Writers out there - what about genders?

[Bêthberry]

Interesting idea, Child!

While we're talking about choices of "gender", I'd also like to raise the related question of "age". Have you ever used an "older" character in your writings, male or female? Just how old, and was that easy or difficult to do?

I have two "older"characters, one a man in late middle age whose youthful exhuberance caused him to be injured, thus forcing him to seek a very different line of work, as a map-maker in Minas Tirith; he had to learn how to give up his youthful wanderlust and impatience and learn how to accept a more sedate style of life. Then he was called upon to help a band of young warriors! Talk about getting into the saddle again! The other elder character I write is the rag lady Ruthven in Edoras, for The White Horse, in her sixties. I don't think I have found it difficult to play either character as I had a very strong sense of who each was before I ever wrote them. For both of them, the age was not a particular issue.

The oldest character I have ever written, however, was an ent, for the old Rohan game here. I loved that character because I could extend the entish style of speaking which Tolkien created.

One thing I suggested for gamers, when we started the White Horse Inn Act III, was to consider "aging" their characters the fifteen years or so between Act II and Act III. I am in the process of having "Bethberry" face a difficult time watching people who have no idea of what the War of the Ring involved. Her personal experience of the tragedies and struggles has left her with little of her lightheartedness and so I am trying to see how she handles this change. I'm not sure people are quite ready to understand how she has changed, as I am introducing this rather subtly.

Other characters I have written for have been anywhere between their twenties to their fifties. I guess the only characters I have not written for in an RP are children.

I do have an idea for a new game, though. I will get to play a "middle aged shield maiden". Well, the maiden part is not quite right, but I want to try for something like what Mathilde faced in her struggle to be declared rightful monarch, over Stephen, in England around 1140. I have found that there are many female characters in the Middle Ages who provide an interesting subject on which to 'build' a character, such as Lady Margaret Beaufort or Hildegard of Bingen.

And that reminds me of how how Chaucer 'created' his Wife of Bath. As a character, she has traits from several well-known character types in medieval literature, the most original of which was the cuckolded husband, transferred to a female character, whose fifth husband cheats on her. Not very Tolkienish admittedly, but still it suggests another way a writer has gone about creating a uniquely new character. She was somewhat deaf too.

Well, time to go find my 'rocking chair' and let some of the youngsters describe their elders. Alaklodewen has a mute teenage boy in Resettling the Lost Kingdom and now an elderly man who is blind. It was interesting to watch her desribe his movements and behaviours, to glean from those actions his infirmity was before she mentioned it outright. Fordim, you've written a grandfather. What was that like?