Gender Changing - idea #3906

Samp

Hey y'all! I wrote an idea (#3906) suggesting that reincarnation give an option for changing gender as well.

Idea #3906 Section: unassigned Support: 1
2014/06/04 07:20:50: As reincarnation helps players to act on hindsight, and to
respond to changes in mechanics, but does not actively rival the Gem of
Transmutation it would be great to see changing genders included-- REINCARNATE
INTO . The rarity of reincarnation over transmutation
would offer a mechanism to change genders without novelty or humor, and it would
serve as a non-flashy and simple way to adjust a character to match someone's
gameplay.

What do y'all think about this?

Odds are there aren't too many other transgender people that play this game, but as there are already two novelty mechanisms for changing gender (Gem of Transmutation/Hematurgy) I think it's really important to add a method of changing gender as part of the hindsight/grace period/game change/customer service that reincarnation is meant to cover- something that isn't exclusively for grins or a joke. As part of Aetolia's policy has always included a firm stance against sexism and homophobia, I'd be really excited to see a brief nod to its trans players too! As it currently stands, changing gender seems non-offensive practice in this game, but since it's only built in in inaccessible/humorous ways I think it could be expanded.

Moirean

There's a pill for that.

Samp

Yikes! So, I'm all for a back-and-forth discussion, but I'm not into people making jokes about gender/sex changes ESPECIALLY in the context of me bringing up how I think relegating gender/sex change to humor is dubious. Humble request: Please don't make fun of me this way, it's insulting.

EDIT: THIS POST CONTAINS ALL MY SHAME, SEE NEXT COMMENT

Serrice

There's actually a pill for that. It's an one-time use artifact that swaps your gender. I think it's 150 cr.

Samp

lolol of course there is. Thanks!

All the same, it's very specifically the reincarnation one I'm after?? It's good to know I'm out of touch and that Moirean has a borderline nasty PM from me she can laugh at for all eternity (such fate that my signature would say "PS sorry for all the years of trolling and raging. I'm a grown-up and much better now") but it still maintains this as a thing about novelty/cost whereas changing race and statpacks isn't. I just don't agree with the disconnect there I suppose!

Serrice

I agree that just because a method exists, doesn't mean others shouldn't.

I think it's a cool idea and I'd like to see it implemented and folded into the current reincarnation artifacts.

Riluo

Funny little fact, riluo is intersex and has been since I made him. I wanted to do it to see how people would react to a character that is birthed male but has female attributes, yet is still essentially male. I did this because I wanted to play a gender fluid character for a change as it adds a lot challenges for rp.

More recently it has been more difficult to pick it as he is a wraith and is bound in shadow and robes to aid in maintaining his physical form.

Moirean

It already is. The gem lets you TRANSMUTE GENDER (see my Q&MQ post about trying it out).

Serrice

I have one. I think the OP means incorporating gender switch into reincarnation. So for example, REINCARNATE INTO MALE STALWART AZUDIM. And then this would apply to the free reincarnations you get and the Lleisan necklace. I assume if this were implemented, the pill would simply be removed and the additional gender transmute function of the gem removed.

Moirean

That seems fair enough. TBH, I dunno why we can't have a non-gender option, as well. It seems like it would fit really well with Idreth, as well as with certain character concepts. For example, I tried to do the whole girl-disguised-as-a-boy thing a while back and it was a pretty entertaining, although ultimately far too exhausting, experiment to not use any gendered pronouns.

Samp

I like the non-gendered option as well! +1! While we're at it, why even require something that costs credits or a reincarnation for changing pronouns?

I'm not quite decided on any of the artifact powers going away. If reincarnation were updated then the situation would clean up neatly because there's already a 100cr artifact- Crystal of Rebirth- that does it. I think the pill is pretty boring and an unimaginative/cheap reference to the real world. The Gem and Crystal are both 10 times cooler as items. However it happened, the pill also shows Aetolia's priorities that I don't think are useful or helpful: For 150cr you can change your character's pronouns and gendered titles, but for 100cr you can change all of your characters stats and racial skills. One of these is about immersion and RP, the other is about quantifiable mechanics and gameplay.

Damariel

Speaking as someone who loves breaking the gender binary in half...

The issue with the non-gendered pronoun idea (we've actually given it some consideration) is that the conventional English gender-neutral pronoun currently in use is 'they'. While this is an ideal solution, it would result in verb disagreement (at least, in the dialect of English Aetolia uses) in innumerable messages (i.e. "Moirean cries aloud, and they is..."). While possible, such a project is currently beyond our time and resources. Many other singular-conjugating pronouns in use, such as 'ze', suffer from a lack of standardization. We've considered 'one', i.e. 'Damariel punches thing with One's fist', but that's a bit strange and it's excessively formal and stuffy in American English.

