December 10, 2015: Here, have a quest...

[spiderwrangler]

Even if Kliks did have genders, there isn't anything about Salt that suggests the gender has been assigned by any traits other than "Thunt said so."

Are you lobbying for klik's with genitals?

[Morgaln]

Even if Kliks did have genders, there isn't anything about Salt that suggests the gender has been assigned by any traits other than "Thunt said so."

Are you lobbying for klik's with genitals?

Well, kliks can be made of anything, right? This would certainly fall under "organic..."

I know. It's not that I think "he" is a default for the genderless, it's that neither gendered pronoun applies. Even if Kliks did have genders, there isn't anything about Salt that suggests the gender has been assigned by any traits other than "Thunt said so."

She's probably the Klik equivalent of an Otherkin; identifying as something outside her species. Okay, I don't really meant that seriously, but it would at least explain the contradiction.

[RocketScientist]

Even if Kliks did have genders, there isn't anything about Salt that suggests the gender has been assigned by any traits other than "Thunt said so."

Are you lobbying for klik's with genitals?

Maybe he wants her to wear a big pink bow?

[Sessine]

As I interpret what Thunt said:

1. Kliks are genderless in the sense that they do not have any biological males or females. That's entirely not how their species works. Full stop.

2. English (and, by extension, Common translated into English for us readers) does have gender in its pronouns. Thunt has chosen to decide that his Klik characters have at least a grammatical gender. That's fine. And there's nothing biological about it. They're genderless, see point 1. There's no requirement that he has to pick the same pronoun for each Klik, either. Some could be 'he', some 'she', and some 'it', if he likes. I don't think he has a rule for this. From his 'what the hell?' reaction to this discussion, it sounds like he simply uses whichever feels right for each particular Klik. No big deal.

3. For how it works in-story: Kliks have been around other species with biological genders for a very long time. They KNOW about gender. Some of them, maybe even all of them, might rather like the idea and decide to pick one for themselves. Why not?

So what we know now is:

ÔÇó No information about our original Klik who bonded with Dies.

ÔÇó Ward is apparently a.. well, actually, we haven't been told yet, but I'm going to provisionally call him a he. Because he's the only one who can talk, he's the one who'll be letting us know about the other Kliks.

ÔÇó┬áThe un-named Klik who took a bite out of the Axe is a boy.

ÔÇó Salt is a girl.

[BlueAmaranth]

I think it would be more accurate to say that Kliks are sexless. Kliks are demonstrably not genderless if at least some of them have canonical genders.

[Sessine]

I think it would be more accurate to say that Kliks are sexless. Kliks are demonstrably not genderless if at least some of them have canonical genders.

...not getting into that debate, sorry. Terminology shifts with time. From context, I believe I am using, here, more or less the same rough multiple definitions of the word 'gender' that Thunt does. Or at least, Idle, who did the speaking -- but I think in this case she's reflecting Thunt's usage.

I am well aware that this is far from the only way to use the words. If you want to discuss other usages, we can go, as I suggested to Talos, to Controversy. Or there's also a Controversy - Light forum; either would be a good place for a friendly discussion about word meanings.

For the purposes of this thread:
- There's biological gender. Kliks have none. In that sense they're genderless. You can call this sex. Thunt doesn't, and that's his usage.
- There's grammatical gender. All Kliks do have grammatical gender, by necessity, though some might be neutral: "it".
- There's self-identified psychological gender. It sounds like some Kliks have this, too. Maybe all, we don't know, but Salt is a girl.

[BlueAmaranth]

I didn't think that was a controversial thing to say, but alrighty. I think it's confusing to use exactly the same word for two distinct-but-related concepts, but I don't feel that strongly about it if it's gonna be a whole "thing."

[Sessine]

I didn't think that was a controversial thing to say, but alrighty. I think it's confusing to use exactly the same word for two distinct-but-related concepts, but I don't feel that strongly about it if it's gonna be a whole "thing."

Heh, yeah. Sorry if I came on too strong there. Didn't mean to imply anything about you, and you're certainly right about it being confusing. I've seen it blow up into a "thing" way too many times, is all.

Here's a question for discussion. Now that we know Kliks do self-identify (at least sometimes) as being male or female, what gender -- in the self-identification sense -- do we think the first Klik we met would have been?

Do we have any clues?

[nikohl]

http://www.goblinscomic.org/11162012/ <-- I don't know what our klik self-identified as per se, but Dies at least viewed him as male...and given that our klik blobbed a part of his body onto Dies' arm shortly after they met and transplanted a bunch of knowledge about the grafting process directly into him in a Matrix-y "I Know Kung Fu" kind of way, I'm assuming that Dies gleaned an understanding of who Klik 'was' during that time, and would've called him her if he was a her. (Wow, that was an awkward end to the sentence. But it sorta makes sense, right?)

