Hey Sup Forums, legit question here;

Hey Sup Forums, legit question here;

I'm writing a sci-fi novel and have a species that's agendered. How would you write it?
English has shit agendered pronouns, so it's either it/we/they/I, which is awkward and led my editor to think that the character was a plural being or something.
I don't want to make up a new word if I can avoid it, and I'm sure as fuck not gonna use any cringy words like xe/xer/xem or whatever the fuck it is now.

There are other sci-fi writers that just pick a gender he/him she/her and refer to everything like that, but it doesn't fit the character (in brief, giant lizard mercenary that's disguised as a teen human girl).

Thoughts? Dumping random wallpapers in the meantime.

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random shit from a sort folder, to be more accurate

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I suppose I could cop out and go third person for self-reference but that always feels forced as shit too

Hi, even is agendered beings, you can use masc. pronouns. The Angels are also agendered and u know, masculine form.

I suppose so. I'm not really keeping the character gender free from a hardcore SJW stance, more from a keep-shit-interesting stance.

What will be the title of ur novel op?

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It does make it weird though; in the book, certain alien races can "host" in humans, basically hang out in alternate dimension and swap places any time with the human. The two share a mind and communicate with one another and/or can control one another, depending on character. Would be a bit weird to have a male character locked in the head of a teenage girl.

Series is "The Kallan Chronicles", book one is "Origin". Book two likely titled "Vigilance", book three likely "Collapse".

Shit, I should check out stackexchange. Thanks user.

Falling down on the dump job

I see.. I think will be ok with masc. pronouns. Good luck with ur project op :)

Thanks for the input.

If you're still here, I'll pick your brain for another question.

Yeah tell me :)

Sorry, internet bugged out for a bit, bumping so I can type.

Okk ill be monitoring

Ok, so essential synopsis is that there are several "power" races/species that largely avoid humans because we're backwards mud people. They occasionally kidnap people for the aforementioned "hosting" technology, which has really only been around for ~50 earth years at this point and has limited applications for most of these races, so it's not a massive-scale operation on earth.
Main race central to story are the Kallans, arrogant magnificent bastards. Agricultural and technological dominance led to an early leg up as intergalactic travel and trade developed within these planets; primary individual weaponry for them are kartha, or suits of armor that are similar to the hosting technology, always ready but not necessarily always on (think the later iron man extremis shit where he hollowed his bones or whatever... I'd written this out way before that and alternate dimensions are better than nuking your bones imo)
Then you've got Krycherin, essentially horned wolves the size of a horse, covered in very hard and spiky fur. They hit like a truck and are excellent in close-quarters combat, but not much for range or technological encounters given their dexterity issues.
Cherathakans (the agendered species in question) are ~7 foot tall lanky lizard fuckers who are excellent at close quarters combat if the need arises but prefer to hunt in small packs, usually 5-8 members per squad, with snipers as support and ops command, heavy infantry and more mobile gunners.
Then you've got Makkar, wispy smoke monsters (essentially) that are ineffective in daylight (most forms of radiation hurt them) but are death machines in spaceship corridors, outdoors at night, etc; practically invisible, hard to hit and harder to kill.
Final species is Shenutians, basically a sentient cloud of bone (really a silica/rock compound) that don't have a set form, so any particulate weapons just shatter their bones, which they can still control; only way to kill them is beam weapons.

Op?

So the question that goes with that is oriented at the names. I'm going through first round of editing right now and the editor stated that she had a hard time connecting the characters/species to the names, and suggested re-evaluating the names of the species to tie more to concepts that the average reader can pick up on.

Okk reading & thinking :)

Sorry, my kids are trying to break my computer, slightly slowed typing.

Anyways; I love sci-fi, and once you're in a world it usually makes sense, but I hate going too obvious with names (think the "Furians" from Riddick; i mean come on, that's just fucking lazy).
Am I going too esoteric, or do I just fuckin rock it?

Secondly, the planetary names for the species is a bit different than their species in some cases; e.g. think that Germans come from Deutschland, not Germany. To you as a reader, would you rather read "Cherathakans are from their home planet Cherathaka, or Thakatria in their native tongue" or just "they're from thakatria".

Thanks for the input, in advance

All read op.

boomp

What about mass effect? They have the Asari, whom all seem to be female, but not really. Dont they just use female pronouns? Can't your species use the pronouns of the sex the resemble?

how do they reproduce? Sounds like they might actually be a plural being, hivemind sort of type if they reproduce asexually like mushrooms or sum shit

not the guy you were talking to, but I'd suggest doing some research on scientific names. for example, speaking of the krycherin (I had to look twice to check the spelling), iberian wolves are canis lupus signatus, I'd start from there, choose the word lupus and play around with it. that way it kinda sounds familiar (at least to me,in my native language wolf translates to lobo) and it's not evident

I am one of the few nerds on the planet who has not played Mass Effect yet. When it came out I took one look and said "nope, I need to avoid this addiction". I will read up on them though.

I´m also love sci-fi, in fackt i´m novelicing & designing some phone game called Phobos Children, but is substancially easyer that your novel :D, I like what I read. So, regarding the question I need to think a little, for give you some answer. With your permission, I´m going to copy/paste your synopsis :)

They reproduce by spawning in pits of mud. The actual biology is that they're essentially a huge version of a microbe that can develop into a much larger organism when conditions favor it (think endospores in microbiology, similar to that). They have a limited hivemind type of communication with one another but they have independent thought and personalities, although there is a strict caste system within their society.

That's a pretty good idea as a starting point; "luvian" vs "wolfer" is a bit less conspicuous.

something like Lypus, that way you preserve some thing of the name you had chosen (yknow, phonetics wise) and at least I'd find it easy to remember those guys are weird wolves

You can play with the concept if you'd like. Just change enough so I don't have to sue you when my book gets called a copycat of your game.

Phobos same guy here,

I thin you ´re right with that, taking words in french/spanish/german/sumerian and try to transform a little.

I think you can get some good names.

yeah, I kinda like the sound of luvian. If you're not that into Latin, just go to google translate and have fun looking for a starting point. Though I'd advise sticking to Latin, or something like Anglo-Saxonic so that it sounds familiar to the readers. you can also do some research on mythology if you'd like, that would be cool. Still regarding the wolf guys, Sleipnir
is the name of an 8 legged horse in Norse mythology, sooo Lupnir? I'm guessing that's starting to sound too far fetched and we're back at the sounding too different problem, but I don't know, you're the writer

hot shit then. back to writing.

Editor basically said "I like the skeleton well enough but you've paced it like a movie so I feel like a third of the book is missing."

Time to expand!

ah, no no, just copy in my desktop for read with more attention, just in case coz maybe the tread dissapeared :) dont worry :) game is completed :)

yeah, exactly

I think you can have two different terms. The word "it" would be the derogatory term and something like "else or sho" would be more pc

Thanks for all of the input and advice, everyone.

Once you get past the loli and shemale porn, Sup Forums is quite the warm and welcoming place.

Phobos here, one again good luck with your book Op :) want to read some soon

In ffix their is an npc race called the sylph who you can't really tell what gender they are (although they are fairly feminine in nature)

Instead of pronouns they sorta refer to each other in descriptive fashion, like they might refer to an evil person as "wicked one" in place of all pronouns.

You could come up with something like that where this race avoids pronouns all together, makes their language appear a little unusual and alien too

no problem man