McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Using it as a pronoun...
Paynesgrey:
Yeah... I think that Creative Pronounery is mainly useful when your painting a cultural or racial image.
(The race Peter David cooked up for his Excalibur must have been a wink at Bel Thorne and Beta Colony style government. Their pronoun choice kept changing every time a government committee got together to "clarify" things. At one point they tried to combine "she", "he" and "it" to be as inclusive as possible, and were really unhappy when they learned why their human friends wouldn't stop snickering until they changed it again.)
hank the ancient:
I know that marvel comics got around this for a while with their gender-bending character Xavin, by having most of the other characters avoid pronoun use entirely and always refer to Xavin by Xavin's proper name. I still don't know if this was a clever sidestep or majorly distracting. ???
meg_evonne:
--- Quote from: hank the ancient on December 21, 2011, 03:29:06 AM ---I know that marvel comics got around this for a while with their gender-bending character Xavin, by having most of the other characters avoid pronoun use entirely and always refer to Xavin by Xavin's proper name. I still don't know if this was a clever sidestep or majorly distracting. ???
--- End quote ---
With careful editing and thoughtful sentence arrangement, especially given Selene isn't the main character, I applaud this route. It would mean more work for you, but less out-of-the-moment concern Shecky has and solves that once-I-got-used-to-it-by-page 3 problem, which for some readers they may never get to page 3 of it bothers them. As to the use of they. I can slide right over it in some works, but in others it irks me--so it must be the writer's sentence structure or usage that made it seem natural or unnatural.
If your character weren't in a consistent body and you purposely switched from day to day from sex to sex--just use the pronoun of the day? That might be far less jarring and would emphasize your shapeshifter's fluid character changes. Perhaps a combination of both these would work well?
Figging Mint:
--- Quote from: hank the ancient on December 21, 2011, 03:29:06 AM ---I know that marvel comics got around this for a while with their gender-bending character Xavin, by having most of the other characters avoid pronoun use entirely and always refer to Xavin by Xavin's proper name.
--- End quote ---
You mean kinda like we did with neuro.
Dina:
Exactly what I was thinking ^
Good option :)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version