Referring to V

[ABB]

All this bit about how to refer to V is driving me nuts. Some people use "S/He" and other people use "Hir", etc.

From now on I'm referring to V as "it", since that's a recognized genderless term...

[Pulsecode]

Thanks for that.

Why not call V "V"? Pronouns are are really just a form of contraction, after all, and "V" is shorter than he, she OR it.

[ref]

And Belkar is shorter than V :smallbiggrin: hehehe...

[Laurentio]

If you are proposing a convention, I disagree. "V" is too short, and sometimes it's skipped in reading. I'd prefer something like "Vaar", otherwise better stick to the proper (sed long) name.

If it was just to let us know, ok. I refer to Vaarsavius as "he", as I'm pretty sure that he is male. No conclusive proof.

Laurentio

[pankake]

No offense to the lady readers out here, but somewhere upon my past I came across a line that I will attemt to recreate here

"You may notice we never say 'she' in this book, and this is not because that there are no female players of this game; nor is this game any means of a sexual preffrence, however we use 'he' as a nutered pronoun, because it's easier to type"

I've used this in a lot of my writing, when I'm not sure of a charater's gender I've simply refered to them as he rather than it. Considering none of my other choices are him/her he/she or the unsightly 'it' I'd rather just stick for the oversimplification of the title and use the unfortunatly nutered pronoun of 'he/him'.

[Chronos]

Personally, I prefer the Spivak pronouns, and thus refer to Vaarsuvius as "e", or variants:
Vaarsuvius fought effectively when e enlarged the soldiers at the breach.
Es spells helped to slow the advance of the hobgoblins.
E was very upset at New Year's when Belkar kissed em.

And so on. They're not associated with any gender, but they're close enough to the existing English third-person pronouns that the reader can easily tell what they mean, and they fit well in the flow of conversation.


pankake, you're probably remembering that from the 2nd edition D&D rulebooks. Or at least, they did include a disclaimer to that effect.

[Emperor Demonking]

He, he is the unknown gender.

[Mauve Shirt]

I just use "he" because I think of V as male. Wanna fight about it? :smallwink:

[Raylin]

I remember reading that disclaimer. Haven't they tended to use 'she' to refer to the player now? Or is that something else?

I'd just prefer if everyone picked whichever they think Vaarsuvius is, and stuck with it. I always refer to him as 'he', because I consider him to be male.

[Chronos]

In the current rulebooks, both pronouns are used. Most of the time, when the books use a pronoun, it's in reference to a character, in which case they use the one appropriate to the sample character of that class. So they might say, for instance, "A rogue can use her Search skill to find traps of DC greater than 20", since Lidda is female, but "A ranger gains a bonus to damage against his favored enemies", since Sovelis is male. When not referring to characters, I think they just pick randomly each time.


I'd just prefer if everyone picked whichever they think Vaarsuvius is, and stuck with it. I always refer to him as 'he', because I consider him to be male.And I think Vaarsuvius is True Neutral in gender, so I refer to em as 'e'.

[David Argall]

pankake, you're probably remembering that from the 2nd edition D&D rulebooks. Or at least, they did include a disclaimer to that effect.

I can't recall how far it goes back, but even in 2nd ed days, there was a determination to put an absurdly high number of female characters into material in order to achieve a mechanical equality.

[Animefunkmaster]

And Belkar is shorter than V :smallbiggrin: hehehe...

I agree with this post.

[The Extinguisher]

While the less used definiton, 'he' also functions as English's gender neutral pronoun.

So he is correct, as we don't know what gender.

[UglyPanda]

Possible replacements:
V, Va, Ve, Vhe, Vaar, Vas, Elf, It

I'd personally just stick with V for describing Vaarsuvius. It doesn't require you to come up with new English terms that nobody else would understand.

[Green-Shirt Q]

I usually say Vhe. Although I haven't recently because most people get confused, so alternativly I say :vaarsuvius:.

[Fiery Diamond]

And I use "she" because I think V is female. So there.

