So I was listening to the Vance Tybull podcast with Liam, a good podcast. Near the end they started talking about males being vixens, and how HBB as Cleo cleared the way for Aurora and stuff about how the negativity for males as vixens being gay and stuff. While this thread is no way my trying to attack Vance-of course not since he's one my fav new people- or me being upset, but rather I want to clear things up since I feel some things might have been lost in transition from rookies to veterans who may have made jokes and make jokes that some people who don't understand might think its an attack on males being vixens.

There was never really much of a widespread hatred of males playing female characters compared to today as you people make it sound, Cleo didn't really break boundaries because Carlos has been making female characters in CWF, Pure and EAW long before that without getting in trouble, hell even I had Jaspora in AWF as a part time wrestler while managing Gunkai. Of course there's nothing wrong with writing a female character, anyone who thinks otherwise would be a moron considering who do they think wrote most of the female characters in movies, films, animes, books and comic books? Obviously males. So why would it be any different in efeds when it comes to males being able to write and create female characters? Hell people who write shows like Dynasty, Showdown,Voltage and Battleground must obviously write the female characters as well, there's no difference.

The reason Cleopatra had so much talk and jokes is because HBB pretended to be a woman in chat and had done things that kind of made some people sour and some suspicious. Namely some weird business between HBB and Mak involving flirt and cybering since Cleo was flirting with him and some others, which led Mak to be one of the most people out to figure out if Cleo was HBB and stuff like hating on it and making jokes about gayness and trans. Now I was "married" to Cleo at the time, mostly because HBB had convinced me to as HBB-which kind of makes me sour since he manipulated me as his male self to get into this with his female self he didn't tell anyone he was, plus its a friend lying to you for strange purposes.- Cleo and I never cybered or anything like that, though HBB did show me a pic of "cleo" like he did various other people, I guess some random black chick he knew, the reason I didn't unmarry Cleo so Mak could when Mak kept bothering me to was only because I wasn't going to roll over for Mak and plus I felt a romance between the Jaywalker and Cleo characters IN STORYLINE would be pretty cool so us being married in chat would be cool to promote it. To me cybering and cyber dating is stupid, I refused to do it even back when it was popular in 2007-2009, having friends in efeds make sense because friends can talk about things that interest them, play video games and find emotional support with each other, all things we can and have done in efed chats, but real dating involves kissing, sex and stuff like that which cannot be done online. Online dating, unlike online friends, is ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

Anyways, that's why there's so many jokes about it and why I at a time was trying to avoid the entire thing because I didn't want my Jaywalker character and myself being linked to it because people can be so annoying about stuff like that, and I didn't want anything like Jaywalker not being heterosexual being added to scripts. Nowadays the whole me not being jtorchbearer-the account married to Cleo in chat- is a joke I do, since obviously that was me and I'm kidding around because I have no other response to it when people ask me about it and I'm not going to get angry about it so I might as well joke back. BTW, the reason I had the JTorchBearer account was because it was my Alloy chat account and I had forgotten my Jaywalkerinc one for some time.

Hopefully this brings an end to the narrative that HBB was some type of heroic activist fighting against males not allowed to have female characters, as if EAW was some dystopia in the past where you'd get jumped for signing up as a vixen if you were male. HBB didn't open any doors or set any precedent for Aurora Rose, Tybull, Liam and the rest who have spoken of this in the past.

Again, this isn't me being angry or anything, I'd gotten over what HBB did a long time ago and we're still friends, especially since he had personal problems at the time that led him to do it. However, I'm not a fan of HBB's deceit, breaking into the hall of fame as two characters-which wasn't meant to be allowed- and the whole ordeal being turned into EAW was an evil place, where the jokes others make about Cleo being simply about a male making a female character and HBB being portrayed as if building the path for males to have female characters as if it was not done long before people knew Cleo was him.

Hopefully now this is done, over and finished with. Sorry this was so long, but I wanted it to be 100 percent clear since the story had gotten muddled so much with new people and people who weren't around to know what actually happened to the point where people act like EAW was collectively being assholes in older eras. Plus, if you ever see any jokes flung at me in chat for Cleo and me saying something about jtorchbearer, not to take it the wrong way either.

Good day/evening everyone.

tl;dr version: HBB was catphishing, completely different to Aurora Rose and males making female characters.

I agree, fuck HBB

Yeah, old school EAW kind of has a bad wrap for being looked at as a bunch of chauvinist, homophobic wiggers who bashed everything that was different from the manly norm. EAW's stance on males portraying females has always been the same, in the sense that it wasn't a big deal as long as people were upfront about it and not trying to be deceptive only to get caught later. Of course if a female did hide her identity and was actually a man, and was exposed for it somehow, back in the day there'd be much much more backlash against the person themselves who hid their identity as opposed to now where we wouldn't see it as a problem and there might be more backlash against the person who exposed this uncovering depending on the methods they used to find out that persons true identity. Neither side is more right and wrong for their reaction than the other, but it's only something that has changed with the time. However, minus the few who may not think different gender characters are acceptable whatsoever, I think if people are up front about their gender when it pertains to intimate practices on a friendship level with other Elitists/Vixens things will always be okay. I didn't find out Carlos played a female character in exactly the most upfront way back when he was Gloria Hamada or I think Kira back in 2012-2013, but it didn't change my opinion on Carlos regardless. So the fact that it didnt bear too heavy on me even though 2012 wasn't too long ago still proves it wasn't truly that big of a deal. Same with being gay, we've had gay people in EAW in the past, pretty sure SW was gay but was still accepted in the community. There are just much less sharp edges around the environment these days, but that's just EAW changing with the world around it and the people in it.

I think EAW is handling these things pretty well right now. It's not good to let people harass people for being gay, transgender, or even just writing another gendered character. At the same time, it hasn't gotten to the point where everyone is a social justice warrior and everyone has to walk on eggshells to avoid offending people. As long as you aren't maliciously trying to hurt someone I think everyone has a right to their opinions. I'm pretty impressed with how little the admins actually have to step in here. I mean they did with the whole EOE incident but usually when there is a forum argument or chat beef they don't even get involved and let the people sort out their business. That's how it should be imo unless it actually starts to affect the fed more than someone's hurt feelings.

Yeah, I have a habit of trying out different female gimmicks in various places because I just like trying out various characters. sometimes people knew it was me, most of the time not so much, though I am impressed DDD actually remembers I was Gloria Hamada.

That said, I don't give a shit if someone's a male playing a vixen or a woman playing a male character. I don't find anything weird about someone creating a character to play because it's fiction. We're just writing. I've portrayed a serial killer/sociopath and I'm pretty sure I'm neither of those things. 

Further to Jay's point however that is a dick move by HBB if it went down more or less as Jay has told us. I wouldn't mind hearing HBB's take so to have a full scope of things, but at the surface it does appear to be a very deceptive thing done. This however doesn't dampen the respect I have for HBB as a writer or as a person as we all make some mistakes in life and aren't always 100 percent honest.

Heh...the incredible amusement of writing this statement on my Vixen account....

I've been a woman before.  I'd argue that Fertility Lynch was probably one of my best and favorite characters.  I didn't know it was a big deal for guys to play women in e-feds.  I did it because I had a good idea for a female character (sarcastic grindhouse prostitute hitwoman) and I relished in the cheese of it.

Cleo's hof should be merged with HBB's tbh