Woohoo! Unstuck!

[tephra]

2174 words today and my novel suddenly has definitively "not nice" people for my protagonists to deal with.

I've been rather nice to my main characters thus far, which probably another sign of bad writing, but Sierna's going to have to be careful or get herself stuck in a really nasty situation now.

And unrelated to that I have a recurring problem with my writing so I'm going to toss it out here for anyone that has a suggestion (like anyone actually reads these updates of mine, but might as well give it a shot.)

First I suppose I should point out that my people are rodents (of a sort) and there's not a lot of sexual dimorphism in terms of their size and general build. There is a large percentage (maybe 50%) of the population that is androgynous and the cues to determine the gender of a person are subtle. There are obviously male and female people but often it's a result of things like profession (blacksmithing for example) or being a bit overweight (the fat deposits in different areas) or in the case of the females, nursing a child.

Enter Zephyr.

Zephyr (an alias) is one of the Dwells (sort of a priest caste in the Valley) and as a result is always going around in robes. When he/she goes out of the Inners (where the caste lives) he/she also wears a hood, and in lighter areas, a blindfold to shield his/her eyes. As a result of this the most anyone knows about him/her is that his/her hands and muzzle are white furred and his/her voice and build are androgynous.

Now I have Sierna (arguably the main character) referring to Zephyr as "she" since her mental impression of him/her is female.

Nikkol views Zephyr as male (and a rival for Sierna's affections).

The main tribe of Roams (nomadic tribesmen) tends to think of him as male (they also have another name for him, yay for making things confusing). However due to the clothing that hunters and scouts wear it's really hard to tell a male from a female unless the male is particularly muscular or the female is particularly curvy.

Zephyr interacts with several other tribes of Roams and some of them refer to him and male and others as female.

The languages these people use have three genders for pronouns. Unfortunately English does not ("it" is not acceptable for a person) and I'm really getting things muddled when I have to deal with Zephyr a lot. When I'm writing him/her with Sierna I tend to use the female because that's how Sierna sees things. Likewise, with Nikkol or the Roams I use the male pronouns. The real problem is when it's just Zephyr, though I admit I'm not thrilled about using either male or female with him/her for extended periods in any situation. I really, really, want the reader to be uncertain about his/her gender. Partly because I'm uncertain as well (though I just spent a large chunk of the story using "he" because he was with the Roams.)

So, ideas? I don't much like the assorted "gender neutral" pronouns that I've seen in use in the furry fandom but I have a sinking feeling that when I edit this mess I'll be backed into using one of those systems.

Comments

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Perhaps in those situations you could eschew pronouns and repeat Zephyr's name as many times as you have to.

[tephra]

I'll probably end up doing that, and referring to him/her as "the Dweller" or similar, he/she has distinctively colored fur so that will help too. The section with him/her interacting with Roams is going to be one of the messier places to deal with in the editing stage.

[iceraptoress.livejournal.com]

Straight Dope has a discussion of various gender-neutral pronouns. You might find something there you like better than whatever the furdom is using these days.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_245b.html

[tephra]

I normally use the singular they but found it to be very awkward in the scenes where I have Zephyr interacting with a group. *sigh* Sections heavy on Zephyr presence are not going to be easy to edit.

Smug little brat is just sitting there snickering in his/her robes too.

[iceraptoress.livejournal.com]

Ah those cheeky characters! XD

I suppose you could look at it as a test of your writing abilites, having to figure out ways to get around referring to Zephry in various situations. ^^;;

Since this race had evolved with the ambiguous gender, I would assume that they would have identifying words and pronouns for it in their own language. So, could you not just make up/use their words? It might be a bit confusing for readers at first, but they would get used to it. I eventually got used to all the bizarre words Harrison used in his Eden books, for example, and in my own original writing I intend to make the readers get used to some Cyrian.

[tephra]

I'm pretty sure their language(s) has(have) pronouns for "person of unknown gender", male, and female at least. They might have more. ("Female with children" comes to mind.)

They're also cheerfully don't give a damn if a couple is male/female, male/male, or female/female. The Northern Roams at least seem to be polygamous as well.