everything comes back to the alien sex eventually

-- make us into these Last Men!

As Jenn seperis herself makes clear, the movement to get Last Men written is some sort of fandom zeitgeist, possessed of a motive force beyond anything I could muster on my own. I'm as much caught up in it as anyone else. Or, as I told Val grrleloquence, it is Sucking My Head.

What is Last Men, you ask? last_men


Incidentally, I never tempted Koi koimistress in a desert. Ever. And let me just point out that she's the one who brought [what became] Last Men back up, not me.



And you know, no, English doesn't have a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun set (aside from it-its-it, which just doesn't fit animate beings well). But it's not unbearably awkward to just strip off the letter or two that indicate gender from he-his-him and she-hers-her:

Look, I told h, I don't even have time to learn how to set one up.

Want your username to be Koi, or koimistress? e asked, and soon thereafter login instructions arrived.

I've written drafts that way for years, if I hadn't yet decided whether a given character would be male, female or otherwise. It fits nicely into syntax already in use.

Granted, I have an easier time adjusting to the way third-singular pronouns are used in Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand than I do adjusting back to the real world after I put the book down, so your mileage may vary...