#i was gonna do a whole as survey but i'm on limited time bc i'm gOING OUT so take this!!!

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Y'know, I really like that Akari in oop is mostly a researcher and just kind of mid at battling. It's refreshing! And it makes a lot of sense if we consider that arceus prob just wanted the pokedex to begin with, and didn't realize there'd be a crisis that she needed to deal with. Even with its ability to yoink her from the future, I still think that if it had known its chosen human was going to immediately be met with frenzied nobles that it'd have warned her about that rather than just saying it wanted a catalog of its creations. Forewarned is forearmed after all. It's always just seemed out of place for it to not say anything about the impending fights for their life if it knew. So Akari being a very average, albeit modern pokemon trainer whose interests lie elsewhere is pretty neat! I also think it'd be kind of funny if arceus just kind of picked her at random. It knew it wanted from the future + interested in pokemon research and spun the lotto wheel. Didn't specify when in the future, didn't specify age, didn't specify battling experience, just got her mostly by chance. I think that since palkia and dialga are specifically in charge of space and time that they're able to be precise, while arceus only has a broad, but narrow reach. It can do stuff to manipulate time and space, but not very well. Anyway, got a little lost in the weeds there, but yeah I like that she's just Some Kid. It's a good contrast to Rei, who starts off being pretty garbage at battling, and Ingo and Emmet who are Very, Very Good at what they do. These kids need protection, and luckily they have some adults who are willing and able to provide it. I'm counting Cyllene and Laventon in that too, even though their ability to help is far more limited.

thank you!!!! yeah i think the kids being actually invested in dex work is really good and i wanna do more of it because. i like it. because the unown report in hgss was one of my fav things like ever. cause i think it's cute if it isn't just A Task to them, bc the game really gives that feeling, yanno? the protagonist IS actively updating their dex over time, recording things they catch, i think they really are interested in the research! plus it's fun if they're excited about it right alongside laventon. whole surveyfam gathered around the wallflower table having a heated debate about whether the spacetime distortion sneasel evolution should be called a regional sneasler variant or if it's different enough to be its own thing.

anyway. yeah this is a thing that i think is gonna be a fun challenge for oop in the future, is like, power scaling for all the different groups floating around. bc like. you have such a MASSIVE range in skill levels between them. where on the one side you've got people who are barely aware of battling as a concept, and then you've got people who only recently started practicing it, and then you've got akari, with this modern knowledge about it but not really a ton of time investment, and then over on the other side of the scale are these two pros. and even if people are at the same aggregate power level they're not necessarily good at the same things? like, i would place irida and rei to be roughly the same skill level at battling, but the key difference is a bunch of rei's knowledge is being pulled from his survey work and knowing a lot about the pokemon he's facing. whereas irida does not have nearly as many of them memorized, because why would she? that's not really a thing she's ever needed to know? but what she does have is ingo's training, which she applies in a more general way with strategies that don't depend as strictly on type matchups or special abilities, like turning powder snow into visual cover.

anyway point being it's gonna be kind of tough to make challenges that actually feel challenging for all these different groups, lol. like, something that is an intimidating but doable task for the miss fortunes is barely even enrichment for ingo and emmet. conversely, something that could challenge those two with their whole team plus tagalongs should rightly curbstomp any of the other smaller groups. this was sort of an angle when i was still trying to figure out how to write the vespiquen fight actionwise. asking "ok, how would you do this fight if you were perfect at it?" and then following that up with "what parts of that plan can't irida do, and what can she do instead?"

[ ftr the answer is bait out power gem -> leafeon mimic -> shotgun it while glaceon runs circles around it to hold its attention. once you've got that 4x effective move in your pocket you clean up much easier. but irida didn't know leafeon had mimic, and also doesn't know that power gem is so effective on vespiquen, a pokemon she's barely had contact with before now, and has a hard time splitting her attention between two different battle partners to the degree required to have one of them just monkeying around being distracting without it getting ko'd. so scaling those things back gets you a mimicked air slash and glaceon playing offense alongside leafeon. ]

...i'm just rambling now whoops. ANYWAY UH. what was the original topic. yeah i really like my akari too!! she's just very curious and loves pokemon a whole lot and really likes being helpful, but isn't necessarily so into battling specifically. that's more of an incidental "way to bond with my partners" than anything. so you get someone with a ton of knowledge but not a ton of experience in applying it, yanno? there's obviously more here abt battling conceptually and the vast array of interactions one can have with it, but, y'know. this is already really long. uh. thanks!

