Ever since I started playing the game about two months ago I’ve had trouble putting my finger on exactly what I found wrong with the homoeroticism in FE13.  I’m not talking about the lack of same-sex S supports, because that’s built into the mechanics of a second generation so it’s grudgingly understandable.  Rather, so many of the support conversations (and I’ve not even gotten them all yet) have these uncomfortably handled queer moments – Avatar gets them the most since his/her C-A supports seem to be largely the same regardless of gender, but there are other instances – Sully’s gender nonconformity showing up in almost all of her supports, the infamous Virion/Libra, etc.  They all have one thing in common, something that is practically nonexistent in every FE before: they acknowledge the prospect of homoeroticism only to immediately shut it down, usually by playing it off as a joke.  I distinctly remember multiple instances of things like “That’s not what I mean” or “I’m not that kind of guy/girl” or just general freaking out over the possibility of a homoerotic situation.

FE homoeroticism is out of the closet, and the results are not pretty.

Like I said, this sort of explicit acknowledgement is something almost completely new to the series – sure, there’s Heather and there’s Legault/Heath and various suggestive paired endings in 7, 8, and 10, but even those are nothing compared to this game.  The Hubba Tester, even (somewhat) toned down as it is in translation, is the clearest example of the mindset that gay people exist to either be fetishized or joked about, and the supports suggest pretty thoroughly that Ylisse is aware of the existence of homosexuality to a degree unseen in any other FE setting and, furthermore, that some sort of stigma exists that justifies characters having momentary gay panics.

Compare Virion/Libra to its spiritual predecessor, Serra/Lucius.  Both supports involve a character mistaking a very feminine-looking man for a  woman, but only the former mentions the likelihood that that man’s femininity turns him into an object of desire for other men.  I think that fact even comes up in Libra’s recruitment conversation with Chrom, of all places, so it’s part of the player’s first impression of the character.  Instead, Serra/Lucius involves Serra briefly fetishizing Lucius’s beauty and leaves the subtextual homoeroticism where it belongs (in his Raven supports and paired ending, of course).  The true thematic equivalent to Virion/Libra, a Sain/Lucius support, does not exist (though I know people have joked about in the fandom).  While there’s a definite ambiguity to the likes of Raven/Lucius, Lyn/Florina, Joshua/Gerik, Ike/Soren, etc.  homoeroticism in these games at least has the advantage of not being so violently shut down at almost every turn.

As for the comedic element, FE has had laughs at the expense of gender nonconformity before; the bandit duos of 6 and 7, Valtome, and Excellus all partake in the same uncomfortable exaggerated femininity, either as a random gimmick for a single chapter or as part of an extended characterization designed to make the player dislike them more and look forward to killing them (on a side note, masculine-looking women are even rarer, but when they do show up – Echidna, Vaida, Tanith to a lesser extent – they’re recruitable characters and their appearance is rarely if ever referenced).  However, gender nonconformity – even with the double standard of the last parentheses – is a convenient out in media that allows for the suggestion of homosexuality without having to actually mention it.  Aside from perpetuating the false association between sexuality and gender conformity, note that all the examples above are villains.  It’s a pervasive (and highly annoying) trope to pit an effeminate villain against a conventionally masculine hero, and who are these guys’ opponents?  Roy (has a veritable harem of potential brides), Eliwood or Hector (required by the plot to get married and have children), Tibarn (sure, he has gay subtext with Reyson, but he’s hypermasculine in the extreme, and right around the time his army kills Valtome he engages in light flirting with Elincia), and Chrom (already married with a child at the time he goes after Excellus).  So…yeah, this is something of a time-honored tradition of the series, and based on Excellus it’s probably not stopping anytime soon.

The playable cast, though, is supposed to be likable, and yet all the comedic pseudo-homoeroticism and everyone’s impulsive reactions against that sort of thing doesn’t endear them to me in the least.  The only instances of homoeroticism that I’ve found so far to be relatively inoffensive (maybe even positively represented *gasp*) are the subtextual cases like Lissa/Maribelle and Inigo/Gerome.  I realize that, in a way, the series (and video gaming in general) is following the same cultural progression that dictated representations of homosexuality in other types of fiction, going from the darkness of ignored and encoded subtext into the harsh light of stereotypes, vilification, and fetishization, with the hope of eventual cultural acclimation and the minimization of those problems.  The problem with that is the moment of general uncloseting in the Western world started in the late 19th century and was accomplished in total by World War II.

*stage whisper* You’re a little behind the times, video game industry.