![]() ![]() However, if I play as the Ryder sister then the roles are reversed. In Mass Effect: Andromeda, if I were to play as the Ryder brother, then the Ryder sister becomes a pretty typical damsel in distress. The media landscape is lousy with male protagonists-why would I want to experience yet another story about a gruff male space soldier saving the galaxy, or about a taciturn male warrior who’s the Chosen One? Been there, seen that over and over again. Furthermore, my brother, a cis man, also always creates female protagonists if that doesn’t call his gender identity into question, it shouldn’t call mine into question either.īesides simple habit, there’s another reason why I always create female protagonists, even now that I’m more secure in my non-binary identity. My characters already deviate from me in key ways-not even mentioning their fighting abilities far beyond what I have-and it doesn’t mean anything other than that I love Alfre Woodard’s character in Star Trek: First Contact and I also love cats. Did that mean that I was deluding myself, that I wasn’t “really” trans? Was I actually just a confused butch lady?īut here’s the thing: my Commander Shepard and my Sole Survivor are black, while I’m white my Dovahkiin is a cat-person, while I’m (as previously mentioned) 100% human. ![]() My Commander Shepard, my Sole Survivor, my Dovahkiin-all women, without exception. But when I started thinking that “non-binary” best explained my confusing feelings about myself and my body, my habit of always creating female protagonists made me take pause. While I’ve been gaming since I was a child, I’ve been out as non-binary for only a few years thanks in large part to lack of representation in the media, I didn’t realize being non-binary was even an option until recently. My ability to digitally translate myself is taken away by that very first character creation option: Gender. However, I don’t have the option to faithfully recreate myself in a game if I wanted to. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, playing characters that are like us in some ways and unlike us in other ways. ![]() Though some of us like to create digital avatars that reflect our real-life selves as closely as possible, many of us use RPGs as an opportunity to act as characters that are completely different from us. For RPG aficionados like myself, pulling up that character creation screen for the first time may be the most highly anticipated part of playing a new game. ![]()
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