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What gender are you and what gender is your main character?

I am female and so is my main character 0.21040462427746 21.0% [ 182 ]
I am female but my main character is often male 0.27630057803468 27.6% [ 239 ]
I am male and so is my main character 0.041618497109827 4.2% [ 36 ]
I am male but my main character is usually female 0.023121387283237 2.3% [ 20 ]
I am male/female and my main character can be either (no preferance) 0.24277456647399 24.3% [ 210 ]
I am male/female and I usually use groups conaining both as main characters 0.20578034682081 20.6% [ 178 ]
Total Votes:[ 865 ]
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I stopped studying my boyfriends after I learned that the human brain was gender specific. So now all my main characters are women, but when I have male characters involved I just ask a guy that I know what they would do in certain situations.

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I just observe people, and I think I'm doing fine with the genders of my characters. I don't think it's necessary to go researching that.

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Try visiting communities like Gaia and playing online RPG's as a female character. Work on being better and better at passing yourself off as female. It's amazing how well this works.

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LordSoma
Try visiting communities like Gaia and playing online RPG's as a female character. Work on being better and better at passing yourself off as female. It's amazing how well this works.

I'm not trying to sound mean or offensive(personally I think it's a great idea) but do you actually do that?

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I treat characters as characters first - yes, their sex has influence on their personality (but dear god, not every female is maternal and care-giving nor every male a violent brute) and physiological differences have an affect. However, I know enough females that act like the guys (hard drinking and all) that when I read a book I don't really care if a female isn't very feminine - this goes double if the world in question doesn't necessarily have the same stereotypes and societal pressures. Guy's acting effeminate - meh, I don't read enough armature fic to even find that unless it is part of that character and there's good reason. (And yes, there are other reasons than being gay. I hate that most of all. I have not met a gay man who acts effeminate yet; so I despise that stereotype.)

For note, I am one hundred percent red-blooded human male, and the protagonist of my current work is female. It's not hard to do, no one has complained about her yet.

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Rikus_lil_witch
LordSoma
Try visiting communities like Gaia and playing online RPG's as a female character. Work on being better and better at passing yourself off as female. It's amazing how well this works.

I'm not trying to sound mean or offensive(personally I think it's a great idea) but do you actually do that?

I did when I was having trouble writing female characters. I've improved quite a lot, if I do say so myself. How would that question be mean or offensive? neutral

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I only write as males. I've never done research, I just write and I never hear that they're too femme or anything. It's not as hard as you think.

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LordSoma
Rikus_lil_witch
LordSoma
Try visiting communities like Gaia and playing online RPG's as a female character. Work on being better and better at passing yourself off as female. It's amazing how well this works.

I'm not trying to sound mean or offensive(personally I think it's a great idea) but do you actually do that?

I did when I was having trouble writing female characters. I've improved quite a lot, if I do say so myself. How would that question be mean or offensive? neutral

I usually tend to offend someone or piss someone off when I ask someone something.Maybe I should try that.

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Either I observe my guy friends, or I read manga, take note of the weepy girly men, and make sure I never do that. ^^; Same goes for female charas. Alternately, reading manga by Minekura Kazuya (she drew Saiyuki) or Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist) helps - they both have a fairly good understanding of how male charas should act.

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I'm female and I mostly write males. I grew up around guys with mostly male best friends, and that's only begun to change recently, so I tend not to understand females too well. Granted, some of my male characters tend towards my ideal of the male as extremely badass and/or incredibly witty, but overall I think I do better with them.

A related question that's been bothering me, if no one minds: Why is it considered so much more difficult for a male to write realistic female characters than for a female to write realistic males? Females will write with male first-person narrators and not occasion much comment, but if a male writes a female FPN it's a Big Huge Deal. Are women really so alien, or is "male" just the default gender setting?

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Tavreynya

A related question that's been bothering me, if no one minds: Why is it considered so much more difficult for a male to write realistic female characters than for a female to write realistic males?


Mind if I try answering thisin a psychological way? Not as a professional of course, so I could be wrong.

I'll explain it using animal references and the first civilisation signs, where the males were hunters and females collectors. Females back then usually collected fruit. They did this chatting to each other, bonding with each other and trying to understand one another's situation. They heard of the lives of other females in their group and develloped the ability to think as other people. They needed these bonds, for example to trust another as babysitter for their children.
For males, as hunters, it was important they could work in a team to catch a prey. They had a different bond and didn't need to know so much about their partners or personal lives.
Though society changed over the many years, it's only recently females can get the same chances as males and this difference becomes smaller. The picture where the male protects and provides for his family and the female takes care of the children and the house is still apparent, or was at least there in the previous century. This means males just need to be able to work as a team where females have more time to spend with friends, go shopping, chat and gossip.
So basically, I just think that females can more easily think as a male than vica versa, because their brain is used to placing them in another person's shoes.


You still see it in animal kingdom as well, females working together while, especially in the mating season, males often oppose each other to get the best females. Lions for example can have three female generations working together while the males are of one generation to avoid incest and they have to fight off opponents.
Monkeys live in larger groups, there can be more males and females and there is a dominant on either side, but the dominant males fight their challengers more agressively than females would. (Not sure if they even fight at all or if their place has to do with age or furtility)

Then again, maybe I'm thinking too much, but it sounds logical and possible to me.

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that's interesting, but there also is the fact that in some animals, the males are the ones who stay behind and the women have to jobs to hunt, protect and take care of their young and even the guys. Like Lions. But that is just something I've heard.

Anyways to answer the topic question, I usually write having my main character a girl. I just usually base the main character on me in someways. Although I do have my stories with male characters there is always a girl character there to balance it all out. Actually in one of my stories, it is based on me and my ex-bf. We had these nicknames and certain descriptions of ourselves at the time that an idea just popped into my head. I never finished the story which I regret and my character ended up with kids somehow. I don't know what happened there.

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A bit Off Topic of my own topic. Sorry...

Fiery Kirai
that's interesting, but there also is the fact that in some animals, the males are the ones who stay behind and the women have to jobs to hunt, protect and take care of their young and even the guys. Like Lions. But that is just something I've heard.


cubskids. Males just lay in the sun after setting territory boundaries, get the females pregnant and claim the food their females kill. Oh, and sometimes they play with their cubs, but if they take over a group where cubs are present they'll kill the 'alien' cubs so they can make their own offspring faster. They are only leaders of the group for a few years, after all so they don't have time to wait.
Lions eat first, then the lionesses do. But the lionesses of more generations interact with each other, even concerning the cubs while amongst the males there is still the dominant male.

Some species are probably different from what I described above, I just mentioned the animal example to show that I'm looking at humans as another animal example rather than rational beings. Or at least to some extend when analysing different behaviour.

((call me obsessed sweatdrop ))
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