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Obsolete: [OLD] The Writers' Workshop Rulebook & Information Hub

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Mod Note, March 4, 2024: Please refer to our new rules thread instead of this one!


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For all first timers, the Writers' Workshop is home to the forum's creative writing. If you've written prose fiction, poetry, essays, non-fiction short stories, or any kind of creative writing you want to share with everyone, then this is the place for you! This thread in is a guide to help you get started with useful links, an FAQ, and our rules.

If you are hosting or participating in roleplay, the roleplaying rules can be found in this thread.

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Please remember that all forum-wide rules apply in the Workshop as well, so ensure you read and follow them alongside these ones.

1) Mislabelled Threads
All threads containing sexual, violent, or other potentially inappropriate content must be labelled with the appropriate prefix of EVERYONE, TEEN, or MATURE and must state in the first post what that inappropriate content is.
- Please refer to the Rating Guide for more details, located here.

2) Superfluous Thread
All threads should be created and maintained appropriately.
  • The first post of each thread must contain part of the work, in the form of either content, a teaser, or an index/table of contents.
  • Users who post the index first should post the first chapter/entry within a reasonable time frame.
  • Do not create new threads for separate chapters of one story. Multiple pieces of short poetry, related short stories, and nonfiction works that are part of a series should also be contained in one thread.
- You can edit old threads and update with new content as much as you want. We ask that you don't create new threads for rewrites/reboots if your fic is still on the first page of the main section.

- Game travelogs, Nuzlocke fics, Let's Plays, and other niche types of fanwork are allowed as long as the contents are primarily in a written format (ie., no video-based Let's Plays or one-sentence screenshot captions).

- You can post foreign words, short phrases, and other kinds of codeswitching in moderation and without an accompanying English translation. Full poems and song lyrics in other languages are okay to post as well, though we ask that an English translation be provided.

3) Plagiarism
Do not post content written by someone else or use characters belonging to other users unless given explicit permission by them.
  • Brief, non-detailed references to other fan-works and/or fan-characters are allowed.
  • Collaboration is allowed. If you post a piece you co-wrote with someone, please credit your co-author accordingly.
4) Advertising
Users may link to work posted on other sites, but should include a preview (of prologue/chapter length) in the thread. Full stories posted here tend to get more attention, however!
  • Advertising your work in other users' threads and/or through private messages is not allowed. Bringing up your own work as part of a thoughtful discussion is not considered advertising.
  • The Fic Advertisement Thread and your signature are the only appropriate locations to advertise your work.
  • Paid commission details are not allowed here, nor are off-site links to paid commission details.
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  1. The Simple Questions, Simple Answers thread is for all your quick questions related to writing or Pokémon fanfiction!
  2. The Plot Bunny Zoo is available if you need inspiration, or feedback for a plot you thought of yourself.
  3. The Samples Thread can be used to post a short excerpt of writing you'd like immediate feedback on.
  4. The Need a Name Thread will help you name your characters, fictional places, stories, or anything needing a name!
  5. The Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread is where you can talk about anything and everything with our writers!
  6. Review League is a Writers Workshop exclusive activity where you can earn points and prizes for each review you post!
  7. The Review Game is where you can review work written by the poster before you, and in return, you'll get a review yourself!
  8. The Weekly Prompt Thread is updated every Monday with a prompt you can incorporate into your own writing!
  9. The Workshop Writing Academy has many lessons for writers who are looking for tips on different aspects of writing, including worldbuilding, description, or characters.
  10. Bulbagarden's public Discord chat has a #writing channel for discussing the writing craft, sharing short excerpts of your writing to get feedback, offering and asking for fic recs, hosting word wars—all in real time!
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1) Can I still participate in the section even if I don't write?
Sure! You're welcome to comment on stories and join in discussions in the Written Word.

2) What's the Written Word, exactly?
The Written Word is where you can discuss all aspects of writing, ask for help with your writing, or to talk to other users about anything else in the General Chat Thread.

