Hello guys!! So sorry for my absence! I've made JS code free for anyone to use in their Twine game, which allows you to have multiple pronouns for your main character -- for example, she/they, she/he, she/he/they, whatever combination!
Some features include:
Completely customizable, and therefore neopronouns-friendly!
No limitations as to how many sets of pronouns you can add—you can add even just one.
Can determine singular and plural pronouns, even if you use pronouns that are different
Automatically switches between pronouns -- and you only need to write ?mcthey, ?mcthem, etc.
If you want to stick to one pronoun temporarily (e.g. so a character refers to MC as she/her and not switch to they/them mid-sentence), it is possible, too!
SHOUTOUT to @magiciansvoyage for inspiring me to do this for Twine!! :)
Why I Did This
I was inspired by @magiciansvoyage (!!!) who made multipronouns in CS, and I wanted to make multipronouns in Twine. Shout to them for this, they're amazing!!
I'm aware there are other gender code out there, but as far as I know, I don't know of any that can have multiple pronouns and switch between them using she/her and they/them automatically, for example.
How to Implement?
Just copy and paste the JavaScript code into your JavaScript, and copy and paste the variables into your StoryInit passage! Link to code here!
You can find the macro with in-depth explanation of what everything does here! I will include a How To underneath the readmore as well for a quick and dirty, but you will still benefit a lot from reading through the readme on GitHub.
How to Use?
This section will be more process-oriented than detail-oriented. For a better explanation on ?mcthey, $mc_they, and the <<gender>> macro, look at my readme on GitHub where you pull the code!
The Setup
Allow the player to add their pronouns for themselves as you would normally. Set these to $mc_they, $mc_them, $mc_theirs, $mc_themself, and $mc_plural (true if plural, false if singular).
Then, you can add this to your MC's pronouns with < < gender $mc_they $mc_them $mc_their $mc_theirs $mc_themself $mc_plural > > (had to add a space between the triangle brackets because Tumblr is weird). This will add that set of pronouns, which will be in rotation throughout the story. Make sure to add every argument, or else the macro will complain you've added too little.
When you want the player to add a new set of pronouns, repeat steps 1 and 2. You can keep prompting the player to add pronouns until they're satisfied. Make sure you give them a confirmation and reiterate what pronouns they've added, as there will be no way to remove pronouns once done (I may add this feature in the future if needed).
In-text
If you want to change between she/they, use ?mcthey or ?mcThey for capitalization. For her/them, use ?mcthem or ?mcThem. And so on.
If you want to use is/are, use $mc_is (a $ this time, not a ?), or $mc_was if you're writing in past tense. It will take the latest pronoun mentioned to determine whether to use is/are. If "they" was last mentioned, it will use "are". If "she" was last mentioned, it will use "is".
If you want to use a contraction like they're or she's, then use ?mctheyre or ?mcTheyre.
If you want to stick to one pronoun temporarily, use $mc_they, $mc_them, etc. It will stick to the last pronoun mentioned by ?mcthey, ?mcthem, etc.
If you want to use singular verb vs. plural verb, use $mc_s. Again, it will take the latest pronoun mentioned to determine whether to add "s" to a verb or not.
I also added $mc_has that follows the same logic as $mc_is to determine has vs have.
If this isn't super clear, make sure to read the readme. Also, feel free to DM or ask questions otherwise! :)
I do often wonder if I would have felt the same way about Tara as I do Kennedy if Tara had been masc-coded and masc-expressed or if the way I feel about Willow and Kennedy is genuinely due to Iyari Limon having 0 on-screen chemistry with Alyson Hannigan.
Or could it be a combination of both?
Is the fact Tara is FEMME and Amber and Alyson have insane chemistry together why I love and ship them?
Much to think about. 🤔
Edit:
No, but it may answer why I have the hots for Willow and not Tara. I’ve always preferred MASC over FEMME when it comes to what’s attractive to me. And Willow definitely expresses more MASC energy than Tara does but not quite as much as Kennedy does. And I just find Kennedy unlikable anyway regardless how she’s coded or how she expresses.
