Writing for Aliens

[F_Star]

So I'm writing a story about aliens, and I want them to be truly alien, not just green skinned Orion slave girls. There's also not a human narrator/character to give the earthling perspective. It's a complicated scenario, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun with it.

These are aliens, so obviously there aren't males and females. There are three genders, none of which correspond directly to earth's male or female. I'm wondering about pronouns. I'd love to use gender neutral pronouns, but I'm afraid that would be way to cumbersome; I don't want to just call them all "he" because I want to make sure the reader knows they are separate genders (plus I don't want to freak out any homophobes); and I don't want to use "he" and "she" because the reader would apply their own preconceptions to those genders.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[sr71plt]

Unless you can get your own imagination around something, I don't see the reason to pursue it at all. I've never been able to understand wanting someone else to feed me hooks or plotlines. Why bother at all?

 

[PennLady]

Why are there "obviously" not male and females? Why can't there be a male equivalent, a female equivalent, and something else (and I believe that was done in a Star Trek: Next Gen episode)? Or why does the alien "he" and "she" have to correspond to ours? Mostly, you're just trying to make a difference clear, right?

Or make up your own words for it.

I think I have to agree with sr, though -- you yourself said it's "beyond my own abilities." How can you write this if it's beyond your own abilities?

And if you're writing about three different genders, I don't see how homophobes figure in at all. Finally, people will apply their preconceptions pretty much no matter what you do.

 

[F_Star]

Why are there "obviously" not male and females? Why can't there be a male equivalent, a female equivalent, and something else (and I believe that was done in a Star Trek: Next Gen episode)? Or why does the alien "he" and "she" have to correspond to ours? Mostly, you're just trying to make a difference clear, right?

Or make up your own words for it.

Star Trek "humans with rubber masks" aliens are exactly what I want to avoid. Male and Female genders carry a lot of cultural baggage that I don't want to saddle my characters with. Readers would inevitably put their own gender expectations on the characters.

Making up pronouns is a possibility. There are already plenty of gender neutral pronouns to choose from though nobody would recognize them. Even if I explain them in a preface it would probably still be confusing.

I think I have to agree with sr, though -- you yourself said it's "beyond my own abilities." How can you write this if it's beyond your own abilities?

Well I guess I could ask for advice somewhere. Do you have any suggestions?

It was just a self deprecating comment about the inevitable complications of the scenario. I'll edit it out of the post so no one else takes it literally.

And you probably shouldn't agree with that guy since it's clear he didn't even read my post. I have no idea how asking about pronoun conventions qualifies as begging for a hook or plotline.

 

[lazyhobo]

Readers would inevitably put their own gender expectations on the characters.

If you said something along the lines of "and the nekomimi (catgirl) stood in the doorway" I would naturally picture my expectation of what a catgirl would look like. Now if you described this character, I would use your description as my reference, and thus when you referred to her as a "catgirl" I would remember what you were saying.

People will always use their own expectation or image of the character based off of the initial description, even if you refer to them as "he" or "she" they will initially think of a human male / female. Thus until you've established what they look like, they will naturally picture humans. But once you have described them, then people will have a new basis.

Introducing a third gender, unless its something like Shemale (Hermaphrodite / Futanari) can be complex and generally confusing because nobody would have an initial image to picture. You'd have to really build that image into their head.

As far as words go, USE IT, If someone see's a word or phrase that seems key or well used in a story, they generally look up what it means. Explain it if you want, if they're in it for the story, they will probably understand. Even if they're not (Presuming its erotica) they may still understand, dont underestimate you're readers.

Now, there is no truly alien, while speaking of aliens, a lot will picture little green men or whatever alien they have conjured in their mind (Movies / books / other media) There is no "true alien look". Alien is anything not from earth, thus it can be whatever you want.

 

[PennLady]

Star Trek "humans with rubber masks" aliens are exactly what I want to avoid. Male and Female genders carry a lot of cultural baggage that I don't want to saddle my characters with. Readers would inevitably put their own gender expectations on the characters.

I'm not talking about humans with rubber masks. Readers will, yes, likely put various expectations on your characters because of gender and other things, until (as lazyhobo notes) you as the writer tell them otherwise.

Besides I think Star Trek used makeup more than rubber masks.

Making up pronouns is a possibility. There are already plenty of gender neutral pronouns to choose from though nobody would recognize them. Even if I explain them in a preface it would probably still be confusing.

Don't sell your readers short. If you explain it well, they will get it. And you are probably going to have to expect some kind of resistance if you're going to try to go outside the usual boxes. Trust me, I know this from personal experience, and I haven't even written about aliens.