There has been some confusion in the past about keeping anything worldbuilding-related to blogs only, but we welcome you to share your world by making a thread for it in the Written Word labelled with the WORLDBUILDING prefix. One thread per setting is allowed.

3) What's the Workshop Archive?
The Workshop Archive is where completed and abandoned works are stored, so have a read of some great work from the past! You can use the COMPLETE prefix as a filter if you're specifically looking for one-shots, poems, and completed chaptered fics.

4) Do I have to review?
Reviewing is not required, but we do encourage it so that writers can get feedback, improve, or at least know someone is reading. You don't even have to write a lot. Just letting the author know you are reading can make a world of difference! For advice on reviewing, click here and here.

5) I've already finished my story. Can I post it all in one go?
You can update your thread as regularly as you want, but we recommend waiting for a day or two between each chapter/installment. This gives your fellow users more time to read your story and share their thoughts.

6) I'm still confused about a few things. Who can I talk to?
You can talk to the mods! We'll answer any questions.

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No problem! If you have any questions, contact a moderator or post in this thread. We won't bite! Also, if you believe another user has broken the rules, feel free to use the Report button so that the moderators can discuss and take action accordingly.

Forum Moderators: @LightningTopaz, @Beth Pavell, @Cresselia92, @namohysip, @Torchic W. Pip, and @lisianthus
 
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The Workshop is changed. I feel it in the fics. I feel it in the discussions. I smell it in the memes. Much that once was, is archived, for none now live who will post there anymore.

It's a new rules thread. That's the change.

At long last, we've got an updated set of rules to announce, including a revamped Ratings Guide! It's not been an easy one to write. We've aimed to make the guide as concise and clear as we possibly can. Inevitably, although we do have to draw a line somewhere, the nature of fiction is subjective so we can't make hard and fast rules. But a key consideration for us what was that it should be possible for authors to tag in good faith. What we don't want is for authors to be afraid of being hit with infraction points, and end up rating their stories too highly, or worse, not post at all.

So what does this mean for you all? It would be a good idea to have a look at the new guide. If you've got stories already published here, chances are you won't need to change the rating. If the moderators do think you need a rating change, don't worry. Our first course of action will always be to message you and talk about it, not hand out infraction points.

Other than the Ratings Guide, most of the rules remain the same with some cleaned up language. That said, you should definitely give it a once over or risk becoming a depraved criminal. The useful links are also especially... well... useful.

BRAND NEW STORIES FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE
@WanderingKalosan brings us The Missing One, a three chapter short story which has already been completed!
@Greninjaman brings us a retelling of the classic Final Fantasy with his own twists.

OLDER, YET RECENTLY UPDATED STORIES FOR EQUALLY PLEASURABLE READING
@Huikyeong's new installment of Paul's [Shinji's] New Adventures
Week 368d: The Tale of Brian of the Leppas in Live from the Fireside by @LightningTopaz
LightningTopaz also baked us Episodes 21: Cooking Up a Sweet Story and 22: Oh, Do You Know the Poffin Plan? of Pokemon Shine Diamond
Interview 12: Mina on The Paxton & Joseph Show (Games) by @JFrombaugh
I bring tidings of Chapter 14: Troublesome Tidings from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guiding Light by @Ambyssin
Chapter 21: Escape of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Unequivocant by @lucarioknight56
Welcome to Chapter 2 of Welcome to the Insanity by @SinnohEevee
Chapter Two of Different Eyes by @unrepentantAuthor
@Sike Saner delivers Chapter 10: Belief of The Worldslayers
Chapter 9: Why of Project Toaster: Decolonized by @jasonwolf
The train rolls on with Feeling Blue in United We Stand by @AceTrainer14

On to Pavell for...

THE WORD OF THE WEEK
This week’s word has a longer history than we can cover here:

tournament (n.): 1. (in a sport or game) a series of contests between a number of competitors, competing for an overall prize.