[llsilvertail]

(I'm reblogging this version of the post bc I like all the points made here, but my reblog is mostly gonna be addressing the original ask)

Disclaimer: I'm closest to fem agender (it's a work in progress lmao) and aroace. While I don't have any conlangs myself, I've been pretty immersed in it and worldbuilding for quite a few years now. I'm also very interested in queer/LGBTQ-ness to the point where I'm literally volunteering to help with an annual survey. I'm def not a trained resource for any of that tho XD, so don't take my word as gospel.

(TLDR at the end but before the footnotes)

So the way people conceptualize gender, sexuality, etc. comes entirely from their interactions with their culture/environment. Language is simply a reflection of those concepts, not a control over their existence[1].

Queer[2] people will always exist in societies in some shape or form no matter how open or restricted things are. For example, take trans people in western society. The idea of "transsexual" (and by extension "transgender") as an identity is a very very recent development (within the past century) when compared to the English language as a whole. Yet, through today's lenses, people who could theoretically be placed into it, have been around long before this label for it existed. (Another good example is the whole evolution in culturally Christian places from "people do sodomy" to "people are gay".)

Now that was a comparison over time. If we compare cross-culturally[3], "third genders" are much more common than what we, in the west, are led to believe. Unfortunately I don't have enough experience or knowledge to properly talk about a specific culture, so ig it's gonna be a more abstract discussion. The terms "lesbian" inherently has both a gender (woman) and a sexuality (interested in women) baked into it[4]. Even the gender neutral term "homosexual" requires knowledge of the gender of the identifying person[5]. But a different culture may use specific terms for "attracted to [gender]", which, while no longer needing the gender of the identifying person, also loses information about how that orientation would relate to society.

Those are the two primary macro variations[6], over time and over distance, of a society and, if we look at language, it also varies in the same way. So trying to apply our sensibilities to a culture that's (theoretically) unrelated to us is an exercise in futility, let alone trying to create language describing it.

That said, there will most definitely be a concept of "queerness" in most con-cultures. As I said, "queer people will always exist in societies in some shape or form", and that will also apply to a constructed human/human-like society. I can't give a full guide for "possible ways to construct variations within a culture that would lead to queer-specific language", bc that would be way too much for an already long post, but one way to come up with terms about that is: what is the "normative" way to be, both in the past and in the present; how does the culture react to people falling outside the norm; how might people (both intentionally and unintentionally) conflict with that and then resolve those conflicts[7]; in what ways might a subculture surrounding that develop and what vocabulary would it spawn. And then there you go!! A queer culture is born!!!!

TLDR: Saying a conlang "[isn't] progressive enough" is a flawed premise in a few different ways including, but not limited to: people will always be queer in some way or another, different people consider different things "queer" so they might not deem it necessary to have a word for it, etc. But if you are trying to include queer language in your conlang (and I assume you are), you need to consider how it would manifest in your con-culture before you can start coming up with actual words. Sorry, that got way longer than I intended for it to be (it's 3:30 am and I've been going since 1 or 1:30 so...) so I'm gonna go sleep now and hope it makes sense.

[1] Yes ik Sapir-Whorf, etc. exists but that's not what this is about (tho I suppose, if you think about it, the weak version is technically in play here lol).

[2] I'm deliberately using "queer" instead of "LGBTQ+", bc this would be applicable to much of the internal cultural variation which isn't necessarily encompassed by "LGBTQ+". (that doesn't make sense but my brain is starting to not work so oh well. have fun figuring it out)

[3] I have a lot of entirely irrelevant worldbuilding thoughts about this, but I put in an entire paragraph's worth of digressions I had to remove and I'd feel bad if I didn't at least mention its existence.

[4] Yes ik about he/him lesbians, etc. but that's not what this is about. I simply need a common, well known, example.

[5] It's "attraction to the same gender", so there's no way to know who they're attracted to without knowing the gender of the person themself.

[6] I'm sure there's an actual word for this, but I'm not a sociologist lol, so ig that's what we're stuck with.

[7] Including like, societal roles that would be more okay with "abnormal" things, safe spaces they could go to or meet at, etc.

I don't think that any of your conlangs are progressive enough to express being trans, but if they were, how would they? What about other gender/sexuality things?

