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Noted. (...Actually, looking at the usage guides on wiktionary, even replacing "transgendered" with "transgender" in my sentence wouldn't have fully corrected it; it probably should have been "transgender people" (minus the preceding "the" of course)...) (A bit of a heads up: it's likely I'll make similar mistakes in the future. I'm not very social, and this forum is pretty much the only community where I have a chance to talk about such things; as a result I'm a bit out of touch with the correct terminology. Please do continue to correct me, but try to be gentle. )

You know what's even funnier, I had at one time attempted to create a character in Skyrim that looked like Nanase, I remember posting a picture on the forums before the great crash, turns out I should have been trying to create Ellen the whole time!

Nice, especially considering I had tweeted this to Dan after the comic went live:

Err, I think we may have a miscommunication here. I said as long as it is the case referring to his seeing Tedd's gender identity as a sickness/perversion. Should he actually get past that, it will of course no longer be the case. Though I will add that even bigotry is not necessarily permanent as it is often rooted in fear. Once the fear is out of the equation and the bigot has had the opportunity to see what he feared as human beings, at least some bigots have been known to reconsider their stance.

The jokes about Arthur always seeing Tedd in girl form notwithstanding, there is no chance that Arthur might not become aware of Tedd having and using boy form. Hiding this information from him is technically part of not outing Tedd, however it will be short-lived and would mean missing opportunity to control how Arthur finds out Tedd has boy form. The preferred option here might be insisting Tedd is boy. At worst case, Elliot and Ellen might seem stupid and/or rude to Tedd, but there is reasonable chance Arthur will get the point that Tedd being girl is not public, while being completely in sync with not outing Tedd to Ashley. (Why it seems perfectly normal to me to use "girl" for 18 year old female but weird to use "boy" for 18 year old male?) Not true. Sure, if it's bigotry, Arthur could yell all day, but if it's ignorance, Arthur is in position to cause Edward think, because unlike Tedd he's adult and authority figure. (Wait ... he's adult or he's an adult?)

Of course, this page might point to Tedd being ready to come out, at least to her father ... but Elliot and Ellen doesn't know that. It's hard to say ... most gender-fluid people can't get into situations similar to Tedd's ... It's entirely possible Arthur has already figured out Tedd's gender-fluidity and is merely being respectful. (It's also possible that he has no clue, and his referring to Tedd as female in front of Mr. Verres will have no more consequences than Mr. Verres "correcting" him.) The problem comes if he's curious and decides to investigate the matter in such a manner that Mr. Verres becomes aware that there's more to Tedd's female transformations than Mr. Verres realized, or if he otherwise accidentally outs Tedd to Mr. Verres due to his lack of understanding of the situation (and Mr. Verres doesn't take it well). Logically, the best option would be to ensure Arthur is aware of the need of secrecy without giving him more informations than he already has. Except I would have no idea how to do it. Even just saying he's not out implies there is something to be out of ... ... and "hoping for best" is not really excuse, nor is pretending that harm resulting from your inaction is less harming than harm resulting from your action. ... Wait. There is additional issue here. ARTHUR has more information, but Ashley doesn't and explaining anything to Arthur would out Tedd to Ashley. Damn this is minefield ... and Elliot and Ellen are even worse equipped to deal with it than we are.

It's entirely possible Arthur has already figured out Tedd's gender-fluidity and is merely being respectful. (It's also possible that he has no clue, and his referring to Tedd as female in front of Mr. Verres will have no more consequences than Mr. Verres "correcting" him.) The problem comes if he's curious and decides to investigate the matter in such a manner that Mr. Verres becomes aware that there's more to Tedd's female transformations than Mr. Verres realized, or if he otherwise accidentally outs Tedd to Mr. Verres due to his lack of understanding of the situation (and Mr. Verres doesn't take it well). My reasoning was that if one has not been told that information that one is in possession of is supposed to be secret, one must decide for oneself whether it should be kept secret in any specific situation. What I obviously failed to take into account was that in some cases (gender identity being one of them), the default assumption should be that it is a secret, so not having been told one way or the other is a moot point. I had a nagging suspicion that I hadn't thought that part of my post through fully, but I had no idea I had messed up so badly; thank you for pointing that out. (It's actually rather ironic I would make this mistake, given that IRL I'm quite selective as to who I reveal my own gender-fluidity to...) I suppose under the circumstances, ignoring Arthur's use of pronouns and hoping for the best is probably Ellen and Elliot's best option.