2. (in the Middle Ages) a sporting event in which two knights (or two groups of knights) jousted on horseback with blunted weapons, each trying to knock the other off, the winner receiving a prize. [Oxford English Dictionary]

Tournament is at least 800 years old, entering English from the Old French tornoier. But the idea of the tournament as a generic sporting competition dates from the mid-18th century. Perhaps it’s appropriate that in Pokémon, tournaments are a kind of martial art.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL: Keep an eye out later this week for some sweet business the mods cooked up :discordeyesemoji:

And with that, Aether drifts deeper into the abyssal void...
 
Another week, another newsletter!
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Today is a special day for me. Every generation of my family has served in the military in some capacity, from the fierce Highlanders of medieval Scotland up to my cousin, who served two tours as a United States Marine in Iraq. I usually take time out on this day to remember friends and family who have lost their lives in the defense of their homeland, regardless of country. The world we enjoy today endures because of your past, current and future sacrifices.

Announcements
First off, appologies for the later-than-typical newsletter, that's entirely on me. Low energy and a lack of time awareness really snuck up on me this weekend!

Right, now, announcements! If you haven't seen it yet, we're running a community event focused on your characters, the Trainers of Fanfiction! We're looking to push the first entries out sometime next week, possibly as soon as June 4th. There's no hard deadline for getting into the first week of character interviews, but time is creeping!

Onto the Review League, @Athena, our main Crossover Battles writer, has lowered the point cost from 90 to 50 for the summer. If you've ever wanted to see your characters square off against other trainers in the Workshop, that's a good way of seeing it happen! If you're interested in the concept of Crossover Battles itself but aren't ready to request a chapter yet, you can also nominate your character for the pool of eligible characters which is more like a puddle at this point!

Teaser?!
Not much progress has been made on it so it'll be awhile before we see it, but I've started to redesign the Workshop Directory. The list will be starting anew and divided not just into the usual genres (with fancy header graphics!), but also rating categories! I'm hoping that it'll be a bit easier to navigate (and maintain) than the current one is. So when exactly will we see it? Hmm... I'm not sure.

New Releases
Another slow week of new releases... Not that that's a bad thing, of course.
@canisaries returns to the TPP universe with another addition to her collection of short stories, Vivarium!

New Chapters
It's been quite a busy week! Let's look at what we have.

Completed stories!
None this week, though since Vivarium is a oneshot, honorable mention?

Word of the Week
@Beth Pavell brings us yet another word of the week, and it's a strange one you might not hear... ever!

Dialect words have a habit of dying out in the face of a global world, but some cling on:

haar (n.): Coastal fog along the coast of North East England and Scotland bordering the North Sea. [Wiktionary]

Robert Macfarlane says that haar is also found in Cornish, which suggests it’s not quite as specific as all that. John Trotter Brockett (1829) writes it may be a Middle Dutch word, but I can’t help but be reminded of the usual suspects in the North East: the Vikings. Either way, haar is alive and well.

That's it for this week!
 
Good day, writers of Bulbagarden! Here's what's happening around the Workshop!

Our new event, Trainers of Fanfiction, will officially get underway today! Come check it out and get to know your favorite characters!

Also, the awards are coming up soon! The nominations period will start on June 22nd, so start thinking about some worthy fics!

New releases

@ZDaemon09 brings us The Lost Ranger!
@Persephone, formerly Athena, brings us The Alola Pokedex, a companion piece to guidance!
@Arbirchy brings us a new tale, Windswept Hair!

New chapters
Chapter 23 of PMD: Unequivocant by @lucarioknight56
Chapter 16 of PMD: Guiding Light by @Ambyssin
Episode 25 of Pokemon Shine Diamond by @LightningTopaz
Week368f of Live from the Fireside by @LightningTopaz
Chapter 3 of Different Eyes by @unrepentantAuthor
Chapter 93 of How To Conquer Kanto in Eight Easy Steps by @AceTrainer14
Interview 13: Caitlin of The Paxton & Joseph Show (Games) by @JFrombaugh
Chapter 3 of guidance by @Persephone
Chapter 4 of Let's Play Pokemon Plus and Minus by @SeanWheeler

Completed stories!
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Word of the Week
We’re digging into the past this week, for an unusual usage of a familiar word:

jet (v.): to go, walk, stroll; figuratively, to die.

