next time i'm sticking to my antisocial ways

[socksuke_uchiha]

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Comments

+1

[(Anonymous)]

i can't imagine there are so many female characters where their gender is hugely important to their personality? unless you're playing from some older and/or less progressive canons

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

It depends on the character, but most of them deal with in-universe gender roles or misogyny that affects their experience or it factors into the way they present themselves and how they relate to their sexuality or their bodies. It's more the experience of navigating one's relationship to the social constructs of womanhood or femininity.

For example, playing a woman in a historical setting who disguises herself as a man to get by. Great! She has masculine mannerisms and can pass if you don't know her secret. Her gender might not directly affect her personality, but it affects the complete person that she is because she never stops being a woman trying to have a relationship with her identity as a woman while living in this situation. What if she comes to a new world in a jamjar game and wants to start exploring trying to live and present in a way that's more traditionally feminine by her standards because she's now in a world that's safe enough to allow that? I have a struggle trying to convey that experience in a way that feels authentic to me.

The woman on my roster comes from a canon that doesn't have in-universe gender roles or misogyny. She never has to think about her gender in relation to the world until people around her keep trying to suggest that she has a biological imperative to have children, but even then her experience is different because of the setting because it fits into a larger theme of dehumanization. That might affect a character who experiences systemic misogyny very differently.

At the same time, other characters from the same canon have a strong relationship to their sexuality and the inherent power of the female form over straight men and I wish I could play them but I struggle with that too.

da

[(Anonymous)]

I also say this with the utmost delicacy but anon, you are vastly overthinking this. Are the characters interesting with fun personalities? Pay them. Play them as people, not as walking metaphors in a Philip K. Dick allegory. You don't have to use them as mouthpieces for the inherent power of the female form over men, because they aren't, they're just people being people inside their own story. If nothing in the story is about gender roles or heavy-handed symbolism, what are you worried about? If you don't want the "you should have babies" trigger to come up (I doubt it would in most circumstances even in a game) then put it in your character permmissions. "Please don't mention pregnancy there is a history of her reacting poorly to the topic in canon" okay there you go. Done.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

I have a struggle trying to convey that experience in a way that feels authentic to me.

okay, i genuinely don't understand this. do you also struggle to try to convey the experiences of male characters who have gone through/are going through things that you haven't experienced yourself? if not, what makes female characters so special and different?

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

da +1

pretty sure the vast majority of dwrpers have never flown in space or lived in a medieval castle or even been in an extended knife fight either. but you don't exactly see that stopping anyone from rping all that shit and more, and there's not normally much fuss about the fine accuracy of any of it

we're all inauthentic around here bitch, the real questions are: will your rp partner find you fun, and does it still at least vaguely follow details set by the canon?

yes to both? you're good.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

It's specifically that I have a hard time viewing things through an internal lens of being a woman because I am not a woman and trying not to reduce that to stereotypes when writing characters.

It's possible that I am overthinking it a lot but I like to do right by the characters and it's difficult for me to write a character when I don't feel like I have a good understanding of what informs their experiences. Obviously I'll never fully understand, but I also do other writing besides RP, so it's worth it to me to think about these things.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

is that all?

try reading more fiction about women written by women

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Please

Please do this

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Overthinking for sure. Just write consistently with their canon traits.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

so, again, what is the difference between that and writing a character who is, idk, a ninja? you're not a ninja (i assume) and so you have no idea of what informs their experiences.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

men fr don't view women as people huh

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

the "I also do other writing besides RP" is what really had me rofl like did this guy approach writing women as if it was a academic paper or observation report

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

really exhausting to see this attitude popping up again. OP: in spite of what they say, it's not true that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, you can just write women as a "default person" just like men are, their lives don't have to revolve around femininity or sticking it to femininity, they can just be written like other characters, I promise.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

i sympathize, but please know that all we are, as a community, are a bunch of tired thirty-something women and afab folks (mostly) playing cis men and other people outside of our gender experience. if you read our threads and something about the experience, as a non-woman, rings true to yours, that's cool, but i don't think any of us think about writing "true" gender experiences all that much. if anything, we are writing fantasies of what we think these characters would do in a way that seems fun to us, and mostly try to keep character beats and personality traits intact, if anything at all.

honestly speaking, if you're this worried about the issue, i don't think you'd fuck up as badly as you think you would if you did choose to play a woman. like, imagine playing jupiter from jupiter ascending. could you do that? congratulations, you're on par with the best of us.

as a side note, i'm very curious: as someone who plays a lot of cis men myself, how often do you think of the roman empire?

