genderqueer

Pronouns for Dragons

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Writing fantasy is fun, and one of the main reasons is that the author decides the rules of each fantasy universe they create. I’ve seen so many amazing fantasy universes built up from scratch, each with its own unique culture, religion, and societies.

Links to original page

Links to original page

My most recent fantasy project has dragons. I know, lots of fantasy works have dragons in them.

In this world, dragons and humans live and work together in a sort of symbiotic relationship. There’s one major difference: the dragons of my world have hermaphroditic sexual organs and gender neutral identities. I was really excited to write this story, because I was going to be able to use gender neutral pronouns.

Genderqueer

Genderqueer flag

I was originally going to use they/their/them pronouns, because it was easiest, but then I got to thinking about it more in depth. In our own society, non-binary people started using they/their/them pronouns for two reasons. One, English doesn’t have an existing gender neutral pronoun. Two, they/their/them was established as a singular pronoun for someone of whom the speaker doesn’t know the gender.

This lends that pronoun some legitimacy. However, the use of this pronoun was shaped by a history of binary genders in western societies. There was no other gender identities acknowledged until recently.

So why would I use they/their/them for my gender neutral dragons? Gender neutral identities are all that dragons know and have known since the inception of their society, at least in the history of dragons in the area they currently inhabit. Of course they already have their own gender neutral pronoun.

Transgender_symbol

But of course, that means that I now have to make up a gender neutral pronoun for them to use. I’ve already asked a few people what they thought of this, and while most people agree with my reasoning about dragons having a pre-existing neutral pronoun, no one really has any ideas of what a dragon pronoun would sound like.

So, back to the drawing board with me, because now I have to go back and decide the evolution of draconic languages.

Who knew this required so much history creation?

For those of you who have been following along on the blog, yes, these are the same dragons I was talking about before. And yes, the main character is still ace/aro.

Does that make my character’s identity really complicated? Yes.

Is it unnecessarily complicated? No.

Because you see, my friends, people who have these long and seemingly complex identities actually exist in real life. I’m just framing my character in a way that reflects the reality of both our world’s and my made-up world’s intersectionality.

Readers might worry now, but I intend to show you what those identities actually mean, and the way they intersect and interact. I won’t just throw readers off the deep end and say “learn these identities, very important, if you don’t you’re a bigot! lol”

But before I do that, I guess I’m going to be writing and rewriting sections of dialogue to see how well different made up neutral pronouns work in the text.

Wish me luck!

Genderqueer Character

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I’m finally writing a genderqueer character!

I’ve been meaning to write a genderqueer character for ages, mostly because it’s a subject near and dear to my heart. As a genderfluid person, I’m always on the lookout for genderqueer characters, but they’re hard to come by.

There are a few authors I know have written genderqueer characters.

The first two, of course, are authors that write for the publisher I also write for, which is Less Than Three press.

Selume Proferre, by E.E. Ottoman features a genderqueer character. This book is an urban fantasy novel, and starts of with An-An, the main character, going to work at a spell-craft company for an exorcist. E. also writes a lot of books on trans characters, and zie has been on my must-read list for a long while now.

The other is J.K. Pendragon, who has a story coming out in the Trans* Geek Out anthology that will be coming out in spring. I won’t give away too much, since the book’s not out yet, but the story is a fantasy with an Egyptian-esque setting.

Lastly, I received a free book from the Gay Romance Northwest meet-up called Static, by L.A. Witt which turned out to have a genderqueer character as well. I liked the premise, which was that a small percentage of the population can switch their sex back and forth from male to female and back again. But it’s a reflection of their gender identity, so it’s a bit like having a genderfluid and intersex character. It’s a slight twist on the normal shifter story.

I’m always on the lookout for more stories about genderqueer characters.

I’m writing this character for the Villains Inc anthology call for Less Than Three Press. I would like to write an Arabic character for this story, so of course, I must do a lot of research. I’m kind of glad that I can write a villain for this character, because then xe can stab people whenever they misgender xem.

I’m thinking that one day I will also write a two spirit character, as that has always interested me.

I hope one day that the genderqueer section of LT3’s store is as expansive as the Gay section. It only has a few books for now. But it will only grow if we write the stories ourselves.