So bit of a weird one, but does it bother anyone else how many people make their characters taller on average in RPs? Especially true of historical/low fantasy RPs. Its the middle ages and no one's getting proper nutrition and we've got a band of 10 6ft+ people wandering around the countryside. 

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In regards to my own diversity in roleplaying, I like to think I'm not too bad, I am however sometime of a sucker for a tragic backstory, but generally stay away from having my characters be orphans these days. 

I definitely fall into using tropes and archetype, but normally that's a starting point for the C.S. and when I think about the character a bit more, I like to plan how they will journey away from that archetype over the course of the RP. Normally I like to think of this in some kind of emotional journey spurred by their bonds with the other characters, but sometimes its more of an existential one. I like characters who are living without purpose or meaning to find one, or characters driven by particular goals to become disillusioned to them and abandon them. Unfortunately, roleplays rarely last long enough for these changes to happen fully. 

There are really only two examples I can think of where I have done this to my satisfaction. One was where an angry, but dutiful and honour bound individual was continuously vacillating between his duty, his anger, and his growing bond with the party. Unfortunately his life was slowly also being consumed by a degenerative disease that left its sufferers feral empty shells of themselves (this was a GM plot device, not my own). It got the point where after years of playing him, my character broke, tried to kill the fellows he had cared for, and was killed in turn by the party leader, which forced an arc of change and growth on them.

The other was a 1x1 I did about a embittered and cynical assassin who ends up falling in love with one of his targets and through this starts to see the good in the world again. He ends up becoming a better, more caring person, but he never loses that ruthlessness and darkness at his core. He pursues better ends for the world at large, but also his own power, becoming something of a spymaster and power behind the throne. He is never fully redeemed, but neither he is completely lost. 

I like to think I'm not bad when it comes to diversity in ethnic, sexual, and disability. I don't often do modern day/real world RPs, but when it comes to fantasy I've had plenty of characters who would be considered Black, Middle Eastern, or South Asian if they existed in our world. I like to put in a lot of character with different sexual orientations, frequently including gay subplots. Right now I'm playing an asexual and a character who's either going to be bisexual or lesbian. My favourite gay character was a homosexual, cross dressing Dwarf from a conservative and isolated Dwarven city state, who through nepotism had secured a place as an ambassador away from his own people in a much more cosmopolitan society. I once played a character who was mute as a challenge to myself, as well as a character missing a leg, and various others missing one eye, fingers etc.

When it comes to the issue of attractiveness, yes I have attractive characters, but I also had plain characters, and I have a few very ugly characters. But my favourite to play it comes to this are attractive characters who have been marred or made uglier. One of my currently characters is a petite and effeminately pretty man, apart from a truly horrible scar he has down one side of his face, like difficult to look at level of scarring. I had a character who never showed his face once over the course of an RP, he wore a veil the entire time.

The only area I consider myself really quite bad at is writing female characters. 

I've maybe done like 2 or 3 that I can recall? Out of what must be getting on towards 50, or maybe more characters I've made over 11 years both on here, old guild, and other sites. Its mainly because I don't feel as confident writing in a female voice, but I'm consciously trying to address that this year as a sort of new years resolution. I'm gonna force myself to write with gender parity in my characters for the rest of the year. If I make a male character, the next character I make must be female. 

This might seem contrived, but I want to improve in writing and I often like setting challenges for myself when it comes to characters. As someone else already said it, limitations breed creativity.