[M4F] The power of classical femininity (relationship play)

I am looking to play a relationship roleplay where the female character uses classical (and classy) femininity in an empowering way and for her own benefit.

I think it’s already obvious, but I want to emphasize that I don’t mean the sense of empowering that has been most popular from around the early 2010s. I mean instead the one where she’s aware of her strengths (and weaknesses) being born a woman, and she uses them wisely. It means that your character should have shed the idea that classical femininity is a disadvantage (or never had held it, for that matter), and would have understood that it offers certain strengths that she can use, as well as some weaknesses, but even the weaknesses can be turned into strengths if she’s smart (and a bit lucky).

Let me also point out that I am not implying that women in general, and feminine women too, don’t face difficulties in real life. I am very well aware that strict gender roles can hurt women in some cases. My point is that, in some situations where the woman is both adept enough, and not too unlucky, they can work to her benefit, and the story I’m interested in playing revolves more around these kinds of situations than the others (although there can be some of the other type; I will mention this later).

About my character, I have some preferences but I can also move along a range to suit your preferences. As a first option, I’d prefer to play a white-collar STEM graduate. Along the lines of the archetype of the STEM-PhD guy who is smart, although more booksmart than streetsmart. Depending on the age you want, he may be about to land a well-paid junior engineer job, he may just have landed it, or he may have already several years of experience and be working in a senior position. I am very flexible with the age, from 20-few up to really as high as you want. As a roleplayer I am older than the average here, so I think I can play older people realistically enough. Although I have mentioned a good salary, actual or potential, I don’t want him to be a perfect guy (I especially avoid the ripped CEO stereotype). As I’ve hinted before, while not stupid, he may not be as smart in some social and interpersonal aspects as he is with math and physics.

Assuming he’s in his late 20s or early 30s, he may also be the kind that was shy and introvert in HS/college, and even if now he has grown out of it, to some degree it’s more like he has learnt to hide it to a degree, because he’s smart in quite a few senses, but deep inside he still has these insecurities. Lookswise I am flexible, he can be moderately attractive, but due to his lack of confidence these years he’s also been quite unsuccessful with women (but it hasn’t turned him into a hateful incel, he owns his mistakes), and he perceives himself as less attractive than what he is. Now he may be growing out of it a bit and about to discover that he has more options than what he thought, but your character may come across before he truly realizes about that, so he will feel extremely lucky to have met her and gotten a chance with her.

If you want him to be older, this early bio could still be the same, but there’s more years to fill up leading to his current situation in life. I can propose some options later if you are interested in his age being higher. I will omit it from here to avoid making the ad too long.

I also offer the option of making him more blue collar if you want, still with a high salary, in this case from a typically male job that’s well paid due to being hard and risky, like underwater welding. In this case he can be physically stronger, a bit more macho in terms of looks, also a bit in behaviour, but with a soft inside anyway, and still be just as manipulable through feminine wiles. Just let me know if you prefer the blue-collar version.

Going back to your character: it’s yours and you should have total control over it. The story doesn’t even work for me if you’re not feeling free to be creative with it. However, I do have some requirements that we should check before we play.

I’d like her to be from moderately to very attractive. However, I don’t require her to be extremely attractive in the sheer shapes-and-sizes physical sense. It’s definitely good if you want that, and it’s definitely an extra weapon in her purse, but it’s not a must for me. The truth is that, at least for many a guy, a woman who is only slightly above average in terms of physical body and face, can drive him crazy if she knows how to do the presentation. This presentation includes a huge range of things, from attire and other “static physical complements” such as using the right make-up, to body posture, body language, the way she speaks, and probably many things I am forgetting out of my hat. And then there’s the behaviour per se, the things she does and says, which in a sense is an extra layer of presentation but I will discuss it later. What I wanna say here is that I’d like her to be very attractive when considering the whole stack mentioned so far. To really own femininity. And know how to be seductive. Of course I don’t expect perfection because it’s not realistic, but just the kind of girl who exists in real life and excels at femininity and at using it for her own benefit, while, of course, she makes mistakes and she learns new things every day.

Overall, throughout the story, I’d like her to manage to wrap him around her little finger. I must also say that I am aware that it’s boring for you if I play him too easy to manipulate, so I will avoid that pitfall. And in any case, I always keep OOC communication while I roleplay, so if I fail at this, you can always let me know. I am also aware that male characters who are too weak can easily come off as icky to female roleplayers, and I fully understand why, so I would do my best to avoid it while I still play situations where she can enjoy success. My plan is to make him a realistically “good, juicy prey” for her goals and wiles, but not a stupidly easy or pathetic one. I’d also like point out that I personally dislike playing effeminate men, and I will actively avoid it. This is actually a big pet peeve of mine: men can very well be “submissive” in a fully masculine and proactive, non-passive way, usually under the tropes of classical chivalry where manliness is equated with helping a loved woman, putting her first, sacrificing himself for her, etc. The whole other trope of equating a man being submissive with being effeminate, seems to be somewhat more recent (at least with respect to the late-medieval standards of courtly love, which is when what I call trie masculine submissiveness, i.e. chivalry, became codified as a fiction trope), and it personally irks me big time because it has that underhand message against the woman: that feminine means weak. So: I am not going to play him effeminate (of course he can be sensitive, but that’s different), and his weaknesses and any sense of “submissiveness” (in the true sense mentioned above) will come from his attachment to ideals of chivalry that he would have absorbed during his whole life (education, media he consumed, as well as owing to inherent predisposition from his gender), where he doesn’t feel man enough if he’s not fulfilling these ideals. Then, she could adeptly exploit this to her own benefit.

Chivalry themes also extend outside manipulation. For instance, I’d be open to playing a scene where she’s in true danger and he saves her, perhaps getting hurt in the process. It’s also not a fully one-directional “exchange”: she’d be bestowing her presence, company and “feminine energy” on him in return for all these other things.

Before I continue, I am going to go on yet another little tangent about the word “submissiveness”, because there’s yet another way in which it may be misunderstood. When I use that term, besides the aspect of being submissive in a non-passive and masculine way, I don’t necessarily mean the sense of the D/s scene; I mean instead a general psychological trait manifested in the everyday (through acts of chivalry, as mentioned). I’d rather not make him a “sub” in the D/s sense by the time he meets her, because these kinds of guys are often too focused on certain games, and at the end of the day, they just wanna play a game and can even be manipulative for that purpose. I’d rather him be quite vanilla in this sense, perhaps with a certain, somewhat subconscious preference for “bad girls” in movies, that may pave the way for her. However, I am open to him developing a “conscious interest” in these themes during his relationship with her, because of her. (I am sorry for the use of weird euphemisms, some places where I post this have keyword filters). The time someone discovers a “special interest” and experiences it for the first time, usually ends up burned in their heads for their whole life, and quite many times they even end up chasing that dragon forever, after that person disappears from their lives. This would open the possibility of creating a very powerful connection in him towards her, independently of whether she stays in her life in the long run or not (that’s up to us and the story). If he’s above 30, it may be more difficult to stick to this strictly, because at these ages anyone who’s smart starts to have a better grasp of what they like and not, but there would still be options for making her discover things he didn’t know. In any case, the idea of her marking his tastes like this is just an option I am floating up.

At a higher, overarching level, I’d like this story to be somewhere in the range from dark to “light-gray” romance. So I’d like her to be quite egoistic, and at least at times she can be ruthless, but there’s also room for feelings such as remorse, and overall she may well harbour genuine feelings for him. These feelings can be of many different types: love, affection, and many other options that can’t be summarized in single words. You have room to pick what you want, or a progression over time that you want. Overall, these combinations and contrasts should add nuances and depth.

However, I’d like to warn about something. Just like many male roleplayers have the tendency to play overpowered god-mode ripped CEOs, many female roleplayers fall to the temptation of playing moral Mary Sues, and I think sometimes it’s not even consciously. “My character did this bad thing… must be because she was a victim before. She’s just traumatized. Deep inside she’s innocent.” I don’t wanna go too much into RL politics and psychology, but I think many women are so conditioned to exhibit moral purity that they don't even dare to play fully fictional characters that deviate from it too much. I’ll be open and admit straight-up that I’d like her to be morally quite flawed, although with all the nuances you wanna add. At minimum, I’d like her to put herself first in life. I am very good with periods of remorse, though. It adds nuances and actually adds more depth to her egoism than if she were just unaware of it. I just prefer if they tend to stay at that: just remorse, not serious deeds beyond what she may need to continue extracting things from him.

I am also open to her being sometimes (not always) outright cruel, but it’s not a must for me. In my experience, few female roleplayers enjoy playing this level, and I don’t require it, but as said, I am open to it if you want to explore it. As I said, what I require as a minimum is that she’s rather self-centered.

The following is more of a suggestion than a requirement, but I will drop it here. One possible way your character would have to turn mine crazy for her would be delaying intimacy extensively, while dropping crumbs that wouldn’t satiate him but would only increase his appetite. When she’d let him have the full prize, if ever, it’s up to you. If she has her own needs, there’s different ways she could manage that. One would be choosing intermediate steps that are much more fulfilling for her than for him. There are also other options that we can discuss OOC if you are interested in this.

I am open to different socioeconomic backgrounds for your character, from very working class to rather upper class. There’s a caveat about working class, though, connected to my earlier point: some people turn it into a Cinderella archetype where she just wants a better life because she’s been so unlucky and life has treated her so bad. I’d like to avoid that. Regarding the other extreme, upper class, I am fine with it, but I am not sure if in that case she’d be content with a high-end engineer salary that may be quite good for middle-class people and allow a comfortable lifestyle, but not a fully luxurious one at par with what truly silver-spoon people are used to. But if you want that for some reason, I guess I could play a higher career path for him that is good enough for her expectations.

This may be obvious after some things I’ve said, but I’d like her goal when dating him to be some kind of stay-at-home role, but in a comfortable, good position where she’s not cornered and she has options out if she ever wanted. Just as an example, if we play the story long term and we reach marriage, one option is that she convinces him to sign a prenup that is very advantageous for her. How she convinces him, etc, could lead to some interesting scenes to roleplay.

The stay-at-home concept doesn’t mean that she cannot have some kind of occupation if you want. I know that playing a character who is so vapid to want to lay on a couch painting her nails all day long would be too boring. But her goal could be being free to pursue an activity she likes that isn’t likely to produce any significant income any time soon. There are other options like building a family. They can be combined. We can discuss all this. In any case, I would like her to be the kind of lady who does invest a good amount of time on her own looks, perhaps out of vanity but also very importantly, because it indirectly brings benefits to her that are big enough that the investment in her looks, in terms of time and effort, ends up paying off very well. So it’s a “good deal” for her, not a form of beauty-slavery.

Regarding her age, for this story I lean towards her being on the young side, 18-30.

Now that I am nearing the end of this long ad, it may be the time to come back to something I mentioned at the beginning and I promised I’d explain: whether the story contains also situations where your character is in a “losing position”, or said more plainly, she is or gets close to being a victim. I am open to this if you want it, but not with my main character as a perpetrator. If you want, it can happen through another male character that I could also play. That would create a situation, or more than one if you want, where my main character may help/save her.

If we want to play a full, long, relationship, this will probably be a rather long-term roleplay. I am also open to making it more of a somewhat shorter, failed relationship, if you prefer. We can also decide as we play. In any case, I’d prefer if whatever the endgame is, ends up being more beneficial for her than not. Even if not everything ends up being the way she may have planned, and there are hurdles in the way, for me, I’d like that the whole thing ends up being a significant “win” for her. For me, this is a premise that sets the overall mood of the story.

I have many other ideas and proposals for things that could happen, scenes we could play, but this ad is already very long, so I will leave that for later.

If you are interested, please also read the pinned post in my profile, which describes general details of how I roleplay. I know that, like this ad, it is a bit long, but it’s really meant to save both of us time by going through very frequent questions covering both the format and the content of stories. If after that, you are interested, you can send me a PM with your preferences, requirements, ideas, and anything you want.