What goes to Character Sheets?

Yeah, I agree. If the pronouns are already being used, is there a reason to call them out?

The only time I would include a pronoun note is if the character (or creator) uses neopronouns (i.e. beyond he/she/they/it) or alternates between pronoun sets, because that may genuinely confuse editors unfamiliar with that sort of thing. Anything else would be self-evident by the description and trope examples using the right pronouns. Any other confusion can be cleared up in commented out notes.

i mean, i dont see any reason to make a rule against it, if someone wants to put pronouns in character bios. I dont see that serving any purpose in 98% of cases, where it would already be obvious. If theres a reason to be confused I guess someone would add them

the only objection i would have is if its one of those pages that already has 20 lines of random trivia about the characters and this is just adding more. (Or, if someone added pronouns only to trans characters. All of the characters or none on a given work, i think)

For things like Marvel's Eternals comics we've called out Jack of Knives as using they/them in the intro text, but we didn't feel the need to do the same for the others.

(Although that particular one's also complicated by the need to distinguish between the current incarnation of Jack using they/them and a more general they/them used for characters who've been Sex Shifters and used a range of pronouns due to The Nth Doctor + Resurrective Immortality)

Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 13th 2024 at 11:09:20 AM

Mmm, "specify pronouns if it would actually be confusing" seems like a good rule of thumb... and also obviates the need to give any specific location for it. If it's not immediately apparent and important, that's kind of why there are descriptions.

Coming in from the pronoun thread, I think it would be worth listing pronouns for a character, even if they're obvious. Much for the same reason it's considered good practise for real people to list their pronouns even if they're cis and gender conforming:

• It'll save a huge amount of energy compared to needing to justify "exceptions", and avoids making a big deal of exceptions in the first place.
• It's handy for characters that use standard pronouns, but might have some confusion (e.g. with Viewer Gender Confusion, or characters that an editor with less than honorable intentions might want to misgender, like Bridget).
• If every character sheet mentions pronouns (whether it's a designated space near the character's name, or just an expected place in the description), it'll help keep things more uniform.

EDIT: Turned my £0.02 into bullet points. I need more coffee.

Edited by Bisected8 on Jan 13th 2024 at 1:17:46 PM

Maybe from a real-world day to day point of view, but from the point of cataloguing a narrative one? In the overwhelming majority of characters in the overwhelming majority of media, especially historically, we can tell for a fact that it's not going to be a relevant piece of information—it's simply a linguistic given. It would kind of have the weird effect of, where it is unusually pertinent information, hiding it away in a spot nobody will ever read.

As for bad faith editors, they're going to make bad edits regardless. Putting something in a designated spot won't change their actions if the entire existing character sheet has no effect. Kind of the same for Viewer Gender Confusion; if someone's not reading the damn character sheet anyway, what use is a gender field?

My opinion is don't bother, use the right pronouns in the description etc., and only bring it up if something particularly strange is going on. A specific field isn't going to fix lack of reading comprehension and doesn't contribute anything besides.

Edited by RainehDaze on Jan 13th 2024 at 1:43:41 PM

I personally don't see the point of it and I'd rather avoid turning the beginning of character folders into bio databases. If it's of particular note (like Viewer Gender Confusion), the description can mention it.

It'd also be a very massive overhaul, as pages that actually needed it are quite exceptions.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 13th 2024 at 4:47:49 PM

are character pages not meant to be a brief bio?

i dont understand trying to make slippery slope arguments about this or treat it like its a huge burden

its literally just a brief (she/her) or whatever after the character name. at worst its confirming character pronouns that are "obvious". at best it makes it very clear what pronouns characters use if they have pronouns that aren't seen as "standard"- whether its an instance of they/them (which as mrph pointed out, can often be seen as invisible), "Astolfo is Astolfo", neo pronouns, multiple sets of pronouns, whatever. and also makes it very clear to bad actors that, yes, we're respecting trans characters' gender identities.

its such a minor but useful change that i don't understand why its worth getting so defensive over.

and like, this entire website is about cataloging miscellaneous and often pointless facts about narrative works. if anything cataloging pronouns fit right into this site's purpose.

Edited by EpicBleye on Jan 13th 2024 at 2:36:23 PM

Nobody is getting "defensive" over it. We're just not convinced it'll be useful in most scenarios. The rest of the bio should already reveal their pronouns anyway so it comes off as redundant.

I don't like adding more information in the stats area when they could be incorporated into the prose of the description or among the tropes. Current practice here is if a selection of biographical info is important to a work, then TVT can place a similar amount of importance on it by displaying it above the line. If an older work doesn't see characters' pronouns as any more than a "linguistic given", I think it's unnecessary to spell them out, especially when they'd be stated elsewhere in the folder/section.

Besides, I think we can have faith in our readers to surmise a character's pronouns from reading their section, just as one would figure out a character's identity from engaging with the actual work — not by the creator stopping everything to inform them, but from the actual writing and way they're addressed ^note excluding obviously the cases that warrant wiki discussion, but even then the actual pronouns used on the wiki are expected to be accurate. Unless there's been an actual issue of people not knowing what a character's pronouns were despite them being used in their bio, then I just simply don't know if this solution fixes anything. At best, it's just adding information the readers were already being given.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 13th 2024 at 3:43:48 PM

I have a relevant example to share: Carlos Whitrow on Reign of the Seven Spellblades — Upperclassmen. I found a way to include a "they" in reference to them in the description. I also added an example for She's a Man in Japan because their pronoun preference varies depending on the translation.