[Jheral]

I'll likely use 'he' to describe V until proven otherwise, though I suppose the reason for that is less that I'm certain about V's gender and more due to the fact that I've been reading a certain comic book by Alan Moore... :smallsmile:

[hamishspence]

Using V as a pronoun might sound a litle odd, but it should be hard to misunderstand who you are talking about. As in:
"For V's a jolly good fellow" and
"I am V Who Must Be Obeyed"

[Morgan Wick]

I don't care what you use as long as it's not a stupid neologism like "hir" or "e". (Well, the latter is okay if you're imitating Durkon's speech, of course.)

[teratorn]

Myself I prefer s/h/it, it covers all possibilities.

[Chazzie]

Myself I prefer s/h/it, it covers all possibilities.

And makes me laugh immaturely to boot. =P

I think of V as a male, so I refer to him as such.

But I have seen a couple people saying "Vself", which I thought was a good idea. Or maybe change that to Varself? Then you can just use His, her's, and Var's.

[DreadSpoon]

Using V as a pronoun might sound a litle odd

Well, it certainly would be, given as how it is not a pronoun, but a regular noun. Using "V" where you'd use "he" does not make "V" a pronoun; it just means that you're not using a pronoun any more.

And personally, anyone who gets offended at the use of "he" as the unmarked pronoun -- which is exactly what it is in English, as well as most other languages -- has their head lodged way too far up some cheap politician's butt. I'd just love to see some of those morons go live in any of the hundred or more countries whose primary language makes extensive use of gender.

People who say "hir" can't grasp basic English grammar. People who use "they" when referring to a known entity also are incapable of grasping basic English grammar. People who use "she" as the unmarked pronoun are afraid that they'll never be liked if they dare possibly somehow imply that they might not think women are inherently perfect beings (because treating women as the superior gender makes up for all the men who think women are inferior, clearly).

If you feel V is some gender, refer to him that way. If you're unsure, the only correct way to refer to him in English is as "he." Not "hir" (which is not a real word), not "they" (which is indeterminate, or non-specific), not "she" (which is explicitly female), not "it" (which is explicitly neater, which is not the same as unmarked or unknown), and not "one" (which, like "they," is also indeterminate).

This is not a complicated subject matter, people. If you have to make a conscious effort to break the speech patterns you had already learned as a young child in order to make yourself feel clever, you're doing something stupid.

[David Argall]

There is no need to make a fuss on the subject, in any direction. So "hir" is not accepted practice in some circles? It is hardly confusing, and may well be superior to the "correct" standard. It's a compromise that makes no logical sense? So? Los Angeles is often called L.A. because of an ancient dispute about how to pronounce the name.

[Devils_Advocate]

So, wait a minute. Let me get this straight. "She" is the female pronoun, "it" is the neuter pronoun, "he" is the generic, gender-neutral pronoun, and there is no male pronoun? So, if, for example, a party of adventurers is walking down a corridor, and some flying whatever zips through too fast to see and slices someone's head clean off, and no one knows if this was done by a trap or a monster or a person or what, they would properly use the word "he" to refer to whatever did it? After they stopped screaming, I mean?

Maybe that's the stance taken by some grammar textbook, but if so, the book is horribly outdated, because that is not how pronouns are normally used by modern English speakers. It's not uncommon to use "it" to refer to a male or female animal, or even a human infant, especially when its sex is unknown.

Look. Most English speakers will normally assume that "he" refers to a male, that "she" refers to a female, that "they" refers to more than one person or someone whose identity is unknown, and that "it" does not refer to a person. "He or she" is unwieldy and doesn't even cover anyone who is neither male nor female. Weird nouveau alternate gender-neutral pronouns will confuse a a lot of people, as they haven't heard (of) them before. It doesn't help that there are several sets of these; no single set has been established as the standard, so far as I know. In short, there is no good solution to this problem.

Personally, I favor the use of "it" as the fully generic pronoun, and the use of "thing" as the fully generic noun, for that matter.

When referring to Vaarsuvius in particular, I use tend to use "Vaarsuvius" where I would normally use a name ('cuz it is V's actual name, though forumites hardly ever bother to type the whole thing out), and "V" where I would normally use a pronoun.

(It's not "too short"; people already use it to refer to V all the time, it's one letter shorter than "he" or "it", and it stands out because it's a capital letter. WTF? I don't mean that as a criticism of Laurentio, really; I'm just expressing surprise. What an odd thing to say.)

