I wanna ask a huge favor of the game devs for the nonbinary community

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Is there any way we can display our pronouns, and if so can we have that option eventually implemented? I feel bad sometimes saying in chat that I don't identify as a girl/guy and inform people that I use they/them as I worry people will see me as being too aggressive about my identity or something (I try to be polite about it).
Were you by any chance born post 2000?

You can call me anything you like :)
Pug
 
Also, the concept of plurality when referring to one person is new to my language skill set. If this is going to become a widely accepted norm, then not only do they need to supply the pronouns to me, without me having to rely on my memory, but I don't know how to use them in a sentence without being confused. "They went to their party." Who does that refer to and is their party their's or is they going to someone else's party?

edit: and importantly, how do I write that in a Shakespearean way. Is it going to be easier or harder? I thought I might choose "Thou" "Thee" and the like.
 
Last edited:
Politics has no place in Elite. Either we open it up to ALL politics or we keep it limited to none.
No. This is a false dilemma. Everything is political in one way or another, and we (and the devs, more particularly) can choose which elements of life, and thus of politics, to represent in the game. At the moment, for example, the game supports explicitly communist minor factions, but not explicitly fascist ones, and I'm OK with that. (Of course some of the 'dictatorship' factions may well be fascist.) The game is full of politics, and it's generally handled in a sensitive way without shying away from tricky topics like hired assassins and slavery. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and claiming that it does comes across as a reductive attempt to silence debate.
 
Also, the concept of plurality when referring to one person is new to my language skill set. If this is going to become a widely accepted norm, then not only do they need to supply the pronouns to me, without me having to rely on my memory, but I don't know how to use them in a sentence without being confused. "They went to their party." Who does that refer to and is their party their's or is they going to someone else's party?

edit: and importantly, how do I write that in a Shakespearean way. Is it going to be easier or harder? I thought I might choose "Thou" "Thee" and the like.
It's not 'plurality when referring to one person'; it's the use of 'they' as a singular pronoun. (And yes, I know that 'they' continues to use the same verb agreements as when it's used for the plural.)

But this problem exists in different forms in many languages, separately from this specific issue. The uncontentious English sentence 'he gave him his newspaper' is already ambiguous (and would be a lot clearer in Swedish, because you could choose between 'sin' and 'hans' for 'his'). Ambiguous sentences come up all the time, and most of the time we just roll with it.
 
Well, English managed to confuse me long time ago with You used for 2nd person both singular and plural, They is just the next step :)
We used to have thou as second person singular (so we had 'thou art') you can still see bits of this in shakespeare and the King James. The irony is that people sometimes use 'thou' when they're trying to sound formal, when thou was actually the familiar.
 
No. This is a false dilemma. Everything is political in one way or another, and we (and the devs, more particularly) can choose which elements of life, and thus of politics, to represent in the game. At the moment, for example, the game supports explicitly communist minor factions, but not explicitly fascist ones, and I'm OK with that. (Of course some of the 'dictatorship' factions may well be fascist.) The game is full of politics, and it's generally handled in a sensitive way without shying away from tricky topics like hired assassins and slavery. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and claiming that it does comes across as a reductive attempt to silence debate.

Nope. The ingame politics is just that - ingame. And they are not related directly to players and even less used to identify personal traits.
They are used to describe the dystopian society that forms the foundation for ED Universe

Commanders are pretty much disconnected.
PEGI7 remember?

So yea, Elite should be kept free from all this solutions that will ultimately create problems.
 
No. This is a false dilemma. Everything is political in one way or another, and we (and the devs, more particularly) can choose which elements of life, and thus of politics, to represent in the game. At the moment, for example, the game supports explicitly communist minor factions, but not explicitly fascist ones, and I'm OK with that. (Of course some of the 'dictatorship' factions may well be fascist.) The game is full of politics, and it's generally handled in a sensitive way without shying away from tricky topics like hired assassins and slavery. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and claiming that it does comes across as a reductive attempt to silence debate.

Oh now everything is political... I see, funny how those goal posts move,
No. This is a false dilemma. Everything is political in one way or another, and we (and the devs, more particularly) can choose which elements of life, and thus of politics, to represent in the game. At the moment, for example, the game supports explicitly communist minor factions, but not explicitly fascist ones, and I'm OK with that. (Of course some of the 'dictatorship' factions may well be fascist.) The game is full of politics, and it's generally handled in a sensitive way without shying away from tricky topics like hired assassins and slavery. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and claiming that it does comes across as a reductive attempt to silence debate.

