I don't have much of coherence, but I wanted to share this point from experience:
Don't curtail your character's (for want of a much, much better phrase) """diversity points""" for fear of player reaction.
Have your character be the way she naturally inclines towards when you're writing her. Do your research, portray her accurately and sensitively, make yourself aware of stereotypes and tropes to engage in with caution or avoid altogether. It can be difficult to find clear and sensitive information online about this sort of thing, but it's worth the effort to feel like you're portraying your character truthfully, with verisimilitude, and without unintentionally causing OOC hurt.
And then... just... be careful about who you tell.
I strongly believe it's likely Eorzeans - with their relative minimum of gender discrimination and their total lack of homophobia - would accept being transgender, intersex, or gender-non-conforming as a quirk in line with "cuts the crusts off sandwiches" or "has an irrational fear of bugs", or otherwise as a private family matter akin to "isn't actually the biological child of their lovingly adoptive parents", and not something worthy of systematic harassment or discrimination...
...but I don't trust a collection of random OOC-wise strangers to be on the same page as me on that one. I fear most people will see any mention of my character's trans-ness as a "grab for attention", no matter how minor or casual it is, because it's a polarised issue IRL.
So I gloss over it in emotes when it might otherwise come up - I don't go into details on what people are seeing unless I trust them, and I avoid putting my character into situations where it would become obvious to others in the first place until I trust the person OOC.
But he's still transgender.
Ages ago, when I was a lot younger, I rolled a character who was originally supposed to be a transgender woman, but I changed her to be a cisgender woman eventually because I was so afraid of the OOC reaction if anyone ever found out. I eventually fell out of love with her for reasons which, while not limited to this issue, were all characterised by "changing things about the character so she was closer to what other people thought she should be". I revisited her recently, reverted all those changes (including making her trans again), and I'm so much happier with her now...
...TL;DR I want to posit myself as a cautionary tale and encourage you to do what you think makes sense for the character, in this regard, and then deal with the messy "what people think" stuff by just moderating who OOCly knows. xD
Don't curtail your character's (for want of a much, much better phrase) """diversity points""" for fear of player reaction.
Have your character be the way she naturally inclines towards when you're writing her. Do your research, portray her accurately and sensitively, make yourself aware of stereotypes and tropes to engage in with caution or avoid altogether. It can be difficult to find clear and sensitive information online about this sort of thing, but it's worth the effort to feel like you're portraying your character truthfully, with verisimilitude, and without unintentionally causing OOC hurt.
And then... just... be careful about who you tell.
I strongly believe it's likely Eorzeans - with their relative minimum of gender discrimination and their total lack of homophobia - would accept being transgender, intersex, or gender-non-conforming as a quirk in line with "cuts the crusts off sandwiches" or "has an irrational fear of bugs", or otherwise as a private family matter akin to "isn't actually the biological child of their lovingly adoptive parents", and not something worthy of systematic harassment or discrimination...
...but I don't trust a collection of random OOC-wise strangers to be on the same page as me on that one. I fear most people will see any mention of my character's trans-ness as a "grab for attention", no matter how minor or casual it is, because it's a polarised issue IRL.
So I gloss over it in emotes when it might otherwise come up - I don't go into details on what people are seeing unless I trust them, and I avoid putting my character into situations where it would become obvious to others in the first place until I trust the person OOC.
But he's still transgender.
Ages ago, when I was a lot younger, I rolled a character who was originally supposed to be a transgender woman, but I changed her to be a cisgender woman eventually because I was so afraid of the OOC reaction if anyone ever found out. I eventually fell out of love with her for reasons which, while not limited to this issue, were all characterised by "changing things about the character so she was closer to what other people thought she should be". I revisited her recently, reverted all those changes (including making her trans again), and I'm so much happier with her now...
...TL;DR I want to posit myself as a cautionary tale and encourage you to do what you think makes sense for the character, in this regard, and then deal with the messy "what people think" stuff by just moderating who OOCly knows. xD
![[Image: tUzrT.png]](https://puu.sh/tUzrT.png)
