RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Gone. · **02-02-2015, 06:58 AM**

(01-30-2015, 01:29 PM)Zhavi Wrote: I once had a character who was from a culture with very strict gender roles. Â Due to a choice she'd made, she'd become something of an outcast, and was stripped of her gender (I had a word for it, in a cultural sense it pretty much just meant that making babies with her was a huge no no), so she left to go wandering. Â But she kept those ideas, and had very rigid thoughts about what women should do (namely staying home and defending home and children and raising the children), and what men should do, and when sex should happen and when it shouldn't.

Finding people who wanted to rp with her was a very difficult task. Â She was short, ugly, stubborn, and prideful (any conversation with her would include the word 'honor' more than once), and it was interesting how some people who tended to stick to beautiful, elegant, sexy characters and interactions would not only avoid her, but me, as well, on an ooc level.

While there may have been a few that rejected this character for their outward appearance, I'm actually going to say that it was more likely that a character such as this simply isn't pleasant to be around in the slightest. A lot of roleplayers are a. female and/or b. fall somewhere in the LGBT spectrum and thus get enough of this regressive crap in real life to not want it in their game. Not saying everything has to always be sunshine and rainbows, but some things hit too close for home at times.

Kinono · **02-02-2015, 07:15 AM**

I am a dog in real-life. It's why I refuse to associate with miqo'te.

Zhavi · **02-02-2015, 12:20 PM**

(02-02-2015, 06:58 AM)hauntmedoitagain Wrote:
(01-30-2015, 01:29 PM)Zhavi Wrote: I once had a character who was from a culture with very strict gender roles. Â Due to a choice she'd made, she'd become something of an outcast, and was stripped of her gender (I had a word for it, in a cultural sense it pretty much just meant that making babies with her was a huge no no), so she left to go wandering. Â But she kept those ideas, and had very rigid thoughts about what women should do (namely staying home and defending home and children and raising the children), and what men should do, and when sex should happen and when it shouldn't.

Finding people who wanted to rp with her was a very difficult task. Â She was short, ugly, stubborn, and prideful (any conversation with her would include the word 'honor' more than once), and it was interesting how some people who tended to stick to beautiful, elegant, sexy characters and interactions would not only avoid her, but me, as well, on an ooc level.

While there may have been a few that rejected this character for their outward appearance, I'm actually going to say that it was more likely that a character such as this simply isn't pleasant to be around in the slightest. A lot of roleplayers are a. female and/or b. fall somewhere in the LGBT spectrum and thus get enough of this regressive crap in real life to not want it in their game. Not saying everything has to always be sunshine and rainbows, but some things hit too close for home at times.

Given the community, one that I had been in and around for ten years, I'm gonna say it wasn't that. The way that community is, there is a certain pressure to have a beautiful, strong character. There is a subtext that your character needs to be both powerful and attractive, and conventionally strong in that 'beautiful control' sort of way, where problems that arise are due to romantic drama and fights over territory.

Plus, too, I like to think that I am sensitive enough to be able to write it in a way where it is not overtly offensive -- and while obviously not everyone does want to rp with characters that push certain boundaries, the type and style of clique that that particular community perpetuates is the sort that prefers familiarity (beautiful characters who are elegant, powerful, and romantically available) over anything strange or outside of the box. It's the type of community where peoples' characters get together, and then there are ooc hissy fits when the male character does something the female character doesn't like. That sort of thing.

So I hear you, and yeah, her personality could have been some of it, but that was definitely not all of it.

Gegenji · **02-02-2015, 12:29 PM**

(02-02-2015, 12:20 PM)Zhavi Wrote: The way that community is, there is a certain pressure to have a beautiful, strong character. Â There is a subtext that your character needs to be both powerful and attractive, and conventionally strong in that 'beautiful control' sort of way, where problems that arise are due to romantic drama and fights over territory.

... This trend was actually why my Champions Online hero (Lard Almighty) and APB criminal (Chris "Chrisco" Colietti) were both fat dudes. As fat as I could make 'em.

There's something deeply hilarious about some pretty large-chested heroine doing the daily grind of beating up street thugs and what amounts to the Blob from the X-Men squeezed into a college football uniform falls from the sky next to them before leaping away again.

Yes, I took the Hulk Super Jump movement power and I regret nothing about it. Used to joke that he'd make it so high up into the air that, if he decided to hip drop an enemy doing this, the last thought before impact would be "What smells like bacon?"

Cato · **02-02-2015, 01:59 PM**

(01-30-2015, 03:50 PM)Fai Wrote:
(01-30-2015, 03:31 PM)Gegenji Wrote:
(01-30-2015, 03:24 PM)Fai Wrote: But, more seriously and back on topic. K'aworu runs into the aforementioned a loooot. I don't mind eRP at all, but he isn't a real frivelous character in that department. This isn't to say he's a prude, it's just not easy, y'know? I feel like, basically, that because my character won't sleep around and do it on the drop of a hat, that my character is automatically uninteresting and won't be approached.

I like to think there's a nice bit of entertainment in the "will they or won't they?" approach, myself. I also don't really like rushing relationships either - it's so much better when you let it grow organically and have events and markers that signal how the relationship formed. Even something as being able to recall where your first date was at is a nice talking piece, even if you don't end up staying with them.

But some folks just want to get to the nitty-gritty. Which is their own choice, I suppose... as long as they don't try to force it upon others or shame them for not doing the same.

