EPT-------------------------------------------------------Story time-----------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time, Riku was young, innocent and played too much Wolfenstein. I played Doom, Wolfenstein, Half-Life and more, and no one cared. Actually, no one even knew. Then the internet came along.
When I was 11 or so, I would venture down to the library with my best friend after school and we would settle down in front of the computers. My first addiction to the internet was chat rooms. We would sign onto "teenchat.com" or something similar (the website no longer exists quite like it did before) and pretend we were older and just talk to people. I learned all sorts of things, including how creepy guys can be when they think you're 15 years old and want to cyber with you. I ventured into that a bit, but then decided it was just too weird to try to talk about something I'd never experienced nor even seen!
After what seemed liked millenia, my parents decided to get dial-up at our house, so I moved my mild chat addition there. I began hearing of MMOs, games that you could play with other people online! I had moved out of my hardcore FPS stage at that time and was exploring JRPGs, which made these MMOs seem even more tempting.
The first MMO I played was Tibia. It was terrible. It was beyond awful! But you could play it on 56k, so it was really my only choice! I played it for a while, but never really got very far nor talked to anyone. Instead, when I was searching for a Pokemon chat I liked to frequent (no, they actually rarely talked about Pokemon, but teenchat.com had been taken down), I accidentally ran into a roleplaying forum. Admittedly, I was following Naruto at the time. It was still fairly underground back then, and only fan made subs existed. *adjusts her hipster glasses* Anyway, this roleplaying forum was based upon the Naruto world and I was immediately sucked into it. For almost two years, I wrote multiple posts daily exchanging details about fights and battles. These were huge things, probably about as big as this blog is going to be when I finish it. I loved every second of it! I was a huge reader at the time and devoured fantasy and sci-fi novels like cake when I wasn't playing RPGs or foruming in my spare time, so the chance to let my creative juices flow and paint my own picture of awesomeness was highly addictive. On that forum, I made a bunch of friends and discovered the drama of being a girl on the internet.
I got a huge crush on the leader of my "group" on the forums and used my character to flirt while playing extremely coy. However, someone of my own age that I also roleplayed with got a huge crush on me! Suddenly, there was an odd love triangle. Of course, these are all mishaps of early teenagers, so nothing major happened. I got my heartbroken a bit, drooled over some pictures a bit and spent way too much time on MSN messenger. Eventually, the forum died out and I moved on.
By this time, my parents had upgraded the internet and I found myself with the ability to play those MMOs I was so eager about! I downloaded Ragnarok Online from a private server and started my assassin cross. I was Ryu-chan, the ph34r b0t and leader of my own guild, Holy Sins. After having great fun leveling up, I got into the mid 100s and found the grinding to be a bit of a bore, so I sat around in the Clock Tower, pvping, harassing people, playing hide-n-go-seek, and chatting. I joined a few "raids" occasionally, but never was given loot priority for my gender. However, I received two donation items, a pair of cutie wings and a valkyrie helmet, from people being "helpful" (i.e. flirting with me).
After a long while, I found myself dating an older guy who played World of Warcraft. I'd sit behind him and watch him play his hunter in Kara and other raids. I was fairly disinterested in playing myself and found it highly infuriating when he couldn't see me because he had a raid scheduled. Eventually, I got him to quit! Yes, Ms. Riku-the-WoW-girl-of-TL convinced her boyfriend quit WoW to spend more time with her. That lasted for almost a year. He started playing again and I suddenly found myself interested in the game. He happily obliged and let me make a character on his account. I made a draenai hunter, screwed around a bit, and then decided I would like to play. He bought me the game and set up payments for my account.
I made a druid named Riku, and decided to go feral. Apparently, the smiles and giggles I produced upon hitting level 20 and getting cat form made the expense of the game completely worth it (or so I've been told). I joined his guild and found the people there to be much more mature and better conversationalists than my RO friends. Everyone treated me kindly and was happy to chat with me when I was online.
I became so happy about making friends in the guild that I decided I wanted to make more! I logged on the WoW forums and made a thread titled "New dr00d looking for friends." All hell broke loose. I mentioned I was female, used too many emoticons in my post, and sounded naive as all hell. People first thought I was a troll, then figured out I was serious and started trolling me! Of course, being the hard-headed and combative person I am, I just pressed on, fought, flirted and suddenly became the most well-known non-70 on the entire server. I had a sharp tounge in trade chat and was constantly being harassed verbally and by people attempting to gank me! By this time I was in the Outlands and a pro at using my druid abilities to escape. I was happy to taunt any attacker and became one of the most disliked players on the server... and one of the most liked, depending on who you were talking to!
Eventually, I hit 70 and was excited to get into raiding. However, I didn't understand ANYTHING about endgame. I was completely hurt when the guild who was so nice to me refused to help me through Kara. They wouldn't even let me into their alt runs and didn't care at all what my gender was. I didn't understand I needed to run more 5 mans before running raids and I didn't realize how absolutely annoying fights can be when someone doesn't understand the mechanics (admittedly, they never really gave me a chance to show I could understand). I eventually got so frustrated, I quit.
