Ho Yay / Empires SMP

All spoilers will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

From very overt to only slightly less overt, there are plenty of moments of gay tension throughout the series.

Note: The events of the Empires SMP are extended roleplay. Most 'relationships' and subtext listed here apply only to the fictional character counterparts and not the content creators themselves, so do not treat the people playing them like you would the characters they play.

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Season 1

• Joey falling in love with Xornoth, albeit one-sided, is one of the more blatant moments of this. Heck, Joey's ending montage in the finale features the two getting hitched in his fantasies.
• Scott and Jimmy's "alliance", being a carry-over from their "Flower Husbands" dynamic from the 3rd Life SMP, is only slightly less subtle than Joey's unrequited romance. Which is to say, not at all.
  • It actually starts all the way back to shortly after Joel and Lizzie's wedding: alongside the Sheep Shack Delivery Service of wool and string trade, Scott leaves poppies with the message "This feels right <3". For context, he doesn't do this in other shipments of wool, and poppies held significance to their dynamic in 3rd Life.
    Scott: If you know, you know.
  • Scott's way of thanking Jimmy for saving his life and solidifying their alliance is to take him on a date, one he spends a full episode prepping for. Complete with custom-made cave with flowers and a cod pond, a Tunnel of Love, and a dinner on a balcony at sunset. Scott also dresses up for the occasion by putting flowers in his hair, and in the moment he actually asks Jimmy out, he gets so flustered he can barely speak. His episode dedicated to this is even titled "So I took Him on a Date...".
    • In spite of Jimmy's video "snippets" cutting out most of the romantic elements, the original footage hints that this isn't one-sided, as Jimmy makes it clear that he does not want Scott taking anyone else down to the date spot, calling it "[their] place", and says that doing so would be betrayal.
  • From another perspective, after striking out on a path to redemption, Sausage seeks Jimmy out and the two discuss their past issues and make mutual apologies... which somehow ends with Sausage giving Jimmy a kiss, loudly claiming it was platonic, and the parting message to not tell Scott because he'd get upset and Sausage did not want to get any antlers in his face.^note Jimmy's POV here, Sausage's POV here.
    • On the other end, while Scott never says anything in-character, around the same time as the episode's release, his content creator counterpart adds Break-Up Songs to his official Flower Husbands playlist on Spotify and changes the playlist cover to fanart of his character crying. Yes, this is apparently how Empires fans get their lore these days.
  • During his Power Incontinence-induced Self-Imposed Exile, Scott picks out a spruce sapling and poppies as decoration to remind him of home. Spruce saplings are understandable as Rivendell is located in a mountainous biome, where spruce trees naturally grow, but poppies in particular, which can theoretically spawn in most biomes? Hmm...
  • At one point during a livestream, Jimmy returned from the End through the exit portal — which puts a player at their spawnpoint, AKA the last place they slept — and woke up at Scott's bed. He's frozen in confusion, then horror, for a full fifteen seconds, then bolts, while frantically denying that anything went on to his chat.
    Jimmy: Run. Quick– run, quickly, run. I don't– I honestly– I don't know why I'm here. I don't– I– Chat, I– I- this ain't sus! I don't know why I'm here! I– I– CHAT! CHAT, IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK!
    Lizzie: (in the in-game chat) YOU'VE BEEN IN SCOTT'S BED??
    • Scott later claimed in the livestream chat that it was from when Jimmy slept over. One could make the argument that there simply wasn't a spare bed available, until you realize that Jimmy has an entire embassy in Rivendell for exactly these kinds of situations, meaning the bedsharing was very much by choice, and not out of necessity.^note The Doylist explanation is probably that Jimmy still hadn't built an interior for his embassy, but since he refuses to tell Scott that, the point stands.
  • In the finale, one of the people Xornoth explicitly threatens to harm is "that one fish boy you're fond of" [sic], prompting Scott to grow defensive. After this, in what one may argue to be a Call-Back to 3rd Life, it's shown that Jimmy lives with Scott in Rivendell in his Personalized Afterlife.

