But I don't think he's ever tried to sustain that over the course of a whole novel. I mean, Haruhis androgynous nature is the central premise of the show.
(Like, people would look at a guy way more strangely if they wore a dress than if a gal wore a suit.). This book is the best example I know of as a first person narration that never explicitly mentions the narrator's gender. I feel like shes a little bit of everything. No, now they are proposing to hide the fact that the character is androgynous, which is just as problematic. @Muzer it's not jarring to the average English speaker. Maybe he grew up outside his society where androgynity was normal. What is the significance of the scene where Gus had a long conversation with a man at a bar in S06E09? Agreed - if gender isn't relevant to the character, then just make the character something where gender isn't relevant. One of the things that seems like a good idea to many beginning writers is trying to deceive the reader in some way or another. Bipedial? Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. All other assets & trademarks are property of their original owners. 
If a few characters guess differently, it will highlight the ambiguity. Their features are not masculine nor feminine, and their face always remains covered. We need stories. It should be made obvious that gender isn't relevant to this character, rather than the reader being encouraged to guess the gender. "That's for you to find out." This quirky, genius character didn't need the gender binary to completely steal the show.
We're deeply in the character's viewpoint, seeing and hearing and feeling and following every minute detail of what they're experiencing. 1) Where's the best place to hide a red fish? If you buy something we may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. I'm a newcomer to this community, and have recently started giving serious thought to my first novel. This post may contain affiliate links. But that works only briefly. It's up to you if you want them to express confusion or struggle with how to address Red Fish. Personally, I thought that Gowther was a female because of his smaller stature, compared to the other male characters, and the bright pink hair. Readers don't like it when the author "cheats," but if the author "plays" it could work, e.g. (The story has also been turned into an alright film called Predestination which isn't as good as the book but show me a film that is). How to write female characters with agency? And probably for a reason. S. LaFontaine of the Canadian web seriesCarmillais a non-binary person who prefers the their/they/them pronouns. You could make the narrator fascinated with the main character and write your story in the second person. Here's how those novels and games avoid needing to refer to the gender of the protagonist: Use names that aren't clearly gendered.
It helps that Professor Tamar is the narrator and yet never visits the scene of the crime. As when Inukashi is addressed as such, they dont correct anyone. The mystery is shared between narrator Krille and the reader. It was never disclosed in the show, and some have interpreted that fact as integral to their character. Video games, movies, TV shows, cartoons, anime, toys, comics, and so much more. His clothes dont really give anything away, and since hes young his facial features are pretty soft and round. But this inversion of expectations is actually very important for the character of Nagisa. If you seriously write this story, you absolutely need to invent an androgynous pronoun. In other words, you can't sidestep the influence of gender just by adding a middle ground. Your characters who aren't of Red Fish's people can be binarily gendered and use standard pronouns. Especially when he puts the hood on and we can only see his face. But even once her true form was revealed, I honestly wasnt too sure of her gender. Or have the narrator or a character give a two-sentence explanation of how it is difficult to translate their pronouns into English because we have no equivalent word. Faulkner withholds information within stream-of-consciousness in. (Also, I get the feeling that concerns about referring to "my wife" revealing the speaker's gender for sure might not be as significant in a modern fantasy race.). The following tags are aliased to this tag: ambiguous_sex, unknown_gender, ambigious_gender, androgyny, gender_unknown, androgynous, ambiguous (learn more). I know I mentioned this already too, but as a genius inventor I always saw Leeron just for his work, and occasional gag.
This is because when Inosuke is introduced hes as manly as one can get. If the main character doesn't even bother to "correct" them, it will also give a strong sense that they're very used to people trying to pigeonhole them into a gender and they're used to just playing along with it. You've got the extra leverage of having an androgynous race, but I would argue that this is not even necessary. We all define ourselves to some extent by our gender (if sometimes grudgingly), and since stories are really about the conflict between different people's understanding of the world (and thus themselves), you're cheating your reader out of part of the story if you fail to reveal this information. And I really didnt see putting that into question as a possibility for the show. All other assets & trademarks are property of their original owners. Read our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to get more information and learn how to set up your preferences. I swear you cant trust these shapeshifters. It's a challenge, definitely, but it's a great way to stretch your writing and make sure you think about what you're doing, which is valuable to do even when not specifically writing in this way. 
