Morriumur?

[Tiny]

Does Morriumur have hair? (Kind of a weird question, but I'm trying to draw a picture of him, and I can't remember weather or not they have hair.)

[Lunamor]

Diones are hairless.

[GreyPilgrim]

10 hours ago, Josephnlittle said:

I'm trying to draw a picture of him

Interesting that you use a male pronoun to refer to them; Brandon uses genter neutral pronouns throughout for all diones, but I must admit that even with that I perceived Morriumur and Cuna as female more so than male.

[Tiny]

I guess in just not used to the whole Dione gender thing.

[Govir]

46 minutes ago, GreyPilgrim said:

Interesting that you use a male pronoun to refer to them; Brandon uses genter neutral pronouns throughout for all diones, but I must admit that even with that I perceived Morriumur and Cuna as female more so than male.

Interestingly, I didn't pick up on Morriumur being referred to as they until about half way through. And I *thought* I remembered them being referred to as "him" before that. My thought was that Spensa originally saw Morriumur as a "him", but after learning more understood they were a "they".

I'll be keeping an eye out for it on a reread.

[GreyPilgrim]

I don't think that was the case, but I could be misremembering. I found the use of pronouns in the book particularly interesting, and I was extra attuned to them because I am actually a linguistics major currently writing my senior thesis about the gender-neutral singular they.

[dbulick]

Morriumur specifically throughout almost the entire book is literally two people, which is why I thought they were referred to as they/them.  I guess I would need to go back and look if that holds for all the other Diones.

[kaellok]

4 hours ago, dbulick said:

Morriumur specifically throughout almost the entire book is literally two people, which is why I thought they were referred to as they/them.  I guess I would need to go back and look if that holds for all the other Diones.

I do not remember Cuna ever being referred to by gender, but instead by name or they/them.  A brief flip-through of the book also confirms using Cuna by name or they/them, even when a he/she might have made more sense if appropriate.  On p.421 of the hard-cover edition, Morriumur views the eldest grand Numiga as 'they', although that description is somewhat nebulous and might be Morriumur talking about how Morriumur looks inside the pod, instead of how Numiga looks to Morriumur while Morriumur is in the pod.

My cursory flip-through didn't find any instances of a dione being referred to as he/she, but instead by name or they/them.  There were plenty of times when a dione was around a species using he/she, or Spensa describing their voice as masculine/feminine.  

As an aside, apparently at some point I started thinking of diones as resembling humanoid hammerhead sharks, and I have only just now realized that that isn't really supported by the text.

[dbulick]

Fair enough.  It was an interesting way of having off-spring.  Really neat world building that Brandon did with this alien race.

[+ILuvHats]

I’ll be honest, I imagined the diones to look a bit like Scary Terry from Rick and Morty, except less scary. 

Also, in my head, I thought of Cuna as female and Morriumur as male. I tried to get out of the habit of thinking of them with genders, with limited success. 

[Xardan Ta'Caran]

I actually just finished Starsight myself not an hour ago and I'll tell you guys the truth: the use of they/them was VERY noticeable to me and was constant. I was listening to the novel on Audible and actually had a difficult time differentiating between when they were referring to a singular "they" and when they were referring to a group of "they." There were some times where they referred to "they" as Morriumur while Spensa was busy talking to the entire flight. It got a little (and sometimes a lot) muddled in my brain. 

But I can say that as someone who was hoping for some kind of gender distinction throughout the book, I'm 99% sure there never is one. Diones are always referred to as "they" specifically because there's no such thing as male or female in their race. Only red and blue.

[Singer]

It was easy for me to imagine beings with no noticeable male or female traits, voices on the other hand...

In my head Cuna had a feminine voice  and Morriumur had a masculine voice. I don't know if anyone else is this way, but once I've created the mental picture, it doesn't budge. Even after I notice it doesn't even fit the description I read, the picture is there to stay. So despite my best efforts, I instantly gender coded the Dione characters. I guess I would really struggle if I joined the Superiority!

[Govir]

They were both “male” to me, but being a male myself that is my default unless told otherwise. If I had actually met them, I would try very hard to use they, but I know I’d mess up a few times. Speaking from experience.

[Xardan Ta'Caran]

I was on the other side of the coin from you @Govir, but I think that's because I only listened to the audiobook and it was being performed by a woman, so I automatically associated both of them to the female side of things. 

I do have to say that I'm also with you @Singer the Ooklalala. Once I get a mental picture, it's set and I can't change it no matter how much I try. Good to know it's not just me! ;-)

 

[Who Sharded?]

On 12/3/2019 at 9:05 AM, GreyPilgrim said:

I don't think that was the case, but I could be misremembering. I found the use of pronouns in the book particularly interesting, and I was extra attuned to them because I am actually a linguistics major currently writing my senior thesis about the gender-neutral singular they.

As a linguistics major, is now correct to use "they" as singular?  I know it is correct for social purposes.  But pronouns were drilled into my head in the early 2000s, and reading Starsight is jarring for me.

[Karger]

56 minutes ago, Who Sharded? said:

As a linguistics major, is now correct to use "they" as singular?

Yes.  There are still some sticklers for using he but even they tend not to be consistent.  NPR did a great story on this.

 

[bdonoho]

On 12/10/2019 at 9:08 AM, Xardan Ta'Caran said:

I was on the other side of the coin from you @Govir, but I think that's because I only listened to the audiobook and it was being performed by a woman, so I automatically associated both of them to the female side of things. 

I do have to say that I'm also with you @Singer the Ooklalala. Once I get a mental picture, it's set and I can't change it no matter how much I try. Good to know it's not just me! ;-)

 

Oh I'm the exact same way.  Particularly since the narrator used an especially feminine voice for Morriumur.  

[Draginon]

I never really thought of the Dione in male or female terms. How much of the masculine/feminine voice is actually more of a result of the translator pin causing it, since the Krell have more than two genders but always goes with two for convenience, so if Spensa didn’t have the pin on would Cuna and Morriumur sound like a blend of both or sound like neither.

[Xaladin]

Using “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun has bothered me because it is plural, but in the case of Morriumur it is quite appropriate, I think

Edited June 28, 2020 by Xaladin

[alamor0]

Holy crap! I just looked up this character because I'm on chapter 14 of Starsight and Spensa refers to them as a 'he' when she saw a Krell ship at the test. I swear!

"It still set me on edge, and I kept finding myself glancing out of the corner of my eye toward it. Who was piloting the thing? That dione with the two-tone face? No, I’d seen him getting into a simple shuttlecraft, not some sleek fighter."

Sad, because I'm a very big proponent of a non-binary system of gender, but also not surprising since it has to be an easy mistake to make in a long book which authors have pronoun typos in all the time anyway!

Edited August 5, 2020 by alamor0

[alamor0]

Also, 'they' is used for plural, but not only. I promise you, everyone here uses 'they' singularly all the time. Like many words with multiple meanings or homonyms, we simply learn to understand it within context, as well as writers using context to make it unambiguous. 

'They' definition:

1. used to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified.

"the two men could get life sentences if they are convicted"

 

2. used to refer to a person of unspecified gender.

"ask someone if they could help"

Edited August 5, 2020 by alamor0

[Starborn42]

On 04/12/2019 at 1:37 AM, dbulick said:

Morriumur specifically throughout almost the entire book is literally two people, which is why I thought they were referred to as they/them.  I guess I would need to go back and look if that holds for all the other Diones.

No, Cuna is also referred to as “they”