A Gender Neutral Option for Some Species?

[FreshRefreshments]

Shame that you think that. 

I don't. 

[Winter404]

43 minutes ago, Carver said:

 

I already covered this, to an extent:

Whether or not my character is able to discern your sex is on my character. You can have flavour text explaining they may look a particular way, but that shouldn't disregard that people have differing perceptive abilities and may be able to identify regardless of such. I noted Aut'akh as an exception because they've had near-all identifying physiological features stripped away, and Skrell because it may be argued that at particular ages it may be difficult to tell them apart due to head-tail length.

To say that my character lacks the perception to tell the difference isn't on you.

You're right. I can't say that your character "lacks the perception to tell the difference". But I don't think this change prevents you from assuming a character's gender. Imagine this change does make it into the game, you can look at- again, taking my character as an example- Yuri's sprite and say, "Well this character has long hair (the picture I chose probably doesn't highlight this much) and "Yuri Masuyo" kind of sounds like a woman's name so my character assumes it's a woman". Your character would be wrong but that's okay, that's still the way they think, I can't fault you for that.
As I was writing this, Fresh posted their response and it's honestly written much better than anything I was about to.

24 minutes ago, FreshRefreshments said:

This is about the efforts of a person to look androgynous. Or someone who just naturally looks that way. 

[...] your character being unable to x-ray vision into my androgynous off-worlder's pants and tell if they have a dick or not [...]

This is kind of unrelated to the topic but, I find your idea that you can "tell the difference" between a non-binary person's gender a bit. Gross. All this change would do is illustrate better what these pixelated sprites are trying to convey. How does this person look? Maybe a few real life examples would help show that, no you can't tell.
Is this person male, or female?

Well, they're Rain Dove, a Female model who wears both men's and women's clothing.
What about this person?
They're Seth Aswell. A male canadian model self-described as a "shape-shifter"
Right now, I can make a character with a flavour text that all but boldly states "this character uses plural pronouns" and (based on your latest response as I was typing this) I can confidently assume you'd still call them by whatever gender the little examine text says. Maybe you're right and people aren't indiscernible (After all, I only found images of models who look a certain way but actually are the other way. I haven't shown any examples of someone who "looks androgynous") But with this change people could more easily show the style their character has. 

And you could still make your conscious choice to ignore this.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I think ones power to decide how their character looks is a freedom that trumps a desire to force a look onto them. Its their character; let them worry about putting the work in.

[Kintsugi]

I concur with Skull's answer in the thread that this is a dupe of.

[Vizendel]

I fail to see why this is a big enough deal to oppose its implementation, especially when someone has already expressed an intent to look into it.

 

It's literally more work to not want this for the individuals who are opposing it.

[niennab]

To add to my sentiment, I want to bring up the issues that come up in essentially attempting to fight the mechanics of a system that is noninclusive.

Finley Greyson is non-binary and androgynous. However, given the present system, the only way I have managed to get around this is to pick the female sex (again, wrong named gender) and pick a neutral/masculine leaning first name. As such, the only way my character truly persists as androgynous is when I am referred to mistakenly as male.

Then there's IRU-Sentiment. An IPC shell who otherwise has no sex, and although they are in a female presenting chassis, has opted to use they/them pronouns. However, the mechanics presented offer me an uphill battle. Set Pose with always use She or He. The examining feature will always clock my characters as one or the other. At times I honestly just give up and use she/her because of this and it feels wrong every time I do.

Lastly, characters aside, I think it's important that we need to consider the community as a whole. I am, if my profile picture isn't clear enough, non-binary. However, I have had to live with the idea that I cannot truly represent myself on the Aurora in addition to the struggles faced day to day. Having this implemented would mean a lot to me as a person and I wager the same could be said for other community members.

[Winter404]

27 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

I concur with Skull's answer in the thread that this is a dupe of.

i really suggest you read more than the first two posts of this thread.
I'm guessing you haven't, since I think it's been shown by this point that. This suggestion is different from what was suggested in that thread.

[Kintsugi]

16 minutes ago, Winter404 said:

i really suggest you read more than the first two posts of this thread.
I'm guessing you haven't, since I think it's been shown by this point that. This suggestion is different from what was suggested in that thread.

This thread ultimately deals with the same subject as the previous thread: It desires to change how gender functions mechanically.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

It does not change how gender functions mechanically. We have 'they' already. This extends it to where it rationally fits.

[Haydizzle]

I don’t think at this point it’s a dupe; this thread talks about character creation (and perhaps more so character identity), while the other one seems to divulge more into extending mechanics that exist to other items (making a gas mask give they/them when examining like a void suit).

They’re similar in that they both deal with perception, but this thread has evolved to also deal with giving non-binary characters a solid option. The sword swings both ways, too; perhaps someone looks male, but identifies as non-binary; maybe a character is hard to tell due to genetics, but was born female and identifies such. It’s a tweak that would give a lot more intrigue to characters and the like.

I think too that giving non-binary people the option to make characters that they can relate to would be a good ideal to strive for as well. It’d be a harmless implementation for people who aren’t interested or don’t feel comfortable making an androgynous or non-binary character, while also giving a few folks something that would honestly rock for them.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Haydizzle

[Carver]

5 hours ago, Winter404 said:

All this change would do is illustrate better what these pixelated sprites are trying to convey. How does this person look?

To reply in brief; "How does this person look?" is, per my earlier statement, already covered via flavour text.

[niennab]

1 hour ago, Carver said:

To reply in brief; "How does this person look?" is, per my earlier statement, already covered via flavour text.

This has already been proven incorrect.

18 hours ago, Winter404 said:

I don't think flavour text is enough. I'll use one of my characters to show what I mean:

This is Yuri. An Off-Worlder human.
I'd like to think I managed to make their style look pretty androgynous.
Now let's see what someone sees when they examine them:

And you might have noticed a problem. My flavour text never uses "She" or "He", I don't use these pronouns when describing their actions, but someone looking at this at a glance might still use gendered pronouns because our character creation has a binary gender selection.
I can't exactly put ((THIS CHARACTER IS NON-BINARY PLEASE USE THEY/THEM PRONOUNS THANK YOU)) in big bold letters in the flavour text because, that's not what a flavour text is.

 

[Zundy]

I think it's a good idea if a coder believes it's worth the time. I'd make.all my characters "they" and flesh them out in my flavor text. I'd go so far as to make biological sex and appearance separate tabs. I could play a woman who appears to be a man at a shift click.

 

I was under the impression this would cause issues code wise though, but if not and someone wants to do it I say hell yeah.