WMG / Humanx Commonwealth

Pip's gender-terminology in Bloodhype is not a continuity error.

Rather, Alaspinian minidrags change sex periodically. They're born male (like Scrap), then become female at adolescence, after which they change back and forth between sexes every so often. Flinx was actually correct to assume his pet was male when he first found Pip - after all, we know he can sense the genders of people whose emotions he reads, so why not animals...? - and it wasn't until his companion got a good deal older that s/he became female and could mate with the then-male Balthazaar. By the time of Bloodhype, Flinx had read up on recent xenoherpetological breakthroughs about minidrag reproduction, and recognized that Pip was in a "male" phase during that adventure.