#submitted nov 1

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[two-sentence-tournament]

making the bracket except i threw in a few of my own to get even numbers but i can't find one for the life of me- its something like "ah finally after a long day of work i get to have a shower" but whatever i search up nothing similar shows up help

[awek-s-archived]

i think i get my dissertation results in like. a week. so im shitting myself frankly

[writingwithcolor]

Hey folks!

It has been a while! Well, we wanted to announce some big things coming your way!

WWC Askbox: Soft Re-Opening

Wednesday, Nov 1, 2023 to Thursday, Nov 30, 2023

In light of the recent attention WWC has received by the writeblr community, and the reception to our Guide to Academic Research—the mods have decided that we will temporarily reopen to your questions and test some important changes to the site! As you may have noticed, we've taken a much-needed break to catch up on our personal lives and restore our inspiration to answer the hundreds of Q&A that we receive. 

Once the submission window is up on Nov 30, we will evaluate how our new system is going, tinker some more, and reopen once again once the construction dust clears.

New Rules and FAQ! 

We are pleased to announce our new and improved Masterpost, which we hope will be a more centralized, more informative resource for those new and returning to WWC. 

Brand-new FAQs, with new answers and content for further reading

Code of Conduct and other etiquette rules

The Ask Tutorial—a guide to writing a good ask that we’ll answer!

Moving forward, all followers are required to go through the masterpost to submit a question so they are aware of the new rules, terms & conditions. 

Read the masterpost here and ask your question!

New Process

We're piloting out our own personal askbox via Google Forms. This will help us streamline the process and keep track of everyone’s questions.

We are also introducing the Deletion Log, a public, anonymous ledger that lets you know if your question (identified by a number code) has been deleted due to a rule violation, and what you can do to resubmit. Check out the Deletion Log here. 

Want to submit an ask? 

The below are topics of asks that we will get to right away, based on the mods who are currently active. 

Black 

Chinese

Colonialism

Iranian/Persian 

Japanese (INCLUDING: Anime fanfic questions! Only Mod Rina will be answering anime questions, and only if she feels that the ask would make for an educational post.)

Jewish

Mixed race

South Asian: Hindu, Indian, Punjabi, Sikh (please remember that when asking about South Asia you must indicate region & time period) 

Taiwanese 

Writing/Publishing industry 

Coming Soon: Writingwithcolor.org

We've made tremendous progress on writingwithcolor.org and are almost ready to show off the more permanent residence of WritingWithColor! However, it'll take a lot of time to fully transfer posts and links. To get the new look and all its benefits to you faster, we plan for a soft launch of the content. This will include back and forth linking between WritingWithColor.org and our home on Tumblr. We'll try to keep things seamless and your viewing experience on Tumblr shouldn't be too interrupted. Launch date is coming soon!

New Mod Applications

We still have some applications from our last call of mods and folks to respond to. So if you haven’t heard back, sorry for the delay, but no worries—we will get back to you as we start shaking the dust off our bones and getting back into Q&A. Once we are ready to invite more mods again, we'll continue our outreach.

A Special Thanks To You All

We want to thank you for your continued support, whether it’s been viewership, spreading the word about us, or sending us a tip that supports our domain and future projects for you all. The whole team really appreciates it. We will keep bringing you our best advice and guides on all things good writing with inclusivity. 

Be well and keep writing!

~WWC

[ahaura]

(Nov. 13)

@amalsaad_lb: Israel has always adopted a population-centric approach which punishes the population not for supporting Hamas, but for simply existing and refusing to submit. It has never tried to employ a "winning hearts and minds" counter-insurgent strategy because it doesn't seek support 1/3

@amalsaad_lb: Support is only necessary when the aim is to rule over a population; Israel's aim isn't to dominate Palestinians but to erase them. All the killings and declarations of genocidal intent we have been seeing are a crucial part of its strategy to crush the will of Palestinians 2/3

@amalsaad_lb: This strategy has historically failed and only fuelled more resistance. Israel doesn't understand how Palestinians and Lebanese continue to reject humiliation and oppression despite great personal cost. It's destined to lose because it's incapable of understanding its enemy 3/3

[rwrbsource]

Join us (@rwrbmovie & @rwrbsource) for the first RWRB Week to celebrate three months of the Red, White and Royal Blue movie. The week will take place from the 6th to the 12th of November. Please see the prompts and our guidelines below.