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

da but anon i think you just hit on why ayrt's difficulty reads so bizarre to me, bc am also a cis woman whose muselist is like 80% men

and when im fleshing out characterization writing them im ngl i have never once stopped to think "hmm what kind of manly feelings should this man be feeling about this rn" or "ooh i better approach this scene very carefully with a male mindset" or w/e

it's just...thoughts and feelings based off the characterization in canon? idk?? gender never rly factors into most threads i have honestly. my character's male body is as unknown an experience to me as the giant mecha they're piloting against alien invaders, but neither are impossible enigmas to write about, esp in a hobby where fun's coming first

op for the purposes of dwrp i really don't think you need to worry so much about this

[(Anonymous)]

echoing what a lot of other people have said: people are people, and you're here to roleplay a person. there is nothing about being female that makes us behave or perceive the world any differently 85% of the time. i'm a woman and i basically never think about my gender during my day-to-day life. using your example, instead of focusing on how the woman in disguise as a man is dealing with acting a different gender than she is, why not focus on her motivations for taking up a disguise, what her end goals are, etc.? why is she doing the things she does, and how does she feel about the setting she's in? i guarantee she's spending more time thinking about that than about Being A Lady. if you were playing a male character in disguise, you probably would not get hung up on the fact that he's not REALLY a postman/castle guard/whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

I know you're getting a lot of heat here anon, and I want to say I feel you! I am not a cis man and I struggle to write cis men.

I can do so in fic, but something about the way I have to internalize a character to come up with their reactions on the fly doesn't click as easily for me when writing dudes, no matter how much I like them. It's not important enough to my rp experience to want to write men, so I don't.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

going to back up a lot of other people: male player (shock horror) who plays female characters, and their gender is never really something i have in my mind when i play them. at the end of the day, gender and personality are two different things and its the latter that you rp. im convinced that it's the people who are preoccupied with being 'true to the gender experience' who wind up breasting boobily all over their rp

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

i should write more women who breast boobily tbh

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

i've had players of both genders try to explain to me why they can't play the other gender while coming off as op does and i'm always left thoroughly confused. it always seems to be making a huge deal about why they Simply Cannot Play That Gender because they can Never Understand. i'm out here playing aliens and a lot of characters whose experiences do not align with my own so I tend to think they're way overthinking or they feel bad for not playing x characters for some reason.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

This thread has gone in a lot of different directions I didn't expect or intend, so I wanted to address a few points. I'm responding to my own comment because I wanted to acknowledge all the comments downthread and not tack it onto the end of something else, but I've read everything.

First, I want to apologize to anyone I offended. I did not mean to make it seem like I'm treating women like alien creatures. That was not at all my intention, but regardless of intentions, having read through all the comments I see how it definitely came off that way. I am sorry for that.

When I said I won't ever fully understand, I didn't mean that to sound like I can never and won't ever write a female character due to the reasons I gave. I want to write women and I want to write women well and in a way that is respectful, but I agree that I have been overthinking things. I meant that since I am not a woman I won't understand 100% of what it's like to be one, but I want to learn and understand more so that in the future I can write more well-rounded characters both in and outside of RP.

I will take the advice to check out more media created by women and also focus more on the canon instead of worrying so much about other things. Thank you all for your honesty and bluntness because I'm not sure I would have realized that I have been trying to overcorrect badly otherwise.

And for the anon who asked: I think about the Roman Empire all the time.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

as the roman empire anon thank you for your refreshing and honest answer

about the roman empire, i mean, i don’t know about the rest of this shit

anyway i hope we see each other on a meme someday :) glhf

da

[(Anonymous)]

this comment has really intrigued me, especially since there's a big debate going on re: women in a fandom I'm part of. Fandom, in general, puts so much more weight on female characters to ever get them to a point of acceptable.

I mean this with all the delicacy possible, and all the love in my heart, but some of these things you talk about with your historical example aren't unique to women (e.g., What about a character who comes from a historical Asian based setting and now has to deal with modern clothes? It's not about gender, sure, but there are things there to play with.) Or things you can ignore. Ignoring the gender aspect of your historical example is perfectly fine. She dressed as a guy, now she can dress as a girl, cool! Or she doesn't even have to pretend because women are allowed to wear pants now, etc.

I genuinely hope you can find a way to play the girls you want to play in a way that's comfortable for you. Have fun with them, don't stress!

da

[(Anonymous)]

my dude you are way overthinking this and need to actually talk to women outside of academia

it's a mistake to believe that the average woman throughout history thinks in deep detail about "the experience of navigating one's relationship to the social constructs of womanhood or femininity", or whether or not every move they make is too masculine

do you, as a man, deeply consider your own experiences navigating your relationship to the social constructs of manhood or masculinity? or do you just get on with living your daily life, thinking about work, about meeting your needs and goals for the day/week/future? do you face inner turmoil when you pick up a box of brownie mix, because clearly baking is a feminine pursuit and therefore clashes uncomfortably with your masculine self, or do you just note that you'll need eggs for the mix, and put the fucking box in your cart?

if you do the latter, congrats! so do women. you've just discovered the secret to how women act.