Meta On Venom and Pronouns and Aliens

[kitewithfish]

There is some ongoing 'new fandom weirdness' going on in Venom fic, in which writers who come from the comics tend to fall into using language common to the comics, and people got into fandom from the movie using that language.

This can lead to some confusion, particularly around how to talk respectfully about a character who is literally a goo alien from a species that does not have gender and reproduces by budding.

Since this can have some overlap with the ongoing cultural discussion about how be respectful and kind when you want to talk to and about trans and nonbinary people, it's worth laying out why there's some differences going on, and where they come from.

• The comics address this by calling the symbiote, 'the symbiote' or 'the Venom symbiote,' and using it/its/itself language for the symbiote. In the comics, only the combo of symbiote+host = Venom, and the name Venom is applied to any host the symbiote takes. Specifically, people who know and love the symbiote use 'symbiote' and 'it/itself' language in a positive, non harmful setting, and this is largely taking place in the context of the symbiote being an alien creature with different cultural norms

• The movie took a different approach: the symbiote's name is Venom from the first discussion, and the movie uses he/him/himself. (Specifically, the symbiote makes an introduction using the name Venom to another character personally, and other characters call the symbiote alone Venom and use he/him language when they consider the symbiote sentient, but other characters who are not nice use “it”; and don't know the symbiote's name.) The line “We are Venom” is said towards the end of the movie, but it's not quite clear if what that shift means.

So, fic writers are using both of these modalities, both supported by canon, AND some people are also using different ways to talk about the symbiote that are drawn from some existing etiquette about how to talk about trans and nb people who don't have a traditional gender (like, sometimes using 'they/them/themselves’) language.

So there is a lot going on in Venom fandom about this, I so far have not seen any grossness or antitrans sentiment going around (tho, hi, it's the internet, I'm sure there's some out there), and I hope this helps explain where folks are coming from.

For myself, I got used to the conventions of the comics, but I've been reading a lot of fic about the movie, so I'm playing fast and loose.I do tend to use 'it' or 'they' with the symbiote by itself, because that's what the comics do and that's what I'm used to doing with nb characters. I basically never use the name Venom for just the symbiote unless I am comment on a fic where the author has used that convention; - it can cause too much confusion to try and insist on different language, and I'm not convinced it really adds much to push for it. “He” for the symbiote alone seems just weird and wrong to me, but it's also common in the comics for people to address Venom (when the symbiote and host are 'suited up) by the host's gender, so it's coming from nowhere. There is a basis for a lot of these choices.

It's a developing fandom and I'm not sure where the consensus is going to land, if indeed it ever does.

Comments

[tehanu]

It sure is an exercise in thinking about gender, especially if you are coming from a different language.

I'm also interested in singular versus plural first person. The more they merge, the more natural it is for the "host + symbiote" team to say "I", sure, and "we" means the same then. But while they have separate identities which relate to each other (as in "you are mine")? It makes the most sense to me when they only use "we" to emphasize that both of them are meant. So I like it when Venom-the-symbiote says "I" on those occasions when they can't mean the team. Say, "I have seen the birth and death of countless stars" sounds better to me than "we have". Although they could mean their whole species too, or the crew or army or whatever, and anyway it's just minor personal preference and when Venom says in a fic "Eddie, our tongue is much better for this than yours" it's the author's choice? And doesn't really spoil anything.

But then in the movie it also gives, they also give, their name to the team, share it with Eddie. They might be happy and feel included if Eddie replied instead, "we are Eddie". Maybe?

[kitewithfish]

Honestly, this is one of the reasons why I am really liking all the different takes on their relationship and Venom's personhood and the biology - it's all deeply strange and wonderful to see all the ways the relationship could work.

The comics I like best, mostly Mike Costa's run in 2016, tended to treat Eddie as thinking about their relationship like a marriage - himself as one person, his 'other' another person (not a human, but a person) and their relationship was kind of psychic and the lines were blurry, but they were different people living together in one body. But there was a quirk of the dialogue where the symbiote rarely said 'I' - when it meant "Eddie+symbiote" it would say we, but it generally formed sentences in the first person without using 'I' - sort of a translation convention where the symbiote's thoughts were getting turned into English for the reader's sake.

And part of that is just conventions of comics writing - the words have to get across fast so that they can support the images, and I can totally get why Costa didn't always have enough space to flesh out exactly how their relationship worked and tended to rely on well established cultural tropes like marriage and romance. And also, it's a comic, they're not going to delve into the delightful subtext they're establishing, we've got fic for that.

[hjbender]

This was really helpful! I've been wondering about this sort of thing recently; I've been toying with the idea of a Venom fic and I was having difficulty deciding on how to address the symbiote, the symbiote+host, and all that. I knew there was a distinction in how the pronouns were handled in the comics versus the movie, but I haven't had an opportunity to look them up. I'll read up on them now, though. Thanks for bringing these nuances to light!

[kitewithfish]

Happy I could help! New fandoms are fun! Comics can be a little bit opaque to new readers, I think, since a lot of characters appear in several titles and have long histories, but I think Venom's better than a lot since there are multiple miniseries that focus on the characters. And digital comics have made the process of hunting things down much easier!

Let me know if you're interested - I have a few recommendations on where to start and what I think is not worth finding.

[spikedluv]

I'm not in the fandom (though I have enjoyed all the art posts on Tumblr *g*), but this was and interesting read.

[kitewithfish]

<3