PROMPTS:

Day 1 (Nov. 6): Quote Day 2 (Nov. 7): Song Day 3 (Nov. 8): Favourite Side Character/Dynamic Day 4 (Nov. 9): Little Detail Day 5 (Nov. 10): Fashion Day 6 (Nov. 11): Kiss Day 7 (Nov. 12): Location/Set

GUIDELINES:

• Tag your post with #rwrbweek so we can find and reblog your creations. • Caption your posts with: @rwrbmovie & @rwrbsource’s rwrbweek: Day # | Prompt Title • To participate you don’t have to create something for every day of the event, you can submit ‘only’  one for the entire week, you can do multiple creations for one prompt. Do however many you like! • The event is open to fan creations of all kinds: Art, Edits, Fanfics, Gifs, Playlists, Videos - you name it, we are happy to see it. • Interpret the prompts as strict or loose you like, have fun with them!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to either of us.

We can’t wait for a fun week with you and all the amazing creations you come up with!

[countrydionysia]

2023 Rural Dionysia Announcement

Io! The time of the year has come again for the Rural Dionysia!

How to participate

The Rural Dionysia is meant to be a smaller competition than its urban counterpart, as such, we have selected only 3 categories:

Freestyle poetry

Modern hymns

“Complete the fragment”

Freestyle poetry

Your poem can be about any chosen topic (myth, personal experience etc.) in any written format. It doesn't have to be religious in nature.

Modern hymn

An hymn must sing the praises of a deity of your choice. Unlike the "freestyle poetry", your work must be of religious nature to fit in this category.

Complete the Fragment

Each year, we choose a fragment from an Ancient Greek poet to work with. The challenge is that the initial fragment must be included somewhere in your piece in its original order. This means you can fill the gaps however you want, but you can’t switch the order of the words in your piece or remove words from the original fragment.

Here is the fragment selected for this 2023 edition: Paen 16 by Pindar (52q Oxyrhynchus papyrus; late 2nd century AD; trans. William H. Race; Loeb 56)

……………… ] Lord Apollo, .…] for I pray ….] with willing (mind?) to give ….] power suffices and you were judged to be ….] most gentle to mortals.

Here is the Greek text for reference. Note that because the word "mind" is unsure in this translation, it will be acceptable to keep or modify this word.

-

If in doubt for any of these categories, remember that you can check submissions from the previous years to get an idea of how others have done before.

Submitting your piece

Please submit your piece through submissions on this blog. All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. but you can only choose 1 category per piece and each person may only submit 1 entry per category each year.

Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks. If your entry needs a trigger warning, kindly add them at the end of your submission and we will take care of adding them in. Check the rules below for further information about submissions.

Calendar of the event

Nov. 10: Official announcement and opening of submissions. Dec. 10: Final submission day. Dec. 11: Vote opening. Dec. 18: Vote closing. Dec. 19-20: Announcement of the winners!

No worries though! We will be posting reminders about each step when the time comes.

General rules

Roleplay and fanfic are not acceptable submissions. This is a religious festival, please respect our faith and do not submit an entry if you are roleplaying or writing fanfiction.

Unlike with the City Dionysia, entries do not necessarily have to be about specific deities or Hellenic polytheism except for the “Modern Hymn” category, which has to be dedicated to one or many gods of your choice.

There are no meter restrictions. This is up to the writer.

All stories, myths, and poems must be entered using the submissions button.

All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks.

