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Your Gender vs. Your Character's


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I'm a nonbinary trans guy and I have a fairly even split in my roster of characters, although my current main is male. My older main is female, although she's hardly feminine. I have one trans character hiding out that I haven't RPed yet, but I've heard from other people with trans characters that sometimes you can get some really unpleasant reactions from people who either think it's a fetish if you're open about it from the start, or get angry for bait and switching them if your character passes, and I'm not really sure I feel like dealing with that particular can of worms... I'd probably just stick with people I already know for a bit until he's more of his own character and less of me trying to figure him out.

In previous games I've played mostly female characters (not in RP, I didn't do that until I got to FFXIV), and people would accuse me of being male IRL. Well...they weren't exactly wrong I guess in retrospect, haha.

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I feel odd cause I'm a male who only makes females in games, I actually get ALOT of fack from friends cause I don't make males. I just find males in games boring to look at and too big, What I like cute pattable things. The thing is tho I also write and draw comics so I have no problem writing for either gender as I don't write gender. I write characters. Tho my biggest flaw is I like younger characters.. 16 to at most 21. My main comic book main character is 16 years old but he's also a 4 foot talking martial artist raccoon who gets into end of the world fights everyday sooo... age isn't really a thing to me either. - I pretty much write fighting/adventure comics- In FFXIV my main is ofcourse female and I've been told the few times I have RPEd that people mistake me for a girl IRL which is odd. Seeing as I write her like a young 19 year old martial artist looking to get stronger by foolishly jumping into fights. So gender doesn't really pop up much least for me. The 3 times it DID pop all of them were odd because the other person thought I was an actual girl. One person even said the way I use my emotes she thought I was another girl. I think what trips people up the most is I don't run around in bikinis, She wears the red jacket with the tank top, the shorts that come with it, with the kitty sleepy hat, and ofcourse... my fav item in the world. THE MOOGLE SHOES! Maybe that's why....

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I will never understand that kind of thinking in an RP community(Ki wong.)
 

The entire point and even definition of role play, is to pretend to be some one you aren't.

 

There isn't supposed to be a gender line there, any more than there's a race line there. If that were the case we'd all be hyur.

 

It's basic, common sense every role player should have, period: right along with the division between out of character and in character, and the understanding of what in the game is on the side of out of character mechanic like player services (fantasia and your hot bar anyone?) and the lore and therefor the world we try to place our characters in (Eorzea, obviously.)

 

I play both, but veer towards males in recent years as someone who's female. I'd be lying if I didn't say the treatment and expectations put on females in RP both as a character and a typist do tend to help push me in that direction. However.. so does lore, and customization.

 

I enjoy Keepers for the challenge in particular, though I rarely see other typists who put enough forethought and examination into their lore group play for them, sadly. I run into far too many Couerlclaw pretending they aren't outcasts and not only wanted by the city states but disliked at best by their own tribe (or lol MALE Couerlclaw make me giggle, sorry), anti-male or uber-agressives forgetting that the very rare (3 or 4 to 1, female heavy) fathers who had mothers of their own to honor in their own bloodline are in fact a requirement for babies playing out Seeker-esque lifestyles similar to them in particular: if not the super-passive/passive agressives.

Meh.. but I still love Keeper lore, what of it we have; and will probably still play them as a main forevahs.

Edited by CatBiter
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On 2/19/2018 at 2:05 AM, Ki wong said:

 

I feel odd cause I'm a male who only makes females in games, I actually get ALOT of fack from friends cause I don't make males. I just find males in games boring to look at and too big, What I like cute pattable things. The thing is tho I also write and draw comics so I have no problem writing for either gender as I don't write gender. I write characters. Tho my biggest flaw is I like younger characters.. 16 to at most 21. My main comic book main character is 16 years old but he's also a 4 foot talking martial artist raccoon who gets into end of the world fights everyday sooo... age isn't really a thing to me either. - I pretty much write fighting/adventure comics- In FFXIV my main is ofcourse female and I've been told the few times I have RPEd that people mistake me for a girl IRL which is odd. Seeing as I write her like a young 19 year old martial artist looking to get stronger by foolishly jumping into fights. So gender doesn't really pop up much least for me. The 3 times it DID pop all of them were odd because the other person thought I was an actual girl. One person even said the way I use my emotes she thought I was another girl. I think what trips people up the most is I don't run around in bikinis, She wears the red jacket with the tank top, the shorts that come with it, with the kitty sleepy hat, and ofcourse... my fav item in the world. THE MOOGLE SHOES! Maybe that's why....

