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Do any other character creators on AVEN ever have trouble with misgendering their characters? I’m working on a story where the AFAB protagonist uses they/them pronouns, (actually I have two stories with this same problem, but that’s beside the point.) and I keep calling them she and then feeling weird about it. How can I stop doing this? I don’t know why it’s happening, since I’m able to use they/them pronouns for myself and the one other person I know who uses they/them with much less trouble than I’m having with my character. 

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patronusmagic

Maybe that character just feels like a she to you, like when you created them. I know that when characters apear to me in my head, the first thought sticks. What ever I do to chainge the character after that, it just wont budge, they are who they are. 

 

So maybe even though you tried to create a neutral character, in your head they are still a she. A bit like when real parents slipp up and missgender their children when for example telling old stories, from before the child came out. :) You are your characters parent in a way after all. 

 

Maybe this was no help at all, oh well, I tried :D 

 

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Fantastic Name

Ugh, I know how this feels. It's like, once I have that mental image of them in my head, I can't reverse it. They're that way for life.

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yeah, this is happening in my story as well. there was one character I had planned out as gender-neutral but I just couldn't envision them any other way but female. I eventually changed it and made the gender-neutral character a different person so that my vision wasn't disturbed. if that's possible for you I suggest it!

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18 hours ago, icyrose said:

yeah, this is happening in my story as well. there was one character I had planned out as gender-neutral but I just couldn't envision them any other way but female. I eventually changed it and made the gender-neutral character a different person so that my vision wasn't disturbed. if that's possible for you I suggest it!

This character's gender is important to their backstory and to the beginning of the story, so I don't want to change it. They're not strictly gender neutral, but since they alternate between being both masculine and feminine and being neither (they're only half human, and their identity is a third gender recognized by their culture) I don't think they would be fully comfortable with she/her.

 

19 hours ago, patronusmagic said:

Maybe that character just feels like a she to you, like when you created them. I know that when characters apear to me in my head, the first thought sticks. What ever I do to chainge the character after that, it just wont budge, they are who they are. 

 

So maybe even though you tried to create a neutral character, in your head they are still a she. A bit like when real parents slipp up and missgender their children when for example telling old stories, from before the child came out. :) You are your characters parent in a way after all. 

 

Maybe this was no help at all, oh well, I tried :D 

 

My initial thought for this character's gender was that they used they/them pronouns. I have no idea why I keep using their birth pronouns since I very rarely slip up and do that with the one other nonbinary person I know, and the only time I do it with myself is when I'm remembering or trying to anticipate something someone else said or will say about me.

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I think it's because we've been conditioned by the binary pronouns dominating fiction that we're not used to seeing a gender-neutral pronoun used to describe a single character, so even though it's technically right something in our brain just goes "wait, that looks weird!"

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Does anyone have any advice on how to stop doing this? I made another nb character who uses they/them for a webcomic I’m working on with a friend of mine, and I don’t want to start misgendering them like I misgender my other characters. 

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Maybe try the same trick some people do for RL people? Try to think of the character with the pronouns you want. 

“Character is a human and goes by they/them pronouns. They like ice cream and french fries.” And so on. 

Or if it’s an option try to write and then when you’re done if you have “search on page” search the pronoun you don’t want for them and fix them (ignoring instances they’re supposed to be there obviously).

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Alejandrogynous

I don't know if this is quite the same, but I have made a character in the past that, during design, was meant to be very very androgynous, but when I actually started to write for them, they did not come out that way at all. But I don't see it as misgendering so much as a case of a character walking off the page like, 'nope sorry, I got my own stuff going on'. Which I think is a great thing personally and I don't fight it. Character says he's a dude? Well then he's a dude. :lol: Who am I to stop him, I'm just the writer. But characters do that all the time for me, developing their own personalities and selves. I usually just go with it but I can see why it could be bothersome, especially if a character is supposed to be a certain way for plot reasons and they don't want to be that way so the plot doesn't fit right and... yeah. That gets tricky.

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I always do a second read through looking specifically at pronouns and making sure I've got them right.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I keep doing that with my character Raven who is six foot of leather and piercings and they’re great but I keep referring to them as him and it’s so annoying! I don’t even know what their agab is but I think because their presentation is more masculine my brain is suppling the wrong pronouns. 

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