I can see clearly now the rain is gone...

Inspired by BigRedKitty and Big Bear Butt Blogger, I thought to write a post about being a male that plays a female char. I've loved this theme for at least the last five years or so. For me, it all started with Final Fantasy XI. There are four races if I recall correctly: hume, galka, taru taru and mithra. Hume and taru taru had the choice of picking male or female characters while mithra and galka were limited to only one gender. Mithra were female and galka appeared decidedly male, but in the back story were asexual. I chose a mithra for my main because I originally wanted to have a thief. What could be more stealthy and agile than a cat person. Truth be told, even if they had male mithra, I would have chosen a female.

I thought nothing of this choice as the character I played never reflected me in real life. In fact, what I generally enjoy about video games is that they do not resemble my life. Why the hell would I want to play a game about going to work 40 hours a week and paying bills? Since the video game does not resemble my life, why does my character need to resemble me? Better yet, why does it need to represent me projected into the video game world?

Many a time have I clarified my gender to other gamers. They make some sort of comment or emote and I realize that they think I'm a girl. I would correct them because I didn't want to have them continue calling me 'hon' or whatever else unless they were female. Quick replies usually came: "Oh, are you gay?" The concept that I choose female chars because I am gay is laughable. One player I know who is gay has chosen all male chars... does that make him straight?

I typically responded that if I have to look at a char that I will be playing for hours on end, I'd rather it were female. I would rather check out the new armor I get when draped across a pair of cartoon boobs than the chest of a male char. Let's not confuse this, however, with being attracted to my toon. I don't /login to /poundoff. I thought this was a justifiable argument, but it seems that a large portion of the male gaming population thinks this is a trite cover-up of my true intentions.

This is the first illogical prejudice or stereotyping that I have truly been a target of. I was perplexed by other players forming their opinion of me based on one decision. After my recent bout of reading WoW blogs, I think I understand them a bit more and hope to help them understand my side a bit more. It would seem there is a large population of gamers that feel their characters are a reflection of themselves or of a fantasy that they create in their own minds. They play male characters because they wish to project themselves into the world. They feel more a part of the game when the character represents them in this way. If I felt this way, I think I would be equally stupified by someone representing themselves in a manner that is contractictory to their real form.

As an example, on a role playing server, if I rolled a chick char and a male char /flirt'd with me, I would flirt back... that's a little weird to me... not the flirting but the whole roleplay shit. I think it's all farked. You are, in many cases, a grown individual that's playing pretend... FARKED! It's the equivalent in my mind's eye, of grabbing 2 Barbies and 6 beers and sitting down with Joe, my good friend, and having an afternoon of playing dolls. Do I share my opinion, do I judge people that roleplay, do I chastise people for thinking that their character is in some way a little version of themselves on the monitor? NO!! I roll on a server where people don't say things 'ooc' because we are not our characters.

So to set the record straight: I am not my character. I am male. My hit percentage with a bow and arrow at 30 yds is maybe 5%. I can't dance, ... well the BElf one dances pretty poorly so she can't dance either. I have a pet cat but when I tell him to attack things, he continues to sleep on the couch. If I put on a shirt that says +7 stam, I am still just as easy to kill as before. I can't make traps that explode. I have a 100% resist rate when I feign death. I don't have long hair, long ears, ridiculously long eyebrows, or boobs. I AM NOT MY CHARACTER.