Soleil: Bisexuality, Other Supports and Drugging.

So here we are again, because for some reason me trying to give a heads up to people about content in the game somehow went viral and every single thing I said about that topic after my first post on it got ignored in favor of accusing me of fabrication of lies and other fun things.

Let’s talk about Soleil again, shall we?

So, by now you have probably read or at least heard about my post on Fire Emblem Fates and its gay conversion therapy. Chances are you’ve also heard that I was making it all up because Soleil isn’t a lesbian, she is bisexual.

The evidence used to support her bisexuality is a line she has in the game after mistaking a man for a woman because he was “too cute to be male”. He asks her if male partners are out of the question. She reluctantly states that they’re not unimaginable, but that she is into women. That’s it.

Can you interpret this as her being bisexual? Sure, she says a male partner isn’t unimaginable after all. But not only is she somewhat reluctant while saying it, she is saying it after the player has initiated another romance story for her in which she has begun falling for a man while perceiving them as a woman.

More than anything it sounds like the kind of line put into the game to reassure male gamers that she would indeed let them fuck her, and when you look at Soleil’s character arc in all her romance option it becomes pretty clear how this is.

Soleil can only marry male characters. Despite literally stating she wants romantic partners to be female, she can not marry any woman. Her character trope is “the girl who loves girls”, she has a skill called “girl lover” and she is referred to constantly by other characters as somebody who is interested in women.

Every single romantic story for Soleil is essentially “finding the guy that converts her straight”, not all of them uses drugging thankfully, but that’s still the concept. And it’s not surprising, the male wet dream of converting a lesbian into a straight woman is very common.

The Male Kamui even refers to Soleil’s lack of attraction to men during their marriage sequence. Soleil states that she fell in love with Kamui when she saw him as a woman, but now loves him regardless, and then Kamui cracks a joke about how he won’t have to worry about someone like her looking at other men. The main character knows full well Soleil only likes women.

Soleil refers to her attraction to women as something preventing her to be a strong woman. Every single romance option for her is about finding the right man to make her turn away from women. It may not be straight up gay conversion therapy, but it’s still written to be a gay conversion dream.

And like so many bisexuals have pointed out. You don’t have to “convince” them of being attracted to men, that’s kind of the point of their sexuality.

Some people are claiming that the marriage options prove that Soleil is actually heterosexual and that she only “likes cute girls”. Basically your standard “great friends” style lesbian-erasure hand-waving, but it brings me to my next point.

She was still drugged. Male Kamui still drugs her without consent.

It’s not okay to drug a heterosexual woman.

It’s not okay to drug a bisexual woman.

It’s not okay to drug anybody.

The fact that this is something constantly ignored by those trying to slander me is pretty fucking scary to be truthful. The drug was not designed to make her straight or to make her fall in love, but it was a mind-altering drug that was literally sprinkled in her drink without her knowing.

The fact that it ends with her falling in love with male Kamui is disgusting in its own right, but the actual issue at hand is that Intelligent Systems and Nintendo put out a game where you drug a woman without her knowing that you are drugging her and it’s not seen as a bad thing and if you push on the character thanks you for doing it. And we’re meant to accept it because “it wasn’t a love drug”.

I didn’t make the translation presented in my first post, I never claimed to have made it. I linked to a pastebin. When asked for proof I got my hands on one of the scenes on YouTube, went over the dialogue compared to the pastebin, found it matching, put some quick photoshopped images together, ran them by four friends fluent in Japanese to make sure I hadn’t messed up and posted them.

I’ve spent the last 27 hours trying to reply to people who are rational and not just spamming slurs and attacks at me, I’ve tried to clear up details that I fully admitted to having gotten wrong through constantly tweeting about it, linking to statements I made that went ignored and so forth. But the damage is done.

I never asked for Fire Emblem Fates to be banned.

I never told people they couldn’t like Fire Emblem Fates.

I never demanded Nintendo to change the content in Fire Emblem Fates.

I never said they weren’t allowed to have this kind of content.

What I said was “this disgusts me, this is why, here is proof that it’s in the game, here are some more details that were presented, it still disgusts me, I won’t be buying it because of this and some of the previous things that we learned about the game, the rest of you can do as you please, but at least know what is in the game” and that’s enough for me to have been receiving constant harassment for over a day now.

I hope this will be the last I have to write about Fire Emblem, because I really have no interest in talking about it any more. I’m sorry I suggested your precious game might not be for everyone.