#panlexicon

[letteredlettered]

I cannot recommend this writing resource enough.

Roget’s Thesaurus is organized by categories, rather than being alphabetical like a dictionary. If you haven’t used it before, you look up the closest word you can think of in an alphabetical index, which then takes you to a page that has a cluster of words. The words are not synonymous necessarily; they’re just related, and the cluster is close to other clusters that are somewhat related.

I far preferred this to other thesauruses, which don’t take you very far from the word you looked up. Sometimes the only word I can think to look up is quite far from what I’m thinking of, or I actually want a bunch of words that create a similar feeling, but aren’t synonymous. Roget’s gives you that.

So does panlexicon. Instead of only synonyms, it gives you a lot of words that are somewhat related. For instance, if you look up “soft”, you get “tender,” but also “weak” and “low,” which are other aspects of the word soft, but not direct synonyms. But let’s say I really was trying to come up with how to describe someone who is easy to get something from, because they’re softhearted. I can then click on “tender,” so now I’m searching for words that are related to both soft AND tender. Then I get “gentle,” “mild,” and “lenient”. Lenient still isn’t QUITE what I mean, but if I search “gentle”, “mild”, and “lenient,” I get “complacent,” “indulgent,” and “tolerant.” By then, I’ve got what I want.

It’s literally the best and it’s the only thesaurus I use these days.

#thesaurus #panlexicon

[mogai-clouds]

Panlexicon!

Also known as panlexic.

When one is comfortable with any/all gendered language (feminine, neutral, masculine, xenic, etc.), though they may have preferences.

This is different from apalexicon, because apalexic individuals do not have any preferences, while panlexic individuals might. Additionally, panlexic individuals actively identify with all gendered language, while apalexic individuals don’t.

Coined by me!

Related terms: fealexicon, mealexicon, nealexicon, apalexicon

#mogai #coining #mogai coining #panlexicon #panlexical #panlexic

[nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour]

writing Good Omens fic like “panlexicon synonym for ‘tender’”

#good omens

[queerofcups]

No but high key, I'm making a separate post so you know I'm serious: if you're a writer, of anything, panlexicon will save your life. You can type in a word and it'll give you a word cloud of synonyms so you can narrow down exactly what word you're looking for. It's great.

[thetwoguineabook]

6 and 7 for Blackbird! Or maybe if you're willing, also 10 :" thank you!

6: hardest/easiest character to write for?

Blackbird is an unusual one because normally I would say Victor is much, much easier for me to write, but I have a heck of a lot in common with this universe’s Yuuri, particularly in terms of having come through a lot of political/ideological nonsense and in believing that the right answer to any given ethical or political question is probably ‘it’s complicated’ followed by a 4,000 word essay. But both of them present some interesting challenges just in terms of trying to reach across both a cultural and an historical divide.

The hardest character to write was undoubtedly Yakov, given that I was trying to sensitively portray a very complex and difficult experience that is way, way outside of my own, and that I had to do it through Victor’s POV when he was aggressively clueless about anything to do with Yakov’s inner life.

7: hardest/easiest verse to write for?

Not 100% sure what you’re intending ‘verse’ to mean in the context of a single story, but I will say oh my god it is so much easier to be writing scenes set in London than in Berlin. I’ve never been to Berlin; anything I described there was about 25% Google Maps and 75% bullshitting. It doesn’t help that modern Berlin and pre-1945 Berlin are really dramatically different to one another, in no small part thanks to the city being rebuilt in two distinct sections. Also historical maps, picture archives etc for London are in English; I can muddle my way through reading German, but not with any great confidence.

10: any writing advice?

I gave some very broad-based advice in a response to an ask here, so here’s some much more specific advice based on two problems I see a lot of in fanfic:

1) Never, ever, ever use an adjective- or any other word, for that matter- that you aren’t already familiar with. There is really no such thing as a direct synonym- even words with very similar meanings have different connotations and will make your descriptions feel different to a reader. A thesaurus is not a tool for expanding your vocabulary, it is a memory aid to prompt you with words you should already recognise (which is why, despite its limitations, I love Panlexicon, as it makes it very easy to visually connect words).

I know it can be tempting to try and embellish your writing with new words, but words are the tools you are using to convey your ideas. If you don’t know exactly how a tool functions, it is liable to ruin everything you’re trying to accomplish. A story with a simple vocabulary which the author is nevertheless in full command of will be much more effective than one in which the language has run out of the author’s control. And if you really do want to expand your vocabulary so all the fancy adjectives can be yours? The only way to do that effectively is to read more. And not just fanfic- too many fanfic writers clearly don’t read much else. Read everything.

2) You almost never have to use epithets- yes, even if you’re writing something in which every single character is referred to by the same pronoun. Repetition of a character’s name is not actually that noticeable in the flow of reading- it doesn’t disappear quite as smoothly as ‘said’, but it is not that jarring to have a character’s name crop up multiple times over subsequent sentences, especially if it’s necessary to distinguish who is doing what to whom.

