#which. singular themself/theirself is not a word you see often in media at all! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

everysongineverykey · 2 years ago

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i dunno it kinda bothers me sometimes to see characters who are referred to with they/them pronouns in games described as "ambiguously gendered" or "gender left unclear" or "gender unstated" by fans and stuff like. yeah absolutely they are sometimes that. sometimes the creator had a gender in mind for them while creating them and just didn't think to talk about it in the game. but also, like. sometimes characters can just be nonbinary? and it makes me kinda sad that everyone's first reaction to they/them pronouns in games is "oh, they have a binary gender, it's just up to the player/not stated in-game".

#this is just something i was thinking about #after reading the ut localization book and seeing monster kid and onionsan described this way specifically #like. onionsan isn't really a big deal to me. they're just never talked about in the game.#i'm not treating them as Important Canon Nonbinary Rep because even though i use they/them for them #they're not canonically Anything.#monster kid is sort of the same deal? undyne uses they/them for them #and while it could be argued that she doesn't know them you could also argue they sneak out to follow her a lot #she could've met them before.#eh. it's a non-issue in this case really. at least they didn't describe napstablook that way #but honestly why are they so scared of saying 'nonbinary'. it's clear that that's what napstablook is #with the 'theirself' and all that #which. singular themself/theirself is not a word you see often in media at all!#it certainly wasn't when undertale came out! that was a pretty uncommon word in games!#so props to toby for featuring the first singular themself i ever saw in media and making me go 'woah'#but anyway. if you're curious. the lol book simply says #'the game refers to napstablook as 'them' not 'him' or 'her''#which. yeah! they're a them! but why do you act like this is some sort of narration quirk #and not just. a character being nonbinary.#i think that became pretty clear when the first few rounds of the undertale art book #came out and used he/him for them #but then someone asked toby about the pronoun difference #and he called them all back and changed their pronouns to they/them in the book once again.#honestly i. only vaguely remember hearing that so if someone has sources i'd love to see them #but like. why can't characters be nonbinary. why can't people just say nonbinary. it's not a scary word.

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