An entry may only be submitted to a single category.

Each person may only submit one entry per category each year.

Winners for each category will be decided by popular vote.

Admins of this blog cannot participate, for obvious reasons. As for now, this includes @thegrapeandthefig @verdantlyviolet

Questions about the rules? Check the blog for past answers, your answer might be in there. And if it's not, simply submit an ask. We'll answer in the best delays possible.

[mindblowingscience]

Australia's first lunar rover will be called "Roo-ver" following a public vote to name the space vehicle. The Australian Space Agency is building a semi-autonomous rover that will launch to the moon as early as 2026 in partnership with NASA and the agency's Artemis program. Roo-ver will collect lunar soil samples, from which NASA will attempt to extract oxygen — a key step toward establishing a sustainable human presence on the moon and producing rocket fuel to support future missions to Mars.  The name Roo-ver was chosen from more than 8,000 entries submitted to Australia's rover-naming competition. The shortlist of names — which included "Coolamon," "Kakirra," "Mateship" and "Roo-ver" — were subject to a public vote between Nov. 20 and Dec. 1, during which nearly 20,000 Australians voted on their favorite name. 

Continue Reading.

[philon-awards]

Philon Awards 2023 Shortlist / Voting Form

(in alphabetical order of the title; shortlist based on the results of the nominations phase)

Short fic (word count under 10K):

An old earth custom by pkrosche Can We Always Be This Close? by ForFucksSakeJim Fatal Vision by ikoliholic I [43M] wish to tell my friend [40M] that it’d be logical for us to get married by Smile_Edgeworth One In A Myriad of Little Dwelling Places by CampySpaceSlime Spock 🖖 by vaksur & WerewolvesAreReal The Tropiest of Tropes by Spirkme

Long fic (word count 10K-50K):

already, and always by flipthebits Catspaw of Another Kind by Borealisblue Distance of Time by yassifiedjimkirk Home in a Mug by Lizzy0305 Milk and Honey by spaceisgay (ChancellorGriffin) Rain Dogs by gunstreet Red is by spirkme Reservations — A Sequel to Desire/Reserve by Herself_nyc Social Graces by gunstreet The Prince and The Vulcan by TonightNoPoetryWillServe Untouched by SButler Variations on a bitter theme by OrpheaAria

Novella/novel (word count over 50K):

First, Best Destiny, Part Two by Ophelia_j The Promised Land by gunstreet This Must Be the Place by gunstreet Time After Time by spaceisgay (ChancellorGriffin) to assess the equation of you by uhuraprime

Podfic:

Communicators Can’t Scan (or, how Jim Kirk learned to stop worrying and love the Vulcanese) by 1lostone For the Greater Good by cookiemom6067 Injured by 1lostone Interior Harmony by 1lostone Mistletoe Kisses by 1lostone

Traditional art:

AOS Spock Portrait by Nic Blooming Kiss by Purple_Enma Marooned? Honeymoon? Honeymarooned? by subterraneanna Spock by the Pool by SButler Spock's Lyre by lorvee The Golden Couple by Purple_Enma

Digital art:

A little sweet, a little spicy: k/s gingerbread cookies by PageofWands Heaven… when I held you again. How could we ever just be friends? by BataSann The Honeymoon Postcard by lorvee The Meddling Captain (Comic) by lorvee TOS Kirk/Spock in SNW Dress Uniforms by BataSann

Poetry:

Asleep by alainanmccoy Come Home With Me by ForFucksSakeJim Diamonds for You by Orabla I’m the X (Reprise) by eigenvectrix The Mountains I Climb by USS_Queertastic

Zines:

The AOS Renaissance Zine  Legends #10 by Dovya Blacque (Ed.)

Rules

Voting is open from 10 September to 1 November, 2023 (11:59 p.m. EDT). You do not need to be a registered KiScon member in order to vote; voting is open to every K/S fan.