Season 2

• Unlike Season 1, Season 2 is very blatant about this with nigh-endless homoerotic flirting. There have been plenty of moments where players have been caught making sexual innuendoes and Double Entendres in both episode-videos and in the in-game chat on livestreams.^note The most glaring offender of this is one Mr. Scott Smajor, though Sausage isn't far behind. The most prolific one involves Sanctuary's main export being wood, especially hardwood (and later something about a career of stripping... wood), and that's not even going into the Banana conversation... or the Chromian tavern incident. Might as well make it a Homoerotic Subtext entry, even if the subtext is so strong that it's overflowing into actual text.
• Joel and Sausage share "joint custody" of Hermes, their 'Shulker child', and both of them consider themself and the other the child's "parents". Oh, and a Running Gag throughout the series, at least in its early days, is Joel making suggestively-worded messages relating to the nature of the gift he gets Hermes to deliver to Sausage, with Sausage doing the same back. What doesn't help is that the two explain to Scar that Hermes was created over "a one-night armour stand". Yes, it's canonically Platonic Co-Parenting and they're Just Friends, but the point stands.
• Even though the "Flower Husbands" has been declared to be "over", it still doesn't stop Scott from making flirty comments towards Jimmy (as per usual by this point).
  • He goes as far as to claim that 20% of the reason behind his first visit to Tumble Town, gunpowder trade aside, was handcuffs, which gets (quite nonchalantly) brought up in the conversation about three times. What makes it worse (or funnier, YMMV) is that this is their first interaction in Season 2 outside of the intro at spawn.
  • After Jimmy accidentally starts a raid (long story involving Pillager bandits), Scott flies over to help him out because he was online... but what allows this to qualify its place on this page is Scott's remarks in the process of flying over.
    "This Sheriff is lucky I like him... and I have a thing for a man in a uniform." (smirking emoji pops up on screen)
  • It shows up again in a very roundabout way during Sausage's Halloween surprise party, as Scott shows up dressed as Bo Peep of all Toy Story characters. For context, in the Toy Story franchise, Woody and Bo Peep are an Official Couple. For comparison, real-life married couple Lizzie and Joel show up dressed as Barbie and Ken.
• While their Season 1 counterparts weren't quite as close, Katherine and Shelby have a very interesting dynamic building up in Season 2.
  • When Shelby hears about Joey trying to woo Katherine, she's very worried about that, and is intensely relieved when she hears that Katherine finds him repulsive. She also later comments that she might need to duel Joey for Katherine's heart, and claims to be very inspired by Katherine's muscles and dreams about being able to watch the princess work out one day.
  • In Katherine's Episode 10, when she finds the mangrove propagule given to her by Shelby, she says that out of all the gifts she's been given recently, the propagule is her favorite. In turn, she gifts Shelby a pink tulip, which Shelby places in a flowerpot on a shelf above her bed.
  • During the Rift Festival, Pirate Joe challenges Shelby to a duel to the death for Princess Katherine's heart. Shelby wins the duel, ultimately killing Joe with a spell when he reveals he's on half a heart. When Pirate Joe tries to blackmail Shelby immediately afterward, Katherine steps in and calls Joe delusional for trying to win her over by attacking Shelby.
    • Averted afterwards, as during a discussion with Joey and Shelby, Katherine admits that she's working on a lot of stuff right now — particularly rebuilding her kingdom — and doesn't really feel attracted to anyone, so the three part as friends.
  • In Shelby's finale, after she's uncorrupted from the Sculk, she seeks out Katherine in GlimmerGrove and apologizes for yelling at her while Brainwashed and Crazy, and Katherine advises against Shelby re-dyeing her hair dark after she's Locked into Strangeness, saying that her white hair is "beautiful" and "the colour of moonlight". Shelby also asks Katherine out for coffee, an invitation that Katherine accepts, hinting at a Maybe Ever After.
    • In the sequel WitchCraft SMP, ten years after the events of Empires Season 2, Shelby is known to have a partner at home awaiting her return from the tournament. While it's not confirmed who the partner is exactly, we know she uses she/her pronouns, and may suggest that the two eventually get together off-screen and spend several happy years together.
• After washing ashore to Sanctuary and being brought to the tavern, Oli somehow wakes up in the same bed as Eddie, Sausage's Parental Substitute. Not only does Sausage have to bear witness to this while checking up on Oli the next morning, but cue this conversation in the YouTube comments section of Oli's episode:
  TheMythicalSausage: Eddie sends their love!!! 🥰
  TheOrionSound: maybe a little bit too much love
• fWhip stays very devoted to enforcing the Law as the Sheriff's Deputy, but his dedication takes him to rather odd places, such as purchasing Joel's entire stock of Sheriff toys to build a shrine to the Law (while dressed as one of the LGM, no less). He has also, for whatever reason, given Jimmy a kiss once, and when he gets fired as the Deputy for his "Thank You for Coming to My Wedding" (in real life) Warden prank, that's when things really start to hit the fan:
  • fWhip, being fWhip, doesn't regard pranking people by sending them Wardens to have malicious intent (apparently, they're protectors in Goblin lore), and is extremely upset about this — he refuses to hand in his Deputy badge, accuses Jimmy of hypocrisy in terms of writing and following the Law-book (of which he's Right for the Wrong Reasons), and his message rebuking the resignation includes the line "You can do better babes" in the context of Jimmy allegedly disrespecting himself (e.g. apparently not taking care of himself).
  • On Jimmy's end, virtually everything up to this point can be perceived as platonic (at least, from his perspective)... but then his 15th episode dealing with the situation is titled, of all things, "MY EX IS TRYING TO FRAME ME.." There is no heterosexual explanation for this.
  • Jimmy in turn rebukes fWhip's refusal to be fired, which fWhip describes to be "toying with [his] heart".
• At the start of the Princess Tea Party, after Pix is introduced to the party as the King of the server, Joel walks up to him to smooch him... which devolves into everyone kissing each other while Gem and Katherine can only stand and watch in confusion (and False isn't in attendance).
  Jimmy: WHAT IS THIS SERIES? WHAT ARE WE?!

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