Fire Emblem 14's Unofficial Gay Fates Mod is Delightful

I’ve been trying to write this rant for a while now, and I always get stuck with it, because I keep trying to be a verbose grandstanding idiot about it, going on about the noble creative endeavors that RPG mods can be as works of love, creativity, and a desire to correct costly mistakes, and blah blah blah.  And all that is absolutely true and some of it’s even true for this particular mod, but in the end, it’s not what’s goddamn relevant.  What is, is the fact that Fire Emblem 14’s Unofficial Gay Fates mod is simple, delightful fun built on fans’ love for the game’s characters and the self-indulgence of shipping the hell out of all of them.  And damn it all, I like it for that, and so will you.

An expanded continuation of an abandoned mod that caught my eye some years ago,* the Unofficial Gay Fates Add-On mod is pretty simple and straightforward in concept: it adds social links Supports, both whole new ones altogether and also new S-Rank conversations for existing ones, written by a myriad number of fans who have collaborated on this project.  A lot of new Supports, for that matter.  And this takes many forms.

Now of course, this is most obviously represented by pairs of characters who didn’t have any kind of support connection in the original FE14 now, with this mod, able to form meaningful friendships, and even** become romantically involved.  This, of course, is going to most often be true for same-sex couples, since the characters already had a ton of heterosexual options available in the vanilla game.  Also, character pairs who had supports that had no romantic S rank before may now have this cherished Let’s Bone rank (which again is most often true for same-sex pairs), and characters who could romance Corrin heterosexually may now also get their gay on should Corrin be of their own sex, with the final romance interaction appropriately altered to represent Corrin’s gender (which in at leat 1 case involved actual re-writing beyond just pronoun switching (more on this case below)).  There’s, like, dozens of entirely new support conversation chains that the mod adds which end with romance.  FE14 was already packed full of potential love stories, but with the Unnoficial Gay Fates Add-On, you can just go absolutely hog wild with it.

Fanservicy?  Oh it’s fanservicy.  It’s fanservicy as fuck.  This is self-indulgence to an extreme within a franchise that is already unhealthily indulgent about such things.

But hang it all, it’s still fun.  This isn’t some game company gracelessly pandering in the hopes of making a cheap, sleazy buck off of its audience.  We, the audience ourselves, are the ones creating these indulgent scenarios.  Not out of some crass hope of hitting the lowest common denominator selling point, but because we actually like the work’s characters, and want to have more content of them to enjoy.  I think fanservice is a hell of a lot less deplorable when it’s massaging characters’ potential out of love than when it’s twisting characters’ essence out of greed.

And that love and gentle treatment shows in this work, because honestly, the overall level of writing to be found in this mod is solid.  Now I haven’t read all of them, and there’s some variation from 1 fan writer to the next...but overall, the characters are represented well, the scenarios in which they engage with one another and become friends and lovers are decent and at times even inventive, and the emotional progression generally checks out well (within reason; we’re still talking about going from 0 - 69 in just 4 conversations).  And most of them even still feel authentic to the general method and ambiance of the game’s original material.  Not ALL of them, admittedly, because some of us just can’t help being overly verbose garrulous windbags no matter what we do, resulting in conversations that are like 3x longer than anything you’d normally have found in the game, but eh.

Yes, I contributed some of the Supports in this mod, so yes, a lot of the last 2 paragraphs was me shamelessly patting myself on the back.  I don’t care.  I like what I wrote, and I like the characters I wrote for.  The world forgives show- and game-ruining narcissism from the likes of Dan Harmon and Randy Pitchford; I think I can be forgiven a little pride here and there.  I’ve still got a ways to go before I see David Cage in the mirror.