In each category there will be a Gold (first place) and a Silver (second place) winner.

The winners will be announced during KiScon 2023 (3-5 Nov). Each winner will receive a certificate and a small prize; we will contact the winners after the convention weekend.

You need to be logged into your Google account in order to submit the voting form; this ensures that people do not vote multiple times for the same work. If we suspect sockpuppet activity, we will get in touch for clarification. We keep the voting process completely confidential! Only the KiScon concom will see the submitted forms.

In each category you can pick one work.

You can submit the form only once, but you can edit your responses if you need to add or change something (just follow the link in the email you receive after submitting the form). You cannot edit your responses after voting has closed, so make sure you have picked your favourite in all categories that are important to you.

Yes, you *can* vote for your own work(s). We won't judge you. ;-)

And here's the link to the voting sheet!

[poeproductions]

FURSUIT APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN! 🎉We're open for fullsuits, partials, heads, and faun legs! 💖These slots are for Quarter 1 (Jan-March) of 2024. ✨

The form is open until Nov 22nd, 9pm PST. https://www.cfstudiosonline.com/custom-application

Please read the form carefully, slots are very limited! Applicants will be notified of their acceptance status by November 25th.

We are open to making pretty much everything! Right now we'd love to make: -Aquatic species -Horses, unicorns, donkeys, deer, goats -Bugs -Dragons

We highly recommend getting a quote for your character BEFORE submitting an application! https://cfstudiosonline.com/quote-form Our quotes are ALWAYS open, so if you are NOT APPLYING FOR A COMMISSION, please do NOT use the commission application form!

Unfamiliar with our price range? We have a helpful price guide right here: https://cfstudiosonline.com/fursuit-price

Questions? We have an FAQ! https://cfstudiosonline.com/faq

And of course, always familiarize yourself with our Terms of Service. https://www.cfstudiosonline.com/terms-of-service

We can't wait to see what incredible characters you have! 💖 Shares are always appreciated. Thank you for your support!

[beardedmrbean]

A college professor of “peace” accused of teaching support for Hamas has been suspended from his tenured post at an ultra-liberal school after allegations he once ran a sex-for-grades scheme came to light.

Iranian citizen Mohammad Jafer Mahallati — who has called for the elimination of Israel and backed the murderous fatwa against Salman Rushdie — was discreetly put on indefinite administrative leave by Oberlin College, Ohio, and scrubbed from its website last month after the administration learned he had previously been accused of sexual harassment.

The college is currently being investigated by the federal Department of Education after a complaint that it abused the civil rights of Jewish students by allegedly letting Mahallati speak in favor of Hamas and give credit for writing anti-Israel screeds.

The move by Oberlin to suspend Mahallati, 71, comes amid mounting fury at colleges’ failure to grapple with antisemitism in the wake of the October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis by terrorist group Hamas.

The presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania faced demands to resign from a billionaire donor Wednesday and criticism from the White House after telling Congress it “depends on the context” as to whether students could demand the genocide of Jews.

Mahallati’s suspension came after court papers surfaced from the 1990s which revealed that when he was an adjunct professor at Columbia University, he had been accused of giving a graduate student 11 years his junior good grades in return for sex.

The papers, given to The Post by Middle East Forum, showed that Columbia and Mahallati had both been sued by the woman, whom The Post is not naming, accusing him of working to damage her reputation and academic future after she reported his alleged sexual abuse to school authorities.

Mahallati had denied the claims in 1997 but did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. Columbia denied the allegations at the time.

The woman, then 32 and a Palestinian Christian, met Mahallati, a 43-year-old married father of a young son, when she began to minor in Middle East Studies in September1995, she alleged in court papers.

She alleged that under the pretense of interviewing her as a potential research assistant, Mahallati invited the student to his home, “made repeated sexual advances” and promised good grades in exchange for sexual encounters, which allegedly took place at his office as well as his Manhattan apartment for 15 months.

