In my more snarky moments, I get the weird impression that when it comes to Au Ra and Miqo'te, I can assume that the female characters are played by men, and the male characters are played by women.
More seriously, I'm a male and I play female characters almost exclusively. I have no idea why, but it is how it is. I say "almost" because in my years of playing MMOs (and a short stint with MUDs), I played a total of one male character (in City of Heroes), who got benched after something like ten hours of play, simply because I didn't feel comfortable playing him.
Which is the main draw of female characters for me: I feel more comfortable playing them. Again, I don't know why. I do like the female glamours more, and I do like the way female characters move in this game, but those don't feel sufficient to explain my preference for female characters. It just feels more relaxing.
I do RP my characters in what I feel is a gender-neutral manner. I don't consciously do so; it's just that the traits I like to roleplay (intellectually curious, confident/timid, exuberant/reluctant, naive/world-weary) are fairly universal, and not particularly masculine or feminine. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter if I play a male or female character.
I have never been mistaken as female in RL, though. I've been told that my choice of words and how I arrange them, especially OOC, is very "male"; I'm not sure if this is synonymous with "masculine". I don't actually know what the criteria for this is, but I've been told the same thing often enough (and by different people) that either there's a popular "is your writing male or female" test I've never heard of, or it really is a thing academically.
More seriously, I'm a male and I play female characters almost exclusively. I have no idea why, but it is how it is. I say "almost" because in my years of playing MMOs (and a short stint with MUDs), I played a total of one male character (in City of Heroes), who got benched after something like ten hours of play, simply because I didn't feel comfortable playing him.
Which is the main draw of female characters for me: I feel more comfortable playing them. Again, I don't know why. I do like the female glamours more, and I do like the way female characters move in this game, but those don't feel sufficient to explain my preference for female characters. It just feels more relaxing.
I do RP my characters in what I feel is a gender-neutral manner. I don't consciously do so; it's just that the traits I like to roleplay (intellectually curious, confident/timid, exuberant/reluctant, naive/world-weary) are fairly universal, and not particularly masculine or feminine. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter if I play a male or female character.
I have never been mistaken as female in RL, though. I've been told that my choice of words and how I arrange them, especially OOC, is very "male"; I'm not sure if this is synonymous with "masculine". I don't actually know what the criteria for this is, but I've been told the same thing often enough (and by different people) that either there's a popular "is your writing male or female" test I've never heard of, or it really is a thing academically.
