moral, not to make any specific group of people happy and not to produce social change(unless the authors make their work that way).  Funnily enought, one of the main proponent of such a view is Oscar Wilde one of the most famous gay writers. And usually, works of art are more beautiful if society leave artists alone.

Very few people complained about Black Panther, because it was clearly an intended part of the MCU that was made by people that wanted to make it like that. It was not the result of SJW complaining that there were not enought black people. This is the kind of representstion that work. There are people that want to write diverse characters. Enable them to do so and give them a platform.

Asking for fair representation imo means asking for a world were Black Panther and Into the Spiderverse can exist and be succesful, not asking for replacing Tony Stark whit Riri Williams. And in case of Fire Embem, it seems more the latter than the former.

 

 

 

Edited by Flere210
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3 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

I wouldn't call that insulting, more like disappointing to some people. Would you find a movie or book insulting if it'd not talk about all kind of social topics including gay ones? Don't think so, and why should Fire Emblem be different about this? I did not care to play with Fatesawakening, barely touched Tellius, and before that it wasn't really touched in this game as much as I noticed - not in support conversations at least.

As for your question, I don't know why we need to ask for gay options in FE games as explained above.

It is insulting. By having Alois and Gilbert not even reach a romantic ending the implication seems to be that Lesbians >>> Gay men because of the difference between the amount of the romantic S supports.

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