Death message error

[Dratz-_C]

Hi,
I was playing on the map, linear with the hover mutator and fell to my death. The message said "Dratz-_C thought they could fly." This should be "Dratz-_C thought that he could fly," right? Could he/she be determined by the player model setting of male or female? Failing that, the message could be changed to "Dratz-_C tried to fly," "Dratz-_C flew like a penguin," or Dratz-_C flunked flight school." I could try to think up some more, but that's the gist of it. What do you think?
Cheers

[greaserpirate]

Hi,
I was playing on the map, linear with the hover mutator and fell to my death. The message said "Dratz-_C thought they could fly." This should be "Dratz-_C thought that he could fly," right? Could he/she be determined by the player model setting of male or female?

I'm personally all for "they" being used as a singular pronoun. I use it all the time, and have never found it strange. In fact, if you look deep into the XKCD archives, you might find this strip: http://xkcd.com/145/

[Dratz-_C]

I see what you are talking about: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/he ... onoun.aspx
Cheers

[qreeves]

I'm personally all for "they" being used as a singular pronoun. I use it all the time, and have never found it strange. In fact, if you look deep into the XKCD archives, you might find this strip: http://xkcd.com/145/

I am the one who wrote this death message, and I totally agree. Death messages are static strings, they cannot easily be made gender-aware. There is always this debate over how to express gender neutral terms, and in the end I believe "they" is an acceptable replacement.