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Apr. 6th, 2016 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI’m poking at a fanfic for Roger Zelazny’s Amber series that requires me to figure out some completely different vocabulary and ways of approaching the characters. I want gender neutral pronouns which isn’t (or shouldn’t be) that hard. I’ve found a site that lists a lot of options. I just have no idea what baggage the different options have. I’d rather not make up my own. I may end up doing it, but I’d rather not.
The series is very, very heavily gendered, to the point that the author apparently never thought about the possibility that true shapeshifters might not automatically be either male or female. (The author doesn’t seem to have thought about the implications of shapeshifting at all. In ten books, it only turns up at points when it would look really cool and not when it would be, you know, actually useful.) It’s also complicated by the shapeshifting characters spending most of their on screen time in the company of fixed form folks who are pretty much human (just super powered and unaging and…) and fairly rigid in terms of gender roles. In interacting with them, there’s an advantage to appearing human and male. The fixed form folks also recently won a big war against the shapeshifters.
Right now, I keep banging into not having a reference for the main character from the books that doesn’t connect to the character being male. I suspect that the problem is that I read the books back in the 1980s and have had thirty years of thinking of the character as male. The character’s parents are also kind of tricky— One is fixed form, human, and male. The other parent is a shapeshifter who was in human, female form when he was conceived and may or may not have stayed in that form during the pregnancy. (And how does pregnancy work for shapeshifters? There’s a vast, biological rabbit hole I could dive down…)
Zelazny does establish that Merlin, the main character, can shapeshift, but Merlin doesn’t use the ability at all 99% of the time. I could take that as the character not being very good at it, but that’s not something that the character admits to, and the character is supposed to have grown up in an environment where shapeshifting is a survival skill (or possibly a mark of status as part of the aristocracy. That’s never fully clear).
The other thing I’m having difficulty with is how Merlin would refer to 'his' parents. Well, more to the 'mother.' The father is human and male and stuck that way. Using 'he' and 'father' for Corwin should be fine. Dara, on the other hand… 'Mother’ might still be appropriate for 'parent who gestated me,' and doing that would save me having to come up with more terminology. Except that more terminology might underline that these characters aren’t human. And Merlin definitely wouldn’t use she/her pronouns for Dara when thinking about Dara, just when talking to human relatives who know Dara that way and who might reject Merlin for not being exactly human.
Zelazny wrote first person from Merlin’s point of view. Doing that would save me from having to immediately pin down Merlin’s pronouns, but I have Merlin thinking about Dara and flashing back to conversations with Dara. That means I can’t avoid Dara’s pronouns or the question of whether or not to have Merlin call Dara mother. The questions are making it hard for me to go forward. I worry that, if I just default to Zelazny’s designations, I’ll default to Zelazny’s assumptions.
I also need to dig into what’s in canon about another character, Jasra, who presents female and may or may not be a shapeshifter. Dara specifically mentions having known Jasra but pretty much labels Jasra as servant class and not aristocracy. Jasra being or not being a shapeshifter matters because it would determine whether or not her son could be. There’s zero indication in the text that he is, but there’s also very little indication in the text that Merlin and Dara are, so… The story I’m considering changes shape considerably if Luke can shapeshift. (Luke and Merlin’s fathers were half-brothers, so Luke has the same sort of motivation to present male that Merlin does in terms of spending a lot of time interacting with human type people who treat men better than women. He also grew up with his father and mother both and might have needed to conform to his father’s expectations.)
I kind of want to work on this story right at the moment since it’s the one I think will flow best while I’ve got three kids running around, but I’m completely blocked by the questions above.
The series is very, very heavily gendered, to the point that the author apparently never thought about the possibility that true shapeshifters might not automatically be either male or female. (The author doesn’t seem to have thought about the implications of shapeshifting at all. In ten books, it only turns up at points when it would look really cool and not when it would be, you know, actually useful.) It’s also complicated by the shapeshifting characters spending most of their on screen time in the company of fixed form folks who are pretty much human (just super powered and unaging and…) and fairly rigid in terms of gender roles. In interacting with them, there’s an advantage to appearing human and male. The fixed form folks also recently won a big war against the shapeshifters.
Right now, I keep banging into not having a reference for the main character from the books that doesn’t connect to the character being male. I suspect that the problem is that I read the books back in the 1980s and have had thirty years of thinking of the character as male. The character’s parents are also kind of tricky— One is fixed form, human, and male. The other parent is a shapeshifter who was in human, female form when he was conceived and may or may not have stayed in that form during the pregnancy. (And how does pregnancy work for shapeshifters? There’s a vast, biological rabbit hole I could dive down…)
Zelazny does establish that Merlin, the main character, can shapeshift, but Merlin doesn’t use the ability at all 99% of the time. I could take that as the character not being very good at it, but that’s not something that the character admits to, and the character is supposed to have grown up in an environment where shapeshifting is a survival skill (or possibly a mark of status as part of the aristocracy. That’s never fully clear).
The other thing I’m having difficulty with is how Merlin would refer to 'his' parents. Well, more to the 'mother.' The father is human and male and stuck that way. Using 'he' and 'father' for Corwin should be fine. Dara, on the other hand… 'Mother’ might still be appropriate for 'parent who gestated me,' and doing that would save me having to come up with more terminology. Except that more terminology might underline that these characters aren’t human. And Merlin definitely wouldn’t use she/her pronouns for Dara when thinking about Dara, just when talking to human relatives who know Dara that way and who might reject Merlin for not being exactly human.
Zelazny wrote first person from Merlin’s point of view. Doing that would save me from having to immediately pin down Merlin’s pronouns, but I have Merlin thinking about Dara and flashing back to conversations with Dara. That means I can’t avoid Dara’s pronouns or the question of whether or not to have Merlin call Dara mother. The questions are making it hard for me to go forward. I worry that, if I just default to Zelazny’s designations, I’ll default to Zelazny’s assumptions.
I also need to dig into what’s in canon about another character, Jasra, who presents female and may or may not be a shapeshifter. Dara specifically mentions having known Jasra but pretty much labels Jasra as servant class and not aristocracy. Jasra being or not being a shapeshifter matters because it would determine whether or not her son could be. There’s zero indication in the text that he is, but there’s also very little indication in the text that Merlin and Dara are, so… The story I’m considering changes shape considerably if Luke can shapeshift. (Luke and Merlin’s fathers were half-brothers, so Luke has the same sort of motivation to present male that Merlin does in terms of spending a lot of time interacting with human type people who treat men better than women. He also grew up with his father and mother both and might have needed to conform to his father’s expectations.)
I kind of want to work on this story right at the moment since it’s the one I think will flow best while I’ve got three kids running around, but I’m completely blocked by the questions above.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-06 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-07 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-07 12:45 am (UTC)At this point, I think I'm going to roll a die.
I'm going to try not to get particularly attached, though, just in case my selection turns out to have unpleasant baggage.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-07 01:33 am (UTC)That sounds like a fine plan :)