Character pronoun and identity discussion

Ignore

Edited by The_Dag on Jan 29th 2023 at 11:27:59 AM

If this is about this forum game, how is it relevant to the conversation on pronouns?

It was the wrong place to post.

Thought I'd bring up another Jojo character: Dragona Joestar from the recently-released JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The JOJOLands. Dragona is shown to be AMAB, but speak with highly feminine speech patterns including use of the feminine pronoun "atashi", look and dress feminine, and also underwent top surgery (or may have secretly used their Stand powers to manipulate their body fat distribution, it's deliberately left unclear).

However, the protagonist Jodio (Dragona's younger brother who seemingly knows them the best out of the cast) refers to his older sibling by the explicitly-gendered term of aniki aka "older brother" as opposed to aneki. Based on this line, Dragona, despite presenting as feminine in a rather extreme way, does not identify as a trans woman or is at least is OK with being referred to as a male sibling; although it should be noted that the Japanese language doesn't seem to have gender-neutral terms for siblings so in the case that Dragona is supposed to be considered nonbinary it would be difficult for the narrative to express it.

As a result of this ambiguity, the fan translators for this part have stated decided to refer to Dragona with he/him pronouns for the time being (with these posts here going into the reasons why, noting that the only use of pronouns comes up in Jodio's internal monologue when he's been shown to be an immature child of a Unreliable Narrator who simply may not have realized Dragona was trans, given he also didn't really know where Dragona got chest implants from either), although they acknowledge that it's subject to change as more chapters of the manga come out and possibly clarify the situation. On the other hand, the character page has recently been edited to change all the instances of he/him with they/them pronouns, when I don't think we have the consensus to do that yet.

Admittedly we only have a single chapter of a monthly manga to go off of for now and it's not nearly enough information to come to a consensus this early on, but I figured the character would show up in this thread eventually so I thought I'd lay some of the information out.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 27th 2023 at 12:59:23 PM

I think it's too early to consider any option until explicitly stated.

Yeah, it's far too early. It should be he/him for now since he's at least canonically referred to by that

He/him until proven otherwise.

In that case, should I revert the pronouns edits and contact the person who changed them?

Again it should be noted that he/him is at the discretion of the fan translators, as the only pronouns actually used regarding Dragona in the Japanese text are the first-person "atashi", which is used the vast majority of the time by people who identify as women, but is also known enough to be a form of lavender speech among openly LGBT cis men that it's not a smoking gun.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 27th 2023 at 2:02:42 AM

It would probably be a good idea to at least send a PM directing them to this thread.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 28th 2023 at 1:16:53 PM

Bringing back the Hollow Knight discussion - it sounds like most of the replies were in favour of it/its, but the topic changed before a decision was made, and ~Vilui brought up the point that the Fandom wiki uses "it" and "they" interchangeably. I don't think that necessarily means we ought to as well, but it's possible they know more than I do. Have the devs spoken more about it than is in the game?

I've been working on some page cleanup and thought I'd bring up Funtime Foxy from Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location. As a preface, a recurring joke in the franchise is the lack of a definitive answer to what pronouns to use for a character named Mangle; since Funtime Foxy's design is derived from Mangle's, this fox is also subject to ambiguity on that front.

Funtime Foxy's character page has an Ambiguous Gender entry that summarizes the situation, but to recap:

• Sister Location's "HandUnit" character goes out of its way to avoid using pronouns for Funtime Foxy on the first night and alternates between he/him and she/her on subsequent nights.
• Descriptions of Funtime Foxy in both this game's Custom Night and Ultimate Custom Night use he/him when discussing Funtime Foxy, but also include the fox in a preset challenge called Girls'/Ladies Night.
• Funtime Foxy does not speak in Sister Location. While the fox's voice actor in UCN is male, this doesn't necessarily prove anything because Funtime Foxy has Voice Changeling abilities.

Looks like using they/them would be easiest option.

This feels like a rare case of "use the name as a de facto pronoun".

Since, to my knowledge, no characters are referred to as "they/them/their" I think we should use "he/she"^{for the record...} I used that link just in case I'm not being clear (or "him/her" or "his/her" depending on the context).

Granted, I have used singular they/them/their before, most notably (EDIT: but not exclusively) on Laconic pages.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Sep 5th 2023 at 1:34:19 AM

He/she sounds the best, since that's the entire joke with Mangle/Funtime Foxy.

If the entire point is making a joke out of not knowing rather than expressly indicating a gender, then it sounds like that's the same circumstance as Team Fortress 2: The Pyro, who has a consensus for using the generic they/them when a pronoun is necessary.

Agreed. I see no reason not to use "they" for a character whose identity is deliberately unclear.

Constructions like "he/she" are eyesores for which there is, quite frankly, no valid use case for as far as I'm concerned.

the only valid usage is for Quina Quen from Final Fantasy IX because we have no idea what their pronouns really are and its how the game describes them

That's at least the only valid use I can think of since I've played Final Fantasy IX (it's been a while since I last played the game, but if I recall correctly, the game technically uses "s/he" instead of "he/she"), but either way, I agree that in cases of ambiguity, it's preferable (and less awkward) to use "they/them" unless the work itself uses something else.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 30th 2023 at 6:34:31 AM

You can use "he/she" for when you're unsure if a character is either male or female, for example. And the work doesn't use they/them/their for any singular character.

I was just giving an example. Sorry if I gave Single-Issue Wonk vibes, that wasn't my intent, I was just trying to give an example. As for your statement, I wouldn't say it's a personal preference since I have used singular they/them/their before. And to be fair I only said that two times, not multiple like you said.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Aug 9th 2023 at 2:07:28 AM

Or you can use "they/them", which is less clunky.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 30th 2023 at 6:35:33 AM

Yeah, there's no reason not to use they/them in a majority of these cases.

You've said that multiple times already. What you haven't said is whether the work actually uses "he/she" or whether that's simply your personal preference, because if the work doesn't use "he/she" either, the thread (including me) is largely in favor of "they/them". If it turns out the work doesn't use any pronouns at all in this case, I or another mod will update the header to say "they/them" because that's what the consensus is in favor of and I see no reason to continue this debate if "he/she" isn't actually used in the work.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 30th 2023 at 8:40:03 AM

Or... hear me out... you can just use they/them. Whether or not the work does so, this is simply how you refer to people whose pronouns you do not know.

Edited by Perseus on Mar 31st 2023 at 12:55:02 AM