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What genders are your characters?
The discussion on race and ethnicity brought me to consider this.
Do you usually play characters whose gender identity aligns with your own? Why or why not? |
While I do occasionally roleplay characters out of my own ethnicity, I never touch this one. As I straight male, I usually roleplay straight males, or straight females. I usually avoid race because its easy to fall into stereotypes, but I feel that stereotypes can be even more prevalent in this area. A lot of it I think is because I don't want to offend people, and seeing as how its such a touchy subject with a lot of people right now.
But honestly a lot of it comes down to whether I even go into any romantic situations in the RP. I'm not really a fan of romance most of the time, so I rarely even think about about my character's sexual orientation. I just write up a personality, and play the character based on the personality that I gave them, making decisions based upon their history. |
When it comes to this, when it comes to the characters I create, they are always a straight male or a straight female. I will never create a character that is romantically interested in a character that is the same gender as themselves.
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I generally play men who identify as male although I have on occasion played as female identifying women. I'm yet to play a character that is transgender or gender fluid but there's not a real reason for it, those characters just haven't appeared in my head yet.
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I find in both of these situations that we tend to play in ways that we can understand.
A great question is this... would you be part of a roleplay that happened in the Netherlands and you had to portray someone who is native to that part of the world? The most common answer would be 'no, I wouldn't'. The reason most have is that they are taken out of their element. They don't know how to roleplay as someone from the Netherlands. What terms do they use over there? What sort of activities do they engage in? Are their sentiments toward religion and general lifestyles the same as here? Whenever you put an rper in a scenario where he or she has little to no experience, then that will usually cause the awkward levels to rise. How do I portray this character correctly? What sort of backstory do I write to make it seem realistic? The list can go on further and further as rpers generally have no idea as to how to make their character function. Take for instance even a change of fandoms. Who here knows how Star Trek works? How many would eagerly join such an rp knowing EXACTLY which weapons are used there, knowing EVERY single term that might be used in the rp, knowing EXACTLY the ranks on a ship, etc. It's the same scenario. You're throwing someone into a very alien scene and they have no idea on how to roleplay their character. The reason pokemon rps are easy to gm here is because we are a pokemon roleplay site. Every singe rper here has some knowledge of pokemon, the anime, the games, and in general how the universe works. It's a nice safe zone, and easy to rp in and understand how to make your character. |
I was really only talking about gender identity, not sexuality. That's an entirely different discussion.
Personally, I'm happy playing a character of any gender - though I've only played characters on a binary of male or female. Mostly because I like there to be variety in the characters I play. I think the gender of a character is much less of a radical difference than nationality or being part of a different fandom. If I roleplay as a female or non-binary character I'd likely write them not so differently to how I'd write any male characters. |
I've never questioned being anything less than a little lady, and that's reflected in my characters. They're either boy or girl. Transgender characters are just characters I would never feel comfortable in writing.
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I once attempted to create a character who was raised as a boy but was a girl, they realised they were a girl and became a girl. Although this became complicated and didn't impact the story I told. I think it should be expressed fully, if you look at my Western Psycho in Gunpowder, his developement comes about from his inner struggle. A character of this should have their story explored in detail. I think I may revisit this character concept, it's a very hard thing to tag on. But I think it's hard to have something that is impacted by a difference in gender.
I think you shouldn't guilt anyone in exploring this if they don't want to, it's a hot topic and they don't know how to play it. To be honest, I'm straight Male, but I've got a non-binary girlfriend. I think it just seems rather imposing. Additionally, depending on your views, it could not impact the roleplay at all, or it could a great deal, depending on if you play the male identified character as if they were male or if you make them different. All in all, it needs to be done proper. And it's hard with no experience. |
I agree. No one should play a character that makes them feel uncomfortable! But all I was really asking is whether people play characters that aren't the gender that they are, and in my asking that I wanted to incorporate the idea of genders that are not male or female. I was trying to be inclusive in my asking, and not trying to start a debate about gender identity as a whole.
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When I did RP, most of my characters were manifestations of the "void". Kind of hard to make a manifestation of a void look human at all. A multi-dimensional creature, if you'd will. Normally if in a human manifestation, it will almost always be extremely pale (because of no sun in a dark, near inhospitable empty space) and have yellow eyes.
