#//noteworthy identity is the enby

[avoidingcertaindoom]

Pridewrite P5~ Occult

Takes place almost a decade ago for my OC timelines, so Shirki* is technically a pre/mid transition character who's since socially transitioned as transmasc and named themself Enoby. As of the time of this fic they use they/them and go by their middle name.

~

"Quiet, quiet…"

Shirki went up to assure their aunt that yes, everything was fine, they were telling spooky stories and she absolutely didn't need to worry, the basement was fine for a sleepover…

Meanwhile, Delia enlisted Zadkiel's help in arranging candles around their set up and allowed him to light it with a holder he'd lifted from his parents shabbat drawer, hand waving the questions about if it was necessarily "respectful" since they had spares.

"You're absolutely sure it's nothing to use them to summon the dead?"

"I'll bury them in salt or something afterwards. You want these lit or no?"

She rolled her eyes and focused on the other task at hand, polishing the main event of the night; a smooth wooden board with careful black lettering.

The planchette it had come with had been discarded in favor of a small loop of metal Shirki was currently spinning between their fingers, and as they finally came down from assuaging their aunt's worries they flopped down on the empty sleeping bag to watch them prepare. "If your parents don't want blasphemed candle sticks I'll take them."

"Not in Yesenia's house you won't."

"Oh so your parents can have cool cursed shit but my aunt's too good for it?"

"Yes, duh."

Delia flicked Zadkiel's ear and pinched the candle in the holder out. "Anyway, shall we?"

Careful to leave the standing candles undisturbed, they all sat around the Ouija board and each placed their hands on the metal loop, and Delia spoke in a low, steady voice to call out to any spirits present that would be so kind as to answer them. And then they waited. And waited.

Zadkiel rattled the loop. “Hello? It’s a yes or no question--”

“Hush.”

“What, it’s not exactly--”

“You shook out ‘hush’.” Shirki replied, nonchalant.

Delia chuckled. “Even the board doesn’t want to hear you talk.”

“It’s a coincidence!” He protested. “You ask it a question, see what it says to you.”

Still snickering, she drummed her fingers over the loop while she tried to think of something. “Hmmm… Will I marry a beautiful girl someday?”

The circlet rattled again, all three side eyeing each other to see who’d own up to the movement, but after shaking over the stenciled letters it slid smoothly to no. Now it was Zadkiel’s turn to laugh and Delia swore at him and stubbornly crossed her arms. 

Shirki rolled their eyes. “I might skip on mine, I don’t exactly want to be dragged by dead people.”

“Oh please, you’ve got to figure something out, no?” Zakiel asked.

They scoffed. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t really think I’m gonna get anything sure out of a game board.”

“Oh? What would impress you then?”

Shirki lifted their hands off, nudging Zadkiel’s knee to get him to do the same. “Now ask something.”

“It doing nothing would impress you?” Delia asked, tilting her head. 

“It doing anything would.” They confirmed. “The metal thingy is your dad’s right? It ought to do something.”

Veritably unimpressed, Delia propped up her good leg and leaned against her knee. “Of course, smart ass spirits are definitely to make a spectacle for you.”

Zadkiel opened his mouth to give his own two cents, but before he could share the candles guttered, bathing the trio in blinking lights before erupting in a unified shower of sparks that fell onto and caused the board to begin smoking.

Shirki lurched forward and dumped a glass of ice water on the board, and as it went out so did the candles, pitching the basement in darkness.

“...You had to open your big mouth.”

“I didn’t even do anything this time!”

“I mean Mx. ‘Anything would impress me’.”

“Oh. Yeah Shirki--”

“Oh, be quiet.” Flipping on a torch, Shirki examined the board, noting that while they hadn’t seemed so bad initially the board was littered with deep scorch marks, though not anywhere near the resting loop. Charred wood made itself evident around letters ‘B’, ‘E’, ‘N’, ‘O’, and ‘Y’. 

Zadkiel traced them out himself. “Are they saying there's bones in here? I thought that was an American thing.”