That first clause is quite a thing to say. Languages aren't progressive. Their users may be, but the languages aren't anything. They're just languages. If you mean they're not modern (i.e. a lot of the languages I create are for cultures that are somewhat antiquated compared to our world), this is true, but that doesn't necessarily mean the languages won't have terminology for different gender identities.

There is a major assumption here, though. My understanding (and please do note: I am a cis man; please feel free to correct), cis and trans individuals, as opposed to nonbinary and genderfluid, are similar in that neither have any doubt about what gender they are, identifying with either male or female. So if any language I've created has a word for "man" or "woman", then there's sufficient vocabulary for a trans individual to express their identity that way.

However, there is a terminological difference, and it's both an individual choice and societal preference: Whether to identify as one's chosen gender identity, as trans, or both (e.g. "I am a woman", "I am trans", or "I am a trans woman"—and then preferring to use one of those or all of those, or some other combination of the three). My personal language preference (as a user and language creator) is fewer distinctions are better (why have three third person singular pronouns—or four or twelve—when you can have one?), because it's less to memorize, less work to use, and demands less specificity of the user—and allows the hearer/reader to make fewer assumptions. Unless the situation calls for it (e.g. the gender system hard-coded into Ravkan in Shadow & Bone), I prefer lumping rather than splitting. This is especially useful as I'm often not in charge of the culture I create languages for.

For example, the languages I've created for A Song of Ice and Fire were for cultures created and maintained by George R. R. Martin. Whatever cultural innovations I have made in creating the languages are, at best, pending—that is, true until George R. R. Martin says otherwise, which he is free to do at any time, as it's his world. As a result, I don't feel confident enough to say what life is like for a trans individual in his world, and how that might be reflected in the languages there. There's simply not enough information.

Where I might be in charge of the culture, you do know my preference now (i.e. fewer distinctions), but, as I am not trans, I'd prefer to leave it to the trans community to decide, and then do what I can to support those decisions linguistically (i.e. to make it work within the language). Any term chosen highlights some aspect of the experience while downplaying others. In English, trans, coming from transition, highlights the change from one identity to another. Other ideas for how to come up with a term might be using a root that refers to "true", highlighting the transition to one's true gender expression. Perhaps another root to look for would be "choose", framing it as one's chosen gender expression—IF one wishes to look at it that way.

In many ways, both the term and the experience are highly individual, and it's difficult to come up with a blanket term and say "this is the term". It's especially difficult since this isn't a life experience I share. It feels both disingenuous and a bit icky to come up with a term to describe an experience that is decidedly not my own.

My own preference in this regard is a twofold approach:

Allow trans users of whatever language to figure out what term works for them, and then support them in creating a term that obeys the various language rules (i.e. the phonology is correct, derived words are derived correctly, etc.). Those users, however, will be operating under the same "rules" that I operate under, e.g. the one who's creating the culture has the final say, if they care to weigh in, and so the result may end up not being canon, at which point it's up to the user to decide whether they care or not. (Note: I shouldn't have to explain it here on Tumblr, but, of course, you don't have to care if the creator of the canon says something isn't so, no matter how many billions they have.)

Allow polysemy. There will never be a term that is THE term. It may be an individual's preferred term, but someone else may like another, in which case it should be allowed.

A very important language-specific note (and the same is true of fandom, generally). By agreeing to work within a language, we're essentially agreeing to rules of a game. The rules can always be broken. When rules are broken, the question language users have to answer is if they've been broken so egregiously that they're no longer playing the game, or if it's fine. For example, if you look at fanfic, there's plenty of fanfic with gender-swapped characters, or the same characters in a radically different setting. Some readers may decide they don't want the characters to be gender-swapped. Others may decide that if it's not in the same setting they're not interested. And that's fine! Both the writers and the readers are deciding which rules of the game can be broken while still calling it the same game. This works very, very well so long as no one gets mad at anyone else. If someone says, "I don't enjoy this because it breaks the rules in a way that ruins my enjoyment", that's perfectly fine. If that same person says, "You're not allowed to break the rules in this way", that's not fine.

So hopefully this all makes sense. And, furthermore, when I say I want to support those who wish to create their own terms, I do mean it. If anyone has suggestions or needs help coining a possible word, feel free to message me! But do bear (2) above in mind. I'm not going to say any term is THE term, and have that be the end of it. It'll be one possibility amongst a rainbow of possibilities.

