DELETEDUSER007

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

Well, I didn't intend for this discussion to go that way, so thank you mods for stepping in where needed.

<Snipped quote by Zyx>

Hi! OP here. I've always tended to pick female characters or create ones when applicable and I never really figured out why. I enjoy it. For roleplay purposes, it was interesting creating characters and experiencing things through their eyes, often far different than my real-life experiences, so maybe that's it. Thankfully when roleplaying I haven't had many people take issue with this, though there have been some people that have either made assumptions about me (whether correct or not) or have expressed a dislike of it, those have been few and far between. I was mainly roleplaying on MMOs in the early 2010s so maybe we have become more understanding as the years went on. I'm sure there's still little trolls and haters out there, but I haven't met any on here or in my roleplay groups.

@PatientBean

>I see. And I think that people have become more understanding as a whole when it comes to roleplaying and the like, though again the odd bit of retraction from writing other perspectives still confuses me. I understand wanting to write what one knows, but to do so without ever branching out seems strange. In any case though, I started roleplaying on fandom wiki's, primarily the Superpower Wiki. So even then the whole solely writing one's own gender thing and bias that comes from IRL perspective just didn't really exist for me. Not when godlike powers and entities who are only truly human in appearance made such irrelevant anyway.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote>

For sure. I do absolutely understand. Heck, I’ve been there myself in the past. So I’m not going to beg you to stay or anything. It is, after all, your choice. Nothing can stop you if things are too far gone. But know that I’m putting in an effort here because I would hate to see you go.

<Snipped quote>

It’s not odd at all. It is slightly out of sync with our norm, yes, but I wouldn’t call it weird. It’s worth sharing that we, the core of the RP, have been doing this RP for nearly 10 consecutive years, so we have a system that does work. I just also will add that I admit that that much experience undoubtedly also implies a level of familiarity with each other and how each of us operates, and as a result, perhaps a disposition towards plot threads that is admittedly not friendly to newcomers. So I apologize on that front, it’s easy to get stuck in the status quo. The flow of it all.

<Snipped quote>

Definitely. I’m fully aware of a lack of intention to measure between each other comparatively. And nothing is going to be justified by me there. But I do think it could all be fixed in the end, by communication, which I will assert with just a blanket statement so as to avoid finger pointing: Open communication on all fronts is key.

I do understand how you feel. MR is a labor of love we’ve all had ups and downs with in the past, and I say that with personal experience. I apologize for how some things have made you feel, but I want you to know that things are always open to be worked on and you aren’t shut out. Or, if you’re insistent on resignation, that is understandable as well. No hard feelings.

@Heroic

>I remain firm in my decision to leave, but I do appreciate the sentiment.

Myriad Reality

Okay. I’m gonna try and break this down from my perspective and try not to step on any toes in the process.

•”Measuring” characters up against each other regardless of context is just a bad idea. It leads to exactly these sorts of scenarios. As much as it may have been a desirably avoided circumstance by both parties, it’s what the interaction turned into, as someone looking in from the outside.

•”Planning” may admittedly be not in the spirit of MR. But I fully believe expressing issues and working towards resolutions on miscommunications or conflicts with unknown facts is imperative to maintaining a healthy IC. It’s not always necessary, but it is necessary.

•In the end, this is a collaborative effort. So, redundant as it may sound, that means putting effort into the collaboration when necessary. The player on the other side of the screen isn’t an NPC to dwarf for fun. We have attachments to these characters and seeing them take nothing but L’s all the time is going to sour moods. And it can be entirely avoided. The most epic scenes in any medium of entertainment do come about from struggle on both sides, after all.

So in the end, my message is simple. Communicating with each other OOC to a degree is necessary. Not always, but it is necessary. Let’s all work toward MR being fun for all parties.

@Zyx

I’m not sure if this was in regards to that particular scene, or if this was to Myriad Reality as a whole, but if it is the latter, I implore you to reconsider. We’re far from being against cooperation.

@Heroic

>You can understand how, given the interactions I've had, why I might not think that's the case. Now sure, I know that there is some cooperation here, but even when reaching out to try and plan out a fight scene with souleaterfan and even the user I interacted with recently--something every roleplay should do when handling PvP to avoid the all too common problem of toes being stepped on or an infinite and repetitive back and forth--I received the equivalent of, "Don't worry about it, we'll play it by ear," each time. With that in mind, perhaps you will understand my reluctance to participate further in the RP as a whole, when planning seems to be such a small part of it.

