30 days of fanfiction meme (day 6)

[petronia]

6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

I slightly prefer writing female characters. Given the choice in a video game or a tabletop roleplay, I always pick a female avatar, and having to interact with the "world" while being aware (because I'm simultaneously looking at it on the screen) that I'm "in" a male avatar causes me actual, no-jokes, psychological discomfort. It's probably 0.05% of what someone with real gender identity disorder experiences. I don't feel like my mind** (thought processes, gaze, sexuality, etc.) is gendered, though, so in FPS-mode where I can't see "myself", I forget about it. Which is why I have no problem writing male POVs, I guess; and of course I don't mind writing about guys from the outside, whether or not they are erotic objects. XD;

My online social network skews vastly female; my offline social network skews vastly male. My fanfiction characters skew vastly male; my original fiction characters (SSBB aside) skew vastly female. I have no theories.

As an aside, this is probably a good place to mention that the Madoka Magica "drabble" fill has hit 1K words and counting. 1) WTF?? but 2) I'm not going to ponder it too hard.


** Any of you guys ever played the "picture a cube in a desert landscape" game? Supposedly every person's cube is different. Mine is a massive translucent white glowing anti-grav thing, suspended a few feet off the ground and rotating on itself. If you look closely at it you see it's not solid: the edges and sides are defined by laser beams and reflection-less force fields. It's very obviously an alien artifact.

Comments

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

1K words and counting

XD

the "picture a cube in a desert landscape" game

I've never heard of this! And when you say "supposedly everyone's is different" I suppose you mean "everyone who isn't a child of the 1980s preconditioned to invariably associate the word 'cube' with 'Rubik's'," because that is what happens to me and surely I am not the only one caught under the long shadow of branding.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Rubik's is a specific thing, and it has a meaning I don't remember, but it's not everyone by any means. XD A lot of people picture a simple cube made of a specific material, or a cube-shaped building, but its size and placement in the landscape is also important.

Then you're meant to picture a ladder, a horse, a storm, and flowers, placing them into the same landscape (not everyone pictures the same desert either). Tell yourself a story if you choose.

[saturnoolaa.livejournal.com]

I AM DESPERATELY HAPPY THAT YOU ARE WRITING FOR MADOKA

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Weellll it is not very good (plotless, mostly about Homura being a loveable creeper), but thx for the vote of confidence. XD;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I don't! Should I? XD

[arboretum]

ahaha i just pictured one of those multicolored shiny spinning things in mariokart that you drive into to get items. i'm not sure those things are actually cubes in the game, now that i think of it.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

You guys are all so INFLUENCED by toys and computer games. XDDDD

(Granted mine is surely constructed from bits of SF movies, but)

[bell]

FYI? I would read Madoka fic by you SO HARD

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question! Here's my lot for compare-and-contrast: I was going to say the avatar thing doesn't bother me, but thinking about it, although I'll play either gender, I never choose a strongly masculine or feminine character. In practice this tends to skew male, as bishounen-types are ten a penny, while if there is a female equivalent, I don't even know the word.

As a child I imagined only female characters, but from about thirteen onwards they were nearly all male. I'm not good at imagining mixed settings; a huge part of the m/m thing is wanting to think about power dynamics without invoking the massive historical baggage that shadows het relationships. There's a massive amount of not-wanting-to-deal in my gender imaginings, but my offline social circle is more or less equally m/f. idk. tl;dr?

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

When I think of cube in a desert landscape, I just think of a grayish cube sitting on a yellow plane. After I think a while, the desert-y part fills in...

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I got a Macbook Air cube - white and glowy on the inside. Also floating, but maybe that's a suggestion from you. The desert is plain sand, in a kind of cream color. There's some ridges in the sand and a couple clouds, like a Magritte painting, but that's the best I can do for details.

I think I told you the story about the deal me and my brother had for Pokemon Pearl/Diamond: he'd play a girl and I'd play a boy. But then I couldn't go through with my end when the game came in, because being able to play as the girl was just too great and novel. ^^ So then we were both girls.

It doesn't bother me to play as a male avatar, but I'll always pick a girl when I have a choice - UNLESS the girl character is obsessed with the hero, like Amy Rose. Then I'd rather just play the hero.