[dsappointments]

⋆ ° ⟡ ( CHARLES MELTON, twenty-five, cis-male, he/him ) has ALEXANDER ROYCE, the FIRST SON from USA arrived yet? i heard they can be quite FACETIOUS, but also BEGUILING. there’s rumours they’ve come to genovia to HAVE FUN WITHOUT THE SCRUTINY OF HIS PARENTS, but you never know. EYES TWINKLING WITH MIRTH BEFORE PULLING A PRACTICAL JOKE, LARGE AND GAUDY RINGS ON SLENDER FINGERS & SUNGLASSES WITH AN OPEN SHIRT always remind me of them. ( harper, 24, pst, she/her )

what’s up folks, alec is big dumb but here we go with some basics:

he comes from a long line of politicians, the royce’s are pretty much known for their immense political power in the us of a

it was a pretty Big Deal when his mother married a korean-cherokee man prior to becoming the president, everyone thought her political career was over, but she persevered and stuck it to the big man

alec’s lived a life of luxury for most of his life, it’s unfortunate how truly out of touch he is with reality... “i mean, it’s one banana, michael. what could it cost? 10 dollars?”

he’s known from a pretty young age that he does NOT want to be a politician, but he loves his mom too much to break her heart

he LOVES his mom, he’s not so cool with his dad... he thinks he’s a bore and a stickler for rules because his dad has always played it close due to his reputation whereas alec has not

alec went to yale, his mom’s alma mater, but he’s actually pretty smart too... he just doesn’t show it because he’s too busy partying and trying to enjoy life before he’s shackled by the big man in the future

his year off turned into two years off before going to law school, but his parents have really drilled it into him that he has to go next year or face the wrath of his mother’s tears and his father’s disappointment (the latter is nothing new, but the former is certainly enough to force him)

alec got his big, dumb heart broken at some point in college and never wants to think about love ever again (change his mind?)

he’s bisexual, but don’t let his parents know shhhhh

he’s here for fun, he’s always been the kind of person to never have strings attached to anything, but he’s a huge joker and charmer and his laissez-faire attitude has definitely gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion

unfortunately, he’s kind of known to play pranks... sorry in advance

he takes nothing seriously, nothing at all, he thinks royalty is stuffy despite being one of the most high profile people and the equivalent of royalty in the united states... did i mention he’s an idiot?

WANTED CONNECTIONS: an ex? a current fling? someone who might actually make him take things seriously again? an enemy? the one who got away? friends? partying friends? get drunk and really fucked up and do stupid things friends? just give me anything, pretty much! hit me up on discord!! (h.#6306)

[logicheartsoul]

how to deal with poor fic reception? i have an ocxcanon series that i put a LOT of my heart/soul into. i just started posting the first few chs. bc it’s oc/canon + a smol fandom, i have no delusions abt how much attention it will get. it has gotten a nice number of kudos so far….but no comments. i’m trying to tell myself it’s OK but it’s kinda hard to feel OK…i’m not sure how to deal with this so i can still keep writing the whole series since i do love the story very very much

I guess it depends on the definition on what you mean by 'poor fic reception' because depending on the fandom and depending on how many fans are in it and how active it is, something that may have low numbers in a bigger, more active fandom, may actually be doing pretty well. I've been in a variety of very rare, small, niche fandoms and some extremely big, active ones. Something like 15 kudos in a small af fandom is pretty significant, coz the smaller the pool of people, the more likely most of the fans have seen it, you know? Even in a big fandom, 15 isn't bad either -- in all the content they had to choose from, those 15 decided to look at your work? That's pretty damn good I feel.

Just by the general nature of things, any fics that are primarily only oc/canon fic is gonna be harder to get more reception than if a fic has canon/canon only ship or if it's a fic with canon/canon and oc/canon. I could probably get into it, and there's lot of meta essays discussing the why's about it, but the fact is, it's just naturally harder to get more readers into it. Since you've mentioned about having no delusions about the attention, I'm sure you know the reasons that I do too.

It's good you got a lot of kudos so far! I dunno if you've seen the Meaning of Kudos post (which is a survey done by readers of ao3 on what they actually mean when they kudos a fic) but all those kudos do mean something, and it's all positive.

