Character pronoun and identity discussion

Claudine was the perfect storm: a work specifically focused on a character's gender identity, in which the narrator was clearly written as in the wrong.

Before it was brought to my attention, I thought there were no situations where we could override the work. I was wrong, and it's for the best that we found a case where I was noncontroversially wrong.

First Law of Gender Bending has a description, and many entries, that switch pronouns depending on which state the character is in. Since the "law" refers specifically to unwilling sex changes, would it be alright to change the description to use "them" for the most part? I also intend to look over the entries to see if they conform with the work page.

The pronoun-switching is weird, but the passage in question is specifically gender-based and wouldn't make sense with a singular they. Rewriting this would take more than just the pronouns.

Which I'd be okay with, honestly. All three of the Laws of Gender-Bending pages have always struck me as deeply weird.

Yeah, they definitely strike me as products of their time.

Anyone willing to whip up a sandbox? (I don't trust myself after my disastrous attempt at another gender-related trope.)

I realized in Characters.Dragalia Lost Main Characters the character Gala Laxi uses gender-neutral pronouns. However, when I check the wiki (I believe it's official), it says the character is a female. Moreover, from what I could gather, there's no Word of God saying the character lacks a gender or is non-binary. I also didn't find any evidence that the character is genderless.

Any objections to changing Gala Laxi's pronouns to she/her? I would have just done it, however, this seems like something I should consult a thread about.

the dragalia lost wiki is not official

that being said, Laxi shares a body with her brother, Mascula. most of the time they're making decisions together on the body.

whenever the article refers to the actions of the character, using they is appropriate because its actually more than one person in this case.

if its referring to the actions of just one half of the character, which should be rare honestly, then the she/her and he/him should be used for Laxi and Mascula, respectively.

Edited by EpicBleye on Dec 20th 2022 at 11:23:29 AM

Ok, I'm not familiar with the work and I just realized it wasn't on Fandom.com. Plus, I wasn't sure, hence why I put "believe" in italics.

Regardless, thanks for your response.

While doing cleanup, I came across Como dice el dicho. Full disclosure, I don't speak Spanish, so I'm going entirely based off info on the page itself and it's subpages. If anyone who does speak Spanish wants to verify that this is accurate, it'd be greatly appreciated.

It has a trans female character who is referred to on our pages by he/him and her old name, Gabriel. Given that the episode she appears in apparently badly mishandles trans issues via Trans Equals Gay, I want to give editors the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to the episode itself not being clear, but she apparently says that on the inside she feels like a woman and wants to be treated as one, and to be called Gabriela. Assuming that's accurate, I think that's how our page should refer to her.

I would definitely agree with that assessment

Do we have any Spanish-speakers here who can chime in?

While I know some Spanish (though I'm not fluent in it), I don't know exactly what was said. That said, since the character is a trans woman, then I'd stick with she/her.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Dec 23rd 2022 at 9:10:14 AM

Without any other evidence, this is another Claudine, in that it's the characters not knowing any better. She/her it is.

Oh hey, just a heads-up, "transwoman" (one word) is considered a slur; "trans woman" (two words) is the proper terminology.

I didn't find anything suggesting that, but okay and I'll fix it. EDIT: It's now fixed.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Dec 23rd 2022 at 9:10:25 AM

Can confirm (it didn't used to be, but certain folk started leaving out the space specifically to imply trans women were "transwomen, not women" or some such gubbins).

"Slur" might be somewhat exaggerated, but it's definitely disfavoured because transphobes love using it to discriminate by invoking Exact Words and being wilfully obtuse.

I have an interesting case to ask about. The Hollow Knight pages fairly consistently refer to the Knight and its void siblings using singular "they". However, to the best of my memory, the game itself only refers to them individually as "it", in distinction from the rest of Hallownest; this is acknowledged in the character page entries for It Is Dehumanising, talking about being weaponised by their father-creator and their ambiguous sapience ^note the Vessels were supposed to be empty, selfless philosophical zombies with no internal experience - to immunise them against brainwashing by the being whose can they were meant to seal - but the paragon Hollow Knight explicitly failed because it became contaminated by an idea, while the protagonist apparently succeeds despite certain indications that it developed a will of its own as well, but even characters who respect the Knight's personhood call it "it", and of course the Knight never expresses an opinion one way or another. I don't know if there's Word of God on the matter.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Dec 24th 2022 at 5:36:45 PM

Ok, that makes more sense for why it wasn't labeled as a slur when I double-checked it on an online dictionary. I'll keep this in mind for future reference, thanks.

As for Hollow Knight, I'm leaning on using "it" because all characters (regardless if they respect the Knight or not) call the titular character that. From what I know, Word of God hasn't said anything about this either.

Yeah, the if the in-game pronouns are for the vessels are it/its and there's no Word of God saying otherwise, that's what we should use

I favour that as well (surprise); I mostly wasn't sure if I was forgetting "they" had been used at some point. And the thread hasn't had to decide between different genderless pronouns yet, so it seemed opportune.

(Slight correction: I've been reading the other character pages more thoroughly, and it seems like the Knight's page is the only one that uses "they". The entries for the Lost Kin, the Collector, the Void Given Focus, and other void family members do mainly use "it" - even for the Knight, in fact, when it's mentioned in passing.)

For clarification, do you mean the Knight (the player character), or the Hollow Knight (the NPC)? Because I'm pretty sure both character's pages currently use they/them.

The former. The Knight's entry uses 'they'; all the ones I listed use 'it'; I was interrupted halfway down the Bosses page and didn't get to the Hollow Knight, so there may be others that also use 'they' but I didn't see any.

(It did strike me how very it is that the fandom named the protagonist after the game when the game is named after the final boss.)

Actually, the entries for Broken Vessel and the Hollow Knight in Hollow Knight Bosses flit back and forth between "it" and "they". FWIW, the HK wiki consistently uses "it" for BV and "they" for both the Knight and the Hollow Knight.

I don't think it's necessarily important for us to stick to just one or the other, since all we know for sure is that all these characters are genderless; anyone in-game is only making their own guesses as to the appropriate pronoun.

it/its if that's what is used in-game