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I feel the teeniest bit guilty about this, but, er... I couldn't help but pick out this sentence from last Friday's NP commentary...

Quote

I would chastise past me for this, but they clearly already fixed the problem...

I kind of have to wonder... should we be taking note of this?  I mean, it wouldn't exactly be the shock of the century if Dan Shive asked to be referred to as "they"...

And I suppose, due to the title of this thread, would anyone else rather be referred to in a way their infobox might not reflect?  (By all means call me "she," "he," "they," or "it," for the record.)

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Well, I was born male and identify as male all of the time, but I would not object to they being used in reference to me, if only because I use it a lot in reference to other people since it's often hard to tell other people's gender on the internet.

I would however, object to she being used in reference to me, if only because it is factually wrong.

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Dan has stated that he hasn't really figured out what he is, but he's ok with people referring to him in the male sense for the time being. Using "they" reflects that he doesn't know yet.

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In my now-lost newbie thread, I mentioned that I was trying to cultivate an androgynous online presentation and stated "use whatever pronouns you want" with respect to indicating myself.

While I presently do not feel as strongly that I want such a presentation as I did at the time, I am still happy with the "use whatever pronouns you want".

Edited by HarJIT

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I think that Dan self-referencing as "they" is an instance of Dan feeling particularly genderfluid at the time--Dan has spoken of such before.

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It's also possible that Dan was using it to speak in the third person for humor reasons, and not saying anything about his pronouns at all. I dunno which is more likely, but it's possible. ~shrug~

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I was surprised that this conversation didn't pop up again last week, though I guess there isn't exactly much to discuss (other than perhaps deep questions of identity, cartoons, and the internet), but at least linking this "development" may be of use:

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=465

And, to quote: 

Quote

As for the pronouns in the strip, I prefer to use pronouns for my avatar based on my avatars currenly form. I haven't done this previously, and this comic nearly went up with "they / them" pronouns, but then I realized I was only doing that due to the expectation that some people would find it odd for me to use "she / her". I decided I shouldn't let that expectation stop me from writing it how I actually wanted to write it.

I'm glad Dan went with what he wanted rather than what he felt was expected of him. I just noticed he made a typo. That irks me for some reason.

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28 minutes ago, Maplestrip said:

I was surprised that this conversation didn't pop up again last week, though I guess there isn't exactly much to discuss (other than perhaps deep questions of identity, cartoons, and the internet), but at least linking this "development" may be of use:

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=465

And, to quote: 

Quote

As for the pronouns in the strip, I prefer to use pronouns for my avatar based on my avatars currenly form. I haven't done this previously, and this comic nearly went up with "they / them" pronouns, but then I realized I was only doing that due to the expectation that some people would find it odd for me to use "she / her". I decided I shouldn't let that expectation stop me from writing it how I actually wanted to write it.

I'm glad Dan went with what he wanted rather than what he felt was expected of him. I just noticed he made a typo. That irks me for some reason.

Yeah, there is a difference between Dan referring to himself as a person, to which he's fine with people using male pronouns, and his avatars in the comic, which would of course vary depending on their form at a given time. It's like referring to Tedd or Elliot with female pronouns whenever they're in female forms.

Also, yeah, "currently" is missing the "t".

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16 hours ago, Scotty said:

Yeah, there is a difference between Dan referring to himself as a person, to which he's fine with people using male pronouns, and his avatars in the comic, which would of course vary depending on their form at a given time. It's like referring to Tedd or Elliot with female pronouns whenever they're in female forms.

Referring to male characters that are transformed into a female form with feminine pronouns as soon as their genitals change is the kind of thing I'd imagine Dan doing at the start of the webcomic, but I have a hard time imagining a person who included a trans character in their webcomic would use that logic alone. Dan didn't refer to Elliot with feminine pronouns while he was Cheerleadra in past chapters, did he? It seems a bit more complex here: the character which represents Dan prefers female pronouns.

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4 hours ago, Maplestrip said:

Referring to male characters that are transformed into a female form with feminine pronouns as soon as their genitals change is the kind of thing I'd imagine Dan doing at the start of the webcomic, but I have a hard time imagining a person who included a trans character in their webcomic would use that logic alone. Dan didn't refer to Elliot with feminine pronouns while he was Cheerleadra in past chapters, did he? It seems a bit more complex here: the character which represents Dan prefers female pronouns.

Looking back, Dan did seem to continue using male pronouns for Elliot when in Cheerleadra form back in "New and Old Flames", though at one point he did use a "her" (quotation marks included) when referring to the Cheerleadra design.

Then again, this was 5 years ago, Dan might not have really thought about switching pronouns for anyone other than Tedd, whom Dan had already settled on having more reasons to use female forms than anyone else in the comic, then again, I can't find any instances of Tedd being female prior to "New and Old Flames" that have any commentary that was made the same time as the comic that would mention any of it, most, if not all the commentary for the early comics was done in the past couple years.

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I know this is incredibly interpretive, but I personally imagine Dan created many aspects of Tedd and Elliot before even knowing about a sex/gender distinction. I can definitely believe that he would have used "she" for Elliott back during the first Sister arc. I think Vladia's lack of caring about gender also reflects Dan's limited knowledge on the topic at the time. I definitely wouldn't be surprised if Dan hadn't heard about concepts like "non-binary" until six years ago or so.

I may fallaciously be conflating an over-arching theme of the comic (slow but stead growth and improvements in artstyle, story, etc) with an "arc of personality." As for what this mean for Dan's use of pronouns for genderbent characters... Well, that may change as well.

Maybe I'm just overanalyzing someone else's identity. Not sure if that falls under gossip or obsession. Either way, sorry about that >.>

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