#ive paid my dues in the hollow knight fanbase I’ve witnessed the cruelest things there.

[ohnomysoul]

With all due respect. What are you even talking about? A character being nonbinary isn’t the same as… forcing a person to be something they are not and abusing them? No one is forcing Dante to be nonbinary. What would be the point? Being referred to gender neutrally isn’t dehumanizing unless its in the case of someone trying to weasel around respecting pronouns; of which only applies when the person has gendered pronouns. This doesn’t apply if a person’s (or character’s, in that matter) pronouns are they/them. Which, there is nothing saying that Dante’s pronouns aren’t that.

And this isn’t the first time Project Moon has had a mysterious protagonist either. Lobotomy Corporation had X, a character who, like Dante, was introduced without being able to remember his past or even his name. But the thing is, despite his true identity being unknown, he was always referred to with masculine pronouns and honorifics. Why would Project Moon change now? This is the second time they’ve used a mysterious manager, and their first time they used he/him before and after X’s reveal.

Granted, there is a possibility that Dante may be given other pronouns later, but that doesn’t really matter right now. This whole post just reads as being upset that a character using they/them pronouns is being seen as nonbinary. What is the issue?

It’s clearly not the depersonalization aspect, because using they/them isn’t inherently that and there isn’t any real reason to do so. Especially if their name is still given to them… which is a major part of most people’s identity. Simply calling them “manager” would depersonalize them more, but they do not.

This isn’t meant to be an attack in any way. I’m simply responding because this was in the main Limbus Company tag and I have to ask: why. What’s so horrible about a clockhead being nonbinary? Because all the reasons supplied hold no water other than speculation and one’s own goal when compared to other works by the same company. (One of which being an official webcomic where all the human characters are nonbinary. But by this idea, they’d only be nonbinary because they are expendable, yes? Which of course undermines the whole meaning of the comic so.)

Okay guys. 'They', 'them' and 'theirs' when used in the singular are gender neutral pronouns.

They are not gender specific to nonbinary people.

Arguing the use of a pronoun set that applies to literally all human beings (and a bunch of other stuff) must mean that Dante is nonbinary isn't just stupid, it's ignoring the themes of their character.

Dante is purposefully mysterious. We don't know anything about them, really. Most of the characters don't know anything about them. They know nothing about themself.

We, like most of the sinners, don't know Dante's real name, age or origin. We can't see their skin. We can't really tell what their figure looks like in that outfit and the way the others are drawn would make that largely inconclusive anyway.

Dante doesn't even have their own face anymore.

They are a fiction even within the narrative. One created by the company that they are currently being exploited by.

To argue that the identity that has been forced upon them by an exploitative corporation in a dystopian hellscape is a representation of their authentic self is either hopelessly naïve or entirely selfish.

To apply a nonbinary gender identity to them is to reduce them to what others have forced upon them.

Which is wild, if you think about it. Because the people he/himming Dante are doing so entirely because they are modelled after an actual human man who is buried in Ravenna. You can go see his grave. They are using meta information to come to a conclusion that might be wrong, and they know it might be wrong. Gender bent characters are not uncommon in this game.

But the people aggressively enbying them (and complaining about the he/himmers) are purposefully ignoring the open themes of depersonalisation in this character to... something something representation? IDK, because it makes them look like they have either no media literacy at all, or they just don't care about themes, narrative or the goddamn plot.

TL:DR

The other characters aren't calling Dante they and them because Dante is nonbinary, they're calling Dante they and them because they don't have the first idea what Dante is and have the decency not to assign an identity to Dante that might not be true. (Or they're invested in keeping that information from Dante.)

Dante could be nonbinary! But they could also be a man, or a woman, or not a person at all. The fact that we do not know is important to this story and dismissing it for the sake of 'representation' is both selfish and disrespectful to Project Moon.

This is their story, not your playground.

Your headcanons aren't justification for bashing the people who don't share them or Project Moon if it turns out that Dante is just a guy.

Edit: The possibility of Dante being nonbinary is slim at best and would absolutely undermine the theme of depersonalisation here. The depersonalisation of being stripped of your gender identity does not hit the same if you already insist that others use the gender unknown pronouns for you.

I only acknowledged it in the context that it's another possibility that the sinners aren't privy to.

It is not likely and it would undermine the themes of Dante's character.

In exactly the same way that taking a character who has been forcibly raised as the wrong sex and making them trans undermines that what happened to them was in fact abusive.

In exactly the same way that the character arc of Prince Phillip's father deciding against forcing his son into marriage was undermined by Aurora and Phill hitting it off.

If the bad thing that happens to a character is contextualised as turning out to be the right thing, then that takes all the wind out of any commentary that existed before the recontextualization.

(In fact, the Sleeping Beauty example is openly a joke. This man is going through a personal crisis and risking war for what the audience knows is no reason.)

Making Dante a nonbinary human character means that this very thematic example of their depersonalisation was an abusive corporation being correct in their behaviour.

Dante being a non-human character, a robit or something, would still be better thematically as they have had a false human identity pressed upon them.

LBC functionally misgendering Dante reinforces their unethical ways, them respecting this character's pronouns does the exact opposite.

Edit 2: I also feel the need to point out that the view I have laid out here means that we are being forced as players to be complicit in this mistreatment. Something that is far more powerful than removing the problem entirely with a nonbinary identity.