However, she always referred to herself as a female. The chemical processes, the needs and feelings, and of course the social norms and expectations. It only takes a minute to sign up. Thanks to them, the following characters have made their way onto our screen and into our hearts. But then I read that in the manga, third volume, some say that theyre a male. post #1709715 post #1827608 post #1572369. And only a few times in a novel. Otherwise, people cannot easily find the rest of your work. Please, any advice would be greatly appreciated. And so she would be taken more seriously. Lots of androgyny to go around, thats for sure. How do the electrical characteristics of an ADC degrade over lifetime? I should've cleared some things up, such as the gender identity of my MC in question. Players are encouraged to project their preferred gender onto the character, or not to think about it all, and instead look at the character for other aspects of who they are. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might want to hide gender from a reader. They really wanted to make sure that they had an understanding about something thatas [show runners] Brian [Koppelman] and David [Levien] like to saythey self-identify as white, cis-gender, straight men, so this was unfamiliar territory for them. The narrator is unambiguously male, as are all his friends he hangs out with in 1950s Stockholm. Now your adding a third gender, but I don't see how that would vary things much. This reminds me of some novel (don't remember title or author, might be Swedish), where the main character is a brain (plus one eye) suspended in a fluid tank in a lab with no memory to their prior personality; for some time the brain even tries to figure out if their personaility id male or female and if that makes sense at all @KlaymenDK V's gender ambiguity was a pun on DnD elven androgynousness, and it did not break ambience. This character could even bring up the uncertainty: "Are you a dude?" The creator of worldwide powerhouse Minecraftdeclared that all characters in the game are gender neutral. There's always the option of having one character misgender the protagonist. Haircuts are seemingly also an unnecessary expense, so we as the audience arent really given any visual cues as to their gender. But the central aspect of her character will always be her work, and not what chromosomes she has.
Or even female if you want to go by the chest size ratio. In short, she gets mistaken for a boy and starts working in a mans host club to pay off her debt. This MIGHT end up conveying the impression of just being a tomboy, though, since I feel like (to modern sensibilities) there are more things that a girl is allowed to do than a man is. And so I really credit them and respect them for reaching outside of their comfort zones to investigate non-binary-gender issues and gender-identity stuff in general..
The reason, I think, why you should generally make your character's gender known, is that gender will normally be a part of the story on some level. Because Zer0 has a deep voice, fans have argued that the careful assassin could be using something to mask their voice in an effort to protect their identity. There is no explicit mention of the writer's gender. There are plenty of humans who go about their day to day business without thinking about their own gender very much - certainly not enough to write in any record of the day. And that will almost certainly leave the reader caring less about the characters than you want them to. Your either in "Inny" with all that means, an "Outty" with all that means, or neither with all that means (and I suppose you could be a both, it's your world after all). You can sometimes use little tricks to briefly delay revealing information that a viewpoint character discovers or realizes. Dan Brown pulls viewpoint shenanigans like that all the time. Inukashi was not dealt the best hand in life. If you are an artist uploading your own work, please tag yourself. The fact that your MC is a neut, will make a huge impact on ner. 
Especially if they only watched the original series. Their mother constantly brought them down. So considering that almost no one got that she was a male without being told, I think shes fit for this list. But using a distant viewpoint will uh keep the reader distant from that viewpoint. So his gender is brought into question a few times during the show. 
The author is not hiding a gender which the character doesn't have. But of course, all of that does little to stop Nagisa from being one of the best assassins, and maybe even best kissers. I remember watching Naruto when Orochimaru first stepped onto the scene. Why don't they just issue search warrants for Steve Bannon's documents? to add to this excellent answer: If none of your other characters display confusion over the MC's ambiguous gender or bring it up, they will feel unnatural and hard to identify with once the reader finds out, making the ejection from immersion that much worse when the reveal comes.
His appearance plus charisma and intellect have made him a powerful leader. Another question about two POV's and broken timelines. And as a slime theyre kind of just a blob, so no leads there. She is just a scientist at her core (in the anime) and thats all she cares about. Hange's gender is never directly discussed inAttack on Titanthe anime and the manga.
