Trans characters and Cantr

General out-of-character discussion among players of Cantr II.

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lee-whiteout
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Trans characters and Cantr

Postby lee-whiteout » Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:35 pm

About two weeks ago, I decided to make a transgender character and I'm...less than impressed with the reactions he got. He's currently being hunted down and killed, and it's really disheartening. I know reactions will vary widely because of the number of characters who play, but I wasn't expecting this. He's probably going to die before he gets to the next town, and I'm sorry to see him go. He was a fun character to roleplay, but he didn't get much of a chance since all of the people he interacted with were hostile.
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Rocket Frog
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Rocket Frog » Tue Dec 01, 2020 4:57 pm

Wow.

If you allow me to say this (and based on my absolute ignorance about the events your char has been through, but also on my previous experiences), I'd say it has little or nothing to do with your char being transgender.

I've seen at least 2 or 3 transgender characters in the past, and I can't count how many androgynous ones. Less I can't count gay, bi, or asexual chars I've witnessed, and I can even tell about one town where ALMOST EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER is gay. No one ever cared about that.
About the transgender characters, I'd say they had a normal interaction with the surroundings, but the most important thing to keep in mind here is that my experience is limited only to the english community.

I feel utterly sad about your experience honestly. I hope this doesn't discourage you. Maybe you should try it at some different community or place?

---

Also: keep in mind that some characters or even places may have things like this as part of their own rp.
For example, while I'm lesbian myself I once tried to make an homophobic character. Ok, that didn't go very well, but at least I tried.

Just don't take it personal. Some language groups are more permeable than others to certain things too. Just don't let it take you down :).
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Black Canyon
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Black Canyon » Tue Dec 01, 2020 5:52 pm

lee-whiteout wrote:About two weeks ago, I decided to make a transgender character and I'm...less than impressed with the reactions he got. He's currently being hunted down and killed, and it's really disheartening. I know reactions will vary widely because of the number of characters who play, but I wasn't expecting this. He's probably going to die before he gets to the next town, and I'm sorry to see him go. He was a fun character to roleplay, but he didn't get much of a chance since all of the people he interacted with were hostile.


I agree with Rocket's response and I hope you hang in there. I don't know for certain if the response your character received had anything to do with the fact that they were transgender or not. Some communities are rather suspicious and hostile to newspawns in general, and I've certainly had my own characters run down and attacked for fairly benign actions that would have been perfectly acceptable at some other town or location.
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gudgeon
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby gudgeon » Wed Dec 02, 2020 1:35 am

Some characters (not their players) are just hostile and antipatic. However they usually live by themselves or only in their little group.

You may make one or two more transgender chars to see how other towns would react to them. Most likely the reactions would be welcome or even indifference.
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lee-whiteout
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby lee-whiteout » Wed Dec 02, 2020 5:19 pm

I'm almost completely sure that the reactions I received were for being trans, but I have made a new character who is in a nice community. Thank God. They're super nice and helped my character find a new name. I'm so much happier with this character, even if my old one had a more interesting personality. He died though earlier today, which was sad.
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PaintedbyRoses
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby PaintedbyRoses » Thu Dec 03, 2020 9:40 am

gudgeon wrote:Some characters (not their players) are just hostile and antipatic. However they usually live by themselves or only in their little group.

You may make one or two more transgender chars to see how other towns would react to them. Most likely the reactions would be welcome or even indifference.
I thought I had learned a new English word but (as far as I can tell) it isn't an English one and it has no equivalent in English. I do think it should be adopted, though. Useful word.
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Chris
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Chris » Thu Dec 03, 2020 8:26 pm

The root word should be "antipathy" (opposite of sympathy), and the adjective is "antipathetic." The noun sees a little use, but the adjective is rare.
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miirkaelisaar
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby miirkaelisaar » Thu Dec 03, 2020 9:52 pm