[Chronos]

Not "hir" (which is not a real word)In what possible way is "hir" not a real word? Sure, it's not a very commonly-used word, but then, neither is, say, "grauple" (in fact, "hir" is over a hundred times more common, according to Google). If people use a spoken or written symbol to convey some concept, and other people understand from the symbol what concept is meant, then that symbol is a perfectly real and cromulent word.

[Sgeo]

Personally, I prefer the Spivak pronouns, and thus refer to Vaarsuvius as "e", or variants:
Vaarsuvius fought effectively when e enlarged the soldiers at the breach.
Es spells helped to slow the advance of the hobgoblins.


I know I'm resurrecting a dead thread, but I think the proper Spivak is
"eir", not "es". Except for "e", you use "their" or whatever plural like "they", and drop the "th". Personally, I also like Spivak, it's what's used in Agora Nomic.

[Optimystik]

Holy necromancy batman!

Come on, there's GOT to be a better way to increase your post count.

[Kaytara]

Personally I like the look of 've'. It doesn't stand out like the 'V' and is more or less structured like a pronoun. It's a lot more difficult to come up with a substitute for 'his' and 'her', though.

Honestly, I'm curious to see if anyone will ever try translating OotS to something like Russian. XD I mean, in Russian it's pretty much impossible to speak in a gender-neutral way at all. Even in first person, when talking about yourself, the verb still shows what gender you are, or anyone you're talking about is. It would be impossible to rewrite V's lines, not to mention the lines about V, in Russian.

[Lowkey]

Grammatically speaking you are supposed to use the male pronoun to refer to anything of indeterminate sex. Ships are the exception to this by tradition, being referred to as female.

[Optimystik]

Honestly, I'm curious to see if anyone will ever try translating OotS to something like Russian. XD I mean, in Russian it's pretty much impossible to speak in a gender-neutral way at all. Even in first person, when talking about yourself, the verb still shows what gender you are, or anyone you're talking about is. It would be impossible to rewrite V's lines, not to mention the lines about V, in Russian.

The Giant could write all of V's lines using masculine Russian, and it still wouldn't prove anything conclusive. Certainly it wouldn't stop the raging debate :smallwink:

[Kaytara]

The Giant could write all of V's lines using masculine Russian, and it still wouldn't prove anything conclusive. Certainly it wouldn't stop the raging debate :smallwink:

It'd make things a lot more odd, though, since that would mean that Vaarsuvius refers to veself as being masculine... and having a male gender identity. Which, yes, STILL doesn't prove V's anatomical gender, but come on...

[evileeyore]

All this bit about how to refer to V is driving me nuts. Some people use "S/He" and other people use "Hir", etc.

From now on I'm referring to V as "it", since that's a recognized genderless term...

One could always use Vaarsuvius' proper name.

[hamishspence]

all the time? might lead to overly verbose speech.

My opinion is that when Vaarsuvius uses Vaarsuvius's spells on Vaasuvius's self, they always work well for Vaarsuvius.

Just a sample sentence.

Of course, verbosity could be an interesting homage to Vaasuvius. :smallbiggrin:

[Optimystik]

It'd make things a lot more odd, though, since that would mean that Vaarsuvius refers to veself as being masculine... and having a male gender identity. Which, yes, STILL doesn't prove V's anatomical gender, but come on...

Ah, but would V be doing it because he self-identifies as masculine, or because he too is aware of the gender neutrality of masculine pronouns? That is the question! :smallwink:

[Sgeo]

Holy necromancy batman!

Come on, there's GOT to be a better way to increase your post count.

Wasn't trying to increase my post count. The reason I posted in this thread is because I searched for "Spivak" after seeing someone use "Hir", and saw a grave lack of understanding of what Spivak is..

[Assassin89]

Well Irregular webcomic has solved a similar problem, although it was the issue of whether a clearly female elf is a man or a woman based on gender. (http://irregularwebcomic.net/1964.html) If V utters the line "we must accept our punishment like men," it could lead to humor as V is forced to admit true gender or just say "I'm an elf, you twits"

[Greep]

Grammatically speaking you are supposed to use the male pronoun to refer to anything of indeterminate sex. Ships are the exception to this by tradition, being referred to as female.

and countries (except germans I think who refer to it as the fatherland) and a couple of other things too.

Wait... this is terrible, so in the unknown sex territory basically women ARE objects? >.>