Ask The Tropers

I'm fairly certain that, because we want to act like all works, currently updating or not, were all written in the distant past... pronouns and the like should not be changed retroactively. Use the female name and pronouns up until the point when the change happened, and then use the male name and pronouns from then on.

Two things that I can think of are

1. Is Part 1 different enough from Part 2 that we can justify splitting by season? I think we often over-lump on character pages.
2. If the cast isn't different enough to justify a split, this is a major enough change to justify soft-splitting the character. Folder [Female/Male], then collect tropes for each character separately, mentioning in the female description that she began to self-identify as male, and tropes past that point are collected as his new identity. We do this with the titular character of Doctor Who.

^ The Doctor's incarnations are, for all intents and purposes, different characters. I'm fairly certain that this case isn't the same.

To answer the original question, we do not retroactively change names or pronouns.

There's a reason why it's called "dead naming", and it isn't because their identity is the same. They are asserting a new identity. They are as different from their previous identity as the Doctor is from theirs (actually, more different, since the Doctor usually insists that everyone calls them by the same name).

...That is not a universal experience. For a lot of trans people, it’s to emphasize that you don’t ever want to be called that again. I’d go so far as to say most trans people don’t think of themselves as different people before and after transitioning.

^^ Orbiting is right, I think you're misreading what "deadname" means.

With real trans people, the accepted practice is to use their current name and pronouns, even when referring to the time before they came out. I think we have to change the name an pronouns, simply because the alternatives are worse: 1. Continue using female pronouns, with only a brief reference their coming out as trans, which will come off as bigoted or; 2. Use his old name and pronouns when referencing events occurring before he came out, and new name/ pronouns for events occurring after, which, because we order tropes alphabetically and not chronologically, will result in constantly switching between the two.

This honestly isn't that different from a standard Gender Reveal. I recall that when Pidge from Voltron: Legendary Defender was revealed to be a girl, we just accepted that we couldn't simply avoid using pronouns for her and just accepted that it would be a Late-Arrival Spoiler. We should do the same here.

My hot take: As long as this is a new development, use whatever name and pronouns the character was using in at the time of each example, and spoiler-tag anything post-transition. Once it becomes the status quo, use the new name and pronouns everywhere and don't spoiler-tag any of it.

(I'd semi-arbitrarily say we switch gears when season 2 starts to come out, but I don't actually watch this show and have no case for any particular time.)

If it's a plot twist, I think old pronouns are used to keep the twist. Examples for the manga Yuureitou refer to Tetsuo as male but use she/her pronouns for his pre-transition self, Reiko, as it isn't revealed until several chapters in that Tetsuo is Reiko. Reiko used to have a separate section on the Characters page from Tetsuo, but I guess the twist was early enough that it wasn't useful separating the two.

However, I have a similar issue with Takatsuki from Wandering Son. Different examples use she/her, he/him, and they/them because they have such an Ambiguous Gender Identity at the end of the series and "change" gender identities as the manga goes on.

Guys, we need to keep in mind, we're talking about a fictional character here and the way this character was represented in their work. I wouldn't call it "bigoted" to refer to a character by the name they were called and by the gender they were presented as in the work and to use the new pronouns and names starting with examples that happened after this change happened. We're recording the way the story referred to them at each point, not making a judgement call about the identity of transpeople in real-life.

Maybe people in real life don't consider themselves a new person when they start presenting as the gender they feel they are, and that's perfectly understandable, but that doesn't negate that fictional characters are presented in a certain way, and this presentation can change, but we can't just erase the original portrayal for the sake of being PC.

^ I don't think it's contraversial to say that it's possible to talk about fictional characters in a way that reflects bigoted views. Regardless, I don't think the solution you propose is workable, because we order tropes alphabetically, not chronologically, so we would switch names and pronouns depending on when the event referenced took place. And what about tropes that don't have a chronological referent, like physics descriptions or personality types? This is going to get even more confusing for tropes on the main page. Even if just switching to male pronouns is imperfect, it's the most workable and least confusing solution.

"I don't think it's contraversial to say that it's possible to talk about fictional characters in a way that reflects bigoted views." Sure, but all I'm calling for is an objective representation of the work, nothing more, nothing less. Facts aren't biased- saying this character was once portrayed as a female is just the truth of the work.

And, yeah, okay. I can see the argument for doing this to make things less confusing, that's understandable. I just disagree with the argument that we should do it because it could be transphobic otherwise, for the reason I just stated above. I have no real qualms with cutting down on confusion; that's a good point.

Referring to characters with their most current identity and pronouns is less confusing, avoids any unfortunate implications, and is what we already do for cis characters who've disguised themself as a different gender as a plot twist (Pidge has already been noted, Naoto is another) because preserving the twist is much more hassle than dealing with every possible spoiler related to their gender.

I'll note also that 'most current pronouns/identity' is the standard policy for The Other Wiki.

This debate was settled months ago, and I have no intention to re-ignite it.

Using "most current identity" for mid-work transitions explicitly breaks our spoiler policy where recap pages are involved.

Recap pages aren't involved in this instance, though. The troper was asking about the show's character page.

Other character pages with characters that discover they're trans over the course of the story (see Coach Beiste and Sadie) use their most current pronouns.