>And I know it might seem odd that I make such a big deal of collaboration and planning ahead, but I've been doing this for at least 4 years, arena battle type RPs especially. Both playing and running them, and let me tell you, if you fail to collaborate or plan something out it just goes back and forth forever, or until someone gets upset. Plus, this is a story we're trying to tell as I said, and you should always have an ending or goalpost in mind. There should be some kind of structure to avoid the pitfalls that so many narratives without a plan fall into.

>Finally, as I've made clear, I wasn't trying to dick measure. I was merely trying to establish an antagonist and not have them neutered in the first five seconds of play. It isn't exactly an enjoyable experience that, especially when trying to play a threatening villain in this feels so often like an exercise in No-Selling just to keep them alive, let alone a credible threat.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

>I can't imagine why, but now the chain of discussion will look quite odd.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

>I still find it hard to understand why writing anything that is beyond your own perspective might be considered weird honestly.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

<Snipped quote by Ammokkx>

What you said in your initial paragraph can be attributed to men making male characters. Again, the question is literally why not apply that same logic and make a variety of male characters that have different personality traits? Why is this logic only applied to characters of the opposite sex?

I didn't call anyone a sussy baka, nor do I even know what that means lol. My curiosity is simply wanting to know why some cis men feel an intrinsic preference to select the female icon in character creation, especially in games where they aren't RPing in.

@Crazytrini85

>Well I can't speak for the OP, but so far as I'm concerned it's just like experiencing a different life, or just because I felt like doing it on a whim. But given how vivid and close to lucid my dreams are at times, and the amount of lives and perspectives I've had within them that are not my own thanks to the enforced plot/narratives said dreams have had, I think I'm more accustomed to exploring perspectives that are not my own or not human than most. Or at least more influenced to do so anyway. Although again, I don't write these things exclusively. I do have a preference towards writing characters of my own gender by default, but again to me that's like swapping out parts on a Lego. In the end whatever perspectives or views there are might as well be tools for me to use to further a character's development or the overall story.

Myriad Reality

>I've changed my mind about participating in this. Good day.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by Zyx>

This is supposed to show that dick measuring a new character with unknown and absurd powers against one that has defined but absurd powers is a bad idea.
Besides, planning things out is boring. :P

@Yatagarasu

>In my experience it helps writing go smoother, not to mention quicker and with less potential for conflict or misinterpretation. Something that a lot more roleplays need frankly, since you're basically co-authoring a single tale, just from different and exclusionary perspectives. In any case, I was hoping to actually avoid a dick measuring contest since I had enough of those back in... well literally every OC roleplay community I've ever set foot in. I say this having done the exact same thing mind, repeatedly, mainly because it's just how those places were. It's tiring to constantly boil things down to two five year old's arguing in a sandbox over whose superman is more unbeatable than the other's.

>I was more hoping to set up an actual, you know, antagonistic threat. Maybe not one that terrifies the characters in question, because given the shit they've seen that'd be rather unrealistic, but at least one that's more than a two-bit bad guy who can just be obliterated by someone from the main cast sneezing in the wrong direction. Because if I wanted that I'd go read some cultivation novels.

>And yes, I do have an actual way this could go that doesn't result in character death or neutering for either party involved.

Myriad Reality

>Okay, so this time I actually do want one of you to sit down and plan out what's going to happen, because I'd like to avoid having to pants this again. It is a horribly problematic means of going about collaborative writing when everyone is in the dark regarding direction and elements.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

<Snipped quote by Zyx>

Yeah, but a genderless shapeshifter is like the same thing as a dragonborn; it's so outside the human perspective so we're all working with the same reference material (ie. whatever's established in the setting).

Like I said, exceptions exist, but it's kind of uncanny when you ONLY write from a perspective that has nothing to do with you. Which is why assumptions of people being trans women start flying. If you had 12 character slots and 11 of them were girls, then you are no longer "just trying" out to write from an alternative perspective; that basically is your perspective. The question OP raised isn't a can or cannot; the question is why.

@Crazytrini85

>I see. Thank you for the elaboration.