“Boney with a ‘Y’,” Delia corrected, then frowned and looked down. “Actually that doesn’t make any more sense? The hell…”

“Obviously it’s ‘No Bye’.” Shirki snorted and clicked off the torch. “Smart ass spirits, guess you were right Delia.”

Zadkiel poked at the board. “Are we not gonna focus on them trying to burn down the building though? At all?”

Laying back down, Shirki scooted their sleeping bag further back from the board. “Why?”

“Like. At least get out the salt. Iron. Something.”

“It can wait til morning.” 

Huffing, Zadkiel dismantled the candlesticks himself and shoved them-- along with as much of the board as he could manage, into the deep freezer plugged in near the staircase. For good measure he left his magen david on the handle, not sure how that would work but figuring it couldn’t hurt anything else.

Delia mumbled something sounding awfully sarcastic, but she was drifting off to sleep so quickly she fumbled off her prosthetic leg and clumsily set it next to her sleeping bag before her head hit the pillow. Not sharing her sudden drop of adrenaline, Shirki propped up their head on the side of their cot closest to Zadkiel and stared while he got himself down to sleep.

“Think I can pull it out in the morning and ask for name ideas?”

“I’ll give you a full list of names if we can just bury it in the dumpster first thing.”

“Can we buy a new one?”

“Goodnight--”

[gendercensus]

Gender Census 2020: The Title Question

This report is the third in a series, analysing the >24,000 responses from the 2020 Gender Census question-by-question.

[ Report #1: On “enby” and age // Report #2: The Identity Question // Report #4: The Pronoun Question ]

~

This year’s Gender Census, aimed at everyone whose gender(s) or lack thereof are not adequately described by the gender binary of “always, solely and completely male OR always, solely and completely female”, was open from 12th February until 7th April 2020. There were 24,576 usable responses. (Unfortunately the spreadsheet of responses won’t be available until I’ve written up the report for every question, sorry about that!)

This report will summarise the responses for the second question, regarding honorific titles.

As in previous years, I asked:

Supposing all title fields on forms were optional and write-your-own, what would you want yours to be in English?

(Please note that you should currently be entitled to use it - for example, you should only enter Dr if you have a doctorate.)

There were 10 radio-button options presented in a random order, based on which answers were chosen by over 1% of participants last year:

No title at all

Mx

Mr

Non-gendered professional or academic title (eg: Dr, Rev)

Ms

Unknown

Miss

Ind (individual)

I choose my title on the day depending on how I'm feeling, even for long-term things like bank accounts

A standard title that is used only by people other than men and women

Here’s a graph of the results:

No title at all - 34.4% (up 1.4%)

Mx - 28.0% (down 3.3%)

Mr - 8.6% (down 0.1%)

Non-gendered prof/acad. - 5.3% (down 0.2%)

Ms - 4.9% (up 0.2%)

Unknown - 3.9% (up 0.4%)

Miss - 3.3% (up 0.2%)

Ind ("individual") - 3.3% (up 0.3%)

Choose on the day - 2.7% (up 0.5%)

A standard NB/GQ title - 2.6% (up 0.1%)

This year I collected rough information about age, in order to add type-ins that went over 1% among under-30s and/or over 30s, which means I was able to create this graph:

Some notes:

People over 30 were a lot more likely to prefer no title over Mx, but no title was preferred across the board.

Mr was more popular among under-30s, and Ms was more popular in over-30s.

People under 30 were more likely to choose “unknown”.

Over-30s were more likely to claim a non-gendered professional or academic title, such as Dr, Reverend, military titles, etc.

The most popular type-in title was M, with 40 entries (0.2%).

This is all fairly consistent with previous results, and nothing reliably stands out as particularly noteworthy on a long-term scale. Here’s the graph of how it compares to previous years:

You can see that the first two or three years are a bit squiffy, while we found our feet and added all the title options that needed to be there. (As we added options, “no title” became less popular.) Things settled down a lot from 2018 onwards, one year after the last title option was added. Identity words tend to fluctuate in popularity, as do pronouns, but titles are for some reason very consistent from year to year.