Agreed. I don't really judge if people do want to rush it and just get straight to things. I just don't really like taking that course. My main issue with any of it though is when you're like... OOCly avoided and singled out in a negative light just because you don't want to. Like you're some kind of no-fun zone.

Yeah, that pretty much sets off a number of alarm bells in my head. In my eyes, it's no different than someone shaming someone in the real world for not sleeping with them and then whining about it afterwards.

I'm already in a relationship in the real world so I don't feel obligated to desperately get my fill of action online. I do, however, appreciate what a genuine romance could bring to the table in terms of my character.

Though as with many aspects of role-play, the bulk of people I encounter simply want to skip ahead with...pretty much everything. Instead of taking the time to travel by land much of a journey is skipped in favour of instant teleportation...and when it comes to romances it seems like there's tunnel vision at play.

I also come from an MMO community where ERP is considered to be a very private affair rather than something paraded around so there's that too. I don't like the idea of my character being seen as just being an object for someone else's immediate sexual gratification.

Zyrusticae · **02-02-2015, 03:06 PM**

(02-02-2015, 12:29 PM)Gegenji Wrote:
(02-02-2015, 12:20 PM)Zhavi Wrote: The way that community is, there is a certain pressure to have a beautiful, strong character. Â There is a subtext that your character needs to be both powerful and attractive, and conventionally strong in that 'beautiful control' sort of way, where problems that arise are due to romantic drama and fights over territory.

... This trend was actually why my Champions Online hero (Lard Almighty) and APB criminal (Chris "Chrisco" Colietti) were both fat dudes. As fat as I could make 'em.

There's something deeply hilarious about some pretty large-chested heroine doing the daily grind of beating up street thugs and what amounts to the Blob from the X-Men squeezed into a college football uniform falls from the sky next to them before leaping away again.

Yes, I took the Hulk Super Jump movement power and I regret nothing about it. Used to joke that he'd make it so high up into the air that, if he decided to hip drop an enemy doing this, the last thought before impact would be "What smells like bacon?"

Haha, yes. All of my Champions Online characters are flat-chested females with the muscle slider jacked up. I frequently end up the most androgynous-looking individual in the room (though to be fair, making androgynous males is literally impossible with that character creator).

Of course, then my main ends up being a gun-toting ninja catgirl... which is exactly what'll happen to T'rahnu when 3.0 comes out. Old habits die hard, eh? Even then, however, I wouldn't describe any of my characters as "conventionally attractive" or "beautiful" in the way most people think of beauty, especially when it comes to women.

I wonder sometimes how many people are turned off just from looking at my characters, and never say anything about it. It's funny, too, when I happen to think my characters actually look really good but then everyone else tells me they look plain, or weird, or unattractive, or whatever, and I realize, well, godsdammit, this is how we end up with characters that all look the same! There's something to be said about that pressure to conform to normalized beauty standards even in a bloody video game with character creation where you have the freedom to go much, much further afield than IRL.

And this is with pitch-perfect skin texture, too. No pimples or zits or body hair or whatever. Sheesh, talk about high standards.

Anyway. I'm ranting now, but this really hits close to home for me. We play these things for at least some level of escapism, and yet even in our escapism we are subjected to this kind of shit... it's really bloody depressing, to say the least.

Cato · **02-02-2015, 03:13 PM**

I wouldn't let it get you down too much. Honestly, many people playing MMO's seem to have a pretty warped idea as to what a realistically proportioned or attractive guy or girl actually is. I've lost count of the amount of times people have said Graeham isn't a 'real man' because he's not a Highlander with the height and weight slider pushed up to maximum.

I've had the same issue in other MMO's too. At this point my first instinct is to simply roll my eyes and tell those sort of role-players to kindly piss off somewhere. Then I stop, think, and realise that I actually feel sorry for them since they're quite clearly deluded.

So even conventionally attractive characters are subjected to bizarre standards that are by no means rooted in reality. Not too surprising though given the sort of people certain playable races attract. I'm not saying all Roegadyn and Highlanders are like that but a significant chunk play up the idea of their character supposedly being so much bigger and stronger than everybody else. Not too bad if it's limited to IC situations but when it leaks OOC...

SessionZero · **02-03-2015, 01:05 PM**

One of the best compliments I ever got on one of my characters was that I had managed to make my female Midlander "different from all the other China-doll type Midlanders that [the player] usually see. She looks like a real warrior woman. She looks like she could kick ass."

I rode that one for awhile Big Grin

Kinono · **02-03-2015, 01:19 PM**

(02-03-2015, 01:05 PM)SessionZero Wrote: I rode that one for awhile

( Í¡Â° ÍœÊ– Í¡Â°)

SessionZero · **02-03-2015, 03:18 PM**

(02-03-2015, 01:19 PM)Kinono Wrote:
(02-03-2015, 01:05 PM)SessionZero Wrote: I rode that one for awhile

( Í¡Â° ÍœÊ– Í¡Â°)

Parvacake · **02-03-2015, 03:56 PM**

Tbh, chatting OOC I found really helps find what you're looking for. Or can at least help turn you in the right direction. I never had a problem with anything myself when it came to looking for RP scenes. Just try not to let yourself get too jaded.

« Next Oldest \| Next Newest »
Pages (2): « Previous 1 2

Finding RP for Unpopular Themes/Ideas

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes