Here at Lady Geek Girl and Friends, we address just about every social issue you could shake a stick at; however, in terms of fandom and fanfiction, the issue that speaks directly to my heart is the lack of fics starring a female couple in a romantic relationship. I’ve already made mention of this in an earlier Fanfiction Fridays of mine, but this time I decided to approach it from a different angle. Rather than hoping that some author would kindly decide to extrapolate on the relationship between two ladies already present in canon, I wanted to see if game series that focus on making a customizable main character might be more evenly divided between the types of slash fic—if not evenly divided, at least an easier task to find actual femslash fic.
Before plunging myself into the depths of fanfiction created by Bioware titles—I could lose days sorting through all that fic-y goodness—I wanted to start with a fandom that is a little more reserved in its output. Or at least it seems like it from this side of the ocean.
Fire Emblem: Awakening is the newest addition to the Fire Emblem series of turn-based strategy games. Its plot deals with a huge multi-continent war, a legion of the undead—named ‘the risen’—coming to wreak havoc on everyone and everything, memory loss, doppelgangers, and time travel, just to name a few things. I know, it sounds like standard fare for a JRPG, but what this has over a typical JRPG is a mechanic in which fighting alongside certain members of your army unlocks new conversations with them, and even marriage later on. It’s a shipper’s dream, and the fanbase loves it. However, and perhaps unsurprisingly, there are no homosexual relationships available for the player character to pursue. This is disappointing especially considering that there’s a pairing that’s so hinted at it may as well be canon (at least in terms of being available for the final, ‘marriage-tier’ conversation).
I had thought that finding a fic based on the seemingly forbidden relationship between the player character and a member of the same gender would have been the easiest path to tread (since self-insert fic is a long-lasting love of any canon), but once more I was surprised: a fic on the front page staring two characters that I hadn’t even thought of together caught my eye. And it was femslash? Be still my beating heart.
Spoilers for Fire Emblem: Awakening under the cut.
Continue reading →