Help with designing/writing an androgynous character...

I've thought about doing that but unless I explain that the name means something different, it's still going to give the player that pesky little first impression, and the last thing I want to do is to have to outright say "This is [Blank] Coombs, and I'm not telling you if they're a man or a woman, trollolololol."

edited 22nd Aug '12 3:34:39 PM by Bisected8

Sorry for the doublepost, but that gave me an idea; I looked up English names (everyone in the cast has them, so I need to keep things consistant) with masculine and femanine forms which don't have common abreviations and came up with one. That gives the same advantage of a name which has become gender neutral without having to worry about it giving the player any impressions.

Does anyone think any of these sounds genderless (and not too silly or narmish); Eri Coombs^note from Eric/Erica, Kor Coombs ^note Kory/Kori, Lau Coombs^note Laurence/Laurie, Non Coombs^note from the obscure Nonus/Nona, Nor Coombs^note Norman/Nora, Rhe Coombs^note Rhet/Rhetta, another rather obscure name., Za Coombs^note Pronounced "Zay"; Xaviar/Zavia, I went with the feminine spelling since Xa or Xav might be recognised too readily.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:59:27 PM by Bisected8

I'm personally a fan of using Robin as a gender-neutral name. Maybe it's because I've played too much Fire Emblem: Awakening, but I can imagine it being used for both male and female. You could also give the player the option to type in a name of their choosing: it wouldn't be the first time a male name's been used for a woman or vice versa and could help with them relating to the character. As for the list of names you gave...

To me, the first one sounds rather feminine, the second and third ones sound masculine (I know a character named Lau from a manga) and the others appear rather... Strange. If that's what you're going for it's fine, but none of them sound English to me (at least I thought that's what you wanted, but I've often been wrong on such things).

Sorry for the rant, but that's how I write. In any case, your game sounds interesting and I'd love to play it once it's out (or test-play if you need someone for that)!

edited 3rd Dec '15 7:05:56 AM by nayru9572

I once used the name Morgan for an androgye character. (Consider Morgan Fairchild versus Morgan Freeman.) You could simply call the character "Morgan" and leave it at that, letting the audience decide for themselves whether it's the character's first name or last name, and whether it's masculine or feminine.

I ran into this issue as well, as I have a character who is effectively "ungendered", I decided that "he" would simply refer to and identify "himself" as "male". To avoid the objectification that the term "it" carries.

From The Order of the Stick's FAQ:

Vaarsuvius (the elven wizard character) is married and has children, but refers to his/her significant other as “Spouse,” while the children refer to them as “Parent” and “Other Parent.” And bear in mind that these terms are translated from Elvish and rendered in English/Common as [bracketed speech.]

Also, the kids are adopted and "Spouse" is a pastry chef by trade. So the exact nature of their relationship is open to broad interpretation.

edited 7th Dec '15 4:57:06 PM by pwiegle

You could try more unusual first names like 'China' or 'River' which I don't think are particularly associated with any one gender.

Dom (Dominique/Dominic) also is possible.

"Dom" has... implications though, if you know what I mean. Unless it's intentional.

I find my own impressions of what names are masculine/feminine are based on the genders of whatever same-named characters I've seen before. For example, I've only seen Dom been used for a male character, so I think of it as masculine.

I agree with pwiegle that "Morgan" is a great choice for a name. Even with a surname attached, it's open to interpretation/personal bias/assumption and wouldn't raise any eyebrows whichever way the reveal goes.

Can't say that occurred to me before lol.

But I'm also finding that whether a name sounds masculine or feminine is based on the associations I have from fiction or real life. Which is why Morgan sounds male to me, because of the bloke in Bananas in Pyjamas.

I've run into this issue before. I'm writing a story in which a male character and a female character are in a competition together, but the female character is hiding her gender and comes off as male. I ended up chosing Tomi for her name (it's the feminine spelling) but, as it's pronounced the same way as the masculine Tommy, it seems believable that the male character would assume that Tomi is male. I suggest doing a similar thing, except that maybe a more androgynous name would work better. On another hand, might I suggest using a slightly foreign name? In one of my native languages, a lot of names are unisex (mine included), so if you were to use a foreign name that's in use in the USA (I'm assuming that's where you live) you could avoid giving a name that's associated with a certain gender.