So our challenge to you is this - if you can come up with a set of gender-neutral pronouns that have some kind of convention to them, would agree with the singular conjugations used by our skill messages, and wouldn't seem too out of place, we would definitely consider implementing them.

Lim

I'd love the idea for a third gender. Though Damariel brings up a pretty good point of practicality.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect too in how you can change your entire race with reincarnation, but have to pay an extra 150cr to switch genders. While race is purely (or mostly, if you consider raceskills) an RP mechanic, why should gender be any different? It would be a different matter if we're comparing the costs of changing statpack v.s. race/gender.

I've ideasupport'dthis idea. Good luck

Moirean

It.

Eleanor

'It' tends to get used as a derogatory thing, though. I would bet my bottom dollar you've seen people chatting OOC about someone they don't like and calling them "it".

That said, I'd find silly "Shim" and "Hir" pronouns just as unpalatable.

Moirean

Damariel said:

Speaking as someone who loves breaking the gender binary in half...

The issue with the non-gendered pronoun idea (we've actually given it some consideration) is that the conventional English gender-neutral pronoun currently in use is 'they'. While this is an ideal solution, it would result in verb disagreement (at least, in the dialect of English Aetolia uses) in innumerable messages (i.e. "Moirean cries aloud, and they is..."). While possible, such a project is currently beyond our time and resources. Many other singular-conjugating pronouns in use, such as 'ze', suffer from a lack of standardization. We've considered 'one', i.e. 'Damariel punches thing with One's fist', but that's a bit strange and it's excessively formal and stuffy in American English.

So our challenge to you is this - if you can come up with a set of gender-neutral pronouns that have some kind of convention to them, would agree with the singular conjugations used by our skill messages, and wouldn't seem too out of place, we would definitely consider implementing them.

It's more traditional to refer to he when the gender is unknown, as English doesn't have a neutral. Parliament passed an act about it back in the 1850s. It got updated a few decades ago and now also includes the counter (ie general "she" includes males) because people were being jerkfaces and going "OH IT ONLY SAYS HE THAT MEANS NO GIRLS ALLOWED LOLOL!" They is a stylistic choice and the manuals of style tend to waffle on or sidestep it. I have no idea what the cultural norm is for people who identify as asexual, but this would be more of a fantasy/sci-fi thing, I guess, so it probably would be fine to just invent a new pronoun.

Moirean

Eleanor said:

'It' tends to get used as a derogatory thing, though. I would bet my bottom dollar you've seen people chatting OOC about someone they don't like and calling them "it".

That said, I'd find silly "Shim" and "Hir" pronouns just as unpalatable.

I thought that at first, but then I thought "I bet people playing as it would feel special snowflakey and even cooler than normal he/she". Either way, it'd probably create an inequity.

Samp

There's absolutely no comparison between shim and hir. Shim is a slur to dehumanize trans women, plain and simple. Ze/hir pronouns are used by trans people who identify them. One is verbal assault, the other is agency and choice. I agree that "it" can be used in derogatory ways, and that I see it more often to belittle trans people than I see trans people identifying with it. That said, there really isn't a perfect solution.

Since there is always a critique of non-gendered/non-binary pronouns, I think we'd be setting our hopes high to solve this problem here. So many people are working on this conversation and idea right now, and it might be better to pick something that is the most sort-of effective and go with it. With they/them/their off the list, the peculiar nature of it as a pronoun, and an obvious need to steer clear of slurs; ze/hir/hirself strikes me as the most standardized and accessible. While it is foreign to many people, it has way more users than bun pronouns and some of the other less "standardized" pronouns. I don't think it's better because it's more mainstream necessarily; it seems like the easiest stepping stone and there is already a lot of information available to the IRE player base if they just hop on Google.

@moirean suggesting we invent new pronouns- YES! I'm really into the idea of using the fact that Aetolia is a game in a fantasy world to everyone's advantage. It seems very simple to tie together a need for non-binary pronouns but also to come up with something suited to the game. Also, on further thought, I'm not super into the notion that any trans person is a special snowflake outside of their own personal lives. IMO, those lines of thought and reasoning exist to rally each other, boost esteem, etc. and carry no institutional or legitimate weight against folks using binary pronouns. If everyone thinks "it" pronouns are super rad and wants to use them, why not?

Samp

Lim said:

I've ideasupport'dthis idea. Good luck

Thank you so much! If other people wanted to IDEASUPPORT 3906 I'd be oh so happy!

Omei

Riluo said:

Funny little fact, riluo is intersex and has been since I made him. I wanted to do it to see how people would react to a character that is birthed male but has female attributes, yet is still essentially male. I did this because I wanted to play a gender fluid character for a change as it adds a lot challenges for rp.

