Three Dollar Quill

Seems like I'm not ramping back up in any impressive way. I've got some writing that I'm revising. That's not ready until I've read it out loud to check for issues with how it flows. At least it's not metrical poetry, so I'm not going to be sounding it out and going "Well, formally, this fits the meter, but I can't actually pronounce it with that emphasis."

I might as well talk a little bit more about this project. From an inspiration perspective, I've got some inspirations, and things that I think I should read for inspiration, that I think sound pretty impressive, and I suspect that the result will be... not. I think it could speak to some people, but this kind of feels different from other projects, where a lot of the time I could imagine it getting a lot of traction and influence—

Yes, yes, that.

But the point is, this project, which I haven't properly named yet, feels like it has a much smaller ambition. I don't want to talk too much about the content; I'd rather let it speak for itself when I'm comfortable releasing it. However, I can talk about one of the reasons I'm putting effort into something that's intentionally "smaller".

This writing, and some other writing I've done in the previous year (some of it more on the ambitious side of the scale), is meant as a vehicle for... I guess I'll call it an experimental variant of English? Swap out three or four basic word roots for, let's say three new roots, doing the work of six.

The point of all of this, the entire reason, the thing that, if you don't understand it, will render everything I am doing here incomprehensible

is that one of the major obstacles I've encountered in writing over the past few years is feeling slowed down by the fact that I have to commit to a character's gender identity if I want to use pronouns for them, and be able to use multiple pronouns to be able to differentiate between them. I know this problem probably won't resonate with a lot of people, and I don't always have it, but I have it enough that I just wanted a break.

So, I devised what I'm calling the "YSK paradigm", named after the first letter of each of the roots for the new pronouns. I don't feel like going into detail about spelling/pronunciation right now (there's a non-zero chance I'll end up revising the current version), but I'll lay out the basic idea:

• The "Y" pronouns indicate "this person or people"
• The "S" pronouns indicate "that person or people"
• The "K" pronouns indicate "that person or people over there"
• There are singular and plural versions.

Now, I've failed to explain this before, and in an attempt to anticipate that failure mode, I'd like to say, if one of the thoughts you have after reading the last few paragraphs is "If you're using these, it would help to have a table beforehand explaining which characters get which pronouns", then you have gravely misunderstood me, and if you wish to rectify that, you should reread from after the smiley box.

Well, what's anyone supposed to call that thing ↑?

Anyway, maybe I'll have stuff using these put out publicly soon, maybe not. We'll see.

For now, I once again need to get to bed.

Good night.