In which I find my language to be severely lacking, a supreme inconvenience for a writer.

[momebie]

I'm gonna respond to comments, I swear to god. I will do it tonight. It's just been a no-fly zone around here over the last week. [HORRIFYING TMI TIME!] I had an ovarian cyst burst Thursday night and the pain knocked me on my ass. Then when I went to the doctor he gave me drugs that knocked me on my ass twice, because apparently Percocet and I do not get along. I would rather be sobbing in pain than have the nausea I had for four days over the weekend. Bleh. Lesson learned.


Anyway, I'm making this post now when I should be sorting out my PMP, because it's become impossible for me to focus on anything else while I'm trying to work through this story. I have lots of questions and none of them are rhetorical and I seem to just be chasing my tail mentally so I thought I might lob them out here and see if anyone's willing to discuss some of this with me. I sometimes just need someone to ask the right question to get me back on track.

First, to get you in the mood, a bit of dialogue that will most certainly not make it in, but that amused the shit out of me. Isn't it great that I at least amuse myself? Ah, I will never feel unwanted as long as that's the case.

"Neutron star?"

The waves of energy roiled around Eli, shimmering gold and warping his field of vision. Grant looked like a mirage being cast from a thousand yards away in the desert, his lines wavering and glitching. His feet didn’t look like they were touching the ground. It’s entirely possible they weren’t. “The collapse was a bitch, and so was that savior of yours.”

"No, seriously," Grant said. He cocked his head and crossed his arms. His jaw clenched and unclenched a few times. Eli knew him well enough to know Grant was holding back laughter. "You’re saying she turned you into a neut."

"I got better," Eli said dryly.

[Hokay, Backstory]
The general gist of the narrative, as it stands, is this. There is a character who I've named Eli who is a sort of reforming villain. If we're going to relate the tropes these characters are based on back to familiar names then Eli is Jason Todd (or maybe a little bit Bucky?) and Grant is Dick Grayson. No one is surprised. So, anyway, Eli was a hero in a team of heroes where he was previously the dirty hands of the machine who really needed the light of the others to lead him, you know? He ends up being killed and then brought back via a Lazarus Pit sort of thing (which will be different). This leaves him mentally unstable and he proceeds to become entirely blind of the light he so desperately needed, turning into something of a villain and making the other heroes work to contain him because they feel responsible for him.

[Regenerative Powers]
Grant, who is/was Eli's lover, learns that the thing that brought Eli back had imbued him with its rejuvenative powers--which is a whole other hinky thing about Eli thinking this whole time that he didn't HAVE a power only to learn that his power is to absorb other powers, but not in a Rogue way, it can't happen accidentally or just by touch, it has to be intended freely--so no matter how many times they kill Eli he will keep coming back. The main problem with this is that a little more of Eli is sloughed off each time this happens, so every time he dies he will come back a little madder and a little more vacant than before, which is dangerous for the general population and for himself.

Grant cannot stand the idea of Eli just being buried and left to die and live and die and live and die and live until he approaches the mental event horizon, so in desperation he has another member of the team take him to fucking space and drop him a star. Because superhero solutions, am I right? This obviously backfires as he absorbs the energy and 'power' of the star. This extra energy, while leaving him still virtually immortal, manages to balance out his consciousness so that he knows what he's done and who he is. He heads back to earth.

[Fluid Sex And How It Might Affect Gender]
What he doesn't realize, until he gets back to earth, is that stars are sort of coded as 'female' in the fabric of the universe and in this powered state he is a woman. I say 'he'. This is where I need help. I want Eli to be okay with this*. I even want him to use it to his advantage at first, allowing him to go about setting right things that he made wrong before in his madness, by being able to go around and work on them without his friends knowing that it's him until Grant figures it out. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on internal confusion or fear. Especially not with a cosmic consciousness that would think there were much bigger things at play to worry on. But I do want to thoughtfully address the fact that he is now both and I feel woefully ignorant about how to do that.

[* An addendum, thanks to theun4givables. I do realize that gender and sex are not the same. Physically his sex would change. But I also want this to sort of move him into a middle state internally as far as the idea of gender goes. I need to decide if I want him to always see himself as him and the powered state as other than. I have a niggling worry that, if I do that, it will seem disrespectful still, though.]

Should he refer to himself as male in a non-powered state and female in a powered state? Would favoring one set of pronouns make it look like I as the author had a preference or was being disrespectful? Does this read as insensitive on the basic subject level? Is there an opportunity I'm missing here that I can really take advantage of? HELP. I AM EYEING THE DEEP END REAL HARD RIGHT NOW. PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.

I know there are other heroes who already change gender based on their powers and/or their preferences, but I also know the criticism I've seen of them by and large is fair. It's hugely important to me that Eli be a human first and let his genders follow from there, and as such, it's hugely important to me that I respect Eli's autonomy and internal life and the autonomy and internal life of any reader who might identify with him. (Ugh, him him him. My vocabulary feels incredibly small right now.)

Does that all make sense? Is there a problem with the general premise that I really need to fix before I can make sure the gender stuff comes across okay? I had this idea a week ago and I've just been banging my head against it the whole time. Which isn't really different from the way I usually approach projects. I was trying to explain this to Em at lunch and she just made this face and told me I had really complicated thoughts. Which is true, but that's because my brain makes me work my way around the block before it will let me see a possible connection that I was standing EXACTLY OPPOSITE FROM when I started. All writing is like this for me. Hell, all living is like this for me. It's a wonder I get out of bed.