But this is your world, so you will need to set out the rules and guideposts.

Well I guess I could ask for advice somewhere. Do you have any suggestions?

It was just a self deprecating comment about the inevitable complications of the scenario. I'll edit it out of the post so no one else takes it literally.

For the first, no, but I'm not sure what exactly you're asking for advice about. I can only suggest you go find some sf that deals with this similar issue. I'm sure there must be some out there.

Second, sorry if I took the abilities comment the wrong way but I didn't see any other way to interpret it.

 

[oggbashan]

My first question would be "Why?"

Why three sexes? What will that bring to the story/plot?

If you are writing for Literotica, having three sexes for whatever reason is unlikely to be erotic.

If you can't work out your own world-construct for yourself, my view is that you should start the story again.

Most SF/Fantasy has an understandable concept that differs from our normal reality, and the consequences of that concept have implications for the plot. Unless the three sexes are critical to your world concept, I'd forget them and stick with two.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I think PL, lazyh and ogg offer good advice but would like to take it from another angle.

The use of gender as a synonym for (biological) sex in English has only been around for 50 years max. It is a term for grammatical construction in many foreign languages and I guess you may be looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Just to confuse you, the male seahorse gets pregnant even though he is called 'he'.

I think you are trying to be too clever for us readers but, even so, I would suggest you start by defining clearly (to yourself and readers) the reproductive process of your 3 sexes - this is going to be erotic SF I assume.

The concept of 'he', 'she' and 'it' is freely transferable from German, Dutch or other grammar and has no real sexual connotation.

I think pronouns are the least of your problems as you don't seem to have sketched out a realistic world in your mind as yet.

PS: The word 'gender' was actually taken on board in English to respect people's belief that their sex didn't correspond to their feelings of themself.

 

[nicecthulhu]

okay, I've read and watched a bit of SF...

If you have no human narrator/characters then you're already in a bit of a pickel in trying to get 'real' aliens to come off as understandable.
A human narrator or character can inject human gender terms and descriptions, however incorrectly, to build a connection between the reader and the aliens. Since you're excluding humans, it's a moot point.
An aliens-only story demands the introduction of alien terms, obviously invented by you. That solves the problem of what you call the genders. The problem with this is it's hard for the reader to connect with the alien characters. There has to be some common ground between the aliens and the reader. You need something for the reader to say "ah, I know what he/she/it is going through".
On a more scientific level, sex means reproduction. I know. I know. But even a couple who physically cannot have children (lesbian or gay) use sexual organs that could be used for reproduction under different circumstances. Reproduction means transfer of genetic material from one being to another to produce mixing which results in a third being. So with three genders you are still likely to have a 'seed depositor' or 'male' and an 'incubator' or a 'female'. The third one is involved somehow, but exactly how is your problem. So you already have a he and a she.
I would hope that before trying such an ambitious bit of writing that you've done your research and read how some of the masters of SF have portrayed 'real' aliens?
I cheat. My 'aliens' are very human-like or they're absolute monsters (sometimes both, sad to say).
Good luck.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

... On a more scientific level, sex means reproduction. ... Reproduction means transfer of genetic material from one being to another to produce mixing which results in a third being. So with three genders you are still likely to have a 'seed depositor' or 'male' and an 'incubator' or a 'female'. The third one is involved somehow, but exactly how is your problem. ...

The three partners in a trisexual arrangement could easily be two donors of genetic material and a third party incubator whose contribution is to make decisions about the outcome of the "foetus". An example is the honey bee, where the workers determine the sex and role of each new bee. An (oversimplification, I know, is that an) egg laid by a fertile queen can become another sexually active queen, a sexually active drone, or an effectively asexual worker according to the feeding in the larval stage, which is always done by the workers.

As has already been said, in the seahorse the seed depositor is also the incubator, but not the egg donor.

I do rather go along with Ogg though. I find it hard to get excited about being the nursemaid to two other sexes' offspring.

As an aside:

... I think I have to agree with sr, though -- you yourself said it's "beyond my own abilities." How can you write this if it's beyond your own abilities? ...

Are you sure sr said that? I did not think that there was anything sr considered beyond his(her) abilities, or which, indeed, (s)he had not already done.

 

[lazyhobo]

As an aside:Are you sure sr said that? I did not think that there was anything sr considered beyond his(her) abilities, or which, indeed, (s)he had not already done.

