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Kaj_Sotala comments on Open Thread: December 2009 - Less Wrong
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I wrote a short story with something of a transhumanism theme. People can read it here. Actionable feedback welcome; it's still subject to revision.
Note: The protagonist's name is "Key". Key, and one other character, receive Spivak pronouns, which can make either Key's name or eir pronouns look like some kind of typo or formatting error if you don't know it's coming. If this annoys enough people, I may change Key's name or switch to a different genderless pronoun system. I'm curious if anyone finds that they think of Key and the other Spivak character as having a particular gender in the story; I tried to write them neither, but may have failed (I made errors in the pronouns in the first draft, and they all went in one direction).
Finally got around reading the story. I liked it, and finishing it gave me a wild version of that "whoa" reaction you get when you've doing something emotionally immersive and then switch to some entirely different activity.
I read Key as mostly genderless, possibly a bit female because the name sounded feminine to me. Trellis, maybe slightly male, though that may also have been from me afterwards reading the comments about Trellis feeling slightly male and those contaminating the memory.
I do have to admit that the genderless pronouns were a bit distracting. I think it was the very fact that they were shortened version of "real" pronouns that felt so distracting - my mind kept assuming that it had misread them and tried to reread. In contrast, I never had an issue with Egan's use of ve / ver / vis / vis / verself.