Characters can also be distinguished by who is the subject and object of a sentence even when you use the same pronoun for each, eg. an apparent fan favourite from ch. 4:

Victor was his, before anything and everything else, and he was determined to have him.

They’re 100% distinguishable because Victor is the object of the sentence and Yuuri the subject- obviously the switch from the nominative ‘he’ to the accusative ‘him’ is helpful, but even in a sentence where the same form of a pronoun is used you can distinguish the subject and the object, eg. this TOP SEKRIT PREVIEW sentence fragment from ch. 5:

It would be so much easier for him to do this without looking him in the eyes

You can tell that’s not the same ‘him’ right away. Even if you are, like me, a native English speaker who was never taught any actual grammar in the context of English (everything I know about grammar I learned from foreign language lessons), you will naturally distinguish the actors in a sentence.

And if all else fails? Just rearrange the sentence. Again, another example from ch. 4 because it’s the freshest in my mind:

He had been summoned to Oxford by Minako and the pair of them sent out to dinner together only about a month after Phichit had arrived in the country

This one caused me a brief headache because it was originally ‘He had been summoned to Oxford by Minako and sent out to dinner with Phichit only about a month after he had arrived in the country’, which I felt could be misconstrued as placing their meeting in 1944, shortly after Yuuri’s arrival in the UK, rather than in 1947, shortly after Phichit’s. Keen as Minako is, even she wasn’t trying to send Yuuri on dates during the second phase of the Blitz! So rather than go for something awkward like ‘a month after the Thai/short/[unnecessary racial descriptor]/hamster-obsessed/who-even-knows man had arrived in the country’, I restructured the sentence so it was both clear and free of epithets.

Describing a named character as ‘the [adjective] man/woman/porpoise/tentacle beast’ draws attention to that characteristic. This can be used effectively when you do in fact want your readers to think about that characteristic, or when describing a character whose name has not yet been revealed. But using bland epithets like ‘the Japanese man’ or ‘the other skater’ constantly is a bit like playing the boy who cried wolf with your readers- when you do ultimately want to call attention to a characteristic relevant to a given moment, they’ll be so worn out that they won’t notice.

#askbox #fic: blackbird #writing #Anonymous

[lm3m]

#IFTTT #Pinboard #reference #dictionary #words

[mogai-clouds]

Apalexicon!

Also known as casslexicon, apalexic, or casslexic.

When one is indifferent towards what gendered language is used for them. They do not have preferences. They let others use any gendered language, such as masculine, femnine, neutral, xenic and others.

This is different from panlexicon, because apalexic individuals do not have any preferences, while panlexic individuals might. Additionally, panlexic individuals actively identify with all gendered language, while apalexic individuals don’t.

Coined by me!

Related terms: fealexicon, nealexicon, mealexicon, panlexicon

#mogai #mogai coining #apalexicon #apalexic #casslexicon #casslexic

[theonlyjackturner-blog]

New Places || Lex

Jack threw on a shirt he cut up and some overly tight jeans. He told Lex he’d found a party, and he certainly had. It was over by Neal Street, some little club he’d never been to. He called and ask Max though, and he said that business was good there. It was sad to say he couldn’t enjoy parties like he used to. A little more than a year ago his only goals were to get high and get fucked, there was nothing else. It didn’t get more simple than that. Now parties were business opportunities. Who would buy what and for how much. Who he should and shouldn’t talk to. What could and couldn’t potentially start some kind of gang war. It was a pain in the ass, but there was a price to pay and he learned to accept that.

He let out a long sigh and sat by the window, pulling out a carton of cigarettes from his back pocket.  He took one out and lit the thin, taking a long drag before pulling out his phone and texting his ‘friends’. He used the word friends loosely, because he couldn’t depend on them outside of clubs and bars. Luckily, he had no assignments for the night. He was just on the lookout for potential business, so perhaps he could actually have fun.

Jack sat at the windowsill a bit longer, exhaling his smoke into the stagnant London air. “My life is fucking perfect,” he muttered to himself, trying to be convincing before throwing the cigarette stub out onto the streets. Tonight was going to be different, he promised himself that. He wasn’t going to whore himself out. He wasn’t going to sell anything. He wasn’t even going to look out for “business deals.” What Max and the rest of them didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Hopefully the club was as big as he assumed and everything would go swimmingly. He’d dance and party with Lex and then go home. Worst that would happen is a hangover in the morning, and that’d be nothing new. He dialed Lex’s number, knowing she could be an actual friend of his. She wasn’t using him, she was just there, and she was nice, and she seemed trustworthy.  She didn’t answer her phone but he didn’t mind. “Hey, Lex,” he said enthusiastically, “Uh, the club is on Neal Street by the Cambridge theater and the Hospital Club! Uh, if you don’t know where that is I can pick you up at your place or whatever!”

He hung up the phone and slipped into a leather jacket before leaving his flat. If Lex needed him to pick her up he wouldn’t care, he just needed to walk around or something first. Hopefully no one would notice or recognize him.

#panlexicon #ooc; sorry it took so long #new places