 

I get compliments about how well I play guys (I'm a girl), so it's along the same lines as you with girl characters. We're just good at portraying our characters, regardless of their genders. It doesn't mean we're 'gender neutral' or anything specialized like that. It just means that we're good storytellers, that we pay attention to others. 

 

Thanks for the reply. :) i'm glad to see that the discussion is still going (and is still mature and calm)!

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On 2/20/2018 at 8:25 AM, CatBiter said:

I will never understand that kind of thinking in an RP community(Ki wong.)
 

The entire point and even definition of role play, is to pretend to be some one you aren't.

 

There isn't supposed to be a gender line there, any more than there's a race line there. If that were the case we'd all be hyur.

 

It's basic, common sense every role player should have, period: right along with the division between out of character and in character, and the understanding of what in the game is on the side of out of character mechanic like player services (fantasia and your hot bar anyone?) and the lore and therefor the world we try to place our characters in (Eorzea, obviously.)

 

I play both, but veer towards males in recent years as someone who's female. I'd be lying if I didn't say the treatment and expectations put on females in RP both as a character and a typist do tend to help push me in that direction. However.. so does lore, and customization.

 

I enjoy Keepers for the challenge in particular, though I rarely see other typists who put enough forethought and examination into their lore group play for them, sadly. I run into far too many Couerlclaw pretending they aren't outcasts and not only wanted by the city states but disliked at best by their own tribe (or lol MALE Couerlclaw make me giggle, sorry), anti-male or uber-agressives forgetting that the very rare (3 or 4 to 1, female heavy) fathers who had mothers of their own to honor in their own bloodline are in fact a requirement for babies playing out Seeker-esque lifestyles similar to them in particular: if not the super-passive/passive agressives.

Meh.. but I still love Keeper lore, what of it we have; and will probably still play them as a main forevahs.

 

I do not know enough about the in-game lore these days (I played two or three years ago) to offer any meaningful reply in that respect, but thanks for your perspective. :) I've played NPC girl characters to support the storyline of my male characters, but I don't think I'll ever go back to playing a female as a main. I just find it more fun to write men, and they get less negative attention xD (for me, anyway).

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I suppose I vary, personally? 

My main character, Nyx Netherflame, is a transgender woman and is the one character I use with whom I share a gender identity. R'yndae Tia, on the other hand, is a cisgender man along with Kiht'a Jakkya. I don't really have much preference, Nyx was historically conceived as a transgender woman and it's difficult for me to want to diverge away from it; especially when it's an aspect about her I relate with the most. 

R'yn/Kiht'a were more experiments in the character creator who came into their own, on their own. Granted, both of them tend to vary towards the traditionally feminine in a lot of ways, but most males I write tend to end up like that -- bit of a different story with my female characters, who generally end up more aggressive/boisterous/warrior-esque archetypes. 

That said, in a general sense outside of FFXIV, I do play a lot of transgender characters. Mostly, I find it a bit easier and in some, rare, cases the act of playing males can be a bit dysphoric (likely why most of mine are liable to behave in more traditionally feminine manners, to be honest). 

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I'm a dude and for the longest time I exclusively played men. It was default. I like men, I like male persona, It all panned out. I wanted to play women but there is a stigma from men playing women who would be total creeps. There was also the idea of catfishing where people may think I was playing a woman to trick other dudes. I mean not my intent but the concern was there about if a character or my character showed interest in theirs  there would be impulsive ic ooc bleedthrough where I would be considered a creep. It is only recently as a roleplayer that I have been playing female characters even making my main a femroe but I still feel worried about preconceptions from others.

