To bring you all up to date and help explain my dilemma, let me go back several hours. I was recently reading a "make fun of Darth Baras" thread, most of the comments were about his weight. It is a hilarious thread. So I thought that playing a fat Sith Sorcerer named Peter Gryffindor would be equally as funny. When I play. I play as an extension of myself. This is an issue because I'm a chick, trying to play this male character, and it just makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can't really explain. I want to play this character though, because I really think it's kinda funny (The idea of Peter Griffin being a sorcerer of any stripe is hilarious all by itself, this name and class combo works on many different levels though). Any advice from other chicks playing male characters, who have successfully distanced themselves enough to not be bothered by it? Edited May 20, 2014 by AnastasiaT
I can't seem tp spell, apparently.

Well, think of him as your buddy or a character in a novel you are creating. That's what I do, with males or females. I have 8 female toons, most of them are nothing like me (one of course is a velvet Mary Sue, but who can avoid it? A better woman than I!), and 3 males (working on the fourth). Extended background and legacy connections help a lot. Also, since you are taking an existing char as an inspiration it should be even easier, since you know the guy.

 

One of my boys is Zenith story (Consular companion) AU, as if he fled Balmorra. His counterpart is a Sith Warrior who is a a Balmorra merchant Princeling, a historic analogy of a high-born barbarian who was admitted into the Roman citizenship. So, my privileged boy is going to have a hard landing facing the Empire's attitude towards a provincial alien, no matter how self-entitled, hence the LS path eventually. AU-Zenith is going to be his buddy, and will undergo the opposite transformation - a crash of his youthful ideals fighting against the Empire's dominion as a Smug and follow-up ascent towards a brutal life of a Pirate King (I can see Zenith going that way if he is denied his political ambitions).

 

For me, as soon as they start to gain their own biography, and it grows in telling, they become more characters, less alter-ego's. Not that they are not completely Mary-Sues, lol!

Edited May 21, 2014 by DomiSotto

I'm a roleplayer. My characters aren't extensions of myself, they're characters in a story I'm telling/writing. If you were to sit down right now and write a comedic short story about Peter Griffin the Sith Inquisitor, would it still be an extension of yourself? Would you still have a hard time reconciling that Peter Gryffindor is not you?

 

I think it boils down to personal style. For some of us, our characters are just tools to tell a story. For others, it's like a personal self-insert "if I were this character I would say/do X" kind of thing. For most people I think it's varying combinations of these things. But for me, I view my characters as tools, a means to tell a story and nothing more. It requires suspension of disbelief and distancing oneself from the character. A little bit of you will inevitably bleed into your character, it's unavoidable, it's the reason any male character I roleplay tends toward some effeminate weirdness--I can't pull off a convincing dude lol.

 

The character you're working on isn't an extension of you, as you are neither a Sith nor Peter Griffin lol. Think of it as writing a story with an already existing character instead, and inserting him directly into another story's universe.

To bring you all up to date and help explain my dilemma, let me go back several hours. I was recently reading a "make fun of Darth Baras" thread, most of the comments were about his weight. It is a hilarious thread. So I thought that playing a fat Sith Sorcerer named Peter Gryffindor would be equally as funny. When I play. I play as an extension of myself. This is an issue because I'm a chick, trying to play this male character, and it just makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can't really explain. I want to play this character though, because I really think it's kinda funny (The idea of Peter Griffin being a sorcerer of any stripe is hilarious all by itself, this name and class combo works on many different levels though). Any advice from other chicks playing male characters, who have successfully distanced themselves enough to not be bothered by it?

 

 

I'm a guy, however, I can offer an opinion: Maybe it isn't the fact that he's a male character that's stopping you.

 

I tried making a joke character, myself. A fat smuggler, modeled after the dude from Megas XLR, Coop. I couldn't play him for long. I can't play characters that I can't take even a little bit seriously.

 

Maybe it's the fact that it's such a ridiculous character that's stopping you? m

RP is a form of expression art, really. Most every artist has to deal with their own comfort zone sooner or later, or maybe should from time to time just to explore it and know themselves better.

 

A guy playing a female might be an Internet stereotype, or they might just be looking to author a character that happens to be female. A gal playing a dude might similarly have eyeroll-y reasons for it, or will thought of and respectable reasons.

 

At the end of the matter is you and what you think of it. Personally, I'd encourage you to give ita go and pay keen attention to what exactly discomfits you. Push the comfort zone a little bit, back off if it just doesn't work for you, maybe find that the reason didn't really exist and it was mere unfamiliarity, or who knows.

 

Is one of the few things in life you can indulge with impunity and risk nothing to do so, except maybe some personal awkwardness you never even have to admit to if you don't care to.

 

Hard for me to seea downsideon trying it at least!

Edited June 25, 2014 by Uruare