Dogs dont care what gender you are, so Im pretty sure Inukashi is just as uninterested. 2) Whether your reader will be distracted by Red Fish's gender ambiguity depends on what else you define about the character. Ryo is Satan, so agender in that regard. Because thats the most innocent cutest face I have ever seen on a man. People can guess or project, as they usually do, but theyre wasting their time. Also, some spoilers may be ahead!). Another book by Peter Pohl, without such mystery, does employ a grammatical technique that could aid in keeping it a mystery. So the whole sexuality and gender thing just flew right over my head. If you must keep something from your readers, keep it from at least one character in the story as well. Reincarnations are always a bit tricky. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. Beyond a show like Yuri on Ice, it always just seems like a bromance, at least to me. But its most basic rule is to be honest with the reader. The reader will have no indications as to whether said character is male or female, and I've already decided that other characters won't be referring to him/her by any pronouns that might give it away. Somehow this seems even more controversial than my list pick. But honestly I feel like he couldnt care less what gender he was. "It's been so long since I've seen you, what have you been up to?" You could read pages and pages of a diary without seeing a single reference to what gender its writer is, because the diary is based around the pronoun "I." Elves and dwarves are sexually dimorphous, so an ambiguously gendered elf or dwarf is going to irritate the reader after a while. It has been implied that theyre a male, though. It is how our recognition system works. How to encourage melee combat when ranged is a stronger option. or "Meet my new friend, Alex," or "Please put the camel in the garage," are all perfectly reasonable things to talk about with someone that don't rely on knowing the speakers' genders. Games with ambiguously gendered protagonists like Sunless Sea do so by asking players to choose their own term of address; 'sir', 'madam', 'Captain', 'whelp', among others.
I nonetheless think that deliberately decieving your reader should not be the goal. I'm basically working on an idea I had a few years back. We establish a concept of the characters, settings, and actions in our heads as we read (some people visualize, some only get the radio drama, but there's some mental thing going on). In actuality hes a fierce ninja, even getting the bad boy prodigy Sasuke to fall to his knees. But honestly this ones all up in the air. Announcing the Stacks Editor Beta release! It helps you, it helps us. Such a character is unlikely to think in terms of gender, and - particularly in a first person narrative - there's no obvious reason why it or its absence should need to be revealed.
July 2022 Writing Challenge: Sharing Secrets, Coming Out, Spilling the Tea. Your answers might be deeper than what's appropriate for this forum.). His features are androgynous, but leaning more towards the soft, gentle side. I won't try to explain how it does this but read the story it's short enough to read in one sitting and you'll see. In the well-known Iain Banks novel whose title escapes me (factory something), there is a deception of sorts, and I don't think readers disliked it. ), @MarkBaker Parcelling out the reveal of an androgynous character in fantasy isn't problematic for me; I could see it being pulled off quite well. If that middle ground was normal enough to be considered a bubble you fill out on a census, then you would have pressures and expectations that would shape that person. One possibility that doesn't deceive the reader would be to write 1st person and make your main character himself confused about his gender. This can work with other character interactions, as well. I want them to keep on questioning it, but not to the point that it distracts them from the plot of the story itself. Perhaps the narrator is a friend or mentor of some kind, to whom the main character shares most of what happens, but not their gender. We still have a Discord server, come talk to us! While watching the show I thought they were female, as they referred to themselves as a lady. "I had a baby" doesn't get followed with boy or girl, because that's rude. So you knew this one was coming. Not only is she the first character that has a gender specific quirk, but shes also the first trans woman (at least that I know of) to be featured on a show as popular as Boku no Hero Academia. Never reveal it at all. The only time I've seen this work is in Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar mysteries, in which the detective is written in such a way that either gender is a possible one. It's fiction, has a lot to do with faeries, Celtic mythology, dark fantasy, nightmarish apocalyptic scenariosyou know, fun stuff. Especially if what they reincarnate as does not have a gender. The reader's enjoyment of a story depends on their ability to enter into the world of the story, to enter into what Tolkien called the sub-created world of the author. It is probably a different reason to why you are obscuring it in your story. It might be possible, though, to hide the biological sex, because they themselves consider it irrelevant to their identity. But, and this is the last plot twist I swear, they want to have a sex change making them potentially transgender. Stack Exchange network consists of 180 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. How to write from the male point of view? They do sometimes ("Hello, Ladies"), but there are enough non-gender based options, that avoiding them doesn't really seem like avoidance. There's a huge difference between a character not having a gender, or in-universe ambiguous gender, and a character having a gender, everyone in the story knowing the character's gender, but the reader not being told what it is. That's not to say a MC couldn't be trying to hid their gender, but even in real life, people identify so much with a gender that when they feel they have the wrong gender's parts they go cutting them off, or sowing them on. (A sidenote before reading: in cases where a character's gender identity is specified, it is used.
ambiguous gender characters