If you look at the pattern over the six years shown in the graph, Mx and “no title” have swapped places until the last two years, when Mx has been in decline - while titles such as Mr and Ms are increasing. Anecdotally, Mx has certainly been the “default” nonbinary title here in the UK, so I am wondering whether the dramatic increase in participants (11,000 last year, to 24,000 this year) might be a factor, as the survey leaves the geographical and social media bubbles more every year. Perhaps Mx is less popular further afield and outside of that bubble? I am curious to see what happens over the next few years. If I am able, this year I will make a UK-only report to find out how Mx has fared in the UK alone.

No typed titles were entered by over 1% of participants, so there will be no additions to the radio button list next year. All the provided specific titles were selected by at least 3% of participants in at least one of the under-30 and over-30 age groups. “I choose my title on the day” and “a standard nonbinary-exclusive title” have both been fluctuating at just under 3% for some years, but the title list is relatively short and those options will become very difficult to count if I don’t provide a pre-typed option for people, so I won’t remove them from the list next year.

The option "a standard title that is used only by people other than men and women” is also quite useful for further investigation. (I refer to it as a hypothetical “standard nonbinary-exclusive title” for convenience, but obviously one doesn’t need to identify as nonbinary to claim it and if the most popular identity word shifts from nonbinary to something else I will refer to it with the newly-popular word.) It sends relevant participants to a question that asks what that title is or might be.

641 participants (2.6%) said they preferred a standard nonbinary-exclusive title. When they did, they were taken to this question:

In the previous question you chose "a standard title that is used only by people other than men and women." If you know of any, please type them here. This question is optional.

The participant was then presented with five textboxes. About 12% of participants who saw that question had something to type, and the following titles were entered more than once:

Mx (26 times)

M (4 times)

Friend (2 times)

That’s a title that is established as one that can be used by anyone regardless of gender, a title that is masculine in French, and a very familiar word that would be used specifically in a quite formal context.

Ind (”individual”) could fit the nonbinary-exclusive title niche if it were to be used that way consistently, and I could see it happening, but it has also consistently been claimed by only about 3% of participants since the survey began. It seems that we don’t have a nonbinary-specific title to stand alongside Mr and Ms yet.

So, this year there is not much to report! Only a slight decline in the popularity of Mx, which could reflect survey-related factors, so I will hold off on making any assertions until we have a few more years of data.

As always, these results support the important point that when designing a form the title field should always be optional. One third of participants in this survey have preferred to have no title at all for many years, so any nonbinary title-related campaigning should demand that title questions be optional in addition to adding Mx to the list.

~

SEE ALSO

A list of links to all results, including UK and worldwide, and including previous years - summary page / results tag

The mailing list for being notified of the final report and next year’s survey

~

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it and would like to give something back, you could increase your chances of taking part in future surveys by following on Tumblr, Twitter or the Fediverse, or subscribing to the mailing list. Alternatively, you could take a look at my Amazon wishlist.

[ace-in-a-shopping-cart]

For whenever you feel like it: hello, please tell me about your DND characters!!

This seems to be a catch all kind of question so I’m gonna use it to just ramble about all of them. (Putting it under a cut because I really did just ramble for a while)

Content warning for alcohol mention and death mention.

Zafrina Carrpuff Cunningsmoke was the first I made so her backstory is a bit generic as I relied heavily on the dragonborn lore I knew at the time. She’s a chaotic neutral green dragonborn farmgirl who, as much as family means to her, wants to see the world. She left her farm once she’d come of age and moved to a small town nearby. When that town was attacked by an ogre, she stepped up and defeated it. (Her backstory is Folk Hero) She doesn’t have any siblings and was raised and trained by her mother.

She left that town and met up with her current party of ragtag heroes. She travels with an elf rouge/ swashbuckler with sticky fingers (my older brother), a dwarf paladin following the Oath of Devotion who enjoys being in control and is completely oblivious to the sorcerer’s flirting (my father), a human sorcerer who is either perpetually tired of the group or the instigator of shenanigans and enjoys flirting with the paladin (my mother), a dwarf druid following the Circle of the Land who is book dumb and barely street smart (my younger brother), and was recently joined by an elf sorcerer who doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation (my other sister).