I don't think expecting readers to intuit pronouns from a description is adequate on its own:

• If someone isn't sure, having to find and read through chunks of text is clunky (especially if the reader isn't aware of a "pronouns are added to character sheets only if they are deemed unusual" rule). An obvious place to check will improve everyone's writing (not a fan of "bare minimum reading comprehension" arguments; people get tired or distracted or feel intimidated in a new setting; it's just good practise to make things easier).
• As Mrph said, some cases can be unclear (I've seen first hand that people miss they/them being used as a pronoun a lot). It's also hard to intuit which cases might be unclear.
• I'd argue that pronouns are just an extension of someone's name (you need both to talk about someone in a natural sounding manner), so clutter from adding them is minimal.

like i said earlier, i see no reason to ban adding pronouns if people want to add them. i can see the argument that it could be useful in a few cases, though for the vast majority of works it wouldn't really add anything. The clutter issue would primarily be a problem on the works where every character has half a novel crammed into their bio already, like Star Wars

to be clear, what exactly is the request here? permission to add them in a few cases? or a new standard of adding pronouns in general? or that they can be added if people want, case by case?

Edited by Tremmor19 on Jan 14th 2024 at 5:04:52 AM

I guess I don't have anything against adding them as a specific note, I just don't know how often the confusion actually happens. It feels like a solution for a problem that we don't have proof actually exists, at least not for a majority of works (where the only pronouns will be he/him and she/her, simply due to age and culture). I can see it being more valuable in a more complicated scenario, but making it required just seems a bit much.

Also, making it a required field when there's things that have no official English translation would also get weird.

Some more thoughts, mod hat firmly off -

Over in Real Life, it's increasingly common for pronouns to be directly confirmed. LinkedIn, Teams and other Microsoft profiles allow users to set them. At least in the UK, a growing number of large organisations encourage staff to list pronouns in email signatures or provide the option to include them on name badges.

It's also pretty common for speakers at events relating to the LGBTQ+ community to confirm their pronouns when they introduce themselves.

In terms of fiction and media, some works - especially those aimed at a YA and/or LGBT+ audience - are starting to use pronouns in their own character intros/profiles, either All in the Manual or directly integrated into the work.

• As with Real Life, if you have a mix of cis, enby and trans characters in a work, it sends a problematic message if we only list pronouns for the ones who aren't cis.
• Where pronouns are listed, it should be in a way that doesn't needlessly increase the length of the character page intro.
• This Is a Wiki and the usual rules apply - nobody needs to seek permission before adding pronouns to a character page, but we do need a valid reason to remove them again once they're part of the wiki.

I don't think anyone is suggesting a full cleanup to add pronouns to all existing character sheets. The point was made that older works (at least western works) are less likely to include any character who's not cis. Especially if they're not science fiction or fantasy. Ok. True enough.

But I can also see a scenario where - in a few years time - actively specifying pronouns becomes increasingly common beyond those LGBTQ+ and big company contexts. And if tropers want to work through things like Hamlet, Columbo and A Streetcar Named Desire and confirm pronouns on those Characters pages, I doubt we'd preemptively stop them.

Tl;dr: Actively stating pronouns is becoming increasingly common as the years go by. TVT tries to be inclusive and if there's a wish to list pronouns more directly, I suspect the position is likely to be "how do we do it in the best and simplest way", not "we don't want to do it".

My thought process this entire time has been that if the bio is going to describe the character anyway, the pronouns would naturally come up. Now this won't work for every character (someone like Mangle from Five Nights at Freddy's swaps between He/Him and She/Her all the time sort of just as a Running Gag) but I just find it hard to imagine scenarios where simply using the pronouns in a sentence about the character wouldn't be obvious enough for our readers. I'm not against specifying pronouns — I just think that we're more or less already doing it by sheer virtue of discussing who the character is to begin with.

If a particular work is in the practice of stating a character's pronouns up front I see a stronger case for including them, and if a character is particularly complicated then that makes sense too. But otherwise it just kinda seems like extra work for something I genuinely think the readers are already capable of figuring out through just reading the bio. You know what I mean?

It has been said that sometimes people won't be able to figure it out, but aside from the more complicated scenarios we've mentioned, I can't see a scenario where a reader is seeing a character's pronouns used in a sentence and is still somehow confused about it.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 14th 2024 at 4:54:35 AM

My only arguments are that

• IRL people don't have full descriptions in their profiles in third person, while we do and the prefered pronoun can usually can be seen in the first sentence.
• I'd like to avoid having any non-paragraphed information unless not separating it could lead not confusion.

I have no issue including pronouns to biodata where there's some ambiguity or the work emphasises it, and don't think we need to remove it if it's already added, but I would prefer to not add it if it's not necessary as currently Characters/ are for grouping tropes and not for building profile cards.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 14th 2024 at 1:03:53 PM

Yeah, I should mention, I'm not advocating for a removal or anything. If they're there, they're there. I genuinely find them harmless, my issue is more about redundancy than anything so while I don't usually see a point in having them, once they're up it's sort of just... whatever.

I think that's largely why I like the idea of appending them to character names - the "Alex X (she/her)" model - if we do feel they should be added.

That avoids adding any extra lines, and if the aim is to put them before the intro text, that ensures they're seen at the same time as the name.

But the initial "if we do" is a big if.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 14th 2024 at 10:15:20 AM

Using the name header for pronouns would be better than having it separately, though other points stand.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 14th 2024 at 1:26:19 PM

On the characters page for Manga.Gushing Over Magical Girls, some of the characters, namely the main villains and heroes have a spot of trivia on them detailing certain aspects like form changes.

I made a ATT query regarding some bit of this trivia (specifically, someone putting spoiler markup above the example line), and the first actual reply in it mentioned that some of that the trivia lists used on it are discouraged.

Would the trivia on that page be valid?