[Where are the MEN? I'm so serious! There are so few male OC's that are romanceable. They all play lesbian/f+ toons to goon on. News flash, there's plenty of hetero female oc's looking for partners. Finding someone for my cute country gal shouldn't be so hard. But if she were sapphic or f+ I could thro wa rock and hit 900 potentials. Le sigh]
I'll put my bad input on this one actually because i noticed this too, chatted with my friends about it and came to the realization of what the issue is. And please pardon me my english isn't all there.
NO ONE wants to play a man and it's because the space has been- I'd like to say- fairly oppressive to them (Please hear me out, put the pitchfork down.)
You can just reference this blog alone, there's tons of people who really don't vibe with men as a whole. A good portion I'd say is for a good reason, too many bad experiences make the good experiences not as good. But another portion of it is all for the wrong reasons. (Performative feminism, witchhunting? Kinda? You get the jist.) A lot of women will talk on and on about how they hate men and how they will never interact with men and it's a safe space to do so, but men really do listen when women talk this way.
It's conveyed in RP as well. As much as many of you do not want to admit it, even I didn't want to, but many people really portray a blanket hatred towards men. When one of my guy friends explained this and even called me out on when I used to play my character very aggressive towards men, he said he almost never would have approached me.
I really had to sit back and think about that. He ended up being such a great friend and I love his wife too! He wanted to find a good group to introduce his girl to since it's her first time rping so it's been really fun to see them write out their little romance together. But that friendship almost didn't happen because I was quite honestly being a bitch and overly snarky for no reason.
It's also a reason why men feel more comfortable playing women. 1. They like to look at their butts, 2. Yes it's probably a fetish but let's not clutch our pearls there is a major issue with women playing femboys, and 3. They just get more people to approach them that way. Not many will just approach male toons, let alone human male paladins. It's just easier to get RP that way to play as a woman.
I know this seemed to veer off a bit from the plot but there's also a reason not many women are willing to play men either. I know there's some and they play men very well, but they also get to experience the shitty part of it as well which drives a lot of women to not play the hot grizzled man who's looking for a cute country gal to make his wife.
It's just one experience and I hope it resonates with others as well but one time I withheld my RL identity from an rp partner because i was a little more strictly only rp no ooc back then and this woman I rp'd with was WILD. She would kind of freak out on me here and there if I didn't respond or ask IC if my character was seeing anyone else on the side then whisper me OOC some crazy shit like how she'd hurt herself if my character was getting nasty with other women. One bad experience made me not want to rp men ever again. She found out i was a woman because one of my friends doxxed my RL identity (Which I was glad she did) and this chick blocked me but I had never been so thankful that my identity was doxxed.
It's just some food for thought, and how I kind of digested it after chatting with my group about it.
theartofmadeline
amandla
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner