I'm from the U.S. you brits can think it's a boys name all you like, but round where I'm from it's a girls name.
Because i can't think of any off of the top of my head though have known people of both genders with the names though a lot depends on what part of the country you call home or what country you are even in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_(name) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_(name)
I would think of Jessie as an abbreviation of Jessica, so I don't see a problem with that. Same with Alex. For last names, I could imagine common names like Young, Moore or Cox ()
Thats all well and good... I dislike any default names, though. But I suppose <Alex Sexton> is slightly better than John Doe. ...I'm still not keen on several score stories where the disparate main characters mysteriously share the name <Max Cox>. *<insert ambiguously gendered name here>
Jessie can absolutely be a girl's (nick)name. A female can choose to spell it either way, there's no hard rule, its up to personal aesthetic. Others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_(name) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_(given_name) All of Rico's options were legit. Some, though, are more uniformly ambiguous than others, and more suitable as a generic name of ambiguous gender.
I Don't care much for the first name, my problem is with Doe. Everytime I read this whatever immersion I had in the story is shattered. For the whole name thing I have an idea though, but it requires an update of the creation story page. Simply replace the variable {first} with {firstm} and {firstf} then when the point of view is chosen put the first if you choose male, the second is you pick female or both if you choose both.
When the new name options are implemented John Doe should be an option. When no other names seem appropriate for the story John Doe sounds perfect. Great example would be an espionage or mystery story.
Exactly if you have a great story and John Doe is the perfect name for your character go with it. But I am just sick of seeing it in every other story just because people don't know or care about the fact that you can change the default name on a story.
Sorry to dig this from it's virtual grave, but is this actually a thing? I'm trying to start a potential megastory and this gives a lot more freedom for options without breaking the flow.
Yeah, I think so... if the writer types {firstf}{firstm} each place the name would appear and then asks that you leave whichever you arent using completely blank in variables, I think it would work. You would probably also need to make another choice where they determine the gender too though, in order to set the right tag... for things like sex scenes. And then make routes or hidden text related to that. It could be an interesting experiment to try! Of course the other way is two whole routes, but that's a lot of writing! As for names, I usually don't bother to change it but I like seeing the default people came up with. The default name I'm using for people in Kami Kurabe is Kattapashikara... I often wonder what people change it to.
