#lesbian nami ftw

[moonlight-moondrops]

A Queer Study: AWL's Nami

Among the bachelorettes of the A Wonderful Life games, Nami easily sticks out the most: she has a more androgynous style compared to the other girls, is the least expressive, and is the hardest to romance--she doesn't like flowers and gems like the other girls do (with the exception of autumn's Trick Blue flowers). All of these things make it easy to headcanon Nami as LGBTQ in some fashion. Heck, I always write Nami in my fanfics as queer/genderqueer too! In my opinion, what supports this theory the most isn't Nami's appearance or behavior, but her direct dialogue with the player in A Wonderful Life. Character spoilers under the cut!

First, let's take a look at the final heart events of Celia, Muffy, and Lumina:

Celia reveals that she turned down an arranged marriage to be with you.

Muffy wants to make your relationship serious if you're going to take her on a date.

Lumina is realizing her feelings for the player. And Nami...

Nami doesn't want to go home. Note that there's a lack of the word marriage in 2/3 of the ways you can get engaged to her. You can offer her a place to live, or she can ask to live with you. But unless you give her the blue feather directly, there's no specification that you'll be getting married--just that she'll be living with you. This carries on to her betrayal cutscene too--if you propose to another girl after inviting Nami to live with you, Nami will show up on your farm to (sarcastically) congratulate you on your engagement and say that means she won't be living with you--understandable, but again, romance nor marriage in mentioned in this dialogue. Of course, this could just be Nami's personality, especially taking her other heart events into account--you have to approach Nami like a cat. If you're too pushy or friendly, she'll be repelled pretty easily. You have to let her interact on her own terms. What sticks out to me is that while the other girls make it a point to confess their love to you, Nami does not.

I was pretty young when I first played AWL; if I had gone in blind and invited Nami to live me before choosing a girl, I would've just thought "oh cool, I guess she'll be me and [Wife's] roommate then, everybody wins." Nope! It would've been quite a surprise for baby me to get to the second year and find out that I'm now married to Nami. Of course, I know that the older Harvest Moon games take place in a more old-fashioned time period. Several games lack a dating stage, so you're essentially going from love interests to engaged without much build up, like an old-timey courtship. Basically, it'd be fair to assume that the social expectation would be that a man and woman must be married, if they are to live together. That makes me wonder: would it be more accurate to say that the relationship between the player and Nami is more of a queer platonic or domestic partnership, rather than a romantic relationship? Takakura makes it pretty obvious from the start of the game that you're expected to get married and have a child, and not doing so within the first year ends your game. Nami gets to stay in the valley with her best friend, and you fulfill a familial expectation, as well as obtain a life-long companion.

Because of how old-fashioned A Wonderful Life is, I doubt this theory is true. But it's nice to think that there's an alternative relationship option for those who aren't fond of the romance aspect, and that there's representation of this kind, whether you headcanon Nami as lesbian, asexual, etc. With that being said, I do think that Nami's events with Gustafa within AWL have a lot more romantic undertones than those she has with the player. I wonder how the Story of Seasons version of Nami will be different? Will she be more affectionate? Are they going to keep rival events in? (I sure hope so--I think Gustafa & Nami are a really cute couple!)