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I'm a guy whose main character is also a guy. And honestly, most of the loose ideas for possible alts have been men as well. Like with most people, it's simply because that's my sort of comfort zone, those are the sort of characters I feel I can flesh out and play the best. Of course, I've milled around with a few ideas for female characters, but that's only been for table-top games, unrelated to FFXIV and other ways of writing roleplay. 

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  • 1 month later...

I play almost exculsively women. It was not because women look better, hey I started on wow, females, males to, are almost all universally ugly. It is because I got tired of the weak save me type of woman you always see. I wanted to say look! Here is a competant woman who can adventure with the boys and it because of her they are alive, she was a priest, though icly she was a monk. She was lawful neutral and did not give a rats butt about the war between the horde and alliance as long as order was maintained. I met my wife on that char and, untill I told her she thought I was another woman playing the char. The key to playing a woman as a guy or a guy as a woman is respect for the other sex. Women aren't sex toys, men aren't gil fountains.

 

 When I was on classic wow I was in Tanaris on my female human warlock. Some guy joined my party and I was cool with that, hey faster quests right? He began making comments and I told him, hey I am a dude and not looking to hook up anyway, you want to keep incnerating pirates fine, anything else no. He immedately drops party, warps to the hub town and starts screaming about how I am a guy, how I am gay, in a bit more derogitory terms, kept this up for like a half hour til a gm finally silenced him.

 

 That's another thing. Not all roleplayers, females or males, are looking for a relationship or to hook up.

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On 7/27/2017 at 10:48 AM, Kaiverta said:

I was just wondering who else out there has a character of the opposite gender (if I'm allowed to ask that O.o), and if anyone has run into any problems with other players because of this (maybe they get miffed that you're pretending to be something you're not, or feel weird playing a female around a male character who is also played by a female, and vice versa).


I really can't relate to people who care what your OOC gender is x:

We're all playing characters different from us in one way or an other, a difference in gender really shouldn't be off the table.

Edited by Aeva Nyuko
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I play whatever character pops into my head, although the aesthetics in games can keep me from rolling one gender or the other. A lot of games have male characters that just seems to look very generic to me, they remind me of the type of heroes and villains that I've read countless novels about that just leave me 'bleh' about the whole thing. Conversely, I don't like games like Tera where the female models are overly sexualized. I don't care if someone wants to play a character like that, but I like to have options, rather than being forced into something that doesn't mesh with the personality I have in mind.

 

If I'm doing something freeform, like a tabletop game, I like to mix it up. When I first started roleplaying I played almost exclusively male characters which burned me out after a number of years, so I tended to play more female heavy concepts instead. Since then its come back into parity.

 

In terms of playing your gender or the opposite... I've known plenty of male friends that have done female characters because they like the aesthetic more, an idea came to them for one, they think other players treat them better, or they just want to put them in the skimpiest outfit they can find. On the flipside I've had female friends that play mostly or exclusively males for similar reasons above, only with the extra benefit that other players don't assume they're a female, as they'd had bad experiences with guys in games due to that in the past.

 

When it comes down to it? I don't really care whose behind the screen. I don't really need to know as it doesn't impact the characters at all. If I like someone and enjoy playing with them I don't need to know something as arbitrary as their gender, their age, what they look like, or anything else. Sure, I've met up with people in old groups before when we happened to be in the same city and had a great time with the majority of them, but I keep OOC and IC separate as much as I can in all respects.

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My character roster is 6/8 male, 2/8 female at the moment, and I am a female IRL. It's the same as for the OP and some other people, I just find RPing men more comfortable and when it comes to creating characters, I often seem to hover towards males. To me RP is experiencing something completely different, so even if my female character happens to be a complete opposite of myself in personality, they usually feel too similar and I tend to lose interest in keeping them going, except some rare cases like with my two ladies. Perhaps it's also partly due to aesthetics, I just prefer to look at males more *shrug*.

 

On the other hand I also tend to roll female characters in single player games or in MMOs I know I am not going to RP in...

 

...And I also play one of those "male characters with a female model", so it might throw the aesthetics-point out of the window a little. Feel free to call him a girl by mistake though! I will find it hilarious OOC, but he will get mad at you IC!