Mahallati allegedly told the woman that he would withhold her grade if she did not keep silent. She alleged that when she went to Columbia’s administration in April 1997 he accused her of handing the same paper in twice, which would have been fraudulent.

When she sued, court records show that he tried to claim diplomatic immunity with a Dec. 1, 1997, letter from Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations appointing him “‘Special Advisor in Political Affairs’ with full diplomatic and political privileges.”

He had been Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations between 1987 and 1989 and Columbia submitted a letter from the State Department to prove he was not immune from being sued for what he was accused of doing after 1989. The case was settled in 1998.

Andrea Simakis, a spokeswoman for Oberlin, told The Post he was placed on leave on Nov. 28 and declined to comment further. It is unclear exactly when the college learned of the 1990s claims against Mahallati.

“We take all allegations of sexual harassment and abuse extremely seriously,” said Simakis. “We would not hire a faculty member who we knew to have a history of sexual harassment of a student, colleague or staff member.”

At Oberlin, Mahallati became the subject of a federal probe this fall when the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights revealed that it was investigating a complaint that he taught students “support for Hamas and terrorism” as part of a larger probe into anti-Semitism on Oberlin’s campus.

The probe, which was opened on September 29, was prompted by a complaint filed in 2019 by Oberlin College graduate Melissa Landa. Landa, who graduated from Oberlin in 1986, is president of the Oberlin Chapter of Alums for Campus Fairness, a non-profit that works to end antisemitism.

She sent the department a dossier of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incidents between 2014 and 2017, including that Mahallati told his classes in 2016 that “Israel is a colonialist state” and “an apartheid state.”

Oberlin said in November that it “abhors antisemitism” and said of Mahallati: “Professor Mahallati has stated that he believes in the right of all people to exist in peace and endorses a two-state solution that would allow the people of Israel and Palestine to peacefully coexist.”

Separately, a group of Iranian anti-regime activists, some of whom have had family members targeted by the Islamic Republic, had also complained about Mahallait, accusing him of being part of a cover-up of a mass murder of 5,000 political prisoners in 1988 when he was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

It said in a statement: “This action comes as a result of tireless advocacy and stark revelations about Mahallati’s involvement in covering up human rights abuses and his antisemitic rhetoric.”

In addition to Columbia and Oberlin, Mahallati has also taught at Georgetown and Princeton.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[blackcestfest]

Prompting for the second round of Blackcest Fest is now OPEN

This is an anonymous, prompting-based fest for fic and art which depict a sexual or romantic relationship between two or more members of the Black family as the main ship or significant to the work. See Fest Rules and Eligibility Details for more information. Participation 18+ only. 

You may leave as many prompts as you would like, and you can prompt without claiming. We can’t wait to see what y’all prompt and create <3 

Submit your prompts on this Airtable Form and view them on the Airtable Gallery

Additional details below the cut

Schedule

Prompting: Nov 20 - Dec 3

Claiming Opens: Dec 4

Work Due: March 1

Posting Begins: March 11

Creator Reveals: TBA

Eligible: 

Poly ships (eg Sirius/Draco/Harry)

Heavily implied Blackcest

POV character learning about a Blackcest relationship

AUs where characters are  related

Works centered on the trauma of surviving incest

Not eligible: 

Yes, we know all purebloods are related but incest ships involving people outside of the immediate Black family are not eligible

AUs where the characters are no longer related

Fics/art centering around Black OCs (eg “Sirius and Regulus’s sister”)

Delphini Riddle

Work created by those under 18

Due to the unique nature of visual art, we ask that any explicit art submitted for this fest only depict characters over the age of 18.

[mbd-gift-exchange]

2024 Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange

To celebrate Murderbot, we are hosting a fandom gift exchange! This is our third annual Murderbot New Year Gift Exchange! (Prior years' collections are here)

All sorts of fanworks are welcome: fanfic, fanart, playlists, etc. The event will be open to anyone who wants to participate, so long as they have a discord account that they will communicate with the event organizers through.