No, the topic starter said that he considered it beyond his own abilities. Penn here is agreeing with sr, about how they feel he shouldnt bother with a story if its beyond his own abilities.

 

[PennLady]

No, the topic starter said that he considered it beyond his own abilities. Penn here is agreeing with sr, about how they feel he shouldnt bother with a story if its beyond his own abilities.

Yes, and the original poster also said he meant that a something of a self-deprecating joke and has since edited the OP to take that sentence out.

 

[nicecthulhu]

The three partners in a trisexual arrangement could easily be two donors of genetic material and a third party incubator whose contribution is to make decisions about the outcome of the "foetus". An example is the honey bee, where the workers determine the sex and role of each new bee. An (oversimplification, I know, is that an) egg laid by a fertile queen can become another sexually active queen, a sexually active drone, or an effectively asexual worker according to the feeding in the larval stage, which is always done by the workers.

As has already been said, in the seahorse the seed depositor is also the incubator, but not the egg donor.

Good points and I should have thought of that myself!
So the male would be the sperm or seed dispenser while the female would be the egg source and/or incubator. So the sea horses are no longer gender-confused.
If all three genders contribute equally to the creation of offspring, then I suppose the gender term would depend on personalities. Stereotypically, the more aggressive would be he and the ones that actually read instructions, look at maps, are able to do more than one task at a time, etc. would be she.
I do think you may be losing a big part of your audience with this idea, though. How many people count sex between truly alien extraterrestrials as their fetish?
It might work simply as a thought experiment or curiosity.
An extrapolation on the bee idea could be interesting. Imagine a couple captured by space bees and forced to act as the third party, while the space bees slowly become curious about human reproductive strategies...

 

[sunandshadow]

My own 3-sexed aliens are a sperm depositor (labeled male) an egg depositor (labeled male but distinct from first type and it's considered straight and normal if males of the two different types are attracted to each other) and an incubator who also contributes 1/3 of the genetic material (labeled female). I chose to label them that way because the audience I was going for was people who like m/m/f stories.

In Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy she has a male sperm donor, a female egg donor/incubator, and an ooloi, referred to as it, who has natural genetic engineering abilities; it unites the egg and the sperm within its own body, then places the embryo into the female's womb. Strangely in this setting males and females are not supposed to be attracted to each other or have sex. Instead there are two versions, the old species and the new human-infused species. In the old species males and females are typically brother and sister, and the two marry an unrelated ooloi. In the new species a female and an ooloi form a monogamus pair to raise children, while males wander and will become an ooloi's lover long enough to sire a child or two.

In Melissa Scott's book Shadow Man she makes up 3 new sets of pronouns by substituting a greek letter for the h or s at the beginning of regular pronouns. They exist alongside the original two human genders, and are the result of genetic damage cause by the process of interstellar travel to colonize new planets.

In Ian Banks' science fiction universe there is a 3-sexed species where a male deposits sperm into the cloaca of an "apex", who adds an egg, then implants the semi-fertilized egg into a "female" who modified it by adding a ring of RNA. In this society the apexes are the territorial and dominant ones, while the other two are more like possessions.

In a science fiction novel whose name I unfortunately can't remember the third sex looks like a hermaphrodite but does not function sexually like a hermaphrodite; they accept sperm from a male via their vagina, from where it passes through tubes to their penis, being "fertilized" along the way, then the third sex uses their penis to put the sperm into a female the usual way. In this society the third sex is much rarer than the other two and does not form romantic relationships, they are sort of like mendicant monks; they travel around most of their lives, but the young and old ones live at a monastery.

 

[MatthewVett]

I'd probably lift pronouns from other languages. Old English abandoned its own versions of "they" in favor or Norse ones, although I admit, hio or heora aren't especially lovely. That being said, couldn't you just use "they?" It's colloquially understood to refer to an individual of indeterminate gender. You might think it'd be confusing with no way to differentiate between singular and plural, but we manage it with "you," don't we?

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

I'd probably lift pronouns from other languages. Old English abandoned its own versions of "they" in favor or Norse ones, although I admit, hio or heora aren't especially lovely. That being said, couldn't you just use "they?" It's colloquially understood to refer to an individual of indeterminate gender. You might think it'd be confusing with no way to differentiate between singular and plural, but we manage it with "you," don't we?

There was a determined attempt a while ago to introduce "en" as a neuter singular pronoun in English. Like most artificial changes to language, it failed.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I'd probably lift pronouns from other languages. Old English abandoned its own versions of "they" in favor or Norse ones, although I admit, hio or heora aren't especially lovely. That being said, couldn't you just use "they?" It's colloquially understood to refer to an individual of indeterminate gender. You might think it'd be confusing with no way to differentiate between singular and plural, but we manage it with "you," don't we?