Pfah.

Comments

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

What gender does Eli identify with. Their physical sex (male or female, depending on their state) may change, but their gender won't.

If he identify as a dude, refer to him by "he" even if he's in his female body. If she identifies as a chick, refer to her by "she" if she's in her male body.

Basically, whichever gender Eli feels they actually are, that's the set of pronouns you stick with. Physical sex changing doesn't negate which gender they are.

That's my two cents as an individual who's genderfluid and just refers to herself as female 99% of the time because it's just easier than saying "I'm feeling pretty dudely today." =p

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, obviously, of course! Gender and sex are not the same and I meant to note that! Thank you for saying so. But I also wanted him to sort of feel in between when it comes down to it. That's related to the way his sex changes, of course, but also to the way that the creeping addition to his consciousness views the idea of gender inwardly. Like, why would it have to choose? Stars have got no fucks to give about our quaint labels.

I think maybe in coming down to it I guess I need to decide how much the consciousness bonds with him, because if he thinks of it as a separate she then he would always refer to himself as a he, and if he thinks of it as a she based on his experiences with physical sex and the consciousness does not think of itself as either then I have to decide how much of a say the consciousness gets in his mental interior space. Which brings up the other question of, if there is a true bonding or intwining, then how would the newly created melding of the two of them refer to itself?

Now that I think about it though, I feel like even with his regenerative powers it would be incredibly painful and debilitating to a more or less human body to have to contend with that much knowledge and/or power for any period of time, so for the narrative maybe the two of them should be seen as and operate separately in which case, yes, you're right, he should always refer to himself as a he and let the entity do what it likes when it has the reins.

THIS IS WHAT I MEANT ABOUT PEOPLE ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS. THANK YOU.

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

<3

You're very welcome. :D I'm glad that I could be of help, hah.

[alien-writings.livejournal.com]

Before I try to say anything about your story, I can relate (a little bit) to the "fun" of having sucky pain medication -- I took (generic) Vicodin after getting my wisdom teeth pulled and HATED IT. Ugh, the pill made me so dizzy I had to lie on the floor until I recovered enough to crawl into bed. I preferred regular old Advil, but I didn't have anything like a cyst!

Yeah, I agree the character should use the pronoun of the gender they identify as, regardless of outer appearance. I'm not super-experienced with these things, but that seems like what you should do. From what little I know, it's based on what a person feels, rather than what anyone on the outside might try to impose on them.

I'm also struggling with gender and sexuality issues in some of my creative endeavors and constantly worry I'm going to screw things up, so I can kinda relate. If you're curious, I've described my own issues below:

My friend and I have a roleplaying game where one character is a member of a species of humanoid genderfluid shapeshifting aliens who are internally intersexed (two working sets of reproductive organs and can both get pregnant and impregnate). They take on the outer appearance of whatever gender they feel like. In their native language, they just have one nongendered pronoun. They tend to think of gender in a "whatever I feel like today" kind of way and end up using pronouns based on outer appearance when talking to English speakers, changing pronouns to match their outer appearance since their gender identity changes, though they are not picky about pronouns. The RP character usually uses "he" because he spends most of his screentime in a male body since he's dating a gay guy. And I'm worried this concept is somehow offensive, and that's not getting into the character's odd powers. Or that fact that he got pregnant partly because there was a miscommunication between the couple about how gender actually worked for the character.

I also have a bisexual female character in a story of mine who may or may not be trans* because I can't decide if she is. She's unquestionably female in gender identity, no matter what kind of body she was born into, though. I know that much. I worry about trans* means gay stereotypes. There are other queer characters in that universe who aren't trans*, though (the main character is a cisgendered lesbian, just to name one). But if the character in question is the only trans* character (so far), I worry about the stereotype. Her society is also religious (fictional religion) and pretty homophobic, and I WANTED to do a thing where they were fine with trans* people but not non-hetero sexualities, but I have absolutely no idea if I could pull that off without offending half the universe.

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

dude i am so horrified to hear you've had such a rough trot of that. yuk. :( i hope it all heals up well and that you don't have to go through that awful medication reaction again. *hugs*

(your story sounds so fascinating. i've been out of the loop on the devlopment, though so will just keep following from here, to see how you resolve these interesting issues. xo)

[quatredeathlady.livejournal.com]

I don't really have anything too thoughtful to add to this? I agree with what others said about gender vs. sex.

But I am curious about why stars are coded as female (or something similar to female) at all? You said in another comment that stars have no fucks to give about our quaint labels, and that I would agree with. So if the star is a consciousness, what makes it choose a gender/sex at all? Why doesn't it choose neither?

I'm just curious if you've already hammered that part out in your head. I think it could be just as interesting if Eli considers himself male when he's him, but when the star takes over it's neither. It eschews the gender binary and choosing a sex in the physical form because perhaps neither human gender can fully encompass its identity? IDK. I don't mean to throw a wrench in everything I AM JUST CURIOUS.

[imthelobster.livejournal.com]

Random comment is random, and I will admit that I didn't read the WHOLE thing up there.........

But why not use gender neutral pronouns when needed?