I totally understand though, wanting to hear what people think about the work and effort you've put into a story, and how it may seem like silence. A good thing to keep in mind is that [x] amount of people read your work and liked it. Sometimes it's hard to lose sight of it because it's numbers on a screen, but a good trick I've learned from someone is picture being in a room. Imagine the number of people you got for those kudos or hits. If it's 26, holy shit, that's 26 people, that's almost the start of a big party! If it's 100 or more, that's the size of a big college lecture class.

Another thing I know from reading fic for a long time and writing fic and being friends with fic writers for years, is that many people might enjoy the premise/idea of an on-going story but will wait for it to be completed before reading it. Some of them they got burned by amazing WIPs and then the authors abandoned the stories or it doesn't update for years or they have limited time to read fic and wanna read it all in one go. And even if people are reading your on-going fic, they sometimes don't comment for the same reason -- they want to save all their thoughts and opinions til the very end.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with asking in the author's notes about leaving a comment. Of course, not in a rude way, but something like 'oh I spent a lot of time working on this chapter this week because...[insert reason], I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments!' or something along those lines. Sometimes readers just need some nice encouragement to leave a comment, even if it's just an emoji reaction.

If the story is one you love writing, I hope you keep going at it! I hope these things might help make it easier, coz it can really get tough. But I hope it won't discourage you to keep going.

Now, if you want to potentially get more eyes to look at your work -- and therefore increase the chances of a reader who does comment to show up -- there are ways to do that. They're not all guaranteed, of course, and I've known MANY an amazing fic writer whose works can get overlooked for lots of reasons and the most popular work can be someone who's just managing to be striking it hot while the timing is right with the most popularly sought out tropes with decent enough execution on the ideas. Popularity does not equal skill and does NOT indicate people who are not popular enough are bad writers.

This response is getting kinda lengthy, so I'll leave it under the cut.

Some of that is of course making sure you're not posting in the AO3 dead zone hours (which I recently found out is a thing, wtf) (check this post out for more info ) so that it allows your chapter updates to show up on the front page of your pairing's tag and a better chance at new readers to see it.

There's also promoting the fic on a tumblr account (either a personal tumblr, a writing only tumblr, or a fandom only tumblr, whatever you want to choose) and using the right tags to get eyes on it (first 5 for it to show up on tagged pages and first 10 for in search results). Please don't use tags that have nothing to do with the fic --characters or pairings that aren't relevant -- because the fans of those tags will most likely just block you, but also it's easier to maintain tagging to relevant stuff as well. Also, it just makes fans of those characters or pairings annoyed, to the point of possibly writing posts about that very thing. And annoyed/mad fans will spread the knowledge of who is doing that kind of thing if they're mean/petty enough. Just better for everyone around to stick with fandoms, characters, and pairing tags that are relevant.

And don't be afraid to reblog your own work to promote it -- people have busy lives and also live in different timezones and countries and so whoever might be seeing might be like, 'oh! This fic updated!'

Another good tip is to regularly update but not post like 5 chapters at once. Max 2 chapters in one go is ok, but space out the chapter updates if you aren't already doing so. That allows people time to read each part through. The only exception I can think of for more than 2 chapters if it's like... the very end of the story, then people can be like 'oh this 20 chaptered fic is complete! I can start reading it now!'

Also, people love following authors they like on other platforms, so if you're comfortable with it, you can also leave in the author's notes the tumblr account you'd want them to interact with.

There's too making friends in the fandom you're in -- people who can understand and share your enthusiasm for why you wanna write this. Sometimes what we're searching for when wanting comments for our fics, other than validation, is just someone to connect to and seeing how what we created connected with them. Sometimes just getting a friend's comment can be better than a random person's.

And, while not all fandoms do this, some do, and that's to find a person or a fandom blog that helps promote other writers for their works and getting someone's eyes on it. Like a pairing/reading library or someone who routinely recs works and encourages others to send their fics in so they can check it out. That could also help! Of course, that's no guarantee the person or people running it WILL read it but sometimes you just gotta put yourself out there. You won't always strike but you never know.

Anyways, I hope all of this was helpful, anon! I do hope you get more good feedback on your fic, that someone will comment, and that you continue enjoying writing this story you love.

And of course, if none of this helps, sometimes it IS ok to step back and take a break. Take a break from the writing or in fandom, whether that's a day or a week or longer. No comments is not an indicator of your worth as a person or as a writer. Sometimes, stepping back to distract ourselves or to not think about it for awhile helps refocus it all.