I disagree with the notion that the gender-bending/gay storylines are inherently "faggy" or pandering. FromSoft is one of the few creative entities that showcases how unnatural and twisted those concepts are. They aren't celebrated, and they're often restricted to monarchs and gods for a reason. If anything, it hearkens back to a time in entertainment when gay behavior was used to disgust and freak out the main character(s), especially over in Japan.
I'm someone who's exhausted of faggotry and other seemingly mandatory tropes in media, but this has always been artistically motivated. Miquella is a weird, androgynous, mind-controlling rapist. It was pretty easy to deduce if you paid attention during the base game. This kind of character can absolutely exist without there being a hint of identity politics muddling the story.
There were Redditor newcomers who were genuinely heartbroken that Miquella didn't end up being a good guy (despite him being an obvious homage to Berserk's antagonist) because they wanted, rather, expected a tranny-femboy thing to be the story's true hero. They approached it with western mindsets and weren't aware of this theme repeatedly popping up in FromSoft's previous titles in a negative, eerie way.