A lot of it is my opinion, but I didn't just make it all up. There are a million articles about this subject already, so I didn't really do anything ground-breaking (:P), but I did verify what I wrote apart from the stuff that is just highly dependent on someone's opinions.

And then of course there is all the stuff I can take straight from personal experience, also on the mistaken side . I'm not guilt-free when it comes to RPing something at least close to a stereotype .

Last edited by Norah (2007-07-26 18:20:30)

I've seen way too much of it in WoW -_-

But you got it in Seed as well. You really find it everywhere, usually even the really heavy stereotypes. Well, ok, you don't find the naked-dancing cybersex chars everywhere... but certainly in WoW.

And I'm actually still prone to slip up with regards to cliche/melodrama and a bit of stereotyping, so I watch it carefully. But generally I don't really care if people (and me) slip up now and then, as long as they're not one of those walking stereotypes .

I wouldn't count a dramaqueen as a stereotype of a female character, because it can be for either sex, and it is more like a problem with a certain player. No matter what char they play (can be a realistic char mostly too), they will seek attention, will always need more heroic deeds, more tragic tragedies, the worstest butcherings in their past, etc, than anyone around them.
I count it as something that falls under more of a player-thing, like those players that insist on telling their char's whole life story when they first meet you, or the ones talking in Ye Olde English, because they think that is what RP is.

I knew probably the worst The Victim stereotype I have ever seen, anywhere, when I was playing WoW, but she was not a drama-seeker at all (He I mean, really, because guess what? Male player ).
And I also knew a terrible dramaqueen in WoW who played a very non-stereotypical character.

And it doesn't have to be intertwined with the victim, but perhaps the people who are dramaqueens often end up stereotyping their female chars that way?

And I do count it as slipping up for me, because it happens when I don't want it to, and I feel unsatisfied about it afterwards.

Stereotypal characters don't need to be flat - they can be just as deep and three-dimensional as anyone and still be stereotypical. After all, real people can be stereotypical. There probably are real-life women (and men too, sure) that fall under Norah's categories. The point is that they're not actually real female traits, and thus you should not take them as such as you roleplay a female.

Equality
On a NWN server I used to play there was discussions about the woman's role in the fictive medieval'ish gameworld. Would an unmarried woman competing with the male adventurers appear as something strange? Would they need protection against the male population?
The discussion ended, I think, with a ban against certain types of sexual roleplay (thank goodness), and that, in the eyes of the typical commoner - all adventurers was strange.

Fantasy
In WoW there was a lot of female/female marriages, but I never saw any male/male wedding - even the female/male ones were unusual then. So there was obviously young guys living out their fantasies in the fantasy world, rather than trying to portray a realistic character.

I used to play a female character in WoW, never really gave the gender much thought, but when one of my in-game friends tried to seduce my character I really felt uneasy. We had until then played a fairytale type of love relationship, but when cybering came into the picture - all roleplay went out the window.

About the strikingly beautiful female characters, aren't they as common as the over-dramatic backgrounds? You want your character to be interesting in itself, even before you enter the world. I think it's a phase everyone goes through.

Do you even think about gender when you roleplay a male character, or is it just personality in that case? If so do we need to consider gender when roleplaying a female?

http://www.elfonlyinn.net/d/20040726.html

I just don't know why people think they need to look beautiful to have a non-average char. By the whole nature of what you're doing you know you're char isn't going to end up average anyways, even if they are average in all ways that they can be (looks, skills, personality, etc). They are going to be in a non-average situation and lots of non-average stuff will be happening to them.  And in most of those games they are outright super-powerful to begin with (everyone's a hero in most MMOs).
And besides, when all the chars are either stunningly beautiful or hideously ugly, your gorgeous or ugly char will hardly stand out of the crowd anymore! There were so many of the beuatiful chars in WoW that I got really bored with it, and my own regular-looking char actually drew more attention. By that time I had stopped making gorgeous chars for a while already though, so it wasn't even sought-after attention. It did result in many people asking me for RP tips for some reason.

And the looking beautiful and the overly dramatic stuff happening to their char fails to make their chars more interesting, it's usually just annoying.

I think people do need to forget about / stop thinking constantly about having to portray a different gender, when they want to play a char of the other gender.
I think the identification problems also stem from that in part: people think too much about now being a different gender. I see a lot of people having "Oh my god I need to portray someone of a different genderthan me, gotta act girly, gotta act GIRLY!" type reactions. Not to mention that their idea of what acting girly/being a woman means is usually the kind of stuff that makes you wince when you have to watch it (stereotyping etc). (same goes for women playing men, only that happens a lot less often).
I don't usually play a male char, but when I do, I just play a personality, I would do very little, possibly nothing, different than when I play a female char (possibly apart from the sexual orientation of the char, I would probably make a male char attracted to female chars, not other male chars. Or maybe not, but with so many RPers still shying away from (male)  gay relationships in RP, even though they should be able to separate RP frpom RL better than that (:P), my char would likely be destned to a lonely life, and I would feel so sad for it).

I also think a lot of those lesbian relationships come from those male players assuming that the other female char is RL female, no matter that their own char isn't either, and that it's much more likely that the other female char is RL male too. Not (just) that they want to live out some fantasy. You see it so often, them finding out after a while that the other player was also male, and the relationship getting quickly broken off. And also in female/male RP relationships, the RL male player asking you for your gender, because they don't want to RP a relationship with a char if the player behind it is male.

And to the seducing of a female char by a friend, are you sure it was cybering he was after?
I would make a distinction between people after cybersex, and an IC relationship progressing from fairytale-romance-no-sex-involved to one where sex is a part of it. Not everyone does RP sex, but then you can just talk to the player of the char that your char is involved with and get both your standpoints clear on it. If one of the two doesn't do RP sex, you can always just imply that the chars are having sex without playing it out.