My apologies for not getting back to this sooner. It was on the schedule for Wednesday, but something else claimed my attention.
However, this morning, an email from a reader reminded me that I had been going to talk about Tekelia — and here we are.
Now right up front — I did not have a lot of fun writing Tekelia — I mean, I love them, but writing them correctly took a couple of tries.
First try, I figured to demonstrate the whole Child of Chaos thing by flipping the pronouns that were used to refer to Tekelia. But! I didn’t want them flipping to be in a pattern of any kind, because that wouldn’t be, err, chaotic. (This same problem is brought up by Tocohl in Hellspark (if you haven’t read Hellspark do it now. Really. Here’s your link.). It’s the custom of her people to pronounce the name of their world alternatively “Hell’s Park” and “Hell Spark,” supposedly to foster flexibility in language, but in reality, it set up a rigid rule.) So, I did my Very Best to randomize the pronouns.
I was not totally satisfied with this, and I did keep hoping that something else would present itself before deadline, but — nothing did, and I handed it in that way.
. . .and pretty soon I heard back from Madame the Publisher, who had read the manuscript and had some Questions, particularly about Tekelia. I explained, and she said, “Do Better.”
So, I tried. And, long story short, the best I could do was to make a bigger point of Tekelia’s eyes changing colors, add in the detail that no one touches Tekelia’s person, and explain what happens when someone does — ramping up the Chaos aspects, you see. And finally, necessity being upon me, I settled on a pronoun — they.
Mind you, “they” is a perfectly good pronoun, employed by many people in real life to describe themselves. My objection was artistic, and arose from the fact that “they” isn’t chaotic, the condition that I wanted to establish for Tekelia, but a simple statement of what is. Plus, yanno, Steve and I have played the “hide-the-gender-game” several times in the Liaden stories — starting as early as Conflict of Honors — and while that’s always amusing, I felt that Tekelia was an entirely different case.
In the end, I allowed as how at least it wasn’t inappropriate for Tekelia to claim “they,” precisely because of the other challenges inherent in living a life so closely aligned with Chaos.
So, while I still wish there could have been something else, something clever and precise that I could have fashioned for Tekelia, I’m not. . .completely displeased with who they became.
Now, we come to the email I got this morning, wherein I am informed that there is a heated discussion going on in the spoiler discussion at Welcome to Liad, about Tekelia’s “gender,” specifically, Is Tekelia male or female. This morning’s correspondent wondered if I would like to weigh in on this, and my answer is: Tekelia is Tekelia. Their pronouns are they/them.
Those who would like more information on this concept may want to look at these websites. I’m sure there are others — Google is your friend.
CBC Kids: They/Them
MyPronouns: They/Them
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If you have questions, comments, or insights, feel free to leave them HERE
Thanks for listening.