btw, any update on shiver's japanese personal pronouns now that the full game is out? theres a tweet going around saying she uses both uchi and onore and that it's a feminine+masculine combo, i wanted to double check and see if that is actually the case or if onore is a common pronoun for women to use? people are getting really militant abt this for no reason (unsurprisingly)

I think I've seen that tweet, yeah, and it's wrong.

So to start this off so everyone knows what’s up: I’m a native Japanese speaker, and I’m nonbinary myself. I’m approaching this topic as someone who WOULD LOVE to have canon, intended, Cisn’t rep here.

However, the situation in regards to Shiver is just a misunderstanding of the... complexities and nuance (?) that comes with the myriad of ways people can refer to themself in Japanese, and there’s actually nothing being censored by NoA when they confirmed that she is intended to be female. As of me writing this (September 17th 2022), there has been no content in the Japanese dialogue that ever suggests that Shiver might be intended to be nonbinary or otherwise some flavor of Not Female.

Before I even get into pronouns I gotta point out that her Japanese name is Fuuka, which is a regular ass girl's name in real life (albeit it's also being used as a shark pun). I think that if they were going to put a canon nonbinary character in Splatoon they're going to be more obvious about it.

Anyhow, with regards to The Question: the instance that Shiver uses "onore" is actually in the Rock Paper Scissors splatfest dialogue, right here:

おのれの魂をコブシに宿し、天につき出すその姿... 勝者のポーズゆうたらコレや！

I always have a hard time doing my own translations because my brain gets caught up on a million different things, but one way I'd write this to try to get across how she's using "onore" as is this:

"Placing one’s soul into one’s fist, raising it towards the heavens... That's the pose of victory!"

It's true that "Onore" has seen some historical use as a personal pronoun, but it's an archaic kind of usage in standard Japanese. It's not actually necessarily masculine either. Now, it does still see relatively common usage in various dialects in western regions, but mostly in the second person. I don't think I've ever heard "Onore" being used as a personal pronoun in the way you'd use stuff like "Watashi" or "Boku" (which is the kind of usage it's being confused with in that tweet) these days, even when writing fictional character dialogue.

That's irrelevant here, however, because that's not how it's being used here! It's being used to refer to a generalized "self" for theatrical effect, and not even as a personal identifier really. I'd say in this case a similar comparison in English would be "oneself" - kinda formal, depending on how you use it it might also be including the speaker, but not explicitly Just The Speaker. Does that make sense?

The like... connotations and perceptions surrounding how one chooses to refer to themself in Japanese is really complicated and context dependent and I DO understand how it might be easy to get confused! I can also see how people learning Japanese as a second language might have extra trouble with Shiver's dialogue in general since she speaks in the Kyoto dialect instead of standard Japanese. Shit's hard! Anyways unfortunately this has been once again a misunderstanding sorry everyone. We can do other things in headcanons, but we can't be going after people or the translators for this.

...

On the subject of personal pronouns though FRYE uses "washi" which has been fun because that is not something typically used by young people! In dialects where it's still common for young people to use "Washi", it tends to be more commonly used by guys, but the more common association is with Old People. Frye in general just speaks like a stereotypical Old Person though I love her she's great. Where's the fucking Frye crowd at

it will never end i imagine

forgive me if i sound short with people in regards to The Disc Horse (disc seahorse?) because this is not fun or even vaguely interesting for me. no matter what I say on the topic I feel like I sound like some kind of bigot or just an idiot and I will never have the words or like idk framework of thought? explanation? to communicate the full complexities of the topic BUT AT THE SAME TIME “bro just trust me” is such a shit source. I get that. But “bro just trust me” also goes for the other side. this is not a good situation. Either way I lose because I either get people being wrong about my native language and being self righteous about it OR the reality that once again I did not get official, canonical nonbinary rep that I would love to have. Also probably painting a massive target on my metaphorical back hiiii snipers if you close in for the kill make sure it's a clean death

I WAS THERE, GANDALF....

HEY HOW ARE WE FEELING ABOUT DEDF1SH/ACHT BEING CANONICALLY THEY/THEM

I think I've unwittingly become the fucking Splatoon Gender Bad News Guy but I would not get your hopes up in the slightest:

The translation in Splat 3 has been kind of Weird, not with the major shit as far as I know (thankfully) but with little things on the side; they have little oddities that would not be fucking there if the English team were communicating well with the JP team, which doesn't inspire confidence in the quality of their already pretty Meh english twitter posts.

I would watch the info on Dedf1sh's Official Bio on their splatbands info section of their website:

(sorry every website I use is in comic sans it's the firefox settings)

If they change Ded's pronouns to they/them in here, THEN I would get out the bottles. Or if they use they/them in the actual game when Side Order comes out.

tldr: bizarrely, I super would not trust the goddamn official Twitter account for info which is certainly a fucking sentence but it's true! Shit's weird. Shit's weird in the game even. Just don't get your hopes up and get them shattered or god forbid start up discourse I can't do this again you Cannot Start Dedcourse 2. HOLD YOUR HORSES EVERYONE we have jumped the gun on Dedf1sh Translation before and it ended in disaster learn from the mistakes of the past

Dedcourse Fucking 2