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I can understand that some people only play the gender that they are, and that's fine. It can be hard to understand how some a character would act in certain situations based on their gender, but I think that can be altered a whole lot based on the personality. For example, just because a character is male, doesn't mean you have to always play them as a male, after all, not all guys are stereotypical body building Arnold Schwarzenegger types. Same thing with girls, roleplaying a tom girl is a lot like playing a guy in some cases. A lot of it comes down to what you feel comfortable with though. As a male roleplayer, I like experimenting with both genders. Playing a female sometimes helps me understand the opposite gender sometimes, and the same goes for when playing a male. |
I am a girl but I play boys and girls in a somewhat even ratio. At least I try to, but sometimes the RPs are unbalanced when I join and I shrug and make a char of the gender that is in minority, even if my other active characters are mostly that too. Such as now, when I play Ash (girl) in Astra, Karix (girl) in Redux and hopefully can play Xyra (girl) in Dust. I also have Aberdeen (boy) in Crossroads of course, but he got lost in a forest... 8)
I never found it hard to play a boy, but I'm not sure I have actually played a grown up man well. Not as a protagonist anyways, but plenty of times as side characters when I think about it. So yeah, gender isn't a problem for me, I can even create a SU and then say "nah" and just switch all the pronouns but keep the char as it is, if I feel like it. Quote:
"how a character would act in certain situations based on their gender" is a sentence that belongs in the dark ages. I'm so tired of seeing this **** haha. We are people, our brains might have a little different wiring, but that's not even 100% connected to gender from what I've heard, so I wish people could just stop thinking "okay now I'll make a girl, she needs to act like this and that here and there" and just think "ok now I'll make a char who likes this and is afraid of this" etc, and then decide on gender on a whim or what you feel like at the moment. We live in a modern world now, not in a world where women should be mysterious enigmas to males and where men are played as dirty brutes by females. /me ends preaching |
I've always played a mixture of male and female characters in a rather even balance- Especially because I tend to do most of my roleplaying through art and comics. It would really suck to draw girls 24/7 hahaha. For art based RPs I tend to favor male OCs, and may use them more than my female ones-- but for written RPs like the ones on PC, it's usually the opposite.
edit: Also, holla at Pikachu's assertions above. I can't help but cringe when someone goes "how would a girl react in this situation?" or "how would a guy react in this situation?"-- it's really ridiculous LOL |
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My point here is, Quote:
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It is difficult to think of solid enough example for what someone would do based on their gender entirely, since there are so many different variables, one of them being the society. To sum up the entire point I'm making: The gender of the character might not affect how they think or act but the society changes how people act towards someone depending on gender in consequence that might change the likelihood of an action (or thought) being taken by a specific gender. Disclaimer: Spoiler:
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Societal expectations/stereotypes of gender are just that really. You recognise that in your response. Because one is expected to behave in a certain way, doesn't mean one will. It's fair enough to point out that we still struggle to find equality in modern day life, and even more so in the past. That said, even if your roleplay is close to life in its treatment of gender, that doesn't necessarily affect the way you play a character. It may just affect the way others react to their actions.
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Yeah, I have a very similar sentiment as to what Pikachu has. Gender does not dictate any decision making at all, personality does. If you remove the words that signify gender from a sign-up, it would be very hard to guess which gender a character is supposed to be in a lot of cases. And even if a character has a lot of masculine or feminine traits, they aren't basing their gender on that. One could play a very effeminate male character, and that character would still be male, just with stereotypical female characteristics. The only thing that gender strongly dictates is how big you can make your characters boobs.
Having said that, I feel like there are some characteristics that you do need to account for with gender. If I'd play my Dust character as female, there would be a very different character standing there, with exactly the same description. I also feel like in such a case, of a female overly masculine, buff, barbarian, there would be some mental gender stuff at play. Let's ignore that for a second, and just go about the characters interaction. They would interact with the world the same way their male equivalent would, but the world would react differently to them. I don't think this should be a reason to not play female, though. I've played both genders and I'm fine with either. The only thing I wouldn't play is someone that is transgender, as I don't think I'd be able to do those issues justice with my writing. |
I used to be 100% against playing as anything other than a guy, but obviously I eventually got over that. Probably from jping so much with Sophia in gunpowder. Now it doesn't really matter what I play. Decision making is slightly different when thinking as a female v male character, but there's not been any too big problems yet.
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I've been female in all my RPs and I think that's what I'd be most inclined to in future RPs, but I'd like to try playing as a guy sometimes just for a change. It'll probably all depend on what role I want my character to play in the story and in some cases a male would fit into certain roles better than a female.
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Taking a look at my list, it looks like out of all my characters 11/25 have been female. So the majority have been male, same as me, but not by much.
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I used to typecast, but I've been branching out now more than ever. It's more interesting playing someone more unlike you so I'll be giving it a shot more often.
My name's SV and I approve of this message. |
Back when I first started roleplaying a few years ago, I always found myself playing a white, male teenager. It was always really hard for me to imagine writing a character different than that because that was what I was.
Fortunately, I have grown over that as the years went by. Nowadays, you're more likely to find me playing the gender that has a lower number of participants. |
I usually play female characters as evident by my record of characters here, but I also play male (Ludger is my first male character on this account) or non-binary characters. In fact I like diversity in my character portfolio.
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I normally play males, but it also depends on the story. I can play either gender fairly well, but i normally make the personality first, then picture the gender second. ^_^;;
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