"You can't use non-binary as a term in a fantasy setting, it's too modern and out of place!"
Every damn fantasy story uses "girl" as a gendered noun for women, which is modern English, yet no one complains about that. "Binary" referring to a system of two in English is at least 200 years older.
Every damn fantasy story uses "girl" as a gendered noun for women, which is modern English, yet no one complains about that. "Binary" referring to a system of two in English is at least 200 years older.
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(That's not getting into how some cultures had non-binary identities long ago.)
Yes, we agree. We also tackle that in the addendums to the thread.
Think that we're in agreement? Right?
Hopefully we don't need to add context to how prefixes are a perfectly suitable thing here too.
But people only take issue with it when it acknowledges that marginalized groups are part of that.
It's also how you arrive at the "you can't change what fantasy creatures/races are like!?" reactions to D&D not wanting to be stuck with Gygax's old bigotry on their pages.
In #TalesOfDistantLands once of the major characters is non-binary, I’ve not had to spell it out because the languaging around them tells you straight away.
Go figure...
On the other hand, while binary is around 1450, the idea was common in both cases all the way back to Homer.
I recently read "The Bright Sword" by Lev Grossman, there is a trans character, but no-one ever refers to them as "trans".
DA:O refers to Sandal as a "savant" which is even younger than the girl example we used.
It's a natural process of world building, arguably done slower than IRL as well.
Maybe there is a better way of getting the same info across that feels more in-universe.
It's a label that people who didn't align with the gender binary came up with for themselves. It was not created by modern psychology.
But a lot of the terms in fantasy sure are modern psychology, especially derogatory ones about intellects.
Sorry if I'm coming across like a giant asshole, I'm not trying to be.
At what point is contemporary language old enough to be used in a fictional fantasy world that exclusively use contemporary language?