The only problem I will ever have with singular they pronouns

To be clear, this is an admission of personal failing and something I'm trying to correct, I just think there's something mildly interesting (very mildly, white-person-spicy-mildly) to be said about this as I think about language and how my brain interacts with it.

Point one: I have never had any problem, philosophical or practical, with the individual they or them. Nothing. I can say it, I can think it, I can write it and it doesn't feel strange to me. Long before I was aware this was a way of defining gender I was using the individual the way we all, no matter how vehemently people deny it, all use the individual they: to refer to an unknown person the details of whose identity are unknown to us.

So I used it in one context, easy enough to port it over to another.

Then I read an article about Missy and, for pretty obvious reasons, discussions of the larger character of the Master were couched in terms of the they pronoun. Simple enough.

Then I saw it. The problem. The stumbling block. The social terror of embarrassment yet to come.

“Themself”.

I can't say it. I want to say it but I can't. The tongue just defaults to “themselves”, an obvious and socially embarrassing plural.

So, yes, folks, here it is. I have discovered that there is a side of retraining oneself (see, I can even say that but “themself” is beyond me? Good grief!) to use language differently.

Will I, though?

Of course I bloody will, don't be stupid. The idea that inconsequential personal inconvenience is going to stop me from trying to make someone feel socially welcome is inconceivable. I know it isn't to some people and that's a constant thorn in my side and my newsfeed but I'll bloody try. I'll screw up and it will be mortifying but I'll try.

If I didn't try I'd be a dick. 

The only problem I will ever have with homosexuality

Pronouns.

Goddamn pronouns! It drives you mad. You're taught at school to establish who's speaking and present with names and then move on to “he”, “her” and so on so as not to test your reader's patience.

Then you write a scene with a gay couple and suddenly there's all this bloody ambiguity about which partner is doing what. You can't even do the physical characteristics thing like “the redhead did this”, “the brunette did that” because that's so impersonal and doesn't suit an intimate scene and is even more, even longer bloody words.

So instead you end up naming people every other line.

I know there's a lot of debate about language and sexuality and gender these days and maybe we don't need to add another layer to the whole thing but maybe we should, as a society, get on this.

You know, not just for my own selfish needs, just mainly. 

5 words that need tighter legal controls

After yesterday's post it occurred to me there are other words writers, directors and producers use that kind of piss me off through repeated misuse and here they are.

“Emotional”

Comedies are emotional because they provoke joy. “Emotional” does not have to mean “depressing”. It usually does, though.

“Innovative”

Or, alternatively, “pretentious”. The Dark Knight Rises is a big example of this as far as I'm concerned. For a start its “innovative” plot is just Knightfall and No Man's Land inelegantly stitched together but the films have a larger audience than the comics it adapts so Chris Nolan and his fans get to pretend he's doing something terribly original with the property. Oh, and as for the villain holding the city to ransom with a nuclear bomb... give me a break! That's practically bloody textbook!

“Iconic”

Less widespread than the others and more in video game territory but here we go: companies have a terrible habit of trying to tell us what is iconic. Though, actually, DC tried to pull something similar with Hush, advertising him as the “first major Batman villain introduced in decades” where “major” isn't entirely theirs to define. As it happens Hush was a good idea, he did become a major returning villain but his popularity could not be relied upon before the audience got a look at him.

That ain't how it works. Something becomes iconic because the audience latches onto it. The baseball cap worn by the lead character in a game you haven't released yet does not get to be iconic just because you say it is.

“New”

New Avengers has been running for a decade and I'm really not sure what's new about the current version when it features some of the oldest characters in the Marvel Universe in their role as pillars of the Marvel Universe. The New Super Mario Bros. franchise is a series of nostalgia games designed to evoke memories of the SNES era. There needs to be a statute of limitations on this.

“Realistic”

This is a particularly abused one and social services really need to step in. Like “emotional” this tends to mean “depressing” but with a side order of “brown and shooty”. Reality can be fun and realistic can mean a lot of different things: a story can be realistic because of its setting (Eastenders): because the emotions of its characters are meant to be related to (Battlestar Galactica); or because it takes a procedural angle on the story its telling (Law & Order). It does not just mean first person shooters with limited colour palates.