Her favorite weapons are the long bow or her newly acquired morning star. She’s a ranger but is a klutz. She gets bored easily and hungry even easier, once eating the hand of someone the party was trying to interrogate simply because the person was being stubborn and she was bored. Her next favorite weapon that does barely any damage is her boomerang.

Noteworthy anecdotes about her is that I once received inspiration for insulting my father (both of us were in character at the time). I spent at least three sessions trying to get a panther and, once finally getting one, I promptly named it Virgil (most of the party just calls him Baby but I’m fine with that) and was very happy the rest of the session.

Lorarila Sarxiron has a noble background and was the second I made. Her personality can best be described as the peppy cheerleader kind of character. She’s a chaotic neutral half elf bard who makes her best music while drunk due to being taught how to play by an uncle that was always drunk. The instruments and skills she didn’t learn from him were taught to her by the local tavern. She vowed to follow the College of Whispers after finding out that was the one her uncle was in. Despite that college typically being used for evil, and her uncle using it for the same, she vowed to use it for good.

She decided to take up adventuring as she hoped to reverse some of her uncles misdeeds whilst seeing the world. Despite being a bard and being well aware of the promiscuous stereotype that comes with such a class, she’s asexual and sees no reason in sex.

(She’s being used in a horror campaign that was supposed to be a short thing finished by Halloween but this family is dysfunctional) Whilst walking to the room she’d been staying in one night, she was caught in the fog and transported to a town seemingly abandoned where she met her current party. She’s currently exploring a house with many secrets with a fire genasi who is very done with the rest of them (my eldest sister who DMs usually), an elf bard that’s a wimp (my other sister), an aarokocra monk who doesn’t like being alone (my younger brother), and a kenku named Shibble (I named it for her) played by my mother.

Kalgrea Aestros (I’ve accidentally been calling her by their last name this whole time) is my most recent character and the one I’m most excited to play with. Pronouns are she/they and gender identity is nonbinary. She’s a chaotic evil tiefling warlock with an axe to grind and an archfey patron. Her skin is lavender and her hair is stark white. 

She was happily engaged to a loving (haven’t decided the race yet) woman. When they were traveling to Kalgrea’s hometown to get married, they were attacked by bandits and their fiancé was killed. Kalgrea swore vengeance and made a warlock pact with an archfey, the Prince of Frost. She swore to give him the hearts of any enemies they encounter if he became her patron and gave them the power to do so. He was amused by their offer and, having also lost a lover to battle, agreed. 

Thus Kalgrea set out for vengeance, determined to use any means necessary to bring her adversary to ruin. They will join a group with the intent of learning new skills and getting stronger to one day take her lovers killer down and fulfill their pact with the Prince of Frost.

I haven’t used her in a campaign yet simply because my family isn’t the right party to use them with as I wanna do a roleplay heavy campaign for her, they’re going to be a very angry person who’s quite standoffish. I don’t know what campaign I’m going to use them with but that will most likely dictate what the fiancé’s race is.

And yeah, that’s my three characters! You guys can ask about my party members and I can give anecdotes about them but for the most part that’s all there is about them. I’m always willing to ramble about these girls and enby as I really love them.

[quasi-normalcy]

So here’s what’s going to happen (spoiler alert for future history).

In a few years, Keanu Reeves is going “die” in a mysterious plane crash or some other terrible accident that doesn’t leave a recognisable body behind, and everyone is going to feel bad about all of those “Keanu Reeves is immortal” memes.

Then, fifty to a hundred years after that, after everyone except for stodgy academics has forgotten all of his films, an actor who looks mysteriously identical to Keanu will show up. No one will find this noteworthy except for one ancient, wizened old enby who spent their youth on Tumblr. They will see a promo for this actor’s new movie on holovision one day; and then, their cackling will fill the retirement home.