I like to think Neil genuinely couldn’t care less about pronouns or the way people define themselves (including his own identity). his attitude toward it feels like an even more extreme version of Jean’s reaction to Xavier. If Neil hears someone refer to themselves with she/her pronouns, he makes a mental note, all right, she/her, and never thinks about it again. If, months later, that same person starts using he/him instead, Neil quietly updates that mental note without a second thought. he never pauses to ask why it changed, never wonders what happened in between. It simply doesn’t occur to him that there’s anything to question. half his life was spent on the run, cycling through dozens, if not hundreds, of identities. somewhere along the way, the way he learned to understand both himself and everyone else stopped being based on biology or an internal sense of self and became nothing more than habit. whoever someone says they are is who they are. Neil adapts frighteningly fast: tell him someone goes by different pronouns, and after hearing them a couple of times, he'll get used to them. tell him, “Starting today, your name is Anne,” and he’ll be Anne without hesitation, right up until someone tells him it’s time to become someone else. agender? maybe? honestly, I don’t even know how I’d classify where all these thoughts end up. It isn’t so much a defined identity as it is an almost absurd level of indifference toward the concept of self-identification altogether. he’s Neil Josten. biologically? sure, he’s a man. chromosomes exist, anatomy exists. does he feel like a man? “…A person?” If circumstances require him to be a man, he’ll be a man. If they require him to be a woman, he’ll be a woman. If they require him to be neither, then he’ll be neither. why make it more complicated than it has to be? to Neil, identity has never been something sacred or immutable. It’s simply whatever allows him to keep moving forward. at the end of the day, he’s just a person — Neil Josten.
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