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§3.17. Men, women and animals

Rounding out the standard kinds provided by Inform are four for living things: "person", which is a kind of thing, and "man", "woman" and "animal", all kinds of person. For instance:

In the Ballroom is a man called Mr Darcy.

For the time being, men and women will be little more than waxworks: they will come to life only when we go beyond the present stage of creating an initial state of the world.

People can be male or female: this is an either/or property for the "person" kind, and it affects play at run-time a little, because the player can use "him" and "her" to refer to male or female people encountered. Men and women are always male and female respectively, and for animals we can choose either way, for example making a stallion male or a nanny goat female. Animals are male unless we say otherwise.

If our animal is instead something like a beetle or an earthworm, where gender doesn't seem to matter or even to exist, we can use the further property "neuter":

The spider is a neuter animal in the Bathroom.

The Standard Rules don't make people behave differently according to their genders, and the main difference comes down to language: whether we want the animal to be called "her", or "it". Because of the existence of "neuter", we sometimes need to be cautious about the use of the adjective "male": since Inform, partly for historical reasons, uses an either/or property for masculinity, neuter animals are also "male".

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