The OED records just one use of jet as a synonym for die, an example from 1546 (“I will not jet yet”). The language of death has always been full of euphemism. In Old English you could say gegan (Gone), leoran (Departed), or geferan (Gone on a journey). John Heywood’s jet might have been a one-off example invented by an author being playful with words, but who knows?
 
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A N N O U N C E M E N T S

- First up, here's another reminder that the A W A R D S are starting soon! Nominations will open on June 22 and end on July 8. Updates after July 8 won't be considered in the judging round, so if you're interested, go go go and write! And don't forget to read your fellow authors' work to get a feel for what to nominate and for what you might want to judge, if you're participating!

- The F I N A L deadline for Trainers of Fanfiction submissions is June 17! We're excited to see so many submissions and definitely plan to host future seasons of the event. :3

- A while back, we created the C O M P L E T E prefix for the Workshop Archive to help readers browse over there. Each fic has been checked and marked accordingly now for a whopping total of 53 pages of completed fics! We're kinda wondering now if the Archive should be for completed fics only, however, with all in-progress fics, abandoned or otherwise, moved to the main section and pushed to later pages. Or something else entirely. Got ideas? Let us know here or shoot us a PM! Any change is going to be easy to implement with fics marked the way they are now, so don't worry about how wild the idea is.

N E W R E L E A S E S

@Misfit Angel has released a Land of the Roses spinoff, Night with the Stars!
@Patrick Haines has released The Legend of the Ampharos!
@canisaries has released Seiren, an improved rewrite of the previously finished fic, Agápe!
@ZDaemon09 has released Family Therapy!

N E W C H A P T E R S

Chapter V of The Deprogramming by @Arkadelphiak
Chapter 24 of PMD: Unequivocant by @lucarioknight56
A new installment of guidance by @Persephone
Chapter 17 and an old Halloween special featuring a Giratina troublemaker in PMD: Guiding Light by @Ambyssin
Episodes 26 and 27a of Pokémon Shine Diamond by @LightningTopaz
Week 368g of Live from the Fireside by @LightningTopaz
Interview #14 with Astrid in The Paxton & Joseph Show (anime) by @JFrombaugh

W O R D O F T H E W E E K

As always, @Beth Pavell sets out to educate us all about the beautiful English language. This week, the word is B A L N E A R Y, which sounds an awful lot like Buneary, doesn't it?

So many of our obscure words seem to come from Latin, and many of them don’t add a tremendous amount to the language. An exception can be made for balneary:

balneary (n.): 1. a room for bathing [Wiktionary]
2. of or relating to a bath, bathing, or bathroom [Merriam-Webster]

Balneary is from the Latin balneum, in turn from the Greek balaneîon. Unlike Classical or Islamic civilisation, Britain lacked a culture of bathing and so never developed a specialised lexicon associated with it. Balneary fills a gap in English that sentō does in Japanese. We could do with more hot springs to go with it.
 
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11) Are game travelogs, Nuzlocke fics, Let's Plays, and other niche types of fanwork allowed?
Of course. As long as the majority of its contents are in a creative writing format (ie., no video-based Let's Plays or one-sentence screenshot captions), it's fine! Blogs are a good place for content not mostly in written format or for diary-esque writing.

Could you explain this rule a bit more? I was thinking about writing a summery of what I did in the challenge I'm planning in addition to the story part. Is that allowed?
 
Could you explain this rule a bit more? I was thinking about writing a summery of what I did in the challenge I'm planning in addition to the story part. Is that allowed?

A summary's fine, as long as the majority of the challenge is put in story format (ie., a very, very long summary that only sometimes has dialogue like a real story doesn't count).

I noticed that you didn't include that I posted Chapter 24 of PMD: Unequivocant. It was posted on Sunday, so I just thought you should know!

I always forget something... This week, it was checking to see if anything else updated between the time the list was gathered and when I posted. xD Added!
 