I mean I do also find Willow unlikeable sometimes too but that’s more so in a way of loving to hate than hating to love. I don’t feel like I’m forcing my emotions when watching her but with watching Kennedy I do. I feel like I’m forcing myself to like her when I just can’t.
I genuinely like Tara but not in a sexual attraction way. So it’s difficult. It’s like I like characters but then I also like like characters. But then I don’t like characters but I then also don’t like don’t like characters. 🥴
It’s confusing to say the least.
Willow’s only unlikable when she’s being a turd. But then I find her being a turd very interesting. So… 😖
Would I put up with it in real life? No, I fucking wouldn’t. Not even in the slightest.
Okay here’s the thing. I really want to just write a fucking scroll about how Dean is both the Eldest Daughter (affliction) and the Eldest Son (disorder), how Hunter culture constructs its own gender binary with distinct rules that line up with a particular romanticized vision of the American working-class existence, how those constructs change over time as their writing room grew slightly more diverse, and how Dean's experiences with gender as a cis man who is often pushed toward roles traditionally coded feminine within that structure and his resulting macho posturing mirrors my own experience with being AFAB non-binary in interesting ways.
Or maybe like...four scrolls.
Buuuuuut I also agree with @robbieross that a lot of the conversation around SPN and gender is kinda gender essentialist. Which I hope is unintential, and I think could be fixed by just...taking a second to really frame what we’re talking about a bit better if we’re going to get all meta about it anyway.
So before I dive head-first into more meta than I really have the time to write (but I’m still going to), I think it’s worth putting it out there that when I personally talk or think about Dean Winchester being “woman coded,” I’m not actually assuming there’s just some fundamental/universal/definitive/exclusive “woman” set of experiences and feelings.
I’m very much coming at this from a feminist lit-crit perspective, where I’m looking at both Dean and the implied gender binary within his fictional world as artificially-constructed parts of the narrative that bounce off each other in a particular way, not “this is how the world actually Is and how gender actually Works according to Nature” or some shit.
What I mean when I say that Dean is “woman coded” is that Dean exists within a fictional world that is built on and invested in the enforcement of the cisheteropatriarchal male/female gender binary and its attendant gender roles. And that within that specific context, according to that internal artificial metric, he is woman-coded in multiple ways. I'm not saying that the context he exists in is right or good or to be upheld, just that it exists as a thing certain people are invested in upholding and he in turn exists with in it in this particular way.
And the fact that said context just so happens to heavily mirror the broad strokes of working-class Middle American culture creates a wider lens, IMO, not a more "valid" one. What does Dean’s gender coding within his story’s context suggest about how he might view his world? What does our reaction to him say about how we view or experience ours? And how does Dean's positioning within the text as both Archetypal Man and Metaphorical Woman according to this artificial binary reflect certain cultural biases or attitudes that still exist around the concept of gender in our society? What potential flaws in this paradigm are exposed by the writers’ inability to reconcile the story they’re intending to tell and the character they’re intending to write with the one they’re telling/writing?
I don't have to accept that the paradigm is correct in order to interrogate the text with the paradigm as a jumping-off point. But I do have to know--and we should all probably acknowledge--the difference between A Constructed Paradigm and The Way Thing Just Are.
There's...a lot more I could say on this topic, especially around how the show constructs and then subverts and then re-enforces its own internal gender politics over the years, but as far as the Gender of it all goes and avoiding gender essentialism when discussing it, that's all I've got. Would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this!
I'd like to hear more about female-coded anakin! its a very interesting topic and I haven't seen much discussion about it (though I haven't been on tumblr very long) but anakin's characterization has always been a puzzle to me and the moment I saw the words 'anakin' and 'female-coded' in one sentence I had a moment of "oh this might be it"!
I made a post discussing what gender coding and specifically female coding is for Anakin a while back!
There’s a link in that post as well with a post Padawanlost made about the same thing and there are articles attached to it with other sources on gender coding in media. ❤️
Day 2358 - I know that gender-coded word choice in job postings can influence who applies to a position, so I’m investigating tools that we can use to evaluate ours.
