What if: Starting with Dawntrail, everyone starts referring to the WoL as they/them?

Ah; Les mots épicènes Did Titanfr:ann (yes, that's a made-up DE word there) fall off their perch of helpfulness back into chucking chum?

Personally I have used 'they' for decades when referring to other people, yet some in the English speaking parts of the world do have trouble with fitting what they think is the solely plural 'they' into singular grammar, saying it feels 'unnatural' to read. eg: "I am going to watch Naoki-san later on ニコニコ [niconico] and watch them roll their eyes before they facepalms"

Yet some of the same people don't understand the added difficulties of gendered grammar in German and French are much more complex then that extra 's' English suffers with.

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

No, when the person is sure about their... "cisness", you're definitly being insulting if you keep using the pronoun "they". And, please, stop using the argument of seniority to justify the legitimacy of a word. There are quite a few words that are very old and have disappeared, quite rightly, because they were no longer valid (All the lexical field relating to ethnic groups, to pick the most obvious example). An element of language is consubstantial with its era; it certainly indicates a certain use of grammar, but it also carries ideological meaning. In this respect, you can't claim that forcing the "they" on someone is neutral today - and the very old use of this pronoun won't change anything here.

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Your feelings do not change how the English language works or the definitions of the words therein.

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Originally Posted by Immut

Your feelings do not change how the English language works or the definitions of the words therein.

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It's not a question of "feeling", but of language usage. I don't have any particular feelings on the matter: non-binarity is something I personally don't understand, but I don't see the point in turning it into a personal vendetta either. On the other hand, it's impossible to deny today that if you persist in using "they" for someone who textually tells you "no, I'm a man"; or conversely use "he" for someone who insists they're non-binary, you're making a form of political claim. Hence my point.

On a more general note, it would be very bad faith to claim that a word isn't emotionally charged. The term "Aryan" was originally a way of designating a population; it's difficult to claim it today, for obvious reasons. In France, the term "artist" could only designate those capable of investing the so-called "intellectual" arts (painters, in particular). Today, it also refers to artisans, mainly because they made it a political claim in its own right at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - a way, like any other, for them to climb the social hierarchy and escape the stigma of the so-called manual arts.

The biggest lie here would be to pretend that the meaning of words doesn't evolve according to the historical period and culture concerned - even if they retain their grammatical role.

Call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner.

But I am secure enough to know what and who I am, regardless of words people choose to describe me.

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

...The term "Aryan" was originally a way of designating a population; it's difficult to claim it today..

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(Has the thread been Godwinned now?)

irregardless; Only from 1850 or so. Not originally.

Prior to that (and currently) it refers to the cultural self-designation of Indo-Iranians (about 2000BCE-ish), and still does. In this form, it has no racial meaning, just as 'American' has no racial meaning on it's own. It's a cultural self-designation.

A bit like the way the symbol for Buddha (The Japanese Manji character) was co-opted by the same central European political group in the early 20th century, yet is still heavily used. https://maps.app.goo.gl/PTkJCwBCmNqtL1WA9 shows one example.



Mind you, some do have trouble with both of these, as they can't mentally detach the evil use for a couple of years from centuries and millennia of prior good use and hold them as two separate concepts. Both the self-designation word and the Manji character.

It would make this game come across as lazier than it has any business being.

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Originally Posted by Immut

This is factually incorrect. The singular "they" has been in use for over six hundred years and is a catch-all for all genders and some objects. It is impossible to misgender someone with "they".

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So using the wrong pronoun isn't misgendering. Got it.

But at any rate, They isn't really a pronoun in the way it's get used, it's more a slang term... Like rather than bother saying "That person" or "Those people", people opt for the much short and simpler "they".

Haha I seriously doubt this would ever happen - But in the event it did...I would mod that shit straight back out of the game!

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Originally Posted by Shibi

(Has the thread been Godwinned now?)

irregardless; Only from 1850 or so. Not originally.

Prior to that (and currently) it refers to the cultural self-designation of Indo-Iranians (about 2000BCE-ish), and still does. In this form, it has no racial meaning, just as 'American' has no racial meaning on it's own. It's a cultural self-designation.