A summary's fine, as long as the majority of the challenge is put in story format (ie., a very, very long summary that only sometimes has dialogue like a real story doesn't count).
Ok, I'll do the summery in the format of a list. Thanks! I don't know when I'll start the challenge. I'm not going to bother with a team update, though I think I should...
 
Good Monday, from about ten minutes into it here in England fair!

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Announcements

It's that time of the year again - Summer Awards season is upon is, and my boy AetherX is determined to get the hype going. We're changing things up a bit this season, so go ahead and see what's on the cards. Remember, these are your Awards too, so if you've got an opinion you want to share, share away.

Submissions for Trainers of Fanfiction have just closed. We'll very likely run this event again in the future - it's good to see how much interest there's been in this event.

New releases
@Donna Baines has released A Mightyena Tale
@kintsugi has released Dungeons and Dragonite
New chapters
A new instalment of The Legend of Ampharos by @Patrick Haines
Chapter 28 of PMD: Unequivocant by @lucarioknight56
Chapter 18 of PMD: Guiding Light by @Ambyssin
Episodes 27b and 28 of Pokemon Shine Diamond by @LightningTopaz
Week 369a of Live from the Fireside by @LightningTopaz
Interlude 4 of Land of the Roses by @Misfit Angel
Chapter 4 of Dreams That You Dreamed by @AceTrainer14
A new entry of The Alola Pokedex by @Persephone

Word of the Week
In a place like this, how could we forget one of our most useful concepts?

thesaurus (n.): 1. a book that lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts.
2. an erudite or loquacious dinosaur of the theropod suborder.

Our word comes from the Greek thesaurōs, meaning, rather pleasingly, storehouse, or treasury. To a logophile, this is especially apt, but to a writer, being able to browse through synonyms is invaluable. Roget’s Thesaurus (1852) popularised the word’s current meaning – the full title of the first edition read: “Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to the Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition”.

Believe it or not, it was pure co-incidence that I would posting this word, this week
 
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Newsletter time, yo!

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

Big news! Nominations for the Summer 2018 awards have opened! Get reading, get writing, and nominate away. It's time to be the best you can be!

Also, Trainers of Fanfiction is in its final stretch for June. Check 'em out if you haven't already!

BRAND NEW STUFF

ALSO NEW BUT NOT QUITE AS BRAND NEW STUFF

Word of the Week
‘Tis the season to be sunny, or at least for some of us:

aetherval aestival (adj.): belonging to or appearing in summer. [Oxford English Dictionary]

Aestival is just the sort of adjective you don’t realise is all that useful until you hear of it. It appears to have entered the language through the Middle English vocabulary explosion, from the Latin aestivalis. Related words include vernal, hibernal, and the more familiar autumnal.
 
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Good morning (or evening), writers of Bulbagarden! Here's what's happening around the Workshop!

Announcements
Nominations for the awards close on the 7th - so hurry and get your nominations in if you haven't already!

New Releases
@Greninjaman brings us Pokémon Anime Rewrite!
@Extroth has released Pokémon: This Wide World
@Derpghost has released The Creations

New Chapters
Interlude I of Different Eyes, by @unrepentantAuthor
A new 'dex entry of The Alola Pokédex, by @Persephone
Episode 1B of Digimon Odyssey, by @Kung Fu Ferret
Chapter Ten of Project Toaster: Decolonised, by @jasonwolf
Production Roundtable #2 of guidance, by Persephone
Chapter Thirty of Land of the Roses, by @Misfit Angel
Interview #16 of The Paxton and Joseph Show (Games Universe), by @JFrombaugh
Chapter 20, plus a bonus chapter of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guiding Light, by @Ambyssin
Episodes 31 and 32 of Pokémon Shine Diamond, by LightningTopaz
Two chapters of The Legend of Ampharos, by @Patrick Haines
Week 369c of Live from the Fireside, by LightningTopaz
Chapter 2 of Seiren, by @canisaries
A new chapter of United We Stand, by @AceTrainer14

Word of the Week
Hola weġ - the sunken lane. The holloway is half a tunnel, so often made mysterious and fey when trees on either side lock their branches together, and the way becomes a tunnel half-earth and half-tree.

holloway (n.): A road or track that is significantly lower than the land on either side, not formed by recent engineering, but possibly of much greater age. [Wiktionary]

The holloway survives in Modern English in the odd places – in the names of streets that no longer have any trace of the way, in surnames whose origin is forgotten. And so in days of metalled roads and tarmac, the holloways are forgotten, hiding in plain sight.

