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SPOILER INFO
This story follows closely my actions in an actual game, so it's inevitably a spoiler.
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I'm going to play a new game as a female character.
How come I play a female? Most certainly not to enjoy the sight of a grotesquely made-up bimbo in a masturbation armor run around and kick men's asses. I play in 1st person view, so I rarely see what I look like (and, for that matter, often end up walking around naked because I forget to put my armor back on after sex). I only switch to 3rd person view for melee combat, because I have discovered that it's absurdly complicated in 1st person view, and for sex.
I am going to play a woman simply to have a different kind of experience. I mean, in the past I have done pretty much everything there is to do in Skyrim and I feel no interest going through the exact same experience again.
How can you make your Skyrim game different? With new lands and quests mods, of course (of which I do have many this time), but the vanilla part will still be unbearably same-same.
It occurred to me that if I played a female character, my game would be psychologically very different. Skyrim has great many NPCs who are infuriatingly insolent. If I were to imagine I was a woman, I would be better able to put up with them, as women don't have the kind of need to defend their dignity as men have. (I know that all things psychological are beyond the large majority of male readers. Never mind, just skip it and read the parts you feel you can relate to.)
It's been only twice in my life that I've played a game as a female. (Apart from one or two games where the main character was female and the user had no choice of gender.) The first one was a brief game of Fallout 2, the second one was Orwell and that doesn't really count, because your "player character" is just a name and a face and it doesn't have any effect on the gameplay. I only chose a female character because all the male faces were unacceptably ugly.
Having such limited experience so far, I have very little idea how I will end up feeling, walking in a virtual world as huge and realistic as Skyrim in the proverbial shoes of a woman. And, needless to say, I'm perfectly aware that a warrior woman as such is a biological nonsense. However, it is a fantasy world, and I like trying out new things – sometimes even those that seem mildly outrageous at first glance. That's why, all things considered, I made a decision to try what it would feel like to be a woman in the imaginary reality.
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Before I'll start the actual game, I am going to do a "general rehearsal" like I've done before my previous Skyrim games. It is more than a mere test game. A test game is just going briefly into the game with COC as the default character to see how one or another thing works. Like, you might attack someone just to see if you can kill him or will get killed yourself. In the general rehearsal, I'll do nothing of the sort. I'll create a player character the best I can (and presumably carry her over into the actual game later), set all MCM settings the way they are supposed to be, and start playing as if it was for real.
The general rehearsal will last 28 hours. That is the length of my last real game (555+ hours) divided by 20 and rounded up.
The purpose of the general rehearsal is to put my mod configuration to the ultimate test. Those 28 hours are going to be my last chance to play around with mods. During the subsequent real game, I won't touch anything in my mod configuration. Unless something is obviously wrong, I'll even avoid breathing too hard while Mod Organizer is open.
* * *
In order to minimize overlappings with the real game's initial phase, I shall avoid the Helgen–Riverwood–Hviterun area. I began the general rehearsal game by coc-ing myself to the town of Northkeep which is west of Lake Ilinalta and creating my character with RaceMenu. I am going to explore the town and unless I come up with something exciting, I'll head for Falkert and then explore the area around Pinewood (which I largely neglected in my last game). If there's still time, I'll check out Morpork, as I have added at the 11th hour a new mod New Markarth Adventure about which I am somewhat skeptical because it screwed up the inn real bad, so I had to go to TES5Edit and just kill everything it had done to the Silver-Blood Inn. Maybe the mod has ruined some other places too I failed to notice during my test game, so I'd better go and take a more thorough look.
* * *
Creating my player character, I came across a ludicrous glitch in RaceMenu:
As you can see, RaceMenu believes the left breast to be of size 0.92 and the right breast of size 1.22. In the nature, however, the breasts are of equal size. If anything, the left breast is a tiny bit larger. I couldn't give them equal values, because then they looked just grotesque.
I was slightly disappointed that I could alter a hundred little things on the head, but had almost no choice as to breast shape. I am therefore thinking about installing Bodyslide .
I was skeptical about my ability to create a beautiful character, but I ended up quite pleased with the result (I chose to not wear a helmet while in town, so as to get better screenshots):
There were several interesting hairdos to choose from, so I intend to get another one and take some screenshots and see which one I like more. I'm also not entirely happy with my nose, and I might choose a modest warpaint, and, as I said, I'd really love to slightly adjust the shape of my breasts, but I haven't yet decided if I'm going to bother with Bodyslide .
I noticed that there is something weird going on with Skyrim height settings. Converting Skyrim units to real-world units, my height is supposed to be 173 cm, and that's exactly what Player Size Adjuster says it is, but it seems doubtful when you look at that picture. I don't mind being short per se. A woman is supposed to be smaller than men. Currently, however, even women are taller than me, so I end up looking upwards when talking to people all the time, and that is a little annoying. So I'm going to make myself a little taller.
* * *
I walked around in the town a bit. I was very hungry and very thirsty right from the start. I felt sorry to spend my meager cash reserves on food and drink, so I went into houses trying to steal some food. I wouldn't steal from a house with people in it, because it's very dangerous – they can sometimes notice that you're stealing even when you're not in their field of vision.
I was lucky to find "Marcu's House" (I made a note to go to TES5Edit and correct the ungrammatical spelling; the owner's name is Marcus) which was empty. I stole everything I could, just in case I'll be able to use something. I also managed to steal a few things, including a fairly strong looking sword, from another house before someone returned home and I hastily took my leave. I found plenty of food, but I still had to buy some Honningbrew Mead from the inn. Non-alcholic drinks are almost impossible to buy in the Skyrim world. Fortunately I was later able to steal a few tomatoes and could make Tomato Juice. (Note to self: I'll have to buy some empty waterskins, so I can get water from the nearby lake.)
I need to sleep as well, but I don't want to waste the daytime and then have to travel by night. I'll explore the town during the day and then take a room for the night and head for Falkert (or possibly Aurora) in the morning.
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