A bit like the way the symbol for Buddha (The Japanese Manji character) was co-opted by the same central European political group in the early 20th century, yet is still heavily used. https://maps.app.goo.gl/PTkJCwBCmNqtL1WA9 shows one example.



Mind you, some do have trouble with both of these, as they can't mentally detach the evil use for a couple of years from centuries and millennia of prior good use and hold them as two separate concepts. Both the self-designation word and the Manji character.

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Ahah, originally I was about to talk about the concept of "Homeland" and "art collector". But if I'm being honest, I'm not confortable enough with English to do it correctly. So that's why I took this example : it's more common, and known by everyone.

For the sake of nitpicking, your message contains an interesting example: "race". Very common in English, particularly in the USA from what I've seen, but unthinkable to use in other countries.

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Originally Posted by Immut

This is factually incorrect. The singular "they" has been in use for over six hundred years and is a catch-all for all genders and some objects. It is impossible to misgender someone with "they".

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Until that offends someone. If referring to me as "they" offends me, then what?

Now we need another term.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

How would you react to your WoL being referred to with gender-neutral pronouns?

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Saints Row (the original series) managed to never use gendered pronouns from the 2nd to the 4.5th title, and it's worked just fine. I'm pretty sure most players never noticed.
It would even make less work for the localization teams :^) (at least in English)

And it would finally free us from extremely weird gendered phrases and idioms where every instance of "man" is replaced by "woman" (as in "a dog is a (wo)man's best friend"), which completely sounds out of place and reads wrong, the biggest offender to me being "old girl" by far. "Old girl" is the reason I will never like Emmanellain. I'll reconsider my opinion of him when he stops calling me that.

Saints Row's trick is to very rarely rely on pronouns themselves, and instead copiously use "Boss", "the Saints", etc, and here "man/woman" could quite easily be replaced by person, adventurer, wanderer, warrior (of light), fighter, legend, hero, friend, partner (Estinien does call us "aibou" 相棒 in Japanese), comrade, clown, anything goes.

If a GTA-like in which you run around with a dildo bat managed to do it without hurting anyone's feelings, I'm sure a fantasy MMO can too.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

snip

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Right, but FFXIV is a established MMO with some people's WoLs going back a full decade, what have very well established genders. So I'm pretty sure it would indeed upset a lot people if the game forced they/them pronouns on to their WoL suddenly. Would upset as a trans woman who uses female pronouns at least.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

Saints Row (the original series) managed to never use gendered pronouns from the 2nd to the 4.5th title, and it's worked just fine. I'm pretty sure most players never noticed.
It would even make less work for the localization teams :^) (at least in English)

And it would finally free us from extremely weird gendered phrases and idioms where every instance of "man" is replaced by "woman" (as in "a dog is a (wo)man's best friend"), which completely sounds out of place and reads wrong, the biggest offender to me being "old girl" by far. "Old girl" is the reason I will never like Emmanellain. I'll reconsider my opinion of him when he stops calling me that.

Saints Row's trick is to very rarely rely on pronouns themselves, and instead copiously use "Boss", "the Saints", etc, and here "man/woman" could quite easily be replaced by person, adventurer, wanderer, warrior (of light), fighter, legend, hero, friend, partner (Estinien does call us "aibou" 相棒 in Japanese), comrade, clown, anything goes.

If a GTA-like in which you run around with a dildo bat managed to do it without hurting anyone's feelings, I'm sure a fantasy MMO can too.

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This game clearly isn't made for you then.

I'm a guy. I play a female character. The NPCs refer to me as she/her and some random players have refereed to me a she as well. Like any rational person, I don't give a shit. It's really that easy.

If you refocused the energy you spend going out of your way to be offended by something so trivial, you'd be cleaning your garage to fit your 4th or 5th super car by now.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

Saints Row (the original series) managed to never use gendered pronouns from the 2nd to the 4.5th title, and it's worked just fine. I'm pretty sure most players never noticed.
It would even make less work for the localization teams :^) (at least in English)

And it would finally free us from extremely weird gendered phrases and idioms where every instance of "man" is replaced by "woman" (as in "a dog is a (wo)man's best friend"), which completely sounds out of place and reads wrong, the biggest offender to me being "old girl" by far. "Old girl" is the reason I will never like Emmanellain. I'll reconsider my opinion of him when he stops calling me that.

