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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/47113
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/47113
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

For the writing challenge, I'm currently writing from the point of view of a robot. Also another robot is frequently addressed. However I've hit a problem: Referring to the robots as “it” often gives confusing sentences.

It probably doesn't help that one of the robot acquired a human male name (which it read from a cryogenic chamber data and liked). Also for some reason I think of the other robot as female (I don't actually know why). But the robots don't have the concept of gender (they don't even really know what humans _are_), so using “he” and “she” wouldn't seem right. I can partially work around it by using the names or the phrase “the robot” more often, but that also goes so far.

Here's an example of what I mean (Tom and Mil are the robots):

> Mil removed the connector from Toms arm and inserted it into one on the door. Tom now was again alone with its thoughts. Before meeting Mil, it hadn't cared about that, but now it felt like something was missing from it. That was illogical, Tom knew, as it was still a complete robot with nothing missing. And yet, something in its circuits told it that it was incomplete. Tom couldn't make sense of it.

Here's the same paragraph with male pronouns for Tom:

> Mil removed the connector from Toms arm and inserted it into one on the door. Tom now was again alone with his thoughts. Before meeting Mil, he hadn't cared about that, but now he felt like something was missing from him. That was illogical, Tom knew, as he was still a complete robot with nothing missing. And yet, something in his circuits told him that he was incomplete. Tom couldn't make sense of it.

In that form, the paragraph reads much better. But it doesn't make sense because the robot simply does not know the concept of male and female.

Therefore my question: Are there other techniques I can employ to avoid the confusion and awkwardness of constantly using “it”?

Original score: 20