No, 'they' is plural and inappropriatiate in context.

'|You' is rather familiar as it takes the French 'tu' form whilst ignoring the more polite English 'thou'.

Anyway, gender in writing has nothing to do with sexuality.

 

[PennLady]

There was a determined attempt a while ago to introduce "en" as a neuter singular pronoun in English. Like most artificial changes to language, it failed.

A friend of mine in college invented the pronoun "hus" to be neutral, but I can't say as it ever caught on. I thought it wasn't a bad idea -- the "h" from he and she and then the gender-neutral "us" seemed a good compromise.

 

[sr71plt]

If you are writing something futuristic and you've been good at conveying to the reader off the bat what the pronoun represents, you should be able to pull off using a substitute.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

... takes the French 'tu' form whilst ignoring the more polite English 'thou'. ...

"Thou" is no more polite than "tu". In the north of England when second person singular was still common (say 50 years ago) it was also usual to address people with whom one was not intimate using honorific and surname (E.g. Good morning, Mr. Smith).

Deciding whether the other person is sufficiently close to be addressed as thou is easy. The rule runs:

"Thou thees them as thees thou."

 

[F_Star]

Thank you all for your replies. I'm still not certain what the final pronouns will look like. Before even posting this thread I'd been using he, she, and thon as place holders. Considering some of the suggestions (as well as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Modern_English), I'm leaning towards He, E, and Ze though I'm not positive how I'll conjugate them as I'd like to keep them as similar as possible to make them obvious.

In the story the genders are kept separate to a degree that some characters in the story might not even know how to address each other. I could add a small grammar lesson inside the prose.

I do think you may be losing a big part of your audience with this idea, though. How many people count sex between truly alien extraterrestrials as their fetish?

At least at the start, the story itself should be fairly recognizable, young love in an age of repression and revolution. The third sex allows me to take that story in a somewhat different direction. The sex is... well, there's no accounting for taste, especially my own. I've tried to infuse it with the right amount of human mating analogs (fluids, holes, protrusions) to be appreciated without being too familiar. And if it makes a few uncomfortable then all the better; shame and masturbation go well together.

 

[PennLady]

At least at the start, the story itself should be fairly recognizable, young love in an age of repression and revolution. The third sex allows me to take that story in a somewhat different direction. The sex is... well, there's no accounting for taste, especially my own. I've tried to infuse it with the right amount of human mating analogs (fluids, holes, protrusions) to be appreciated without being too familiar. And if it makes a few uncomfortable then all the better; shame and masturbation go well together.

I'm sure people can relate to love, repressed love, and other themes. But even if there are mating analogs (I like that term, btw), I'm not sure how erotic the sex can be in this story. It could certainly be touching, and involve the reader, but arouse the reader? I'd be iffy.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

"Thou" is no more polite than "tu". In the north of England when second person singular was still common (say 50 years ago) it was also usual to address people with whom one was not intimate using honorific and surname (E.g. Good morning, Mr. Smith).

Deciding whether the other person is sufficiently close to be addressed as thou is easy. The rule runs:

"Thou thees them as thees thou."

Yes,yes,yes!

Thou is equivalent to the French 'tu'; the single(familiar) second person . Thou and 'tu' are both familiar ignoring the polite 'vous' and 'you' forms.

 

[oggbashan]

Yes,yes,yes!

Thou is equivalent to the French 'tu'; the single(familiar) second person . Thou and 'tu' are both familiar ignoring the polite 'vous' and 'you' forms.

The French rules on tutoyer (who you call 'tu') have relaxed among the young over the last twenty years or so. Many students would now call each other 'tu' even if they had never met before.

The older generation used to use 'tu' for close friends, family, and children. Now they are extending their use of 'tu' but with caution. Youngsters can cause offence by calling their elders 'tu', but are less likely to be rebuked for it.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

The French rules on tutoyer (who you call 'tu') have relaxed among the young over the last twenty years or so. Many students would now call each other 'tu' even if they had never met before.

The older generation used to use 'tu' for close friends, family, and children. Now they are extending their use of 'tu' but with caution. Youngsters can cause offence by calling their elders 'tu', but are less likely to be rebuked for it.

Yes, but amongst themselves and close relatives.

No-one would dream of 'tutoying' their doctor, dentist or great-aunt. A question of 'politesse'.