I suppose this is all my fault, as these characters live in my head

[ultranos]

Alex is currently stymieing all efforts to write them. Actually, this is rather unfair to Alexander. Alexander will calmly point out, as many times is necessary, that Alex is Alex, and doesn't actually give a whit what pronoun is used. It's actually my problem. I guess we could say that Alexander is genderqueer. (Alex's backstory, as described in "Taming Fenrir" is that they were born female-sexed, raised as male, and due to genetic-engineering fuckery, required a metric fuckton (ask any scientist; this is totally a valid unit of measurement) of treatments, some of which included male hormones, as a child/teen to not die. This is also sci-fi, so work with me here. Alex's public identity is as a man. In private, she'll use male or female pronouns pretty much as he feels like.)

I'm mostly trying to figure out how to write them so as not to horribly offend anyone. Any suggestions? (This is locked down so that, if I did fuck up in the above, I trust you guys to take me to task for it. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone.)

On a less relevant note, it's incredibly satisfying to be able to fire up Universe Sandbox and figure out reasonable-sounding interstellar travel and neatly side-step Scifi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.

Comments

[auguris]

...hrm. I keep trying to think of a way to answer it but it's a tough scenario. My character Undeye is gender queer, but zie uses gender-neutral pronouns. (Not sure how I feel about zie/zem/zes, but I don't like they/them/theirs at all, so. *shrug*) It's kind of a cheat, though -- at first I was going to have zem alternate using he/she and also have the narration use different pronouns depending on the current POV, but it was too big of a mess. I was never trying to make it into a statement, Undeye just kind of showed up as a FAAB individual who looked and sounded masculine and liked wearing pretty things.

I think the best way to go about it is to not make a big deal about it. Sci-fi gives you a little leeway -- you can have your society be blasé about gender expression, or view non-traditional expression as a quirk as opposed to world-ending.

To cut this short, because I could very well go on forever: In other words, I have no idea.

[ultranos]

It's an incredibly tricky scenario. When I wrote "Taming Fenrir", which is the short story that Alex first appeared in, it was for a class. So I used "she" when in Alex's POV and "he" for everything else. It was mainly to simplify things for the guy teaching the course and get the damn A. Now though? Now I want to think about it. I don't really want to make A Statement. Alex doesn't give a whit either way. It's kind of always been how everyone else reacts.

There are very serious political and legal reasons why Alex has to publicly be male. To vastly simplify it, the older generation pulled some fuckery, it hit Alex in the face, and Alex could either angst about it or decide there are more important things, not care, and go with it. Alex chose the latter.

I think the thing I'm most afraid of is accidentally stepping on this huge hidden landmine. I don't think I am, but I figure it's worth it to think about it and ask. On the other hand, the cast of this thing is quickly growing into a group of people you could read as Making Statements, but who honestly don't give a fuck and just live like they want.