More recently it has been more difficult to pick it as he is a wraith and is bound in shadow and robes to aid in maintaining his physical form.

Beneath his cold, dark exterior and his malignant Death's spectre robes, Riluo's really a sensitive woman wanting to be loved.

Ishin

I would almost argue that the lack of a label is better than having a label, but I can understand the desire of wanting a label too. I'm sure a lot of you can remember me back in my hate-filled days, but I like to think I'm more of a 'Just do whatever makes you happy.' these days kind of guy.

If you want one and it makes you happy, hey. Go for it. Hope it works out for you, Samp.

Aryanne

I'm on the 'it' bandwagon

I know people get all touchy about 'it', because they interpret the gender-neutral pronoun as dehumanizing, but that is only because we aren't using it regularly in a for-humans-gender-neutral way already.

While it makes practical sense to have more options out there for individual people, there are soooooo many identities that people take up, that making a new pronoun-system-option for every identification would leave us with a crazy number of pronouns in the end, and that simply can't be practical, nor realistic for talking to anyone and trying not to offend them. Not unless our awesome programmers wants to spend several thousands of hours* just to make sure they don't leave anyone out.

'It' is simple, singular, and can be attributed to anyone- including folks who might go by 'he' or 'she' anyway, but prefer to be anonymous until met up close It implies no specific identification and is only dehumanizing if we continue not using it to regularly describe humans.

*or whatever appropriate length of time to make it apply to soon(tm) completion

Areka

I would make Areka rock 'it' in a heartbeat. Though what I -really- want is a namechange artifact so that when she rocks Manreka, her name becomse Arek since the a suffix in Trollish means fems.

Samp

Ishin said:

I would almost argue that the lack of a label is better than having a label, but I can understand the desire of wanting a label too. I'm sure a lot of you can remember me back in my hate-filled days, but I like to think I'm more of a 'Just do whatever makes you happy.' these days kind of guy.

If you want one and it makes you happy, hey. Go for it. Hope it works out for you, Samp.

I'm not sure how to respond here? First, thanks I guess! Second, I don't want to suggest that changing a character's gender should or does have any of the implications IC that come from changing gender in the real world. We can change race and stats (body physique/mental abilities) on the fly, so Aetolia historically isn't creating mechanics that are invested in strict adherence to how a character's body started. If Aetolia as a universe is beyond "problems" with gender, then changing from F->M or M->Neutral or whatever should be equally innocuous and mundane as race/stat changes. At this point, changing gender isn't cohesive with the other character changes. I mention real world implications because (1) that's the context in which there might be a gameplay mechanic that is specifically more noticeable to trans, intersex, queer, LGB, etc folks and (2) it shows a lack of unified thought. I can afford the 150CR to change all the genders of all my characters indefinitely, so this experience isn't coming just from "Well I transitioned in RL, so now all of my characters must as well!" :P

Dear "it" supporters: Any of y'all interested in brainstorming an alternative set of gender-neutral pronouns that are exclusive to Aetolia and a little more interesting than it? It doesn't address the OP so it's pretty damn off-topic, but if we can have our cake and eat it too then I think this is a really exciting opportunity!

Angwe

What's wrong with they/them/their?

Omei

$+(he$) springs from $=(his$) mount, dhurive at the ready.

"He springs from his mount, dhurive at the ready."

"She springs from her mount, dhurive at the ready."

"They springs from their mount, dhurive at the ready."

It would, technically, be feasible to make a little function to drop the "s" off of words or make them conform to other grammatical rules, but at the end of the day that means someone is going to spend the next month re-writing messages.

Amberlea

^And our trigger(s)?\! Our precious trigger(s)?\!$

Samp

Seeing they is would hurt me way more than they springs, both are pretty awful and the stopgap of dropping an s wouldn't fix half the grammatical mistakes that would pop up. A rough patch over seems like Rapture SOP but who actually likes that? @Amberlea‌ I'd love to see something that required an overhaul of systems. The combat is so much more advanced than it was 12 years ago, and now it's a real feat to make a system from the ground up. I'd love it if the old folks had to do a bunch of work to keep it polished!

Areka

I would prefer it to they since the latter becomes messy with plurality.

Moirean

Samp said:

@Amberlea‌ I'd love to see something that required an overhaul of systems. The combat is so much more advanced than it was 12 years ago, and now it's a real feat to make a system from the ground up. I'd love it if the old folks had to do a bunch of work to keep it polished!

PKers are always, constantly updating stuff and coding to stay in fighting shape. Nobody just writes stuff and is just done for years, there are always updates, especially since there are always new things coming out. Mandating even more coding work for fighters is just tiring and unnecessary.

Jensen

You go away from the game for a couple of months and you're not top notch when you come back.