i’ve seen a lot of posts flying around recently discussing the use (or not) of they/them pronouns for the canon vessels and as a Certified They/Them myself i feel at least a little obligated to add my two cents
you don’t really… see nonbinary characters in media too often. least of all when their nonbinary-ness isn’t like.. a huge deal. the vessels being genderless and using the pronouns they do is super important to me and many other people who identify like me, because it’s so so rare to get that sort of representation at all, least of all without it being made into a whole social justice issue or commentary (which is all great ofc, but it’s nice to have something just casual once in a while). which we get in hollow knight! and i love that! so do many others in my position!
however when it comes to fandom, both for this game and others with nb characters and protagonists (COUGHundertale) there is somewhat of a problem with people who see a genderless character, explicitly said to be genderless by the source material and/or the creator, and go “oh cool! a blank slate to project whatever idea of gender i want onto!”. which is pretty textbook erasure. and usually that gender is male, from what i’ve seen, which is a whole other can of worms about male being the “standard” that i don’t want to open but sure is a thing too that i and many others have noticed
making gender headcanons for canon characters that aren’t canonly marginalised identities is naturally all fine n stuff, but think of it this way (purely theoretical scenario): say there’s a gay character in media, who is widely seen as good representation, and openly shown/said to be gay in the source material or by the creator. however, for whatever reason, a big chunk of the fandom just so decides that this character is instead straight, and only describes them as straight and ships them with the opposite gender, because “it doesn’t matter that much” or “it’s up to interpretation” or “people make straight characters gay all the time” or *insert excuse here*
can we all agree that that would be homophobic at worst and erasure at the very least? ok? cool. that’s how I feel when I see people downplaying the importance of nonbinary/genderless characters in media. especially considering they’re even rarer to see compared to gay characters. you could replace the above example with just about anything - trans characters being hc’d as cis, poc characters being hc’d as white, it’s all the same principle and proves the same point
at the same time, though, nonbinary people do exist who use binary pronouns! that’s incredibly valid, pronouns don’t define your gender etc etc, my problem is more with people who completely erase the fact the vessels are nonbinary at all. i’d be considerably less iffy with people who make binary pronoun headcanons keeping that in mind (though anything other than the canon they/them for them does make me eeehh a bit, it really isn’t my place to judge people who aren’t exactly crossing any lines, so yall keep going even if its not my thing) but sadly i don’t see that too often
tl;dr cis/binary people please keep in mind that the canon vessels’ gender and pronouns may not seem so important for you, but to others it’s a huge deal when it comes to representation that’s otherwise very few and far between. please be considerate and listen to nb people when we say it’s an issue!
extra note: this post has nothing to do with ocs, feel absolutely free to have your vessel ocs identify however you like! it’s more a matter of the representation present in canon that i’m discussing here