Beyond being genuinely enjoyable and giving the player a chance to do more shipping in an afternoon than their local FedEx hub, it should be noted that this mod DOES have its higher purposes.  Yes, its draw is primarily for the simple fun of it, but I wouldn’t be making a rant about it here if that truly were all there was to it.  The Unofficial Gay Fates Add-On also fixes some mistakes that the original FE14 made.  Remember my list of Fire Emblem 14’s romances?  After I celebrated the best the game had to offer and lamented its worst, I also listed out certain love story options that really should have been available to the player, such as the popularly desired Ryoma x Scarlet (given that they have an actual personal connection in the main story, which you sure as hell can’t say about most of the various shipping possibilities in the game), or the option for characters who very clearly, canonically already have romantic and/or sexual interests in their own gender to romance Corrin regardless of gender (how insane is it that Soleil’s only able to romance Male Corrin, yet her interest in him is based on closing her eyes and pretending that he’s a girl?).  Quite obviously, this mod corrects these mistakes of negligence, allowing for several romantic relationships whose absence in FE14 was a notable error.***

Additionally, I’m just pleased overall that FE14 now (unofficially) has a good number of homosexual relationships available to its characters.  I was really annoyed over how incredibly tiny a first step FE14 was for the series (and the publisher, for that matter) into realistically representative romance options, and I sincerely think this is what Fire Emblem 14 needed. And while you can certainly make the argument that giving every character multiple same-sex relationship options is overkill, that overkill is still a hell of a lot better than the previous state of inadequacy.  It’s not like you HAVE to engage in teh gayz with every character if you don’t want to, and even if it’s obvious where the main focus of the mod is, like I said earlier, there’s plenty of new heterosexual couples added in, too.

Also, I know it’s not a huge thing, but it’s a bit of a relief that Peri now has more than just 1 single romantic option that actually helps her grow and develop past being a mental-age-stinted murder-hobo.  And just for a little extra fun, this mod also incorporates a different one which makes Lilith a playable character, complete with her own Supports, which is nice, honestly, because she kinda got dropped and forgotten by the original game, and definitely deserved better.

The Unnofficial Gay Fates Add-On mod really displays just how much its community genuinely enjoys and cares for the characters of this game in ways that go far past the self-indulgence of shipping, too.  The mod also adds quite a few unique conversations between potential mothers and children (which, in the original game, were only represented by a single stock conversation per child), unique conversations between potential same-sex fathers and their children and between siblings created through male same-sex romances (so the mod opens up and then provides an entire new branch of parent-child and sibling interaction Supports),**** and even a bunch of purely platonic Supports between various other characters, often a first generation character and a second generation character who might have cause to have interactions and a connection.  You’ll come for the shipping, but you’ll stay for the tremendous expansion on the cast’s interrelationships.  And again, while I haven’t seen them all by a long shot, what I’ve experienced has been consistently good quality.

Worth noting is also the care and skill which the leader of this project, Babysauce, or Chicken McNuggies (depending on whether they prefer their name on GameBanana or Youtube), has transcribed these conversations into the game.  Not only does Babysauce transcribe all these conversations into the game--which by itself is a huge feat, considering there is, at the time I write this, 367 Supports***** that have been added or changed by the mod, and at least a few of them are pretty damn long--but they also add textual effects where appropriate.  It’s not just 2 people standing there exchanging text boxes; there are times when the mod’s conversations are almost like a Tales of skit with how effectively they’re executed.

Additionally, Babysauce has added a feature from Fire Emblem 13 that was cut from FE14: the use of characters’ spoken lines in their Support conversations.  In FE13, conversations would apparently (I still haven’t played it) use some basic, pre-packaged vocal lines for each character that, while not actually speaking the lines in the text box, would roughly represent the intent/mood of the dialogue.  A character might say, for example, “My heart flutters when mine eyes behold thy sublime countenance, oh cherished beloved,” in the text box, while the vocal line “WOOO YEAH BRO THAT’S THE GOOD SHIT” plays over it to emphasize the character’s positive excitement.  Exaggeration for humorous effect aside, though, it’s a cute quirk of the Support conversations that does add to their quality in FE13, and the fact that Babysauce has now used FE14’s existing voice acting lines recorded for battle scenarios is just 1 more feather in this mod’s cap.

And it’s worth a decent bit of respect, too, because it means that in addition to transcribing all these dozens and dozens of new conversations, Babysauce is also taking the time to review them for appropriate moments to add these vocal effects, too.  The amount of care and effort that’s been put into this mod is staggering the more I think about it.