Wow that sucks, I've never seen that before in about ten years of playing, I have one trans character and people do occasionally forget or carelessly ignore their pleas to stop calling them "ma'am", but they also live alone so it's not a big issue for them, and that's the worst I've seen so far, some of mine have dated trans characters (all amazing people and gone too soon), and I also have several gender variant characters who identify as their spawn gender but reject gender norms or dress and some of them have gotten a remark like "why are you wearing a dress" or someone who doesn't know my character thinks about wearing dresses offensively telling someone new that "dresses are for girls" and my character feeling secretly shamed, and a couple rare times they just got a dirty look but I could only assume if it was because of that, or something else since they didn't explain why they had beef. But that's it so far. I haven't yet seen other trans characters mistreated because they were trans, yours must have wound up in a horrible place, I'm sorry :( definitely I hope you try again though, cantr doesn't have enough different gender representations imo and as a trans person myself, it's pretty disheartening, BUT usually the reaction I see is normalcy and no one batting an eye and immediately respecting pronouns and name changes once they're told, which is wonderful and like a utopia I wish could be real life. But even in cantr sadly there are some dark places.. There are slavery trades too, though my character's have only heard of this, never witnessed anything yet. Hopefully never do ugh.
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alecto
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby alecto » Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:58 am

There are some deeply problematic 'cultures' in Cantr, I find. The best advice I can give is to scope out your char's spawntown for a while and judge the personalities, then see if they're a good fit for the type of RP you're going for. I find this has helped me (as in the player) avoid some potentially awful experiences.
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Snowdrop
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Snowdrop » Sun Dec 13, 2020 1:18 pm

Having a trans or non-binary character is always going to be difficult in Cantr just because of the coding that shows unknown characters as 'a man/woman in their twenties'.

My own experience is related to that - my character's description makes it very clear that they shouldn't be able to be easily identified as either male or female (while clothed of course!), but some players don't seem to bother even glancing at character descriptions before refering to a gender. All fine if they accept your correction and use the right pronouns after that, but I did have one newspawn that insisted my character was female despite being told otherwise by mine and a couple others and without having seen my character naked or anything. So...he got punched in the face. When that very unladylike act failed to improve his viewpoint, he got locked up! It seemed to be in that instance that it was very much the player with an issue, as the character had been given no indication of what my character's body actually looked like - it was purely based off of the player seeing 'a woman in their thirties'. And therefore that player's character was then seen as being a deluded loon.

I'm glad you've had a better experience with your second attempt :D
Generally speaking, Cantr is a much more open-minded place than the real world, perhaps because human reproduction doesn't work anything like in real life? But there is bound to be some characters who will still have issues, so as long as it's for legitimate in game reasons, rather than the player themselves, it can add some interesting conflict.
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gudgeon
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby gudgeon » Sun Dec 13, 2020 1:53 pm

I agree that gender as a game mechanism is completely useless in Cantr. We could simply replace all "man" and "woman" with "person".

In the recent versions of Angband, there is no gender option in character generation at all.
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Rocket Frog
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Rocket Frog » Sun Dec 13, 2020 3:28 pm

Snowdrop wrote:Generally speaking, Cantr is a much more open-minded place than the real world, perhaps because human reproduction doesn't work anything like in real life?


I think the cantrian community is generally more open minded. IRL I'd punch anyone in the face for purposely disrespecting someone non binary or trans just because of that. But IRL I'm quite reactive and hotheaded with stuff like that.

gudgeon wrote:I agree that gender as a game mechanism is completely useless in Cantr. We could simply replace all "man" and "woman" with "person".

In the recent versions of Angband, there is no gender option in character generation at all.


We totally could.
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Bmot
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Bmot » Mon Dec 14, 2020 9:12 am

Rocket Frog wrote:
gudgeon wrote:I agree that gender as a game mechanism is completely useless in Cantr. We could simply replace all "man" and "woman" with "person".

In the recent versions of Angband, there is no gender option in character generation at all.


We totally could.


We recently discussed that in the suggestions channel on Discord actually.

I see no reason in Cantr why we need to specify sex/gender in such a hard-coded way. There's literally no difference between men and women in the Cantr systems at all (afaik).
Richard Dawkins wrote:We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
Millhouse
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Millhouse » Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:41 pm

I play both male and female characters and it does help me step in to a role picking a gender at spawn. I've never played a trans character before, so I can't speak from experience but I would imagine it would also take away from the experience for a player that does (from realization and transitioning, etc.) even if that experience isn't always the best. I do sympathize for anyone experiencing bullying or abuse, though. I'm glad OP had a better experience in a different location.
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Bmot
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Re: Trans characters and Cantr

Postby Bmot » Mon Dec 14, 2020 4:38 pm

Millhouse wrote:I play both male and female characters and it does help me step in to a role picking a gender at spawn.

Nothing is stopping you from picking that gender, though ;) it just missed the button, but there's plenty you can do with names and descriptions to make it clear what gender your char has.
Richard Dawkins wrote:We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

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