Timeline:

Sign ups: Nov 10 - Dec 10, 2023 Assignments: Dec 15, 2023 Gifts Due: Jan 20, 2024 Pinch Hitter Period: Jan 20, 2024 - January 31, 2024 AO3 Collection Closes: Midnight January 31, 2024 UTC Reveals: Midnight February 1, 2024 UTC

Main rules:

Keep the gift a secret from your giftee until midnight Feb 1, 2024 UTC. It's a surprise!

Please abide by "Do Not Wants" requested by your giftee. (Eg: if your giftee asks for no apples, please do not make a gift for them that involves apples.)

The event organizers will check in with you via discord direct messages as the deadline approaches. If you fail to respond to check-ins three times in a row, you will be presumed as not being able to complete your gift, and your gift will be reassigned to a pinch hitter.

Submitting your gift through the AO3 Collection is optional. But if you want your gift to be included in the collection, you will need to post it there by Midnight January 31, 2024 UTC, before the collection closes to submissions. (Make sure to check this time in your local timezone. It might be earlier than you think, especially if you're in the USA!)

Have fun!

For additional info on the timeline, rules, gift minimums/maximums, pinch hits, etc, see: https://tinyurl.com/MB2024NYGE

If you have questions, feel free to inquire at our ask box.

Signups are open now through this form!

(Perhaps you want to wait to write in your prompts until after you've read System Collapse, which is coming out in less than a week! Just note that event sign ups may close early if we reach a max participation the organizers can handle. )

[writingwithcolor]

Conlanging Issues: A Compendium

NOTE: This question was submitted before the Nov 1, 2023 reopening and may not adhere to all rules and guidelines. The ask has been abridged for clarity. 

Most of my questions are about linguistics. […] One of the major locations in my story is a massive empire with cultural inspirations ranging from North Africa in the far south to Mongolia/Russia in the far north […] The middle region is where the capital is and is the main root of culture, from which Ive been taking inspiration from Southwest Asia […], but most notably southern regions of India. I've tried to stick to the way cities are named in Sanskrit-based languages but added the names of stars to the front (because the prevalent religion of this region worships the stars [...]). So Ive ended up with names like Pavoprayag, Alyanaga, Alkaiduru, Alcorpura, Cygnapete, etc. Is this a consistent naming system or should I alter it in some way? The empire itself is named the Arcana Empire since [...] each act of my story is named after a tarot card [...]. Another region in my story is based more on parts of South China and North Vietnam, so I've tried to stick to names with a Chinese origin for that. I understand the significance of family names in southwest [sic] Asia, so I wanted to double check [...]. They have only two short given names. Based on the birth order of the child, the first half of the name comes from the fathers family and the second half from the mothers family. It is seen as disrespectful not to use both names because using only one is seen as denouncing that side of your family. Thus I have names like Su Yin, Dai Jun, and Yi Wen for some of the characters from this region, and the city itself that they are from is named Bei Fen. On the other hand, Im having further trouble naming characters. […] Ive been trying to give my human characters names from real human cultures to distinguish them from the website-generated names of say, orcs, elves, dwarves, etc, but I think I should change many of the names Ive used to be more original and avoid fracturing real world cultures for the sake of my worldbuilding. […] Im still very weak in the linguistics area (even after four years of French, sigh) and am having trouble finding where to read about naming patterns so I can make new ones up. I read your naming guides but am still having trouble on where to start for specific languages. […] Im trying to look into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian specifically.

You're Going Too Broad

In my opinion, you’re casting too wide a net. You mentioned looking into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian to develop fantasy names. These languages are very different from one another, so unless you’re using them separately for very different parts of your world, it will be hard to draw inspiration from them in a way that makes sense. You’re taking on a huge amount of research in order to worldbuild cultures that span a massive geographical area (basically all of North Africa and Asia?) and have very little in common. Are you sure you want to take on that task?

