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I have two active avatars on Gaia. I don't consider either of them a "mule" as I've seen others describe their secondary accounts, but they each allow me to express different parts of my personality.

Mikkat is my first account. (It's actually the second I made, but the first was so long ago and hasn't been used in so long that I don't even remember her name.) Originally, this was just me, and I chose the sort of vaguely boyish clothes I wear in real life, going for an androgynous look. I didn't put a lot of thought into the avatar as a separate character, just sort of representing my ideal.

Then one day I got bored and made Zatarrah. This became the outlet for my rarely expressed (online at least) "girly" side. I picked fluffier, pinker outfits and items, lots of animals, and at some point I realized that I even talk (or rather, type) differently when I'm logged in with this account. So I started sort of building a character and seeing my avatars as a type of unstructured roleplay. Zatarrah isn't all that developed, though, and mostly I figure she really likes cuteness and cosplay, and every one of her outfits is based on a theme and similarly undeveloped character. But I can admit she mostly functions as an electronic paper doll for me to dress up.

With so much of my girly side, already a pretty small part of my personality, poured into Zatarrah, Mikkat became even more an expression of my masculine side. I found the gender swap potion and made the change permanent (for now, at least), and started developing him as a separate character. I actually don't do much paper-doll-ing with him, and most of my wishlist items seem to be weird animals to be his pets. I dress him in basically the same type of outfit every day - the same plain, geeky way I would dress if I was a guy. So with him, I realized I was already developing a character, and you can see his not-very-original story on his profile page.

Sometimes I wonder if I should worry about what it says for me that my male avatar gets a full character while my female avatar is a doll. biggrin But I think really it's just that playing Mikkat gives me a chance to explore a different part of my personality and go all out in a way that I haven't been able to in real life. Even in the gay community, sadly, it's often not accepted to be too far off traditional gender roles. So I express that as much as I can. With my girly avatar, there's not much that I've ever wanted to express there that I couldn't. Pretty much my only "girly" traits are my desire to care for others and my love of cute/pretty things. So that's where I go w/her.

I keep these two pretty separate on forums, mostly so I can keep track of who I've talked to with which avatar. It also helps to make sure I'm staying active with both, so if I want to talk on my two favorite boards I have to switch. Zatarrah spends most of her time on the Morality & Religion forum and a few guilds, while Mikkat hangs out in the Supernatural forum. I also occasionally take both of them around other boards, especially in the entertainment category, but those two are where I spend most of my time.