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"I'm sure you'll find someone worth talking to.
There's gotta be some women on there somewhere." "Oh, there are plenty of women - but most of them are men too." |
Welcome to CrossMuckers Anonymous.
My name is Ragnar, and I am a crossmucker.
(Everyone chorus: Hello Ragnar!)
Just kidding. Anyone who has been on the net for a while (and even some people who just read about it) should be aware that people are not always what they seem or claim to be. Okay, so the guy who claims to be a dragon is obviously bluffing, but when it comes to gender people tend to believe each other. Have a look at this list of people I found in the park on FurryMuck one day:
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| Well I've often wondered how pretty girls start
(Abba: Thank you for the music) |
So Waydya and the other characters listed on the main page don't really have any secrets. Some of my other characters do. In fact the main page is kind of out of date - I have six characters now, and only half of them are male. So what have the squirrel's "sisters" got to say for themselves?
When I think about it, all my female characters have one thing in common in
addition to their gender: They are all, more or less, based on
TRaM morphs! The original Waydya was based on a
neuter "drone" morph, but in the other two cases you could say
that playing a girl was someone else's idea. ;)
But why do it "secretly"? Some think there is only
one answer (and only one kind of
crossmucker), but there are many different ones. I guess my own answer is
the credibility thing - as I mentioned at the beginning, nobody's going to
believe your alleged species but they may just believe your alleged gender.
The best reaction I can get as Yip is "Hey man, you play a dog
well" but as Ms. X I can actually make at least some people believe
the illusion. (A couple of weeks back a new aquaintance of hers made a
remark that probably was just a casual remark to him but a great compliment
to me: "You're not bad for being a female!")
Another answer is popularity. Both I and other (male) crossmuckers I have
compared notes with, have found that our "femalts" are both more
popular and more exciting than out male characters. And more different from
their players too... Of course it could simply be that we play them more.
It could be as simple as that being bored makes you boring and being
excited makes you exciting, I don't know...
(The popularity thing works both ways it seems. I once met a female
crossmucker (Yes, they exist too...<g>) who claimed that she was
playing an ugly male because she was tired of being hit upon. Oh well...)
It's also possible that all those people who seem to believe in me see right through me and just play along... That's the curse of the secret crossmucker: Except when someone makes a remark like the one above, you can only know for sure if someone believes in you by asking them, and then of course you have blown your cover...
Talking of covers, have I blown mine yet? A little hint for anyone trying
to hunt down one of my "unlisted" characters: She's got a
website of her own, and it's not on any of the
other servers I've got sites at...
[After I wrote this I have added a BIG hint in the silhouette of Ms. X on
the main page. That's a filled in version of a
picture on her own site. And as it says when you point to it, she's not a
dinosaur! <G>]
And one more thing: All my characters have taken the same vow: To never
lie about their player. So if you meet a character who makes a point of
never referring to her player by pronoun, just ask her if I'm her player
and she'll tell you the truth... Assuming there isn't someone else out
there who gets a kick out of pretending to be me of course. Well, at least
any character who denies being mine really isn't... ;)
[Final (?) note: Apparently not many people are interested in discussing the crossmucking pehenomenon, but I once took it up on a small mailing list and got some response. The archives are found on my EUNet site, and the thread starts at 585 - fur now anyway.]
Crossmucker is a word I made up for describing a player whose
character is the opposite gender of him/herself. It is kind of derived
(tongue in cheek) from crossdresser, which is an American term
for a transvestite. Another term I made up is crossmorpher, which
describes a character who uses morphing to change
his/her gender temporarily. (This is not meant to imply that all
crossmuckers and crossmorphers are "digital transvestites" with
all that may imply. Some of us are Mostly Harmless. <EG>)
Oh, and "femalt" is a contraction of female alt (alternate
character or something).