I could see it being more manageable if most of your story is set in a small region of this world, which you will then research in depth to make sure you’re being as specific as possible.

Taking Persian as an example, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use Old Persian, Middle Persian, or Modern Persian. Each of these comes with a different alphabet and historical influences. They’re also associated with different periods of time and corresponding cultural and social markers. Once you’ve decided exactly when and where you want to start from, you can then expand the borders of your area of focus. For example, if you’ve decided to draw inspiration from Achaemenid Persia, you can then look at the languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid Empire. A quick Google search tells me that while Old Persian was the empire’s official language, they also used Aramaic, Akkadian, Median, Greek, and Elamite (among, I’m sure, many many others and many more regional variations). Further research into each of these will give you ethnic groups and bordering nations that you can draw more inspiration from to expand out your worldbuilding.

Don’t forget to make sure you’re staying within the same time period in order to keep things consistent. It’s a lot of work, and this is only for a small portion of the continent-spanning worldbuilding you’re trying to do.

You can get away with painting the rest of the continent in broad strokes without too much depth if the story doesn’t go there and you don’t have any main characters from those parts of the world. Otherwise, you’ll need to put this same level of detail into your worldbuilding for the area with Turkish-inspired names, and again for the area with Sanskrit-inspired names, and so on.

I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I honestly have a hard time helping you figure out where to start because your ask is so broad I don’t quite know where I would start myself. So, this is my advice: focus down on one region and time period and go from there. Feel free to write back once you’ve picked a narrower focus that we could help you with.

- Niki

So there’s logistical issues in regards to your naming system for southern China-coded regions. One issue is history: mainly on how there is not simply one language in China but multiple due to having a lot of ethnic groups and the size of China. South China in particular has different dialects and languages than the North as seen in this map of Chinese languages and dialects. There’s also how historically Mandarin was not the official language until 1913 in China and historical China saw vast changes in territory dependent on the dynasty. Before then, Mandarin was primarily a northern Chinese language based in Beijing while southern China had its own languages, dialects, and dynamics. Not to mention, historical China saw an evolution of language just like English has Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. For instance, Vietnam was once part of China during the Tang Dynasty and at another point, it was not part of China.

-Mod Sci

If You’re Borrowing Whole Words or Elements, Research More

The other issue is inconsistency with the cultures you’re deriving this conlang from. In regards to “two given names,” the Chinese name I was given was one syllable and then I would have a last name that was also one syllable. There’s also how not every family is perfect. Not every marriage is sanctioned and some children may come from single parents. Some families may not cooperate with marriage and sometimes children may be abandoned with unknown parents. There does not seem to be contingencies for these names under this conlang system.

The main problem with conlangs is that one needs to truly understand the languages one is drawing from. Tolkein managed to create conlangs due to training in linguistics. Mandarin is already a difficult language with multiple tones, and trying to use it for conlangs without knowledge of how Mandarin works or a good foundation in linguistics is just a Sisyphean endeavor.

-Mod Sci

Four years of French wouldn’t have taught you about linguistics as a science or anything about the language families you’ve listed - Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic, nor any Asian naming conventions. I agree with Niki that you need to narrow down your research.

Pur/pura means city in Sanskrit (ex: Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur). Prayag is a place where pilgrimages are done. Naga isn’t a place name in Sanskrit (google says it means snake), nagar is and it means town. X Nagar is a very common name for places (Ex: Rajinder Nagar). Many cities in Karnataka have names ending in uru (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Tumakuru, etc) but the language of Karnataka is Kannada - a Dravidian language and completely different family from Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan). I’m not sure where “pete” came from. “Bad” and “vaal” are common suffixes for places too (Ex: Faisalabad, Allahabad). A disclaimer that I do not speak Sanskrit, I speak Punjabi, which is a descendant of Sanskrit and in the same linguistic family (Indo-Aryan languages).