That's all for now--happy writing!
 
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Another week, another newsletter!
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Announcements
Are you living under a rock? If so, you might be unaware that we've officially begun the Writers Workshop Summer 2018 Awards! Judging pools are currently in the process of being created, so if you're a judge and you haven't been assigned anything yet, fear not! For everyone else, user voting is now open! It's a tough race between Best Newcomer, Best Reviewer and Best Contributor, so make your voices heard by voting in them! Votes can be either posted publicly, or submitted to the host (@AetherX this year!) Best of luck to everyone who is competing!

Don't forget, we introduced the Honorable Mentions in Winter 2017's award season and they've returned. Want to recognize one of your fellow authors for a stunning display in their writing, or how they've livened up the community atmosphere with their relentless shitposting? You can also give a nod to character-related mentions as well, such as best on-screen chemistry, if you'd like.

New Releases
Unfortunately, nothing new has graced us with its presence this week.

New Chapters
It's been quite a busy week! Let's look at what we have.

Completed stories!
Nothing this week, it seems!

Word of the Week
As is tradition, @Beth Pavell brings us yet another word of the week: crapulence. This one definitely describes me today, I've gone through an excessive amount of tea in an attempt to stay awake after a restless night and I'm starting to regret that decision.

“I was free to wallow in my own crapulence!”

crapulence (n.): 1. sickness or indisposition caused by excessive eating or drinking.
2. intemperance; debauchery; excessive indulgence. [Wiktionary]

No, The Simpsons didn’t invent this one. Crapulence is related to crapulent (adj. relating to the drinking of alcohol or drunkenness, Oxford English Dictionary). Thanks to Mr Burns, the Urban Dictionary gives the definition as “Mean-spirited, mischievous, and/or immoral activity (Or the mindset that leads to it)”. But crapulence comes to us from the 17th century lexicon, from the Latin crapula – inebriation.

That's it for this week!
I'd just like to thank everyone for their continued interaction with the community. Activity is through the roof and we're still going strong! Let's keep it up!
 
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THEY TRYIN' TO CATCH ME WRITIN' FANFIC

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

Awards judging is underway! Everyone's busy, busy, busy reading and discussing fics. User voting is open, too! There are a variety of ways in which a user can contribute to the Writers Workshop, so, if you think a fellow writer stands out for one reason or another, be sure to let them know you appreciate the hard work they put into making this community what it is. <3 Non-conventional awards can be given to specific fics, characters, fic scenes, etc as well!

N E W C H A P T E R S

Chapter 5 of Let's Play Pokémon Plus and Minus by @SeanWheeler as it continues to depict what the authors hopes to see in Generation 8
Chapter 32 of Land of the Roses by @Misfit Angel, where the protagonist, Andrea Dennison, struggles with the recent curveballs life's been throwing at her
Chapter 22 of PMD: Guiding Light by @Ambyssin, where an infected Bewear attacks and and puts numerous characters' lives at risk
Week 369e of Live from the Fireside by @LightningTopaz as it continues to retell an old fairy tale known as The Sun-Moon Boy
Episode 35 of Pokemon Shine Diamond by @LightningTopaz, featuring Paul challenging the renowned Sinnoh champion, Cynthia
A new entry of The Alola Pokedex by @Persephone offers a unique look into the Rattata & Raticate species
Letter 13 of Flying in the Dark by @diamondpearl876, in which Haley confides to Markus about a bad dream

C O M P L E T E D S T O R I E S


Super excited this week to be able to congratulate @lucarioknight56 on completing his fic, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Unequivocant, the third in a series filled with ambitious tales to match the spirit of such an ambitious writer. Thanks for sharing with us, and good luck on your next projects!