I already had bought Blizzcon tickets, though, and started playing again half a year later as WotLK came out. WotLK was a completely different experience. Instead of playing a feral cat, I went feral tank when I hit 80. I researched, I practiced and I pugged endlessly. I went from total noob in BC to the most requested PUG tank for in WotLK. I trolled trade chat and everyone forgot the young Riku of BC. Instead of being known as the the annoying 17 year old girl, I became the well known troll and ganker. When a guy started camping people and spamming "u bad, scrubs, go back to canada," I ganked him until I got him banned for making threats about hurting me irl.
I didn't try to keep my gender secret, but I 100% made sure to never confirm or support claims I was female. When people asked me if I was hot, I would reply "If you're into bears." In fact, one of my favorite pass times was to troll around trade chat pretending to be a gay male and hitting on people. Riku seems more like a male name than a female one.
Now, I did experience some interesting attention at times for being female, but none that really effected the game too much. Some random PUG decided to ask me to have a threesome with him and his wife, a person tried to claim I got my officer position by sending nudes, and I would get love mail occasionally from secret admirers.
![[image loading]](http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o4/GinRyuChan/wowguy.jpg)
People often complain that women have an unfair advantage when it comes to getting loot and raid spots. Perhaps if you have an unfair Loot Council system run by corrupt people! However, in all of my PUGs and guild raids, I maybe got one item because I was female. I was tanking for a PUG group and I only needed two or so items in the entire instance. I had been leading the raid when it came to describing boss fights and I was acting as the main tank. The cloak I needed finally dropped and I exclaimed excited about it, but someone else won the roll. The group told the person, "You should let Riku have that cloak, she really deserves it." They knew I was female, someone else had legitimately won the loot, but the group convinced that person to give it to me. Was it because I have breasts or because I was preforming well and it was probably the only loot I even had a chance of getting? I'll never know.
--------------------------------------------------End of story time------------------------------------------------
So what's it like being a girl on the internet? It's like having a "hate me" sign taped on one side of you and a "love me" sign taped on the other. If you don't choose your words carefully, people either think you're being an "attention whore" or they get a crush on you. I can't even count how many times someone has messaged me and I've replied normally and kindly like any nice guy would and then suddenly tell me, "I think I really like you."
Being a female on the internet can be extremely frustrating, because people get too distracted by your gender to listen to what you are talking about. I write a blog on how to make a costume? People only fucking comment on the pictures at the end of me wearing the costume. Yeah, great, the bottoms are skimpy, now get over it and give me some feedback on the entire body of the blog or tell me how to improve the armor!
Of course, there are two types of "non-haters" you run into as a female; the crazy ones and the nice ones. See the WoW letter I posted? No offense to that guy, but that's a crazy one. Never talked to him, never grouped with him, he just heard about me from somewhere and decided to... ask me out? What? Sorry, that isn't how things work. The "nice ones" are the people who are supportive, both in the open and in the shadows. When blogging seems to really suck and I feel like I can't bare the weight of the constant hate anymore, I get a sweet PM from someone cheering me on, telling how they are proud of my dedication and how my blogs make their day just a little bit better. Truthfully, it's those people that I want to strike up a conversation with, that I want to ask to grab a beer with me.
There is an endless amount of trolls and hate, however, especially from other females. Not going to lie, there is some sort of combative instinct natural programmed into women so that they automatically want to be on the top. Unfortunately, girls also tend to be passive aggressive experts and are quite quick to use their "followers" to their advantage. I'm stubborn, though, and, while I cannot say I am completely without that instinct, I like to believe that it can be mostly suppressed, especially because, in the end, I prefer to take an "I don't give" attitude. Sometimes it can be really tough. People are 10x more willing to tell a girl how she is unattractive, etc. I can't tell you how many comments I've read similar to the ones blah_blah was more than happy to draw my attention to:
On July 07 2011 17:43 blah_blah wrote:
Oh hey, those pictures look awfully familiar...
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3025385&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=128
Oh hey, those pictures look awfully familiar...
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3025385&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=128
Certainly, that costume was "asking for it," but I never expected to receive so much hate for going to a Blizzard convention dressed up as a Blizzard character. If I had decided to go as a succubus (like so many girls have before) to Blizzcon, I probably would haven't received even close to the amount of hate. My costume stood out because it was different. Instead of being complimented for it, my physical appearance was criticized by so many people I felt sick to my stomach for a week to even think about getting near the internet.
That is a perfect example of what it's like to be a girl on the internet. Anything that makes you "stand-out" is 100x more like to bring you trouble and hate than support. If I were to post blogs on my figurine collection instead of video games and cosplay, I doubt I would have to suffer through even half the amount of trolling.
Sorry, I'm getting a little off subject and too defensive. I've experienced a lot of hate over the internet for things I have never been criticized for in person, so it can get me a little riled up.
In conclusion, I don't think girls have much of an advantage when it comes to video games and loot, but they certainly get the short end of the stick when it comes to patience and understanding. I can't wait for the day where men and women are treated as equals on the internet.
For now, though, I'm going to leave my troll mask on, cackle "girls don't exist on the interwebs" anytime one is mentioned in a chat, and tough it out. People might not love my blogs, they might think I'm vying for attention, and I'll undoubtedly receive much crap for anything I do online when people know my gender for years to come, but I'm hard headed and I'll just keep being Riku for now.
a little late to go back and try that now. 
