Fields Of Mistria Almost Had The Perfect Butch Lesbian Romance

Fields of Mistriais excellent.Not since Stardew Valley has a farming sim managed to sink its hooks in so confidently. I spent most of this past weekend working my way through my debut year in the town of Mistria, tackling three of the four seasons. I made bank, gained new friends, and have already begun eyeing up potential romantic interests. The latter is the hardest part, since pretty much everyone in this game is inconceivably dreamy.

But one moody blacksmith rises above the rest, because I’m a lowly bottom who loves it if a partner is willing to talk down to me and play disgustingly hard to get. March is precisely that, and begins the game as a stand-offish brat who believes I’m not welcome in town, will never be a good blacksmith, and counts on his brother Olric to tell the townsfolk that he isn’t a jerk, just misunderstood and socially awkward. Despite his mean exterior, I wanted to soften him up and bag myself a sweetheart.

Fields of Mistria - March in the bar

Everybody Wants March To Be A Masc Lesbian

However, there is one thing that bothered me. When I first glimpsed March’s character art on Twitter before picking up Fields of Mistria for myself, I was convinced they were just meant to be a masc lesbian who was either binding or hiding top surgery scars under their many dusty looking vests and leather jackets. It would have been a wonderful inclusion for a game like this to include, especially one which already boasts myriad people of colour and has no limits on gender when it comes to romance.

Alas, when I stumbled upon a topless March on the beach as I was picking up seashells and totally not oogling them from afar, they had toned abs and a cisgender male chest. Fields of Mistria had done me dirty, almost as bad as not making rock-loving himbo Olric a romance option when I would very much like to climb him like a tree. But the game isn’t to blame for this one, and from the progress I’ve made with March, he is an interestingly dense character, regardless of his outward gender expression.

Fields of Mistria

Now Fans Are Making It A Reality With Mods

He cracked a tipsy smile at the local bar on Friday evening as he asked me to sample a new bottle of wine with him, before he called me into his blacksmith office to offer me a lovely new tool he’d made as a gift, all while trying to act like I would be hopeless without him. It’s a classic tsundere attitude we’ve seen in countless games, shows, and films in the past, but it turns out I’m incredibly basic and will eat it up every single time.

Like any sane and remotely queer gamer would, I quickly went looking for Fields of Mistria mods to see if anyone had already changed March’s character to be either A) a cis woman who also happened to be a butch lesbian or B) a trans-masc lesbian with top surgery scars I’d do anything to caress beneath the flame of his blacksmith forge. It didn’t take long to turn up fruit,because someone has already created a mod which changes March’s appearance and pronounsto match this widely appreciated headcanon, and it’s amazing.

Since I started writing this piece,yet another March mod has appeared. This time it is focused entirely on them being trans-masc.

I’ve yet to install the mods myself because I’m playing on Steam Deck and trying to navigate Linux frightens me, but I’ll brave the interface soon enough. The reason thousands of people immediately saw March as a butch or trans-masc lesbian is because their appearance alone perfectly fits that, and we are crying out for this kind of representation in any game, more so in cutesy farming sims where queer identities are actively celebrated.

March could have been that representation finally making itself known, but instead, fans are having to make the changes themselves. Don’t get me wrong, nobody is at fault here, and it is a testament to March’s character design and personality that they fit the butch/trans masc identity so beautifully, but I can’t imagine the joy I would have felt if it was canon.