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

[NanaWiloh]

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.

[Gemina]

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.

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.

[Iscah]

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.

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.

[Iscah]

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.

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.

[VirusOnline]

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.

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:

what tbf suits Emmanellain to a tee.

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

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.

[Mcg55ss]

Found the 'phobe

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

[4clubbedace]

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

[caffe_macchiato]

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.

[DiaDeem]

[LynxDubh]

Where do you find these S tier gifs?