W O R D O F T H E W E E K


@Beth Pavell brings us a word of Japanese origin this week. And perfect timing, too, since this is the first week there's been all sun and no rain for me! :p

komorebi [木漏れ日] (n.): sunlight filtering through trees. [Wiktionary]

Some words are difficult to translate entirely. The characters that make up this word shed some light: 木 “tree”, 漏れ “leaking/coming through”, and 日 “sun”. Komorebi could mean “sun-dappled shade”, or “sunbeams through leaves”, or perhaps even “chiaroscuro”, but none of these fully capture the connotations of the word. Komorebi is the fragile, intransigent beauty of the sun filtering through leaves, the patterns of the escaping sunbeams and shade.
 
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Totodile knows what tenacity means.

Announcements
It's still Awards season, so things are a little slow here in the Workshop - but don't forget, there's still user voting to participate in!

New Chapters
Just squeaking in under the bar, The Legend of Ampharos by @Patrick Haines
Production Roundtable #2 of guidance, by @Persephone
Chapter VI of The Deprogramming by @Arkadelphiak. Ayyy.
Butterfree, and Ledian, from The Alola Pokédex, by Persephone
Interlude Sixteen of How to Conquer Kanto in Eight Easy Steps, by @AceTrainer14
Chapter 23 of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guiding Light, by @Ambyssin
Episodes 36 and 37 of Pokémon Shine Diamond, by @LightningTopaz
Chapter 33 of Land of the Roses, by @Misfit Angel
Week 369f of Live from the Fireside, by Lightning Topaz
Interview Sixteen of The Paxton and Joseph Show (Anime Universe), by @JFrombaugh
Chapter Four of Seiren, by @canisaries

Word of the Week

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“Gimme five bees for a quarter, you’d say!”

bees (n.): Money, cash, coins, etc.

Whenever there’s an utterly bizarre slang term floating around the English language, there’s a good chance the Cockney dialect is to blame. Bees, and likewise sugar, owe their slang senses to rhyming slang: bees/sugar and honey = money. The Oxford English Dictionary records these usages as late 19th-century, 1892 for bees, a little earlier for sugar.
 
May I ask for some clarification around the use of slurs? I have recently received some communication around my apparent usage of one in a recent chapter, and I was just wondering which words count under that rule, and what the rationale is behind this rule?
 
Basically, a slur is a word that, in common use, carries with it a sense of extreme negativity, or is used to attack a (an often marginalized) group of people. These words typically have a deep and lengthy history associated with them and are still considered slurs in most contexts, even if the affected group is starting to reclaim and remove the social power of the word.

Some words are considered slurs in most parts of the world, while they're not in other parts of the world due to differences in culture and social acceptability; for simplicity's sake we're looking to ignore those social acceptances because they're often narrow and only apply to one country or region (such as Australia's love of the c-word), whereas the rest of the world finds it grossly offensive. It can be annoying, I understand. But the idea is to make things simple on both us as moderators and on the authors themselves, who can refer to the guide to accurately rate their work.

You can appeal based on context, but in a lot of cases it'll still be considered a slur and we'll ask you to rate the chapter it appears in (or the story as a whole, if it's frequently used throughout it) as MATURE.

As far as the rationale behind the rule, it's aimed towards building a community where people can escape those words more easily. With authors being asked to explain why their content is rated a specific way via content tags ([use of slurs]) at the start of a chapter or in the table of contents with a story, it's much easier for readers to find what they would want to avoid.
 
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@Misfit Angel (or any mod interested) My issue here though is that this rule goes against the purpose of this revised guide to put more judgement back in the author's hands and work with context more. I find it very strange to grasp that, as a gay man writing a story about gay men, I would have to automatically label a chapter 'Mature' if I was to have one of those characters use the F-word, a word that many in my community have reclaimed or seek to reclaim, simply because this one particular rule is given a 'one size fits all' brush stroke. I think these words are as open to interpretation and context as pretty much anything else in the guide - and, personally, I feel are more open to contextual interpretation than some things that are given major leeway under 'Everyone'.

