Our Man 🥰 @groguspicklejar @shotmrmiller

casual affection (part 2)

clearing out a drawer for the other at their house

helping the other wash/cut their hair

filling the other’s car with gas

making sure the other is up for work/school

sewing a rip in the other’s shirt

picking up the other’s meds for them

changing the other’s bedsheets

telling the other’s parents/siblings how much they love them

being the designated driver for the other at a party

taking candid photos of the other

holding the other’s hand in every situation

helping the other with their homework

learning the lyrics to the other’s favorite music so they can sing it together

making sure to kiss the other before they’re apart

giving the other a bouquet of flowers just because

helping the other go through their old clothes and taking them to donate

buying the other’s favorite candles and lighting them before they get home so the house smells of their favorite scent

teaching the other a skill (knitting/crochet, instruments, cooking, etc.)

putting up framed photographs of the other in their room

hugging the other every chance they get

Claudia entering her villain era 🫣🫢

Anyway chile..... I predict nothing but chaos in the next chapter of their lives

They're having fun! The bumblebees are having fun!

i'll let phie-san say it:

i do not pity israel. never have, and never will.

each night that gaza experiences is deadlier than the last, as idf soldiers record propaganda tiktoks, make rave parties and grwms and fit checks, gloat over having food and water, and film themselves deriving sadistic pleasure from torturing their hostages and victims and desecrating the dead.

Palestinians have to display their martyred before the camera for you to believe the atrocities that the zionist entity has subjected them to. they cannot even mourn in private. the apartheid entity murders them in cold blood, and you deliver the killing blow by doubting them.

babies whose families have been killed will never get to know their own name.

i can't reshare a tenth of the videos and photos that cross my timeline. i have seen more dead children in the past month than i have known death my entire life.

israeli settlers burn olive trees, bomb bakeries and fishing boats, shower white phosphorus and earthquake bombs on the captive civilians of gaza. you already know about the disastrous effects of white phosphorus, but earthquake bombs were last used during ww2 to wipe out entire cities.

how holy is the land that seeks to be built over the mass graves of thousands of children? is it holier than the miracle of a child being born in this hypocritical world?

all 11 universities in gaza have been bombed. academics should be agitating right now, especially those who call themselves "decolonial thinkers." destruction of universities is a sinisterly deliberate act to sabotage the Palestinians who will survive this great catastrophe.

the act of cleansing your hands before prayer is extremely important to muslims. no part of us can remotely comprehend the grief of the mother who refused to wash her hands from the blood of her children after losing them in a zionist airstrike over gaza. "I swear I won't wash them, I won't wash my hands, how else am I supposed to sleep near my kids."

it is only both moral and right when one side defends itself. the other side are the price of war, no better than insects and cattle and sheep left to die within the four walls of the slaughterhouse.

this situation should not be up for debate, but let me finish with one final thing : do your research about Palestine. HOWEVER. you do not need a degree in middle east studies to object to an ongoing genocide. if someone outwits you in a debate about historical details and every nuance of a subject, you were and will remain entirely correct in objecting to a genocide.

may those martyred rest in peace and be reunited again with their loved ones in heaven's eternal vastness.

DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT PALESTINE.

glory to Palestinian resistance. from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

a comic about friends

in preschool someone read us the story of the red oni and the blue oni and it still gets to me a little

Super soft intimacy

cradling the face, looking into their eyes

pressing foreheads against each other

sighing into the other's mouth

kisses all over the face

calling each other petnames they wouldn't use in public

hugging the other from behind

sliding hands under their clothes

softly stroking their warm skin

ruffling the other's hair

murmuring sweet things into their ears

stroking the other's finger while holding hands

nuzzling into their neck

massaging their feet

napping together

having the other's head on their lap

staring into each other's eyes

pressing soft kisses on their shoulders

smiling into the kiss

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Writing Deaf Characters | Speech is Speech

Before I get going, I’m 75% deaf, as some of you know, semi-reliant on hearing aids and lip reading. My first languages were Makaton sign and then BSL. I now use spoken English.

There are a lot of issues I find with how deaf people are represented in books, when represented at all. I would love to see more deaf and hard of hearing characters in the books I read- without having to read books specifically about deaf/HoH people- but when I find them, they’re grossly undercharacterized or stereotyped. Authors write them in a way that sets signing language characters apart from speaking characters as if they are inferior, and this makes my blood boil.

Some technicalties

I’ll keep this brief.

You may have heard that “deaf” is a slur and you should use “hearing impaired”. Don’t. I’ve never met a deaf or hard of hearing person who believed that. Use deaf for people who are deaf, and Hard of Hearing (HoH) for people who lack hearing. These can be interchangeable depending on the person. This is why sensitivity readers are a useful part of the beta process.

Sign language is incredibly varied. It developes in the same way as spoken language. Fun fact: in BSL there are at least half a dozen ways to say bullshit, my favourite of which is laying your arms across one another with one hand making a bull’s head sign and the other hand going flat, like a cowpat. It’s beautifully crude, and the face makes the exclamation mark. Wonderful.

There are different sign languages. Knowing more than one would make a character multi or bi-lingual, even if they are non-speaking.

Makaton is basic sign language used by children, and it mirrors the very simple language used by toddlers.

Yes, we swear and talk shit about people around us in sign language sometimes, and no, it isn’t disrespectful to have signing characters do this. Just remember that we also say nice things, and random things, and talk about fandoms and TV shows and what we’re having for dinner, too.

Each signed language is different from another. ASL and BSL? Nothing alike. Just google the two different signs for horse.

Remember that sign language is a language, equal to the spoken word

Therefore, treat it as such. Use quotation speech marks and dialogue tags. You only need to explicitly state that this character uses signed language once, and then let your modifiers and description do the rest.  It isn’t a form of “sub-speech" or “making hand actions”- sign language is a language all on its own: it has its own grammar rules, syntactical structures, punctuation, patterns, idioms and colloquialisms. For example, “what is your name?” becomes “Your name what?” with the facial expression forming punctuation in the same way that spoken English uses alterations of prosodic tone (inflections). There is even pidgin sign; a language phenomenon usually associated with spoken language.

In the same way that you would describe a spoken-English character’s tone of voice, you would describe a signed-English speaker’s facial expressions and the way that they sign- keeping in mind that these things are our language’s equivalent of verbal inflection.

So please, none of that use of “special speech marks” or italicised speech for sign. If your viewpoint character doesn’t understand signed speech, then you take the same approach that would be used for any other language they don’t understand, like French or Thai. E.g “He said something in rapid sign language, face wrinkling in obvious disgust.” is a good way of conveying this. The proof that you’ve done this well is in whether or not you can switch “sign language” for French or something else, and it would read the same.

Don’t be afraid to describe how things are said, either. Sign language is such a beautiful and expressive way of talking, and to see a writer do it justice would be truly fabulous. Putting this into practise:

“Oh, I love maths!” She said, fingers sharp and wide with sarcasm. She raised her eyebrows.

“I’m sorry.” He replied and made his face small, but could not keep the grin forming. She was starting to laugh, too.

This is part one of two, for the sake of readability and keeping the information simple as I can. Part two- writing the deaf characters themselves- is coming up over the weekend. See you then and best luck with your writing until that point :D

This is part of my weekly advice theme. Each week I look at what you’ve asked me to help with, and write a post or series of posts for it. Next week: settings and character development (including heroes, anti-heroes, villains, and every other kind of character).