It's a little too high-pitched to be truely gender-neutral, probably because Raven is obviously a girl. If it were a little lower it could work though.
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:smallbiggrin:Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobias Funke, from the "Man Inside Me"
Spivak? A pretentious futurist expression that make people sound like they're speaking bad Cockney.
"Ey's a good fella, ain't ey? Ah, ey loves em, ey does. Why, ey's a chiminey sweep, ey is. And a fine one at that, ain't ey?"
Why not just use the singular they? Yes, it's technically incorrect grammar, however, it's still common usage in spoken English when referring to a non-gender or unidentified gender object.
I imagine French OOTS fans must boggle when discussing Vaarsuvius.
Though I do remember reading a sci-fi/comedy novel once which raised a good point - if we ever discovered an alien race neither male nor female, "it" would be the only acceptable English pronoun, as "he" or "she" would be deeply insulting.
I try to use strudture my sentences so that I do not use a pronoun to refer to V. Notice in my previous sentence I just used an abbrivation for Varsuvius's name instead of a pronoun.
If I absolutely must use a pronoun then I use the female pronouns because I am in the V's a girl camp.
Meh, I'll stick to her correct gender pronoun.
I like it. Plenty of linguists approve of singular they, as well as the Canadian Dept. of Justice. (I'm from the USA, so I am glad to be guided by our more civilized neighbors to the north.)
I see V as male. I use he when referring to him... sometimes I'll alternate he and she, but usually just for comic effect.
It doesn't bother me when people refer to V as female, but it really annoys me when people use the idiotic politically correct pronouns to refer to V.
Political correctness has a tendency to foster resentment towards an entire group because one member demands you use one word instead of another, often when you meant no offense. In these scenerios, I tend to show the person what I would've said if I DID intend to insult them...
V's gender can only be found by a cat. But until the cat dies or lives, we will never know.
All in all, methinks we will never know, even after the end of the comic, if such a thing ever happens.
That being stated, is it truly important what pronoun or mix of pronouns are being used? While it has been stated as confusing, I, for one, have never been confused who we were reading about when I saw a mixed pronoun. When we mix with other Schrödinger elves, then things might get a bit confusing... but we are smart, we will figure something to call theö.
I've always thought of V as a guy, since Roy called him V-Man I've never thought of him as anything else, so I just use masculine pronouns. I agree that hir and such look silly. The one that drives me nuts (or would, if this was SRS BUSINESS, but it's not, so it just vaguely annoys me) is "shi", which is not at all a combination of "she" and "he".
FWIW, I use "ve" or "vir" because I've found it comes in handy for scenes with more than one gender-ambiguous elf in them. Kyrie is "ke" or "kir", V's mentor would be "ae" or "aem", etc. That way, you can immediately tell which elf a given pronoun is referring to.
I either use the one that's less confusing (the opposite of any other characters I'm also talking about) or use she.
However, I'm ashamed to admit I sometimes type "hir" without thinking about it. Someone shoot me.
I tend not to talk about V that much, but when I do, it's always "she." I always think of her as female. Heck, I didn't even know she was supposed to be ambiguously gendered until the Azure City arc. How I missed all the obvious clues, I have no idea.
I like to use she for a couple reasons. One she is the correct pronoun. Two when discussing something I can use pronouns more often. For example of team evil and team good we have in the female column: Haley, V and Tsukiko. In the male column we have: Redcloak, X, Durkon, Elan, Roy, and Belkar. Makes my life easier.
P.S. I would also like to point out we don't really need pronouns for V. We can call V "V" when a pronoun like he or she is called for and "V's" when her or his is needed.:smallsmile:
Although I instinctively use the masculine with V, I have a couple of random thoughts:
Random thought 1: :durkon: has no trouble with pronouns for V because his accent clips the first consonant sound anyway! (most of the time)
Proposition 1: Everyone on the forums adopts written Dwarvish accents.
Proposition 2: Fayd is an idiot. :-P
Random thought 2: Perhaps elves DON'T HAVE the traditional 2 genders.
What? I said it was random!
I'm not bothered by whatever pronouns people choose to use. Perhaps it's because I'm not a native English speaker, but there's nothing that sounds inherently right or wrong, be it he, she, s/he, he or she, zie, hir, they, em, ey, eir, or whatever people can think of, and I'm not offended at all when people suggest new usages. The only thing that bothers me a little, is all the contempt and hostility here against 'the politically correct' :smallfrown:, but I guess some people will always have a problem when others don't think exactly like them.
But the people who use 'he' or 'she' don't normally object when others use "she, zie, hir, they, em, ey, eir, or whatever"...well if they do it's usually only because they believe V is a 'he' or 'she'.
It was the OP, who said "I've seen all kinds of nonstandard pronouns used to refer to Vaarsuvius. Stuff like "Hir" "Vim/Vis" and "Shim". These stopgap pronouns are awkward, confusing and ugly. We should be using Spivak pronouns..."
It's the OP who had a problem with the usage of others. It was the OP who suggested the conformity of the nonconformist. The suggestion was phrased mildly but the suggestion itself carried its own "hostility", as you call it. It's no surprise people responded the way they did.
I know not what [grammar] course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty [to use the pronoun as I see fit] or give me death [of intelligent discourse]!
I refer to her as she because, like Blue Ghost and PId6, that's how I thought of her before I realized it was supposed to be ambiguous. I don't find the esoteric collection of pronouns used at all annoying; indeed I'm always amused to find a new one. I had just assumed that a poster using such a pronoun was (like, I suspect, the author) undecided as to whether V was male or female. And I assumed that people who used 'he' assumed that V was a male.
Reading this thread, it appears these assumptions were wrong; people's pronouns sometimes don't reflect their view of V's gender (it is late and I'm too tired to go find quotes, but I noted a couple of examples in this thread). It seems that someone might use 'he' to reflect a neutral rather than a male gender, while another might use a neutral pronoun for political correctness (or, more generously, out of respect for the intended ambiguity of the character), despite their own firm view that, say, V is female. Though I suspect that anyone who uses the female pronoun does actually think V is female.
I agree with Hamster that it doesn't really matter what pronoun is used, with the proviso that clarity is maintained. I've not yet seen a case where it isn't.
Thank god for this thread.
Hir and ze and stuff are nonsense and using them is awful.
Any other pronoun is fine, and alternating them is fine. "V" is also an excellent alternative (easier to type, easy to say, and not a pronoun but a nickname anyway).
I always used "she," but recently I find myself using "he." I'm not sure why.