Saints Row's trick is to very rarely rely on pronouns themselves, and instead copiously use "Boss", "the Saints", etc, and here "man/woman" could quite easily be replaced by person, adventurer, wanderer, warrior (of light), fighter, legend, hero, friend, partner (Estinien does call us "aibou" 相棒 in Japanese), comrade, clown, anything goes.

If a GTA-like in which you run around with a dildo bat managed to do it without hurting anyone's feelings, I'm sure a fantasy MMO can too.

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Well, Saint's Row's "boss", they call the player character by title rather than a name or anything... The equivalent for XIV would be just everyone constantly calling the player character "Adventurer", or later on as "The Warrior of Light/Darkness" by people who actually know the character.


How well would the dialogue flow if they replaced every instance of he/she or him/her with "The Warrior of Light"

Saint's Row, eh? How did that game fare with its latest attempt at a reboot to appeal to 'modern audiences'?

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Originally Posted by Troxbark

This game clearly isn't made for you then.

I'm a guy. I play a female character. The NPCs refer to me as she/her and some random players have refereed to me a she as well. Like any rational person, I don't give a shit. It's really that easy.

If you refocused the energy you spend going out of your way to be offended by something so trivial, you'd be cleaning your garage to fit your 4th or 5th super car by now.

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My brother in Hydaelyn I am a woman. I just don't want my own gender being thrown into my face in ways that make the dialogue, the literal text, unnatural and forced, when there's really no need for it to begin with.

My point with Saints Row is that the lack of gender doesn't feel forced at all (which is what you (plural) seem to be afraid of in this thread), and the dialogues roll really smoothly.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

My brother in Hydaelyn I am a woman. I just don't want my own gender being thrown into my face in ways that make the dialogue, the literal text, unnatural and forced, when there's really no need for it to begin with.

My point with Saints Row is that the lack of gender doesn't feel forced at all (which is what you (plural) seem to be afraid of in this thread), and the dialogues roll really smoothly.

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I've played a number of games that do this, and it always feels awkward, gross and lazy AF. It makes me feel disconnected from my character because the world just treats em as some amorphous blob instead of their own person. It's also not how people talk in RL, people don't go outta their way to avoid referring to you as he/ she unless you're living in some Deep Blue city and demanding they use the wrong pronouns for what they clearly see. Really makes the dialog feels wierd AF.
And again, it's lazy AF because the devs only have to record 1 line over 2.
So when it's forced like that it doesn't even feel "political", it just feels lazy bones af. "They did this to avoid recording more lines ... lazy *&^%s! "

Like I said it should be an option if you are roleplaying a non binary character but I just don’t see it as a big deal, like I’m not gonna get annoyed when people can (and do) refer to me as my avatars name, do people really think my real name is Andreas, of course it isn’t, am I gonna get annoyed that someone in VC called me Andreas, hell no I prefer you call me Andreas in VC Because that’s what my in game name is

i find this subject fascinating because not every language has gendered pronouns while others are extremely strict about it and in the end all i care about is whatever option allows me to maximize my laziness
so in this instance idgaf about gendered pronouns and idk why anyone would care if it switched to they/them. like who cares. its literally a nothingburger. the ghost of english past isn't gonna haunt you and even if it did you'd be so far down in queue because shakespeare himself didn't give a fk about whether or not singular they/them was correct or not and used it anyway.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

My brother in Hydaelyn I am a woman. I just don't want my own gender being thrown into my face in ways that make the dialogue, the literal text, unnatural and forced, when there's really no need for it to begin with.

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It frustrates me to no end how people on this side try to reverse the logic like reflecting it off a mirror. Forcefulness is committed when the subject matter is inappropriate, not the other way around. If you and/or your character is female, it will never be inappropriate to be referred to as she or her. It is simply correct. Forced is what happens when people are expected to refer to someone as he or him, when they are clearly a female. This is not the appropriate context. This is not the appropriate pronoun. If you are a female, and you get offended when someone refers to you as she or her, that is your problem.

