rpanons | next time i'm sticking to my antisocial ways

next time i'm sticking to my antisocial ways

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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.

this. different species, magical powers and horror experiences are gucci, but a gender you either are or observe by interacting with daily is just too out there?

come on. you're not suspending the laws of physics when you envision a vagina.

da

eh. if i write an alien character or a serial killer badly, it's very very unlikely that an alien or a serial killer will read my tag. but if i write person badly and there are people with those characteristics (not just other genders, but people of other races, disabled people, etc) who will probably read that tag, it feels more like you need to do it well. you can't compare them 1:1 like that.

how do you write anyone who isn't exactly like you, then?

but that's a completely different argument. you're talking about the social pressures of a respectful portrayal. the anon that triggered the comment said they felt they didn't have 'a good understanding of what informs their experiences' to play women - in other words, their problem was the lack of a reference basis, because they can't produce in writing an experience they haven't personally lived. at which point, a lot of fiction writing may prove intangible to them.

what is worrying about not having "a good understanding of what informs their experiences" isn't about wanting to write a respectful portrayal? presumably op could write women if they really had to but they seem to believe they wouldn't do a good job of it. to see examples of what happens as a result of that see also the "breasted boobily" jokes that get thrown around here all the time.

to me op sounds like they don't believe they can write women very well and so they're not doing it. i don't believe they should be forced to do so by social pressure or otherwise.

i don't mind people not playing whichever gender but it does feel sort of dehumanizing to have people act like your entire gender is some mystical Other that simply can't be understood and whose experiences are so alien as to be impossible to penetrate.

that bugs me.

ayrt

i can see that. i think maybe i'm more tolerant to that feeling because it's how most cis people treat me as a non-binary person..

DA

This makes me feel salty on your behalf. I'm sorry it's like that out there anon.

+1

love it when that also came with being criticized for my portrayal of a nonbinary character at one point and being like "my dude... i AM nonbinary. 90% of the character's gender shit is just copy and pasted from my own"

Yeah this is what bugs me as well. If someone has a muselist of all the same gender and doesn't make a giant deal about it, I'm unlikely to think about why their muselist is split the way it is at all.

Especially when that's apparently their only obstacle.

I guarantee OP has played characters of that don't have the same age, race, nationally, education, economic class, religion, health problems, political values, career, time period of origin, or a thousand other major and minor factors as them, and I guarantee they managed to do it without crying about not having the corresponding life experience.

Maybe they actually are a perfect angel that's just paralyzed by anxiety at the idea of doing things wrong, but most likely they're either a misogynist or have some severe hangups about their own gender.

people arent pressuring op to write women and thats a bizarre fucking take

theyre criticizing op for having a dogwater dehumanizing take on mystical women emotions and thoughts and encouraging them to read more writing by women to break that down

ayrt

idk op has stated multiple times that they don't feel comfortable writing women and most of the replies have been "but you should write women and here's why and if you don't then you don't think women are people"

not sure how that isn't supposed to sound like anons are pressuring op to change their mind and do something they clearly don't want to do? honestly these days someone saying "i don't think i can write this sensitively and so i'm not going to do it and leave that for people who can" is actually pretty refreshing. maybe more people should do that rather than shitting out terrible stereotypes

anon

this is in the "characters you want to play and why youre not playing them" thread

op said they want to write female characters

anons are responding to their concerns

https://rpanons.dreamwidth.org/95280.html?thread=277185584#cmt277185584 this is literally the top level comment from op

read the thread next time before you project your insecurities on the replies

"honestly these days someone saying "i don't think i can write this sensitively and so i'm not going to do it and leave that for people who can" is actually pretty refreshing."

lol there's nothing "refreshing" about it when their entire argument for "i don't think i can write this well" is "because this gender/race/class/fill in the blank here is a foreign species i just couldn't possibly understand"

there is validity to deciding not to take ownership of and/or capitalize off of a NARRATIVE or irl lived experience that doesn't belong to you, but treating anything/anyone 'different' like a foreign species is odd as hell... representation can be a thing in writing man

come on. the options aren't just 'women are from venus' and 'breasting boobily.' hell, assuming there is a 'correct' way to depict all women that would somehow be known by having a single direct experience is stereotyping just as badly as rping Harlequin protagonists through a 1950s lens.

look, speaking as a woman: yes, i benefit when writing men from the fact that literature historically has featured more works by men and showcasing the points of view of men. so i have plenty of male point of views to draw from, on top of the canon that shapes most of the re/actions and principles of my male characters. but i also accept that there is a margin of representational error i may or may not ever be able to fully bridge. i don't completely other an entire gender because of it.

you're projecting. the entire premise of this thread is that op wants to write women

they even said they do other writing besides rp.

it's not though, since OP is worried about writing the characters respectfully and not falling into stereotypes. they were asked to explain what they meant about not knowing how to internalize femininity and the answer was that they didn't have an understanding to inform the experience.

i agree that women aren't aliens and OP is severely overthinking things, but i got the sense that the overthinking was the result of being afraid to get it wrong, especially in a hobby that has a lot of afab people in it.

but there is a middle ground between needing to have a direct experience of something and only resorting to stereotypes. if (general) you absolutely feel you cannot emotionally or situationally relate to someone to depict them, you can always choose to read accounts from people who have undergone the experience or, even more pertinently, just depict their take on something to similar extents to which it's portrayed in canon.

most of us haven't had relatives killed, yet there are plenty of batman players out there, who still tread the line of respectfully portraying that specific type of grief and not offending the minority of people orphaned in dark alleys.

it's not though, since OP is worried about writing the characters respectfully and not falling into stereotypes.

okay so just

play the character as they're depicted in canon. that's literally all you need to do. there is no such thing as a universal female/male experience because every single person's lived experience will be different. all you need to worry about is how their experience is shown in their canon.

this.

like let's be honest here: most people on this site aren't playing characters with a lot of depth or exploration of their various identities, be in gender, race, culture, etc. they're playing from gacha games and marvel movies lol if you're going to tell me you're too intimidated to play black widow because she's a woman then im not going to assume good faith.

what if we read more fiction written by women

i cant believe youd place this social pressure on ayrt you fucking scumbag

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next time i'm sticking to my antisocial ways

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