(10-06-2013, 08:45 PM)Theodric Ironheart Wrote: I've played MMO's long enough to realise that it doesn't matter what any given playable race looks like since someone, somewhere will see fit to sexualise them to ridiculous degrees. Role-players in particular are very guilty of this, though I won't go into too much detail to avoid getting into trouble.All of these things. All of them.
Miqo'te are subjected to a lot of sexualisation. Especially by many of the users of this very site. I've lost count of the amount of unsavoury images of people's characters that have been linked to me which display some very unusual and baffling scenarios, often involving 'lesbian' female Miqo'te, additional appendages and curves.
The men don't escape it, either. A baffling amount of Miqo'te men are role-played as raging bisexuals or outright gay with all the negative stereotypes that come with it. It's a shame, but that's what happens in MMO's. I'm bisexual myself and often make my own characters range from being straight to bisexual to gay - it just happens to be part of them, rather than their defining trait. Most role-players don't settle for doing that and so we see sexualisation and 'zany' posts letting everyone know that their character is gagging for it at every turn.
I didn't have the best sense of the community when coming to FFXIV. My decision on what to roll was based totally on my traditional default choice of beast races. Since in XIV beastmen are the bad guys, and I'll likely never get to play an Ixial Musketeer as much as I think that would be the greatest thing to ever happen, the closest I could get to beast folk was... cat people. It was the same logic I applied in picking my Tauren or Argonian characters on other games. Neither of aforementioned races are particularly pretty, but you can bet people still assume its some sort of fetish.
And I'm also distressed by the atmosphere of exceedingly negative gay stereotypes that just pour forth from role players. It's annoying to me on a personal level, but I've come to expect it at this point. It's not my place to tell you 'how to be gay'. The problem is that it sets an unpleasant standard where that sort of behavior is not just acceptable but the expected default for any homosexual character. Then people avoid you, because they don't want to deal with 'faggy' RPers.
It's frustrating to me, because I'm not role playing gay. I just am, it's not a trait that has been specifically woven into the character's personality. I don't think about it, I don't sit down and decide 'oh, and he's also a raging homo' when writing down my notes. It's just a thing about them, it doesn't define them. And if your character is completely defined by their sex or sexuality, you might want to reassess your priorities.
