Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that "it" probably serves as an acceptable pronoun given that the toaster is... y'know, a kitchen appliance.
This is confusing since it's a case where Word of God directly contradicts the actual work. And unlike literally the only other instance of this being the case that I've seen, it doesn't seem to be just an arbitrary decision... oh boy.
I know we don't take fan interpretations into account outside of YMMV, but this in particular is a pretty sticky situation...
I think it's easiest to just stick to they/them when in doubt.
Macron's notes
If the work itself refers to him as male that's what I'd go with in order to keep things simple.
I would say it/its, given that it is in fact a nonhuman appliance
Sorry I'm blunt, didn't get much sleep. But I digress since we have this discussion constantly.
Regardless, while my personal opinion is "just use they/them if you're unsure so we don't have to keep dragging it out", I'll be civil here and say we should use they/them in this case.
The work calls him male. I don't exactly see how that's ambiguous.
^ Word of God contradicts, and the book contradicts in a whole different way. I don't see how it isn't.
"it" would be inaccurate in this case because the characters are sentient household appliances who all have genders. "they" would be more preferable in this case to me
Edited by NoUsername
^^ Death of the Author. If Word of God claims that the toaster is neon orange when the toaster is grey in the film, then Word of God is wrong. It might be interesting trivia, but it doesn't change what's in the film.
What's in the book is relevant to the book, but it doesn't change what's in the film.
They/them. Films and VA statements are contradictory and "officially" the appliances have no gender. The latter alone justifies gender neutral pronouns.
^^ DOTA only argues that Word of God is as valid as any audience member's interpretation. It leaves exactly as much ambiguity.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
I would go with gender-neutral pronouns.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I was considering bringing this up myself.
From what I can gather, pronouns are used to refer to the character once in the first film, in an easy to miss line, hence the Ambiguous Gender example.
I say gender-neutral pronouns, maybe with a note on the debate.
By the way, I think the conflicting sources might be an example of Writer Conflicts with Canon over Death of the Author. But that's just me and I may be wrong.
The actual movie uses "he/him", so naturally we should go with the actual movie, IMO.
The main issues with using they/them in this case are:
1.) The work does gender Toaster a couple times. We cannot discount that it happened just because not everyone noticed.
2.) I'm pretty sure the other appliances are given unambiguous genders. If I recall this correctly then we cannot rely on the idea that they don't have gender just because they're appliances, especially since they have been anthropomorphized.
Edited by Karxrida If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Use what the work uses, he/him and add a trivia entry under Writer Conflicts with Canon.
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
I've changed over the pronouns on the main page, and cut the She's a Man in Japan entry (as applied to this particular appliance) because it was used as pseudo-Crossdressing Voices rather than an actual dub gender change.
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
As someone who uses they/them exclusively (well, in English and in safe environments at least), I would like to point out that if no source refers to Toaster as they/them or it/its, then we might have two use cases: - Exclusive use of he/him, per the work - he/him and she/her being interchangeable, if we accept both the work and actor's gendering of the character
I understand that Toaster is a) a fictional character and b) an anthropomorphic household item, but the use cases above are consistent with the preferences of many nonbinary people who use multiple pronoun sets, or all pronouns altogether. It would not necessarily be Writer Conflicts with Canon, unless the actress and director unambiguously state that they don't agree with he/him pronouns for Toaster.
It is considered rude for many nonbinary people (which carries over to nonbinary fictional characters) to be referred to with pronouns they don't use. For example, I know people who strictly use its/its, or some neopronouns like xe/xir, and doesn't want to be addressed with they/them as some form of umbrella term.
Disclaimer: I have no problem with sticking to what we see in the movie as canon and keeping Toaster's wiki pronouns he/him, just want to point out that Toaster being addressed as she/her by at least 2 members of the creative team doesn't mean a direct contradiction.
That then however runs into the whole thing of how to handle characters with more than one set of pronouns, which we have an entire thread discussing
that can't come to a solid conclusion on it.
Keep he/him when discussing the movie, and if other material uses other pronouns, use the relevant pronouns when discussing those works.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
^^^ i also use they/them regularly and i think it's totally fine to use "they" if you don't know what pronouns someone uses; if you do know, then obviously it's rude to avoid using the correct pronouns. i think that's standard practice, and that's the idea here; we don't know whether toaster should be "he" based on the movie, or if the use of "he" was a mistake and toaster should be "she" based on official comments, hence the suggestion of "they". it'd be different if toaster was canonically nonbinary, which they are in the novel but not in the film. i also wouldn't be opposed to just sticking with "he" for the movie's page and adding Writer Conflicts with Canon
Edited by NoUsername
Does it matter if it's a mistake, if it's still part of the movie? If Obi-Wan's lightsabre was blue by mistake, and was meant to be purple, that doesn't mean we start claiming that it's actually purple.
Personally I advocate for he/him pronouns because the film uses he/him pronouns. As everyone else is saying, it's what the movie uses, i.e. it's canon. It's not really a matter of ambiguity so much as conflicting sources. I'm thinking more and more there may need to be some kind of discussion about when Word of God and other outside sources can change writing about in-universe content.
Honestly it sounds like this may just need to be put to a vote, since it seems everyone is rather split on this.
Edited by iamconstantine
^^ it varies, really; if obi-wan's lightsaber was purple in later movies then it'd be a Retcon and probably worth pointing out, but if they just said "it's supposed to be purple" and never changed it, then yeah it'd be best to keep calling it blue. the latter case seems to be what's going on here.
i'd be open to a vote/crowner
I was about to suggest a crowner too, due to all the disagreements in the replies.
This discussion should probably get moved to Short Term Projects, because after a decision is reached, you'll want to check at least some of the crosswicking to verify that whatever consensus pronoun is reached gets used correctly off-page as well.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Since there's a short term project thread now, I'll close this query.
Macron's notes
So I noticed on The Brave Little Toaster, there seems to be a disagreement on this very wiki on the titular character's pronouns due to their Ambiguous Gender.
Troperfind wants to use female pronouns since the director referred to them as female in a Reddit AMA and their voice actress called them female once. But the film uses male pronouns (Lampy says "He sank!" at one point, and one of the sequels called them male), so that makes me wonder if Toaster's gender is truly confirmed or if the filmmakers deliberately wanted to leave it ambiguous, since it seems like no two sources agree. (Keep in mind that in the original novel, it was a plot point that Toaster had no gender.)
Can we just use they/them pronouns? Especially since a lot of modern fans interpret them as non-binary anyway.
Edited by MrMediaGuy2