Personal thoughts aside, what are the 'slurs' we have to label under Mature? I tried to find some sort of handy, concise list to bring it up, but basically anything I found included basically any word under the sun. This Wikipedia page on homophobic slurs includes words such as twink and dyke that are commonly used by members of the LGBT community in an affectionate and positive way. They would be slurs, in a sense, if used in a negative and derogatory manner, but 90% of their usage these days would be by the people who are supposed to be offended by them.
 
@Misfit Angel (or any mod interested) My issue here though is that this rule goes against the purpose of this revised guide to put more judgement back in the author's hands and work with context more. I find it very strange to grasp that, as a gay man writing a story about gay men, I would have to automatically label a chapter 'Mature' if I was to have one of those characters use the F-word, a word that many in my community have reclaimed or seek to reclaim, simply because this one particular rule is given a 'one size fits all' brush stroke. I think these words are as open to interpretation and context as pretty much anything else in the guide - and, personally, I feel are more open to contextual interpretation than some things that are given major leeway under 'Everyone'.

Personal thoughts aside, what are the 'slurs' we have to label under Mature? I tried to find some sort of handy, concise list to bring it up, but basically anything I found included basically any word under the sun. This Wikipedia page on homophobic slurs includes words such as twink and dyke that are commonly used by members of the LGBT community in an affectionate and positive way. They would be slurs, in a sense, if used in a negative and derogatory manner, but 90% of their usage these days would be by the people who are supposed to be offended by them.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. What do you do if you're using a slur in a setting where it's normalized (ie., the N-word in a U.S. civil war setting)? What do you do if you're using a slur among friends where it's not meant as a true insult (ie., the C-word used affectionately)? Right now, I'm of the mindset that using slurs colloquially does not take away the offensiveness or the stigma surrounding them. It is still a slur. And it is not the WW's place as a small corner of the internet to start determining which groups of people would be okay, on the whole, if we started allowing slurs aimed at them to be treated as if they're on the same level of other curse words.

At best, I can see allowing colloquialism of slurs used in TEEN, but never EVERYONE, and even that is a slippery slope for me as I type this. I'd say "slurs used in moderation," but all we ever got with the old rating guide was questions about an objective number of swears that were allowed, which wasn't viable to figure out. Anyway, what's currently allowed in EVERYONE was based off of a reflection of our current community, where EVERYONE was just not a common tag for people to use compared to TEEN and MATURE. So, we opened it up a bit more, and honestly, in a real world setting, it's not that unexpected to see innuendo or adult references to alcohol/drugs all over the place, and curse words are allowed in very minute amounts. Spongebob Squarepants and Ren&Stimpy from Nick come to mind immediately. However, I would never expect an explicit slur in any context to show up in anything less than rated R.

That said, if we completely disallowed the criteria currently set there, we'd run into the exact same issues of people saying: "Well, I want to say 'fuck' once, but that means I have to bump up my rating" or "I want to have a character smoke after a long day, but I can't show that with my rating." The mods discussed the suggestiof a 4th rating to try to bridge some gaps, but we found the criteria lists would end up being more restrictive and prone to people worrying about what to include in their fics to avoid rating changes than not. Basically, we couldn't make each rating distinct enough to make it worthwhile.

The problem with a list of slurs is that it'll never be comprehensive, and there's always going to be controversy about what constitutes a slur and what doesn't, colloquialism aside. That's why it's specifically stated in the rating guide that we're not out to get users with warnings and bans. If users want to express their concern about context, then they can! In fact, I encourage them to do so. :) Slurs are open to argument right now in the sense that we could be convinced a word we thought was a slur is not actually, in fact, a slur... and yes, I’m aware that it takes context out of the author’s hands a tad more than other criteria. That’s purposeful as a reflection of the extra sensitivity regarding slurs in most of the world. I'm open to feedback and ideas, but just letting you know this is where I'd stand right now. Perhaps a list of words we've concretely decided to be slurs based on past discussions would suffice?
 
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