WARNING: UNSPOILED STATEMENTS ABOUT A CERTAIN SUPPORT! WHILE NO DIRECT SPOILER ABOUT THE STORY IS LISTED, BE FOREWARNED ABOUT SUPPORT SPOILERS!
I'm getting on the damage control early since this latest rumor about the game has spread to other gaming forums. As you can guess, Fire Emblem Fates has had a bit of a misinformation problem as things get translated from Japanese to English. Reports saying that rape, stripping, fornification, sexual assault, nudity, or gore porn have been popping up every few hours since release. These rumors are then swatted down by a bunch of people and confirmed in game to be untrue.
The latest rumor involves the support conversation between the main character Kamui as a male (Kamui is the Avatar in the game and his/her gender is determined at the start) and the female known as Soleil. According to the rumor and the unofficial 4chan pastebin translation, Male Kamui drugs Soleil with a magic powder that causes her to fall in love with him. This is worsened by the fact that she is bisexual in-game (though she can't marry women because...look, this game DOES have legitimate problems but I'll go over that in another thread, this thread is for squashing a rumor). So, in a series of supports, you have a male use drugs to turn a gay woman straight. This...sound very problematic. Here comes the problem.
...We have absolutely no idea if its true. Our main source is a 4chan who used Google freaking translate to get it. These same supports have been cause of other misinterpretations of the game so we have already established them as unreliable. I have multiple conflicting reports telling me that this translation is accurate or not but the more reliable ones have said that it isn't accurate. From what I can gather, there is no direct intention of date rape or gay erasure in the support. There MAY, however, and this is more complicated, be implied date rape and gay erasure.
The actually support goes like this. Soleil has a problem when she sees pretty girls. She faints. This normally isn't too problematic except this happens on the battlefield. She goes to M!Kamui for help on this matter. M!Kamui gives Soleil a magic potion that, in her eyes, reverses the genders. This somehow works (look, if the controversy was on how idiotic this support is, I'd get it. Supports quality range from great to wtf were you smoking, ok?). Also, Soleil somehow falls in love with M!Kamui (Again, quality not the point here). Given the Soleil is both mechanically and narratively more inclined to like girls over boys (though she is bisexual), many people are seeing this conversation as subtly implying gay erasure. I'm...not to sure about that honestly.
On one hand, if you want to include the fact that this game seems to want more gay/lesbian/bisexual relationships than it actually has (Carmilla has a liking for strong girls, Soleil has an in-game ability called GIRL'S LOVE, etc.) then you could argue that the fact that no same sex marriage is included at all for these characters counts as gay erasure. That support would just be another nail in the coffin. On the other hand, the gay/lesbian romance supports are perhaps some of the better supports in the entire game and there seems to have been extra care for all the supports that lead to an A+ rating so I can't shake the feeling that something happened between then and now. Plus, I'm still getting most of my info from a 4chan user using Google Translate and have multiple "official" translators flat say it's fake so who knows?
In any case, there is, at the very least, no direct attempt at date rape or gay erasure in Fire Emblem Fates. It's all ANOTHER rumor. I swear, I need to make a thread on what Fire Emblem Fates ACTUALLY has fanservice wise because this blowing out of proportion.
I'm getting on the damage control early since this latest rumor about the game has spread to other gaming forums. As you can guess, Fire Emblem Fates has had a bit of a misinformation problem as things get translated from Japanese to English. Reports saying that rape, stripping, fornification, sexual assault, nudity, or gore porn have been popping up every few hours since release. These rumors are then swatted down by a bunch of people and confirmed in game to be untrue.
The latest rumor involves the support conversation between the main character Kamui as a male (Kamui is the Avatar in the game and his/her gender is determined at the start) and the female known as Soleil. According to the rumor and the unofficial 4chan pastebin translation, Male Kamui drugs Soleil with a magic powder that causes her to fall in love with him. This is worsened by the fact that she is bisexual in-game (though she can't marry women because...look, this game DOES have legitimate problems but I'll go over that in another thread, this thread is for squashing a rumor). So, in a series of supports, you have a male use drugs to turn a gay woman straight. This...sound very problematic. Here comes the problem.
...We have absolutely no idea if its true. Our main source is a 4chan who used Google freaking translate to get it. These same supports have been cause of other misinterpretations of the game so we have already established them as unreliable. I have multiple conflicting reports telling me that this translation is accurate or not but the more reliable ones have said that it isn't accurate. From what I can gather, there is no direct intention of date rape or gay erasure in the support. There MAY, however, and this is more complicated, be implied date rape and gay erasure.
The actually support goes like this. Soleil has a problem when she sees pretty girls. She faints. This normally isn't too problematic except this happens on the battlefield. She goes to M!Kamui for help on this matter. M!Kamui gives Soleil a magic potion that, in her eyes, reverses the genders. This somehow works (look, if the controversy was on how idiotic this support is, I'd get it. Supports quality range from great to wtf were you smoking, ok?). Also, Soleil somehow falls in love with M!Kamui (Again, quality not the point here). Given the Soleil is both mechanically and narratively more inclined to like girls over boys (though she is bisexual), many people are seeing this conversation as subtly implying gay erasure. I'm...not to sure about that honestly.
On one hand, if you want to include the fact that this game seems to want more gay/lesbian/bisexual relationships than it actually has (Carmilla has a liking for strong girls, Soleil has an in-game ability called GIRL'S LOVE, etc.) then you could argue that the fact that no same sex marriage is included at all for these characters counts as gay erasure. That support would just be another nail in the coffin. On the other hand, the gay/lesbian romance supports are perhaps some of the better supports in the entire game and there seems to have been extra care for all the supports that lead to an A+ rating so I can't shake the feeling that something happened between then and now. Plus, I'm still getting most of my info from a 4chan user using Google Translate and have multiple "official" translators flat say it's fake so who knows?
In any case, there is, at the very least, no direct attempt at date rape or gay erasure in Fire Emblem Fates. It's all ANOTHER rumor. I swear, I need to make a thread on what Fire Emblem Fates ACTUALLY has fanservice wise because this blowing out of proportion.