[Krulle]

I agree with Nikohl (and I disagree with her assessment of the sentence being awkward.)

Klik was a "he", at least to me it felt that way. (Dies Horribly identifies Klik as male, e.g. here and here.)
The same seems to apply to "Junior".

It may have to do with which gender the host of the newborn Klik had.
If the host was female, the copied soul might still identify as female.
It the host was male (like Dies Horribly), the copied soul seems to identify as male.
Now we do not have seen genderless hosts in Goblinscomic yet, so that may be another reason why no Klik until now indentifies as "it".

[BlueAmaranth]

It may have to do with which gender the host of the newborn Klik had.
If the host was female, the copied soul might still identify as female.
It the host was male (like Dies Horribly), the copied soul seems to identify as male.

I like this theory. Since Kliks don't have distinct physical sexes, I wouldn't expect them to develop a concept of gender roles or gender identification out of nowhere, or at least not one that mapped onto the masculine/feminine version we use. But since their life cycle involves copying the soul of a host who might be gendered, that's good enough for me as the source of their concept of gender. It makes perfect sense that if Salt's host identified as a girl, and Salt's soul is derived from that girl's soul, then Salt would identify as a girl.

[Lady Dawn]

Uhm, okay so there is sexless and genderless being seperate things. I can agree with that.
And sex is the thing where a species reproduce themselves, right?
So that means.....
Oh noes!
Klik totally had sex with Dies!!

I think I need some mind bleach now...or maybe I'll just snort some washing powder for a brain wash.

[Sessine]

So that means.....

No, relax. It doesn't.

[BuildsLegos]

Well, Dies was kinda pregnant until the failed abortion resulted in birth.

[Lady Dawn]

It was an accident but it still resulted in reproduction.
Same as what happens to foolish humans all the time.

[BlueAmaranth]

I mean, they certainly reproduced, but that's not equivalent to "having sex" in any meaningful sense. For a real-world example, male anglerfish reproduce by attaching their faces directly to the female and digesting most of their own bodies until they are just a pair of gonads stuck to the female. I don't think anyone would say the anglerfish are having sex in this situation.

[spiderwrangler]

Well, they are having sex when the female spawns and the males release sperm.

[BlueAmaranth]

"Having sex" has very specific connotations that neither the Dies situation nor the anglerfish situation meet. The anglerfish are reproducing sexually, but they're not "having sex."

[thinkslogically]

The klik situation seems more like a very fast budding process with a bit of soul-borrowing mysticism along the way

[spiderwrangler]

"Having sex" has very specific connotations that neither the Dies situation nor the anglerfish situation meet. The anglerfish are reproducing sexually, but they're not "having sex."

I don't think that it applies to Dies at all, just to be clear.

As for the anglerfish, the distinction is less that they are anglerfish and more that they are fish in general and have external fertilization if you want to get to the particulars of the connotations of "having sex". At the broader sense I was using above, fertilization happened, sexual reproduction was had. If you're operating under the 'one bit went into another thing', then no....

[thesilence]

As for the anglerfish, the distinction is less that they are anglerfish and more that they are fish in general and have external fertilization if you want to get to the particulars of the connotations of "having sex".

For that matter, every time someone with a pollen sensitivity sneezes during allergy season, it's because a flower had sex with their nose. (You could even use the R-word there, if your preferences aligned with mine - but I'm trying, however futilely, to behave myself.)

[thinkslogically]

Aaaah the wonderful grossness of nature

(psst! Spider! Angler fish have internal fertilisation, same as sharks and stuff it's cool and awesome but sadly getting waaaay off topic).

Anyway, if what klik did is like budding, the process of making junior is more like magically welding a spider plant to your arm than anything we'd likely consider 'having sex'. And with that mental image in mind, I'd like to suggest that this whole discussion is getting a little bit silly

[spiderwrangler]

(psst! Spider! Angler fish have internal fertilisation, same as sharks and stuff it's cool and awesome but sadly getting waaaay off topic).

Internal? Cool! Then they ARE "having sex".

I wasn't sure, and didn't find anything saying it wasn't external like most fish, so defaulted to that.

[thinkslogically]

(yup! With their faces! Which slowly melt into a fused bag of sperm attached to the body of the female it presumably works for them since they are low density ambush predators and can't constantly afford to track down a mate every time they want to breed. This way, they only have to find each other once and it's good enough! Although sometimes one female can have several males attached. I have no idea how the sperm competition works in those cases but I bet it's fascinating )

[RocketScientist]

Fish are completely interesting. Do angler fish birth live young, then, Thinks?