I never played Saints Row, and to be frank I don't care. It's not even a matter of most people being conditioned to think a certain way. It's a matter of reality. It's knowing that true north exists. Anytime that the dialogue in FFXIV has referred to my character as she or her, not even one time has it felt out of place. And the reason for that is because my character is a female.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

It frustrates me to no end how people on this side try to reverse the logic like reflecting it off a mirror. Forcefulness is committed when the subject matter is inappropriate, not the other way around. If you and/or your character is female, it will never be inappropriate to be referred to as she or her. It is simply correct. Forced is what happens when people are expected to refer to someone as he or him, when they are clearly a female. This is not the appropriate context. This is not the appropriate pronoun. If you are a female, and you get offended when someone refers to you as she or her, that is your problem.

I never played Saints Row, and to be frank I don't care. It's not even a matter of most people being conditioned to think a certain way. It's a matter of reality. It's knowing that true north exists. Anytime that the dialogue in FFXIV has referred to my character as she or her, not even one time has it felt out of place. And the reason for that is because my character is a female.

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Careful, having sense and logic will get you banned by today's societal immoral emotional standards. Their feelings matter more than what's correct or your feelings

OP:
https://media.tenor.com/HiLOP76CTr0A...ugh-giggle.gif

The spirit of Titanmen is alive and well.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

My point with Saints Row is that the lack of gender doesn't feel forced at all (which is what you (plural) seem to be afraid of in this thread), and the dialogues roll really smoothly.

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Taking a story as long going and personal as FF14 and then distancing the character by suddenly using ambiguous terminology would feel forced and unnatural. The worst part is you accuse me of being afraid when you yourself seem to be afraid of gendered language.

I find it absurd that you want want to change the game for 99% of players because you and a handful of others seemingly only found in NA have hyper-focused this one tiny and trivial personal issue. Even if I agreed with you, there's no way to find justification in spending the resources for this kind of change because of how small and regional the crowd is that's complaining about it.

If they did that to me I would ignore them permantly.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

Found the 'phobe

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like for real you deserve any single bit of backslash ...
typical woke nonsense , if youre not with me and agree to my ideologies you're a bigot and racist,phobicsomething and some other bs

https://i.imgflip.com/8da51c.jpg

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Originally Posted by Troxbark

I find it absurd that you want want to change the game for 99% of players because you and a handful of others seemingly only found in NA have hyper-focused this one tiny and trivial personal issue.

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My brother in Hydaelyn, I'm sorry for not fitting the preconception you have of me once again, but I am European. Not even from the UK. In fact I speak 3 languages, 2 of which are a lot more gendered and less flexible than English in that regard, from a purely grammatical perspective. If anything, not being a native speaker highlights even more how easy it would be to simply tone down the gendering in English without making it uncomfortable for anyone. Because, as has been said here and elsewhere, the English language already accommodates for it and has for a long time, which is not the case in the 2 other languages I speak, for which there are still debates around new grammatical rules and pronouns.


More to the point, and this is not just in reply to Troxbark but to Gemina and others too, you're completely missing the argument I'm trying to make here.

You seem to be overfixated on pronouns, when, as I've explained in my first post, you can simply bypass the use of pronouns almost entirely and refer to the individual by other means, without shocking anyone, like Saints Row did (and I fail to see how the failure of the reboot invalidates anything I've said about the original series).
Even right now, in FFXIV, we have Loporrits who go by she/her, he/him and they/them, but you barely notice it, because they're mostly referred to by their names, or "furball" or whatever other characters call them in their respective quests.

What bothers me with the current gendering of the language used in-game is that, again, it is being excessively gendered in an unnecessary way. Again, it is not about pronouns. I do not hate Emmanellain for using she/her to refer to me, a woman who uses she/her pronouns. That would not make any sense.
But when was the last time you affectionately refered to a woman you know as "old girl"? I've never heard or read this saying in any other media or conversation, except maybe to an animal or a machine (which somehow makes it even worse!). What it is is that they've taken "old boy", which is a lot more commonly used to affectionately refer to men, and automatically gendered it without considering how off it sounds. This is what I mean by forced and unnatural.

