[alaklondewen]

I think some interesting issues have been raised on this thread, and I hope it will not turn feministic debate. I'm guessing that most of us writing fan fiction or in RPGs are placing our characters in Tolkien's world. Middle Earth is fantasy, but being thus it is still based in reality. Tolkien had a amazing gift of writing his world so that it became very real. If we say ME is based on Midieval culture, then we have to look at the social norms of that time on which to base our characters. Men and women had different roles...

With that said, I don't know whether I prefer playing one gender over the other. It seems to me that my characters write themselves. I read a proposal or get an idea for a story and the character is already there...needing to be written. All I have to do it put the pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). My female characters are not fighters...they are soft, intuitive, sometimes catty. My male characters are all very different from one another, so I would not be able to categorize them.

I can say that I do prefer to challenge myself with characters that are diverse and all very different from myself (with the exception of one a year or so ago). I don't like to write characters like myself. It could be that I don't find my own experiences 'exciting' enough, or it could be that it makes me nervous to reveal too much of my own inner struggles through a character that is very much like me.