- SK

Also, This Is Not…Really Conlanging.

Hi OP. Linguistics refers to the science of studying how languages work, not the discipline of learning languages. And nothing shows that gap more than how you have thus far approached constructing fictional languages and toponyms. 

The reason why Sci and SK have a lot to say about your place names is because they don't resonate—you have borrowed whole words into your toponyms (place names) from a variety of languages—without an accurate understanding of what these words mean, how they’re pronounced, where they’re derived from—and expected them to work together. I suggest you read the links below on why conlanging is not as simple as choosing some languages and mashing their IRL words together: 

Why Using Random Languages Wholesale in your Fantasy is a Bad Idea 

Pitfalls of Mashing Countries and Languages in Coding

In your city names, for example, you’re using star names from multiple languages that use different sets of sounds represented by different sets of historical spelling rules. “Cygn-�� and “Arcana” stick out like a sore thumb—the fact that one “c” is /s/ and one is /k/ is an obvious flag that they are Latin-derived English borrowings. This is because spelling rules were created in Middle English to make sense of the mix of “c” pronunciations across words of Indo-European origin due to a historical split called the Centum-Satem division. This is a phenomenon that is very specific to our world history, and to the history of English at that. Ironically, in your attempt to avoid stock fantasy names (which also often fall into the Latin-derived English pit), you are taking the exact same approach to naming.

Like Niki said, your selections are far too broad to code under a single umbrella. Do you expect that whatever language that city name came from runs the full gamut of sound inventory & spelling variety that spans multiple continents and hundreds of languages? Because that’s not how languages work. (And yes, I mean hundreds. Indigenous languages and linguistic diversity are a thing. See Niki’s note about just the languages in Persia. And nation-states bulldozing over those languages and pretending it’s just one language is a thing. See Sci’s note about China.) I haven't even talked about the variation in morphology (how words are formed) or syntax (sentence structure).

Please just read or re-read my guide on “naming conlangs” in this post and start from there.

~ Rina

PSA ON CONLANGING AND FANTASY NAMES:

For fantasy language asks submitted after Nov 1, 2023, the asker must indicate that they have read Mod Rina’s conlanging posts linked in FAQ 2 (Guides and Posts by Topic) of the Masterpost under the question “How do I make a fictional language for my story?” While this is an older ask, we are posting it as an example to our followers.

Per our new rules, any questions that can be directly answered in or extrapolated from the FAQs, or questions that indicate that the relevant resources haven’t been read, will be deleted with a note in the Deletion Log explaining why.

As always, if this post was helpful or educational to you, please consider tipping the relevant mods: SK, Niki, Sci, and Rina.

Edited for terminology errors

[end-otw-racism]

OTW Board Meeting Nov 12(ish)!

The next public OTW Board meeting will be held on November 12 at 1:00-2:00 AM UTC. For some of us that's actually November 11, so be sure to check when that is for you.

The currently planned agenda, from the Board Calendar:

Decisions made since the last public board meeting

Welcome new Board members

Announce officer roles

Diversity update

Any other business

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last an hour. If you've attended OTW Board meetings in the past, this one will be a little different. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions. 

Questions should be asked in the #open-chat channel where they will be collected by moderators and added to the ⁠#questions-voting channel. There, they will be upvoted by meeting attendees and then asked in order of descending emoji count. The Board requests that questions be reasonable and polite, under 50 words, and that each person only submits one. Questions that require Board members to read and respond to any linked posts will not be accepted.

Unanswered questions will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel, starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting. This means if your question isn't covered in the meeting, there's still a chance it'll be answered later.

Also new is a set of Community Guidelines, which can be found in the #rules channel. We encourage you read them to familiarize yourself with the details. As this process is new for the Board, too, these rules may continue to be refined in the lead-up to the meeting and so the information shared in this post may not be in its final form.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at the meeting!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team