I've taken "old girl" because it's the one that really struck me the most, but likewise you don't really hear "she's a woman of her word" or "Ah, [Player Name], you're just the woman I've been looking for.". Instead you'd rather say "she keeps her word" and "I've been looking for you/someone like you", or, to go back to my previous post, "you're just the person/adventurer/hero/miracle/savior/walking anomaly I've been looking for". This is because the original text is using idioms and phrases that are traditionally using "man" as an all-encompassing word (instead of person, invidual, etc), and then adding gender to it when it is used to refer to a woman, when it could simply.... not use those phrases to begin with. There are plenty of other ways to say the same thing, and it doesn't have to make any mention of gender.

Emmanellain could simply call us "friend" (maybe "old friend" is a little too much when we've barely met him) or "mate", or literally anything else that is appropriate for the situation, and still sounds natural.

The one exception to this overgendering would be "gentlewoman", because I think it's only used in the context of the Hildibrand questlines, and it fits with the tone of those stories.


Anyway, I've made my point and I don't really expect the reading comprehension in this thread to improve, no point spending more time on this.

The language in the game is definitely not excessively gendered. It's just regular English.

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Originally Posted by keichirou

like for real you deserve any single bit of backslash ...
typical woke nonsense , if youre not with me and agree to my ideologies you're a bigot and racist,phobicsomething and some other bs

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It's so ironic, isn't it?

Rather than seek acceptance of their own choices they want to force conversion to their own beliefs. It's fascist.

No one is begrudging them the option, instead they want to force their views on everyone else.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

What bothers me with the current gendering of the language used in-game is that, again, it is being excessively gendered in an unnecessary way. Again, it is not about pronouns. I do not hate Emmanellain for using she/her to refer to me, a woman who uses she/her pronouns. That would not make any sense.
But when was the last time you affectionately refered to a woman you know as "old girl"? I've never heard or read this saying in any other media or conversation, except maybe to an animal or a machine (which somehow makes it even worse!). What it is is that they've taken "old boy", which is a lot more commonly used to affectionately refer to men, and automatically gendered it without considering how off it sounds. This is what I mean by forced and unnatural.

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I have, sure it's said by upper-middle-class British boomers but so is old boy. It's not commonly used anymore and I think the reason why the male-gendered version is more common is shows like Black Adder and Dad's Army, as soon as you say old boy this image pops into my mind:
https://blackadderquotes.com/wp-cont.../Lt.George.jpg
what tbf suits Emmanellain to a tee.

Edit: I think Toff may be a better description than boomer

My wol is not a they/them he or she. MY WOL IS QUEEN UPON HIGH GODDESS OF WORCHSTERSHIRE LORDESS OF LALA YE KITTY LADY.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

My brother in Hydaelyn, I'm sorry for not fitting the preconception you have of me once again, but I am European. Not even from the UK. In fact I speak 3 languages, 2 of which are a lot more gendered and less flexible than English in that regard, from a purely grammatical perspective. If anything, not being a native speaker highlights even more how easy it would be to simply tone down the gendering in English without making it uncomfortable for anyone. Because, as has been said here and elsewhere, the English language already accommodates for it and has for a long time, which is not the case in the 2 other languages I speak, for which there are still debates around new grammatical rules and pronouns.


More to the point, and this is not just in reply to Troxbark but to Gemina and others too, you're completely missing the argument I'm trying to make here.

You seem to be overfixated on pronouns, when, as I've explained in my first post, you can simply bypass the use of pronouns almost entirely and refer to the individual by other means, without shocking anyone, like Saints Row did (and I fail to see how the failure of the reboot invalidates anything I've said about the original series).
Even right now, in FFXIV, we have Loporrits who go by she/her, he/him and they/them, but you barely notice it, because they're mostly referred to by their names, or "furball" or whatever other characters call them in their respective quests.

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There is a specific reason stated in the lore why the Loporrits are mostly referred to by name. Their names are directly related to the tasks they've been assigned, and their entire identity is based on this. There is a secondary less specific reason, and that is because they all look identical. They are still a gendered species, and they will be referred to as he/she, him/her when the context calls for it.

