If a Pokemon harvest moon game existed would you want for a marriage candidate?
like, who would i marry in a hm style game with pokemon characters? that’s easy, N harmonia of course
other good candidates would be cheren, sycamore, the protagonist from pkmn colosseum, a human gijinka of gengar from the mystery dungeon series, cynthia, that one girl from team aqua and i guess the corresponding team magma girl, steven stone, jasmine (that one steel gym leader), some others i am probably forgetting
(also in case you forgot this blog is still being abandoned, the queue will run out in like a day)
Ngl, I miss when you used to do commentary of screen caps from YouTube. Those were the days
you are right anon, those WERE the days
unfortunately i don’t really put enough effort into creating original content on here to do that anymore but i will keep that in mind and will try to bring this back if i come across any hm videos
Send me a Harvest Moon Character and I’ll tell you:
1. How I feel about him/her
2. Who I ship him/her with romantically
3. Who I ship him/her with platonically
4. What do I like about this character
5. Would I marry this character
6. What would I do if this character was real
i do not know why all of you sent me characters starting with M but here i go anyway. under a cut to preserve length!
murrey
1. How I feel about him/her
uhh he’s the weird dude in awl. when i was younger i used to give him money so he would leave
2. Who I ship him/her with romantically
money
3. Who I ship him/her with platonically
also money. he probably also deserves the friendship of the entire town, why is everyone just letting him be (presumably) homeless?
4. What do I like about this character
he’s kind of endearingly weird and gross
5. Would I marry this character
probably not but if he was a marriage option in game i would certainly watch someone else do it on youtube
6. What would I do if this character was real
be concerned for his well being
muffy
1. How I feel about him/her
she is Good and to be protected
2. Who I ship him/her with romantically
self fulfillment. also i guess mark or pony? not really but griffin is too old and i do not want her to be alone. muffy/nami would be cute but i feel like nami’s emotional distance is not what muffy needs in this stage of her life. flora/muffy could also be some good stuff.
3. Who I ship him/her with platonically
griffin, pony…just being happy in general
4. What do I like about this character
she is nice, pretty, and always has her eyes on the prize. on a more meta level she’s also a surprisingly deep iteration of the outgoing flirty girl trope which we see in all her cutscenes about being hurt or used by men. she’s kind of painfully wistful though about being married and having a child
5. Would I marry this character
i did and it was good
6. What would I do if this character was real
like all her instagram photos
mary/maria
i’m gonna discuss hm64 era maria specifically since that is the version of her i am most fond of/familiar with
1. How I feel about him/her
the alpha hm wife
2. Who I ship him/her with romantically
the player i guess, but also karen and i think popuri. its been a while since i had opinions about hm64 yuri, i would have to check the cutscenes again
3. Who I ship him/her with platonically
all the hm64/mineral town bachelorettes. gray and harris can hang out too i guess
4. What do I like about this character
in hm64 at least she’s this shy librarian girl which always got points with me as a youth but also she’s kinda weird in a fun way. she likes bugs and cabbage and is the mayor’s daughter who is the only employee of the town’s library. flowerbud village library, more like ‘maria’s private book collection that wouldn’t fit in the house anymore’. she just works there so she can read and get paid for it honestly
Heyo! There's a new PC game that just came out- Stardew Valley. It's not an official Harvest Moon game, but it is an indie developer's homage to the series. Classic HM fans will probably love it!
if anyone has managed not to hear about stardew valley yet, it seems definitely worth checking out, especially if you’ve always wanted to be gay in harvest moon! i haven’t played but the pixel art is very beautiful and i’ve heard the farming mechanics are really pleasant as well. it’s gotten very positive reviews i believe & you can download it on steam!
I get the feeling that Marvelous would embrace same sex marriage before Natsume would. idk if its just me that sees it but Natsume is kind of ... conservative? as in, it seems like they stick only to what works and they only want to do whats safe
(cont’d) so i think that if we see any more branching out of heteronormativiry it’s only going to be from Marvelous. conversely, i also have a feeling that Natsume will bring more to us in the way of racial and ethnic diversity
in the past this has proven to be mostly true but honestly that distinction isn’t really relevant anymore! bokujou monogatari games are now localized by xseed, who are a lot less conservative about that whole issue. natsume might still be making games under the harvest moon title (and they recently just patched out gay marriage in seeds of memories so you know nothing’s changed), but as for marvelous’ decisions we in the west will still get those characters if they put them in
as for diversity uhh it’s true natsume has done a little of this but in lost valley it’s also true that they have tony’s immigrant father speaking perpetually broken english and i believe they only have one dark skinned marriage candidate? i’m not an expert on the tlv/som casts but i would not say either natsume or marvelous are perfect in that respect
I wish Harvest Moon would have gay marriage candidates but they could also, if they didn't want to program whole new characters, do what Fire Emblem did for Fates and make a male and female bisexual character. I would take it over nothing. Though I am happy that in recent games you can wear female outfits as a male character because that's a lot more than we used to have.
honestly i think the easiest solution in this is just removing gender altogether within the games since at this point it’s become kinda arbitrary. hm games aren’t separated into boy/girl versions anymore, all available clothing is gender neutral, and literally the only difference now is the kind of heart events you get with characters. then you could make everyone available to romance with the least amount of effort!
of course that doesn’t address the problem of specific representations of sexualities but it would still allow for a lot more freedom. i think this is how stardew valley’s romance system works?
the fire emblem example is an interesting one actually because while you do have 2 bisexual characters (disregarding that you have to buy 2 games to get both) they are not treated the same by the game when you gay marry them because you miss out on getting their kids and miss a whole part of the game. it’s a step forward but not perfect and i’d hope hm would do better than that!
thoughts on maybe getting a possibility of gay marriage any time soon in the franchise???
hmm that’s a good question anon! while i cannot really speak for the likelihood of getting a good, respectfully portrayed/developed gay marriage candidate that the game treats just like the straight candidates (in that it’s ‘marriage’ and not ‘best friends’, you can still have kids, etc)–what is a lot more likely now is that if there is one it will be kept in the game when brought to the west!
we all know about natsume’s infamous removal of the best friends system in ds cute, but xseed has publicly stated that they will not change the gender/sexuality of any gay characters that may be included (and you can see this in sos with marian) in future games. localization has come a long way!
in my opinion i wouldn’t be surprised if we got a single gay candidate in a future game (maybe not in good friends, but we’ll see) but it’s hard to tell right now.