Now, it’s all fine and dandy and well and good and nice and spiffy and peachy that this mod exists, and is a lot of fun, and is well done, but of course, not everyone’s got the know-how and tech wherewithal to go around modding their 3DS games.  Or maybe everyone actually does, and it’s just me who’s a slack-jawed moron.  But either way, the great thing about The Unnofficial Gay Fates Add-On is that you don’t actually HAVE to install it to enjoy its content.  Because, as it turns out, Babysauce has also gone and uploaded a video of basically every Support added by the mod to Youtube!  So you can even experience the joy of your favorite ships from the comfort of your own technological disinclination!

So if you like Fire Emblem 14’s cast, but were left in any way wanting about who could hook up, or you’d be interested to see the family dynamics of its first and second generations expanded upon, or even just want to see what happens when I try my hand at silly stupid sappy fanfiction,****** you should check out The Unofficial Gay Fates Add-On mod.  It’s earnest, skillful, and a heck of a lot of fun!















* Unassuming Venusaur’s Same-Sex Marriage Patch, to give proper credit.


** Ha!  “Even.”  As though the shipping isn’t entirely the reason for it.


*** I’m quite pleased that I got to be involved in 1 of these corrections, that being (re)writing the S Support I felt was most mistakenly left out of the game, Camilla with Female Corrin.


**** Children are linked to their fathers in this game, so the child character of Mitama, for example, is always the daughter of her father Azama, while her mother could be any of Azama’s Supports that can reach S Rank.  With this mod, though, Azama could potentially get together with, say, Silas.  Mitama still exists, whether through a surrogate mother or some magical conception-to-birth means, but obviously the stock conversations she could have with her mother are not viable.  But this mod also adds a unique Support, in that case, between Mitama and her second father Silas--it really goes all in on these.  Similarly, since child characters are linked to their fathers, male same-sex pairings in this game leads to 2 child characters who are now siblings--in the example I gave, Sophie, as Silas’s daughter, is also now Mitama’s sister.  And the mod also provides a unique Support between Mitama and Sophie in this scenario which reflects their connection.


***** In fairness, I would assume that the many, many Supports that originated in Unassuming Venusaur’s progenitor to this mod had most of the work done for them.  But Babysauce has still done probably more than half of the total conversations in this mod, I would say.


****** Oh you all KNOW I’m too shameless not to share these things with you directly.  AND share my thoughts on them as if anyone cares.  Enjoy, maybe!

Camilla x Corrin (S Rank): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rflb6JCnaHw
For most gay Corrin S conversations, a simple matter of pronoun-switching is all that’s needed, but Camilla’s specifically involves referencing a scenario--Corrin, a man, and Camilla, a woman, going on a vacation to a hot springs resort together--that just doesn’t have the same social context when it’s between 2 women, so some additional care was called for.  I know this is all a bunch of silly fanfiction, but I’m all the same very pleased with how I’ve reworked this conversation to stay generally in line with the original, but have Corrin’s concern about appearances make a bit more sense.

...And then use that slight alteration as a springboard to add juuuuust a bit of character stuff for Camilla and her obsession with Corrin.  Because Qi Jhong help me I just can’t stop myself.


Mitama x Selkie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQMkdkLB_M
Mitama is my spirit animal and I fucking love her.*******  And Selkie just never ceases to amuse me.  I’m most proud of my Camilla x Corrin S rewrite, but I definitely had the most fun and personally like this Support the most of these.


Mitama x Ophelia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSelw-egmi0
I just have a certain fondness for burdening Mitama with quirky, disruptive, and arguably mildly insane characters, it seems.  Camilla x Corrin is the one I’m proudest of, and Mitama x Selkie is the one I had the most fun with (not that I didn’t enjoy writing all of these, mind you), but objectively, I think the best overall of my Supports is probably this one; it just seems to flow right and bring them together very well.


******* YES I AM AWARE OF THE IRONY OF MY LIKING THE CHARACTER ALL ABOUT HAIKUS, THE FORM OF POETRY DEFINED BY COMMUNICATING WITH STRICT BREVITY.