There comes a point in Fire Emblem: Three Houses when players are asked to participate in the White Heron Cup, a dance competition involving all three houses. You need to pick a participant, and if they have a high enough Charm stat, they’ll win the tournament. From a gameplay standpoint, winning means unlocking the Dancer class.
Dancers are special combatants who can give other characters a second turn by shaking a leg. You can only get one Dancer per campaign in Three Houses, so picking a representative for the Heron Cup is a huge choice. Based on my conversations on social media, some of the top picks for the dancer role seem to be Flayn and Dorothea, which makes sense given the kind of characters they represent. (Dorothea, for instance, is a famous opera singer.)
Some players are opting for characters who feel “right” for the role, but my favorite phenomenon is that people are finding absurd dancers. Twitter user HangryEli, for example, picked Felix “because he hated it AND he excelled at it,” they said. “There was no doubt, it had to be him,” they continued. Another Twitter user, explodingpompom, also picked Felix both because he has high charm and because it’s “funny.” As it turns out, some characters will protest when you pick them — but they have no choice, because you’re the professor.
Noticing a pattern here? Players are delighted that they’re able to make male characters into dancers, as that’s apparently never been possible in a mainline Fire Emblem game before. (There’s been a bard class, which does the same thing, but without the dancer outfit. There have also been male dancers in Fire Emblem Heroes.)
My favorite take on the dancer class comes from my friend, @acosmos, who chose Sylvain as the representative. This is notable because Sylvain spends most of his time in Three Houses being a total womanizer. Seeing him become a sultry object of admiration feels like a hilarious comeuppance.
It helps to see the Dancer in action. Dancers wear a free-flowing costume, and they twirl about in battle, like so:
It’s all very reminiscent of that part in Breath of the Wild where Link has to wear a costume to sneak into Gerudo Town. And, similarly, the male dancer phenomenon in Three Houses is inspiring some fantastic fan art from devoted players.
