ID:2408337
 
Not Feasible
Applies to:DM Language / Website
Status: Not Feasible

Implementing this feature is not possible now or in the foreseeable future
Right now, there are only four sets of pronouns natively supported by BYOND: he, she, they, and it. While this is a pretty good set for general use ( although I have mild concerns at the possibility that the "Other" gender setting uses it instead of they - I haven't actually checked, but that's something that should be tweaked if that's the case ) a bit of a QoL thing for non-binary peeps would be to allow using their own pronouns in the case that they prefer something else instead of "they."

I picked both DM Language and Website because I feel like this could be done on either or both sides:

If added to the language, then games could implement this on a case-by-case basis, which would also come in handy for games with conlangs, or races that don't use human genders. It's something technically already possible through creation of a dedicated system for each game, but having some sort of pronoun verb or whatever which works with the default text macros would be nice.

If added to the website, then that saves the players themselves the trouble of having to set up their preferred pronouns for every game that goes to the trouble to let them do that. Those settings could just be tied to the account, and after setting them up once, they'd be good for the rest of their playtime. There's less room for game creativity with this, sure, but that's not exactly an insurmountable issue for devs that are dedicated to an idea they have, anyway.

I'm aware this is a pretty low priority thing - I don't even know if there are that many nbs that play BYOND at the moment - but I feel like any way it's implemented, it'd be an nice update to a dated system that'd be a solid show of support.
Lummox JR resolved issue (Not Feasible)
I get where you're coming from on this, but this would be a difficult change to implement. Gender is in the language as a 2-bit set of flags so it only has four values: neutral ("other" on the website), male, female, and plural. Neutral and plural were really meant for objects, although neutral could be used if a person's avatar were, say, a robot, where "it" becomes appropriate.

Adding new flags for gender simply isn't very feasible. However, I think I have a good workaround for games that wish to employ it.

mob/Login()
...
if(gender == "neuter") gender = "plural"

The pronouns for plural change to they/them/etc., which should suffice. The only downside is that the \a macro then says "some" instead of "a", but games never use it explicitly with mobs (because why would you?). The \a macro automatically goes it in front of a name starting in lowercase, but if you ensure the names always start with a capital letter, there's no issue at all.

Now of course the other obvious downside is that this has to be implemented deliberately into games. But I'm sure plenty would be happy to do that. Many games already let you select a gender in a character selection screen anyway, ignoring the account setting.
This is a good reason to abstract outputs through a dedicated function that takes custom text macros and applies them correctly instead of relying on the engine to do it for you.

String manipulation is fairly trivial and only requires that you know how to find indexes and snip back together the string with what it should say.
Gender is dichotomic and this request is ridiculous! Even Google, Yahoo, and other email providers limit you to the same three options.

In games, if people consider themselves to be bigender and want to roleplay to the identity they feel that day, they can. Login to female account when you want to be "female". Login to male account when you want to be "male". Hell, I think some games only have male gender or even offer sex change NPCs. I don't think a lot of games even bother to use string macros to refer to characters a certain way.

Like seriously, just pick a female character with short hair and call yourself a f2m transgender or male or genderqueer on the game or something. It's transphobic if anyone doesn't identify your pronouns, and they'll just be banned by an admin if the game is transgender friendly right. Why are we not protesting games like Skyrim and Fallout right now? A company like Google is clearly big enough to know better than to not offer more pronouns. Let's sue them.

I'm actually rather pissed off I'm a transracial dog and can't play as my own race on a lot of these games.
In response to VampyCrampy
If you tried any harder at being a troll I might have put effort into a metaphor.
In response to VampyCrampy
Comparing trans to pretending to be animals is an ironically off-color joke from such a blanched-white, heterosexual, pinnacle-of-the-human-specimen such as yourself.

At least this guy remembered to wear his arm band over his sleeves. Lol.
I think MrStonedOne threw in the joke of equating racism to what I said because he's secretly in protest of the new wave of genderism too.

At least let's stop being immature about this; no need to deflect the topic onto personal attacks. We need to work together to besiege right-winged bigotry.