Normal people are not fixated on pronouns. Before all this ze/zem, rock-self BS, no one even batted an eye when pronouns were used to refer to someone. I recently saw a video where a rainbow haired hairstylist with more facial piercings than I could count asked her clients what their preferred pronouns are. Meanwhile, in normalville, when I go to my stylist she simply asks what I want done to my hair.

The fixation comes entirely from a certain set of people who think each individual person is encompassed by their own universe. They say ridiculous things like each person has their own sun, the Earth is flat, and it is perfectly ok if they identify as a fawn, a rabbit, or any race on this planet they choose. These ideals are not grounded in reality, and a lot of people, especially today's youth aren't functioning like normal adults.

I speak two languages myself. One of those is Spanish. It is one of several gendered languages that couldn't function properly if correct pronouns based on male and female are ignored. However, even in good 'ol English, pronouns still serve a specific purpose and are not always interchangeable. Let me give you an example.

If a girl's name is Alice, her name can be interchanged with a pronoun to refer to her.

Do you see what I did there? No one would say, "If a girl's name is Alice, Alice's name can be interchanged with a pronoun." It's not proper English, nor is it proper sentence structure. Also, if you read books and/or screenplays you will know how cringe it is to consistently use a person's name to refer to them when the listening party knows who is being mentioned. Names are used for specificity. Nicknames is a system already in place to take this even further and assign something unique to an individual based on personality, looks, or something else associated with their character. For some reason though, this isn't good enough for some people.

The specific name of a person can only be used if the person or people knows who they are.

I did it again there.

The WoL will be arriving in Coerthas upon the morrow. Her name is Gemina Lunarian.

And again right there.

Sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to interchange the pronoun with the person's name, but there are conditions for this. It is never unacceptable to refer to someone as the pronoun associated with their sex. It is absolutely silly to make a big deal out of this, which is what you're doing. And any game out there that hyper focuses on the elimination of pronouns is definitely a game I would never care to play. What a complete waste of time and resources. I much prefer to play a game that focuses on delivering a good story, and fantastic gameplay. That is what catches my interest.

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

No, when the person is sure about their... "cisness", you're definitly being insulting if you keep using the pronoun "they". And, please, stop using the argument of seniority to justify the legitimacy of a word. There are quite a few words that are very old and have disappeared, quite rightly, because they were no longer valid (All the lexical field relating to ethnic groups, to pick the most obvious example). An element of language is consubstantial with its era; it certainly indicates a certain use of grammar, but it also carries ideological meaning. In this respect, you can't claim that forcing the "they" on someone is neutral today - and the very old use of this pronoun won't change anything here.

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I agree with the first part of your post – using "they" is misgendering if the person is a "he" or "she" – but the rest of your post in summary is that "old-fashioned singular they has been replaced by a new use as a gender-neutral individual pronoun", which isn't the case at all. Though the person you're quoting isn't correct either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

The older use of singular they is alive and well, but it isn't a catch-all for referring to any single person and not being wrong. There's an ambiguity to it – it's used where the identity of the person being talked about is unclear or concealed or simultaneously addressing all the individuals who the message could apply to.

We use it in internet discussions because the real identity of the person we are referring to is unknown to us.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

And it would finally free us from extremely weird gendered phrases and idioms where every instance of "man" is replaced by "woman" (as in "a dog is a (wo)man's best friend"), which completely sounds out of place and reads wrong, the biggest offender to me being "old girl" by far. "Old girl" is the reason I will never like Emmanellain. I'll reconsider my opinion of him when he stops calling me that.

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The script isn't just limited to dropping "boy" or "girl" into a pre-built sentence – entire custom phrases are substituted according to the player-character's gender. They could have avoided the "old" part entirely and had him call you "my dear" if they wanted to, but they didn't go that way.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

My brother in Hydaelyn, I'm sorry for not fitting the preconception you have of me once again, but I am European. Not even from the UK. In fact I speak 3 languages, 2 of which are a lot more gendered and less flexible than English in that regard, from a purely grammatical perspective. If anything, not being a native speaker highlights even more how easy it would be to simply tone down the gendering in English without making it uncomfortable for anyone. Because, as has been said here and elsewhere, the English language already accommodates for it and has for a long time, which is not the case in the 2 other languages I speak, for which there are still debates around new grammatical rules and pronouns.


More to the point, and this is not just in reply to Troxbark but to Gemina and others too, you're completely missing the argument I'm trying to make here.

You seem to be overfixated on pronouns, when, as I've explained in my first post, you can simply bypass the use of pronouns almost entirely and refer to the individual by other means, without shocking anyone, like Saints Row did (and I fail to see how the failure of the reboot invalidates anything I've said about the original series).
Even right now, in FFXIV, we have Loporrits who go by she/her, he/him and they/them, but you barely notice it, because they're mostly referred to by their names, or "furball" or whatever other characters call them in their respective quests.

What bothers me with the current gendering of the language used in-game is that, again, it is being excessively gendered in an unnecessary way. Again, it is not about pronouns. I do not hate Emmanellain for using she/her to refer to me, a woman who uses she/her pronouns. That would not make any sense.
But when was the last time you affectionately refered to a woman you know as "old girl"? I've never heard or read this saying in any other media or conversation, except maybe to an animal or a machine (which somehow makes it even worse!). What it is is that they've taken "old boy", which is a lot more commonly used to affectionately refer to men, and automatically gendered it without considering how off it sounds. This is what I mean by forced and unnatural.

I've taken "old girl" because it's the one that really struck me the most, but likewise you don't really hear "she's a woman of her word" or "Ah, [Player Name], you're just the woman I've been looking for.". Instead you'd rather say "she keeps her word" and "I've been looking for you/someone like you", or, to go back to my previous post, "you're just the person/adventurer/hero/miracle/savior/walking anomaly I've been looking for". This is because the original text is using idioms and phrases that are traditionally using "man" as an all-encompassing word (instead of person, invidual, etc), and then adding gender to it when it is used to refer to a woman, when it could simply.... not use those phrases to begin with. There are plenty of other ways to say the same thing, and it doesn't have to make any mention of gender.

Emmanellain could simply call us "friend" (maybe "old friend" is a little too much when we've barely met him) or "mate", or literally anything else that is appropriate for the situation, and still sounds natural.

The one exception to this overgendering would be "gentlewoman", because I think it's only used in the context of the Hildibrand questlines, and it fits with the tone of those stories.


Anyway, I've made my point and I don't really expect the reading comprehension in this thread to improve, no point spending more time on this.

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Originally Posted by Mosha

I have, sure it's said by upper-middle-class British boomers but so is old boy. It's not commonly used anymore and I think the reason why the male-gendered version is more common is shows like Black Adder and Dad's Army, as soon as you say old boy this image pops into my mind:
https://blackadderquotes.com/wp-cont.../Lt.George.jpg
what tbf suits Emmanellain to a tee.

Edit: I think Toff may be a better description than boomer

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Didn't expect to see Black Adder. Warms my heart xD
Also agree. 'Old boy' feels sorta affectionate regardless of gender. It's sorta like the colloquial 'girl, tell the tea'. I use this with both genders. It's the same thing with addressing high ranking women as "Sir" that you see a lot in sci fi or even Ser in Fantasy. I feel as if these sort of terms are less gender focused and more rooted in nuance of what these words are supposed to get across.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

Found the 'phobe

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Typically your phone cuz you're baiting a question in hopes of getting people to disagree with you and call them a name that for some reason the modern left in Western culture thinks is an insult but when you call everybody who disagrees with you that it kind of loses it's meaning. But we all know that Japan / Eastern culture doesn't give a shit about what's going on in the West and they don't play to the pronoun games that Western culture has adopted so this question is ignorance or a troll

make me president and bait threads will be a criminal offense.

FYI: Because the singular "they" is singular (referring to one person), you need to phrase your sentences accordingly.

"They is playing Final Fantasy XIV."
"Aidyn Starlight is queuing for the party and they is a Dancer."

Replace "they" with he/she in the above sentences and you will see that these examples are grammatically correct.

https://media1.tenor.com/m/qXBO-dDP5...-run-funny.gif

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

https://media1.tenor.com/m/qXBO-dDP5...-run-funny.gif

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Where do you find these S tier gifs?