Dancer Archive
Thread: Girls, does it ever bother you?
Well hopefully I can help enlighten you.
I play a female character and I am indeed a guy.
Now, to calarify: I am nto attempting to lead some sort of double life with this. I do not broadcast my gender to other people in the game, well cuz like most of my personal information, it's none of their business. In real life I am not a female, furthermore I am also not a criminal or a martial artist, I have only limited skills with a firearm, and I have never flown a starfighter. Were it applicable, I would also point out that I am not a Mon Calimari/Wookie/Bothan/Zabrak...and the fact that I made my avatar to be one sould not be considered indicative of any extraterrestrial lineage. However I play a human, so it is not a point that applies to me, but one I wanted to make.
See, none of us are what are characters are in the game. We are not Jedi, does playing one somehow falsify our character? In real life I am a total bleeding heart liberal. In the game I am a proud member of the fascist Imperial regime. See what I am getting at here?
Anyway, people play cross gender for many reasons. I think the most common reason is to see if they can do it. I rarely play cross gender in tabletop roleplaying, because my very presence at the table in some ways destroys the character I am trying to protray. MMORPGs make it a bit easier. You don't have to look at my 5 o'clock shadow while refering to me in feminine pronouns. (now for two tabletop bits: 1) The character I play is based on a character I played in SW RPG a few years ago and 2) women have the problem I mentioned above as well. A female friend of mine took to wearing an "It's a boy!" button to games because other players kept referring to he -male- character as "she"). So for me, primarily, it is a role plaing opportunity that I don't get to engage in often.
A less lofty reason is one that I also use. I like to look at women. So, if I'm going to spend hours a day staring at an avatar, it might as well be one that I find pleasing to my eye. I have done this since I started playing games with a high visual/voice content. Every CRPG I have ever played, most of the characters I have played have been female.
Some people get bent out of shape with flirting or actual wooing in these games, but that is a function of the internet. Whether it's a persona in a chat room or an actual avatar in a game, people are falling for a proton of what they see rather than the whole person behind the avatar/persona. Not to say that you cannot find love on the internet, but when you do, you have to do a lot of digging to find out everything about the person, not just what they have shown you.
Hope I made some sense with all that.
Now onto a more purient topic:
"The other thing I don't understand is the cyber thing."
Interactive erotica...the ultimate safe sex. Not everyone's cup of tea, but hey, everytime you create a meathod of communitcation, people figure out how to get sexual gratification from it. Words, letters, telephones, movies, tv, now the internet. So you shouldn't be so surpirsed about it.
Dreysander wrote:
.... wookies seem to have a thing for bothan.. /shudder
I hear that and have experienced this myself as a bothan female. LOL
JerethBane wrote:
Well hopefully I can help enlighten you.
Hope I made some sense with all that.
I understand what you are saying it's more a generational thing I guess. I didn't grow up with RPG and especially online visual RPG. We played cowboys and indians or war out in the yards where you could see each other and playing the opposite sex just never crossed our minds. I don't think I could convincingly play the opposite sex. I always assume the person behind the character is aligned sexually and treat them accordingly. That doesn't mean I don't think female toons have different abilities, I look at character skills there. It does mean I speak to them differently because being an old school southerner I don't use many uni-sex terms when speaking to people.
Interactive erotica...the ultimate safe sex.
Oh I understand the concept and the potential pleasure. Again its a generational and experience issue. Sex of any kind involves way more emotions than many people want to admit. To interact at that level with a stranger is fraught with all kind of problems. I see this more in younger people who, just like me when I was young, think you can have casual sex.Most people can't truely be casual about it, they realize at some point they have invested parts of themselves they didn't plan to and someone gets hurt.
FuschiaD wrote:
What bothers me is people who insist on lying about their real-life gender.
There is a fine line between roleplay and dishonest deception. For this reason, I'm perhaps a little overly cautious that others know that I'm me, regardless of which character I'm on. The exception to this is one character that I play who kind of serves as an escape from constant tells, e-mails and responsibility. She is a Trandoshan female and no one has ever hit on her, questioned her gender..but frankly, I doubt many would want to get too close to her anyway
I'm a little sensitive about this because one of my best friends from a previous game got jerked around from someone who insisted that she was a man and was actually a woman.
A good friend in another game I played became well known and appreciated for his ability to lead large groups through one of the most difficult quests in the game. When RL demands required that he leave the game, he gave his character to a guildmate. Unfortunately, the guildmate tried to pretend that he was theoriginal playerbehind the avatar.
One of the characters that I manage originally belonged to a friend who left the game last February. This character is the mayor of the town where I live. I drive the character when anything is needed for the town but I make sure that everyone is kept aware that it is me and not the original player who made such an enormous impact on our server. I very much enjoy roleplay but not at the expense of a friend's memory.
And as for those who say that hooking up with someone you meet in an online game is lame... don't throw stones.
Mikkel and I metabout 4years ago while playing Asheron's Call. We immediately became friends but the thought of an online romance was the last thing either of us were interested in. When two guildmates married we stood there as MoH & BM making fun of it in tells.
One and half years ago he decided to take a 2 month summer trip to the US. I offered that he use my place as a base from which he could make short trips to visit his friends and relatives all over. The original plan was that he would go back home in August. He finallyreturned to Denmark the following December to close out his apartment and move here permanently. Never say never
picklesSW wrote:
I've been accused of being a female before. Didn't really bother me.
but you're just so pretty!
Esharra wrote:
FuschiaD wrote:And as for those who say that hooking up with someone you meet in an online game is lame... don't throw stones.Mikkel and I met about 4 years ago while playing Asheron's Call. We immediately became friends but the thought of an online romance was the last thing either of us were interested in. When two guildmates married we stood there as MoH & BM making fun of it in tells.
One and half years ago he decided to take a 2 month summer trip to the US. I offered that he use my place as a base from which he could make short trips to visit his friends and relatives all over. The original plan was that he would go back home in August. He finally returned to Denmark the following December to close out his apartment and move here permanently. Never say never
tell me about it... I'm still dating (after 4 years) the guy I met on ICQ 8 years ago
Pappi wrote:
picklesSW wrote:
I've been accused of being a female before. Didn't really bother me.
but you're just so pretty!
And I like shopping! And clothing!