I have always found avatars and character creation as a wonderful means of exploring one's identity. I thought I would share some stories of how I explored my gender throughout my life so far.
As a preteen I was very into the Pokemon series, and in each game you are asked a seemingly simple question right off the bat: Are You A Boy Or A Girl? For a few years I always chose the boy option without really thinking about it. I thought that I was supposed to pick based on my biological sex and that there was nothing else to it. At some point however I was starting a new game and I became immensely curious about what playing the game as a girl would be like. I remember feeling nervous as I was trying to decide, thinking that I was doing something wrong if I chose girl. I finally did anyway and had a lot of fun, and I decided that I liked the girl character better. I didn't want anyone else to know however, and in later games I still always chose the boy character before eventually changing to the girl.
I had a similar experience with the Mass Effect series, where I played the male version of the main character first and later decided to try a female version. After one play though as a woman I knew that I didn't want to play the male character again, and I still think of the characters as female to this day despite the male version being on all of the marketing.
Games with character creators really allowed me to start exploring what I wanted. I can remember playing Skyrim and spending hours tweaking little sections of my female character's face trying to get everything just right, and then having to figure out a build that would allow her to go without a helmet so that I could see her while playing.
Most recently, I found myself dissatisfied with one of my characters in the game Destiny. I tried changing clothing, weapons, abilities, and nothing worked. I finally realized that both of my other characters were female and that this one was male. I had tried to make my characters very different from one another to see all of the options, but the longer I played the more I realized that I always wanted to be playing a female character. I finally decided to go through the lengthy process of restarting the character from scratch and re-aquiring all of the gear. When all was said and down I was much happier for having made the change. In fact, I was surprised to find out just how much it mattered to me, how much happier I was seeing myself represented on the screen as a woman. This ended up being one of the things that really started tipping me off that I might be trans.
Does anyone else have any similar experiences that they would like to share? It can be from games, online personas, or even just relating to characters from other media like books or movies.
