Envy Gender Question and Holiday Love Meme

[bay_alexison]

For those that had read/wrote fic that features Envy, how you go by referring that character? In my help_japan fic I have Envy as one of the characters in it and wondering which pronoun I should use-- he, she, or it. At the moment I'm using "it" because Envy doesn't seemed to have a clear gender, but I'm afraid calling Envy "it" might be weird. So yeah, want to hear your guys' thoughts on that!

In other news, there's a holiday love meme going on that I stole from aamalie. If any of you have something nice to say to me, comment on my thread here! Even if there are those of you who just friended me recently and don't know me well yet I'm still cool with you posting. *wonders if anyone will see this*

Edit: Thanks Jax for mentioning the link wasn't working at first. @_@ All that should be fixed now, though!

Comments

[alasse-mirimiel.livejournal.com]

I never thought of Envy as female...

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't really think Envy is female either for some reason. Only thing is Envy can change to both male and female, hence I'm a bit unclear which pronoun to refer to Envy.

[alasse-mirimiel.livejournal.com]

I think he is the best choice, even if he is an it.

[aztecravemonkey.livejournal.com]

The link to the holiday love meme doesn't work. :(

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Woops! Should have checked before I posted it, LOL. LJ can be funky sometimes. Okay, it should work now!

[aztecravemonkey.livejournal.com]

\o/

I'll respond to it when it won't be totally obvious that it's me posting. XD

[r-kimono.livejournal.com]

I've only written the one fic with Envy (which you've read), but I had the same issue. I ended up using "he" with a disclaimer; there were some (possibly useful) comments on it, here.

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember that story (and made the banner for it, LOL). I considered using "he" just to make things easier. I did have to use "he" when Envy was changed into male though, haha.

[ladynorbert.livejournal.com]

In the canon they tend to refer to Envy as 'he,' even though Arakawa says that Envy hirself has no idea what gender hir is. You could always use "hir," which I learned from a friend who writes a lot of differently-gendered characters (including one who can be both male and female).

[bay115.livejournal.com]

I think I heard of "hir" before, but yeah as mentioned it might be slightly weird if I used that pronoun as not everyone is familiar with it.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

often I DO use it for Envy. Otherwise I use male unless of course Envy is pretending to be a woman

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Pretty much only time I'll use "she" is if Envy change to female too. Not sure if Envy will be female in my help_japan fic, but we'll see. XD

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that Envy seems super-gender-ambiguous - plus s/he is a shapeshifter who can be any gender or shape s/he likes.

'It' is one obviously possibility, but it does raise another problem - if you were talking about a real person who was intersex or genderqueer, you really really wouldn't want to call them 'it'. Luckily, there are lots of other options. As ladynorbert says, there's always 'hir' - that's still quite a theory-driven term that's unfamiliar to many, but you could experiment with it in a few passages, send to betas, etc. and if it's not working, you can use 'search and replace' to swap it out very easily.

Another alternative is singular 'they', which is widely used in common English in situations where we're describing a stranger's actions and don't know their gender (e.g. "another driver just nearly crashed their car into mine. I have no idea what they thought they were doing!"). "They" might sound odder if the POV character is someone is either Envy, or someone like Lust who knows Envy really well. It has the effect of making someone sound like a stranger, so might work better if the narrating character doesn't really know who Envy is. (e.g. "Winry noticed that the stranger with hair like a palm tree had something in their hand.")

Other possibilities: alternate male and female pronouns. One of my favourite webcomics, Order of the Stick, has a character called Vaarsuvius whose gender none of the characters knows (s/he does have a singular gender, there's just a running joke that nobody knows what it is). So one character will refer to V as "him" in one scene, then the next scene another character will say "her". I've seen this approach taken with Envy in fic, actually, and thought it was quite successful.

/wittering

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Man, why I haven't thought of "they"! D: But yeah, you're right about the POV thing. ladynorbert did mention the characters using "he", so I might use that when I write Envy, Lust, and Wrath's POV. Also will be using "he" if Envy is changed to someone male. "They" is if Envy is in his normal form and I'm going for someone else's POV.

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a plan! Gives a sense of Envy's gender ambiguity/indeterminacy without confusing the reader.

Language sidebar: in terms of the characters using 'he' in canon, this is very possibly a translation decision - Japanese third-person pronouns tend to be mostly gender-neutral, unlike ours. Very useful for speaking about characters whose identity is a mystery (like Pride and Dante in the first anime).

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I refer to Envy as "it" when I'm talking about Envy, because I don't think it has any gender, personally; but in stories, I more often use "he", because it seems to be the trend.

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Indeed that seems to be the trend. Already mention to bob_fish over how I'll go by referring to Envy, which will pretty much depend what form he changes and the POV I'm writing in.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Seems like a good plan.

[psychmoonshadow.livejournal.com]

I've actually been doing some readings on transgender studies since my class. We read some works by a great writer named Leslie Fineberg. Fineberg feels that neither "he" not "she" are properly defining, so instead uses the pronoun "ze." For possessive, ze uses "hir" (pronounced like "here"), as others have mentioned. Ze explained that being referred to as "it" feels degrading and dehumanizing.

Of course, considering Envy isn't exactly human, "it" is feasible, but probably not preferable. Additionally, for someone not used to gender-neutral pronouns, reading "ze" and "hir" would likely seem strange. Since the terms aren't in wide use, they certainly do risk being distracting to a reader. I wouldn't alternate between different gender pronouns, either. As mentioned "they" might be good, otherwise just go with whatever the fandom tends more towards, I suppose.

I think it's kind of neat that these kinds of cases can get us to think about the way he use gender pronouns, though. :)

~Psychic

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Gender pronouns are serious business. :P Seriously though, I don't want to be called out on saying the wrong pronoun, so I want to be safe.

Already mention to bob_fish over how I'll go by referring to Envy, which will pretty much depend what form he changes and the POV I'm writing in.