Gente Che Gioca > Gioco Concreto
[Slow Down]Giocare un gay o un pg dell'altro sesso
Meguey Baker:
(Please forgive me for posting in English - if someone wishes to translate my words for better clarity, that is fine)
Two things of note before I begin: I have GMed for years, so naturally I have played many NPCs of all sexual biologies, gender expressions and sexual orientations. I will talk below only about my experiences playing my own characters, not NPCs. Also, I have been a sex education teacher for many years, so this subject is a keen interest of mine.
Patrick, to your original question: whether we have experience playing various sexual orientations and if it was more difficult. My short answer is yes, I have much experience playing all kinds of sexualities, and no, I do not find it difficult, for the most part.
I have played a lot of male characters, most of whom were assumed to be heterosexual but was never an issue or a facet of play. The same for many women I have played. I have played people who are transgender by their culture, in that they are women acting in a masculine role or men acting in a feminine role, but not in their personal orientation. I have played lesbians of many types. I have played completely blatantly over-the-top gay men, and men who were eventually discovered to be gay only when it became relevant to the story. I have played a woman in love with a man who was once a woman - the maelstrom of Apocalypse World can do strange things to gender!
What I do occasionally find challenging is playing a straight man in a romantic relationship with a straight woman. I want not to fall into tropes and stereotypes of behavior, and I want to play a whole person, not just a set of genitalia. So, if the story is just about the sexual dynamic, I might get bored and look for other ways to express the character. When I've played male characters on-line, I've had beautiful love affairs with female PCs. At the table, I tend to play characters (male and female) who are either in an established relationship or not interested in sexual relationship. Role-playing courtship and falling in love is intense! I don't do it very often.
I agree whole-heartedly with Matteo Turini, that the ways heterosexuals court and love and yearn and hurt is no different that the way homosexuals do. Love that exists between any two people has certain universal constants. The specifics and physical technicalities may differ, but the basic experiences of love are the same. Jackvice makes excellent points as well,as does Giullina, about the spectrum of sexual expression, and how playing a character at one point is only one point.
Moreno, I wonder about that argument that it's difficult to play a gay man because it's close to home. Certainly, if he is your age and lives in your hometown and has similar interests to you, ok. But if he's a 19-year-old Gunlugger with a soft spot for blonds, or an ancient Japanese warrior, or a doomed prince of the Frozen North, isn't that enough distance? At what point does 'close to home' become no longer true?
Moreno Roncucci:
--- Citazione da: Meguey Baker - 2012-06-01 06:03:30 ---Moreno, I wonder about that argument that it's difficult to play a gay man because it's close to home. Certainly, if he is your age and lives in your hometown and has similar interests to you, ok. But if he's a 19-year-old Gunlugger with a soft spot for blonds, or an ancient Japanese warrior, or a doomed prince of the Frozen North, isn't that enough distance? At what point does 'close to home' become no longer true?
--- Termina citazione ---
The answer is obviously tied to the game I am playing, or, to be more exact, to what does it MEAN in my own reality (at the table, between the players, in the real world) in that game.
My answers in this thread are relative to a specific game, Kagematsu. What happen when I play Kagematsu? I have to frame situations where "my character" can seduce Kagematsu, and then try to do so. not with the dice results, but with the way I portray, with acting and descriptions, the seduction.
I never played a male character in Kagematsu, so I am basing my thoughts about this on what happen when I play a woman: at first, trying to get the very first gestures from Kagematsu, the Japanese setting and trappings are more important, but then, moving on to more intimate / sensual gestures, it become much more universal / personal (maybe because I have really no idea about what could be considered seductive in that time in that culture, so what I am really doing is trying to think about what that character could do in that situation that I would consider seductive to myself, and seeing the reaction of kagematsu's player.
If I think about this putting myself into a male character, I don't think that the japanese setting will make one bit of a difference... on the difference: it's a distancing factor, true, but it's the same for both kinds of characters, it's not like I play a japanese only if I play the man but not the woman...
It's obvious that, in another game, that would not be a problem: hell, I don't even KNOW the sexual preferences of a lot of characters I played in a lot of games where sex or romance never, ever entered in the fiction...
Even in a game where sex and romance usually is present, like for example 1001 Nights, the situation is completely different: in 1001 nights I can play a gay man without ever having to describe what I have to do to convince another man to "roll in the hay" with me: in Kagematsu, I can't.
Mattia Bulgarelli:
--- Citazione da: Moreno Roncucci - 2012-06-01 06:45:15 ---It's obvious that, in another game, that would not be a problem: hell, I don't even KNOW the sexual preferences of a lot of characters I played in a lot of games where sex or romance never, ever entered in the fiction...
--- Termina citazione ---
Well, this is interesting... I think I always knew, for each and every of my characters, what they're supposed to like (not just in their sexuality, but ALSO in their sexuality). I don't know what that means, though. ^^;
[Moreno dice che non ha mai conosciuto le preferenze sessuali di molti suoi personaggi]
Beh, è interessante... Penso di aver sempre saputo, per ogni singolo personaggio, che cosa gli piacesse (non solo a livello di preferenze sessuali, ma ANCHE nella loro sessualità). Non so bene che significhi, però. ^^;
Danilo Moretti:
La questione se l'amore etero e gay siano o meno diversi è relativa, a livello astratto l'amore è amore, ma in un gioco (e nella vita) è necessario ridursi alla banale concretezza di rituali di corteggiamento (e di accoppiamento) che cambiano invece notevolmente da maschio a femmina, da maschio a maschio e da femmina a femmina (e mi fermo qui). Nella realtà le consuetudini e influenze culturali e sociali non possono essere nullificate, in gioco magari sì (dipende da quanto si desidera prendere le distanze e "idealizzare").
Ribadendo la mia ignoranza su Kagematsu, mi resta da capire se l'ambientazione giapponese è solo "color esotico" per speziare storie di seduzione (e facilitare la "giusta distanza" emotiva giocatore-personaggio) o se il rispetto dell'ambito culturale/storico/sociale dell'epoca invece è un ingrediente essenziale per la riuscita del gioco.
Perché se l'ambientazione giapponese è solo un pretesto per trattare l'estetica di un amore idealizzato, giocare un gay, un etero, una donna o una tazzina non cambia (quindi non poniamoci problemi, e vai di spensieratezza) e non (dovrebbe) comportare turbamenti emotivi da eccesso di coinvolgimento, quindi il sentirsi a disagio perché ritenuto criptogay in quanto "giocante gay" o le pippe intellettuali sul "reggerò il peso della responsabilità che comporta un ruolo del genere" possono essere bypassate.
Se invece l'ambientazione conta, dobbiamo confrontarci sul fatto che i rituali di corteggiamento/accoppiamento della cultura giapponese post-medievo sono molto diversi da quelli occidentali (del 21° secolo), e già questa è una sfida complessa! Figuriamoci riprodurre con verosimilianza rituali omo non rilevati dai rigidi codici sociali di una simile cultura (e anche poco trattati dalla letteratura in generale)...
Dairon:
In realtà un Kagaymatsu storico probabilmente è perfettamente sensato, con lo shudo e il nashoku. Credo il fatto che noi stranieri ne sappiamo poco non sia dovuto a mancanza di testi (e insomma, già il romanzo di Genji parla di omosessualità!) ma al fatto che oggi in Giappone non sia un argomento che vada per le maggiore.
Stasera ho visto un'interessante PG maschio interpretato da una donna (Gioventù Bruciata). Quasi fosse liberatorio fare un marchettaro non stereotipato. Mmm mmm.
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