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Instead of a direct answer, I’ll give a round-a-bout answer (but it’s all on the topic, really). Way back when, I was a fan of the Ultima series, and so when Ultima Online happened I naturally had to play it. It was the first MMORPG to hit it big, and a lot of things were new. Just starting out I had made a few characters, and while the gameplay was fun, something just wasn’t ‘clicking’ with me. I’m a role player, but the role just wasn’t happening. Then I decided to try something really different, and made a female character.


I don’t know what it was, but something on this character clicked. She just worked. A history and ideas just started flowing. Being a long time Ultima fan, I already knew the lore of the world, which helped. She had a personality, motives, she made friends (and a couple enemies). Details of her life would often pop into my head out of nowhere. More than once I’d look at something I’d just typed and wondered where that came from.


And thus was the Tregarde legacy born.


As you may have guessed by now, I am not a woman in real life. People playing characters of a different gender is common today. But back then, it was not. Sometimes drama would break out OOC when people found out the player behind a character was not what they thought. And I’ll admit at first I very carefully chose how I phrased certain details of myself so I didn’t say what I was either way. After all, I had come to consider many of those people friends, and I didn’t want to lie to them, but it did take a while before I felt comfortable being entirely open. And apparently I was doing something right, because many thought I really was a woman from my RP.


But as time went on, the acceptance grew. More people were RPing characters of a different gender, more were open about themselves behind the keyboard. But there was still one more stigma to get through when my character realized she and another woman were falling in love. It was just something that happened, over many months of RP, first becoming friends, then best friends, then realizing there was even more. But it was something we knew our characters would not be ashamed of, and so we were not either. But there were tensions at first, most notably the second in command of my guild at the time clearly did not like it (though he did soften up after a while). And to this day I’m still in touch with that other roleplayer (who happens to be a woman, not that it matters).


Since UO I’ve spent time in Lineage 2, EverQuest 2, Guild Wars 1 & 2 and dabbled in several other MMOs. In every one I make a Tregarde (or two, or three). Most of my characters are women. In single player games that allow choice, I will certainly play through as a woman (at least the first time). If a game has a female protagonist, that’s a plus in my book. I don’t know why. I’ve long since stopped asking why.


And in real life, I don’t care what you identify as. All I care about is if you’re a good person. Your character can be a total [censored], but I can keep IC and OOC separate.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm a female irl, and my main RP character is a cat boy, but I have many alts, both male and female, that I would be interested in RPing with someday. :D

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I'm female IRL and I play both genders in game. I know a lot of guys that play female characters and the same with women, I know tons that play males. I never assume the gender of whoever is playing behind the screen and either stick with 'they' because it's neutral or only go by the character's gender. I personally play more women just because I am one so it's easier but it's hella fun to play a guy and get out of my comfort zone. I've even done several different types of relationships because again, to me, gender etc. doesn't matter. Something about not restricting myself to my own gender or worrying about other peoples is really freeing. It's a game, I'm here to have fun. Not worry about silly things. 

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I'm female and exclusively write female characters. I always have since I started RPing in chatrooms in the late '90s. Just about every other RPer I know has written someone of the opposite gender, so people like me seem fairly rare. I've made a few "joke" male characters for temporary laughs.

 

For me, RP is wish-fulfillment. My wish is to be desired by men and to eventually enter into a virtual long-term relationship/marriage. It works even better when the character is struggling to find someone. The best scenario is the plain/ugly girl who lands the hot (cat)guy. Strangely enough, I hate romance novels and romcom movies. Go fig.

 

Unfortunately, I've found on Mateus, trying to find a straight man, especially a miqo'te, is truly a needle in a haystack scenario. It wasn't like that back in the '90s. Back then, if your character was female, guys assumed you were female and went out of their way to treat you like gold. God, I miss those days.

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I'm male and I've been playing female characters pretty much only going back to the days of Runescape and IRC in like.... 2003?

 

So it's just kinda been trained into me to RP female characters. Doesn't hurt they have the better armor most of the time, 4.3 notwithstanding.

 

I will say I don't roll for ERP purposes, and don't roll for the cliche of "want to look at a good ass." Nor am I really interested in spinning any IRL romance out of this, heck playing a female character probably makes it harder to find an IRL romance when you're straight.

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