There are plenty of fascist factions in Elite. I'm guessing perhaps your understanding of what fascism is needs updating (clue - it's not people who disagree with you)

Yes, the game is full of politics, but they are fictional. Game of thrones is full of politics too by the same measure.

It does need to be all or nothing. If it were only some things, then fdev would have to resign itself to being a fascist organisation. After all 1 person / group, unelected will be deciding what political thought and expression is approved, and what is wrong think...is exactly what fascism is.
 
It does need to be all or nothing. If it were only some things, then fdev would have to resign itself to being a fascist organisation. After all 1 person / group, unelected will be deciding what political thought and expression is approved, and what is wrong think...is exactly what fascism is.
No, that's not what fascism is. You can't just define fascism to be whatever you don't like.
 
Gosh darn it, sometimes I'm just glad to live here in Soviet Finland where the language lacks genders of any kind, there's only one third person pronoun and everything is referred as 'it' in everyday speak anyways, be it people, pets or neighbor's car.

interesting. this is all about how male/female cultural roles are ingrained in the language, and how the language becomes a problem when those cultural roles need to change. but different languages just manifest different cultural tics. e.g. in japan there isn't any grammatical provision for gender but it has evolved to have two distinct languages based on gender (actually more than two, by age and social status). and in spanish gender is still a property of even inanimate objects which is considered to full lexical consequence.
 
Also, the concept of plurality when referring to one person is new to my language skill set. If this is going to become a widely accepted norm, then not only do they need to supply the pronouns to me, without me having to rely on my memory, but I don't know how to use them in a sentence without being confused. "They went to their party." Who does that refer to and is their party their's or is they going to someone else's party?

edit: and importantly, how do I write that in a Shakespearean way. Is it going to be easier or harder? I thought I might choose "Thou" "Thee" and the like.
Speaking using plural pronouns is a rather old way of pointing out that they speak with the authority, if not the voice, of many. The royal "we", as discussed earlier in the thread. It's why some take issue with trying to use "they"/"them" when "this one" or "that one" would be a more proper way to go about replacing "him"/"her". "They" / "them" when refering to a single individual bears the pretense of authority where there is none.
 
Nope. The ingame politics is just that - ingame. And they are not related directly to players and even less used to identify personal traits.
They are used to describe the dystopian society that forms the foundation for ED Universe

Commanders are pretty much disconnected.
PEGI7 remember?

So yea, Elite should be kept free from all this solutions that will ultimately create problems.

If only it were that simple.

All things are political as they don't exist in a vacuum. (Hey, nice pun Ethel!)

If you don't notice it, then that's usually because it support the status quo.

Obvs that's stating some pretty obvious assumptions and should (rightly) lead to at least a little bit of eye rolling but the point stands.

And we all know technically correct is the best correct.
 
Gosh darn it, sometimes I'm just glad to live here in Soviet Finland where the language lacks genders of any kind, there's only one third person pronoun and everything is referred as 'it' in everyday speak anyways, be it people, pets or neighbor's car.
Yeah, unfortunately, in English referring to a person as "it" is considered quite insulting, and dehumanizing.
 

Ian Phillips

Volunteer Moderator
No. This is a false dilemma. Everything is political in one way or another, and we (and the devs, more particularly) can choose which elements of life, and thus of politics, to represent in the game. At the moment, for example, the game supports explicitly communist minor factions, but not explicitly fascist ones, and I'm OK with that. (Of course some of the 'dictatorship' factions may well be fascist.) The game is full of politics, and it's generally handled in a sensitive way without shying away from tricky topics like hired assassins and slavery. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and claiming that it does comes across as a reductive attempt to silence debate.
These forums are exclusively for the discussion of the game.
Suggestions may of course be made, but ANY discussion of real world religion or politics is a big NO-NO.
 
actually, nothing is political, it just turns political the moment someone wants it to be and is listened to.

then again there is a huge assortment of hills to die on ...

In b4 lock or ban I hope.

A political agenda is indeed a thing and can be politically orientated, but the inherent "quality" of "political" (simplistically left/right/centrist) isn't really up fo debate as even "saying nothing" is still a political act.

This needs a beer garden ideally.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom