#babble speaks

[babblable]

So, I'm not deaf(?), but I just bought some hearing amplifiers because I'm poor and tired and figured I needed *something* to tide me over until I talk to my doctor on the 5 of August. Why did I do this? Well, over the years of my life I have suffered a lot of trauma, from my mother screaming at me for "ignoring" her and asking "what?" too much- to teachers doing the same thing for the same reason, all the way up til now, as an adult in a safe environment with unfortunately declining health in various ways due to childhood neglect, still asking those questions but getting affirmed with a repeated answer or a gentle "did you hear me?" Followed by a repeated answer if I responded to that with "no"! But!!! Because I've been able to hear 75% of things- level and quality of hearing those things having constantly been claimed unimportant by the adults throughout my childhood- I've just come to believe that my hearing is Fine and I'm just "being difficult".

Apparently, that was wrong and I only found this out because I work at a call center now and before a couple days ago, we shared desks.

And my deskmate? A small little elderly lady with no problems with her hearing.

I noticed one day that she always had the volume turned to half on the phone. Meanwhile, me, believing that my hearing Totally and Completely Fine, had to turn the phone volume to MAX and I STILL struggled to hear the customers who'd call in.

After a week of this, I decided "fuck it" and bought a pair of hearing amps on a whim.

Y'all when I say I was blown away by the fact that the world is so much more noisy, I wasn't joking.

I thought that there was Silence outside when I'd pick up delivery orders, outside of the occasional car passing by of course.

But no. No no. My best friend, @chuubifrog, had to tell me that Silence Does Not Exist when I asked him about it and that the humming I was hearing now when going outside is a mixture of the wind, the cars from the highway which is more than 500ft from our house, the entire neighborhoods A/C units, a wind chime from a neighbor down the street and a cricket somewhere nearby.

"W. what the fuck do you MEAN there is no Silence???"

"I'm honestly surprised you've experienced Silence at all. This is what the world sounds like."

"no fucking wonder everyone's always so angry."

I ALSO LEARNED that SODA fizz makes a noise! That I was always thought of as being aggressive or giving an attitude because it sounded like I was slamming things when really, I THOUGHT I was being GENTLE based off the noise of what I was "slamming".

I learned that the dog we have isn't just annoying to hear scrambling throughout the house bc of his nails, but downright painful to hear. I learned that the vents at work are so loud I can't hear myself think very well and I'm m surprised that we all manage to speak over it.

I learned that the reason my mother and other people I live with tell me to turn things down so often is because I couldn't hear it unless it was loud, and that it was REALLY disruptive to everyone else!

I learned that my phone is fine, actually! It's NOT busted because I had to talk to people on speaker and have it close to ears to hear it on max volume! I just couldn't hear in general.

And so, I realize now that so many issues I had growing up would have been so easily solved if the adults around me had bothered to listen when I said "I can sort of hear it...(But not very well)" or "I can't hear it.." instead of playing the noise again and making me "focus" on it really hard, often times resulting in their increased anger when the answer remained the same, I chose to lie to please them or they gave up, claimed I was being difficult and marked me as having perfect hearing.

I walk a line, apparently. And that line is "not enough to be marked as disabled, but too disabled have good quality of life without aid". It isn't the phrasing I wanted, but it's what my brain could put together.

And I am now conflicted between the euphoria of being able to hear all the things that I couldn't hear before, being overloaded sensory-wise and sadness as I sit here wondering why it took 26 years of abuse, neglect, a safer environment, an elderly coworker sharing my desk and a really cheap set of knock off hearing aids for me to realize that I'm hard of hearing.

I'm choosing to see the bright side, but I'm also going to ask my doctor about it on the 5th.

For anyone else who may think they might be HOH because of similar reasons, try out a cheap set of hearing amplifiers from Walmart or something. If you can hear the wind or the soda fizz with them on after years of Silence, then you should ask your doctor about the subject.

[spaghetticat3899]

Something I get mildly annoyed about in writing (mostly in fanfics, since I haven’t encountered a published book with this), is when sign language is depicted identical to speaking. Like, commas, contractions, stuttering, etc.

When I was taught ASL in high school, we were told there was a way to write down sign, but it’s not like how you’d write a spoken English sentence. Words are typically in all caps, lack any -ing/-ed, and have a different grammatical structure.

For example: “I went to school today” would be made into something like “TODAY SCHOOL I GO TO”

Obviously, I’m not someone who’s remotely fluent in ASL, and high school classes do not give me the right to winge and criticize on behalf of those who do speak it. I just found it odd that I’ve never seen Glossing used at all in writing, and it bugged me that signs were used essentially like spoken dialogue (how does one stutter in sign language?), when there’s a uniqueness to the language that gets erased in the process.

[bonefall]

Sibling headpaw's warrior name -> headfriend

Names that are silly that I'm fond of;

Headpaw/Headtail (headass fetus twin infodumping flightrising lore while im tryna pass our warrior assessment)

Babblepaw/Babbleface (bc she wont shut up)

Moon2paw/Moon2moon

The PS5

Names that are legit that I'm fond of;

Nearpaw (closer side of the moon)

Eclipsepaw (MANIFESTING)

Starpaw (canonize the prefix erins. do it.)

[simple-persica]

A little preview of something that was supposed to be art practice and ended up becoming a whole thing and a half.

[twistedappletree]

sorry but going to nebakov with hans is so funny, he’s like “daddy has a meeting henry, go run along and play” and henry just goes goblin mode for a few hours while waiting for him to be done with his boring political stuff

[inkyarcturus]

When you find a fic that includes all you’re favorite tropes (Severitus, Overpowered Harry, Necromancer Harry, Self-destructive Harry, NottPott, Selective Mutism AND Harry forced to get along w Draco) BUT ITS INCOMPLETE

[leejeann]

Filling the Cinderella Boy fast-passer void by scrolling through the tags on mondays after the free eps release to see those readers freaking out about it, 10/10 fun times

[writerfae]

I don’t talk about little Aiden and Henry together enough… that being said, little Henry used to carry toddler Aiden around sometimes and I bet it looked adorable

[batsydoodle]

Begging people to learn how to spell the word rogue. Begging on my hands and knees. Please... I'm tired of getting taken out of the reading flow by a stray rouge

[anghraine]

It's honestly kind of funny to me that catapulting into Kirk/Spock shipping has launched my usual "meh, not into jealousy as a metric of romantic love" shipping tendency out the window and instead I'm genuinely charmed by the extent to which they reflect the same unhealthy seething jealousy.

This is most obvious with Spock, but you'll get McCoy joking about Spock falling in love with a computer (not an android, a stationary computer) and McCoy being A Normal Guy Joking About His Friend Having a Hobby is immediately contrasted with Kirk's barely repressed jealousy (you can all but see him thinking "time to talk another computer to death" while McCoy just laughs at his own joke about it). Kirk gets more and more generally insecure until Spock publicly declares that, while he does like an efficient computer, Kirk is irreplaceable and he doesn't want to serve anyone or anything else, and Kirk looks like he's about to kiss him on the bridge.

(Kirk still talks the computer to death, btw, for plot reasons. But big "Edith Keeler must die" energy.)

I also enjoy Kirk's horror/outrage at Leila Kalomi and her obvious gloating over "taking" Spock from him in the docility sex pollen episode and Kirk's willingness to do or say anything to get Spock back vs Spock bleeding intensity throughout "Requiem for Methuselah" as Kirk falls in love with Rayna, then Spock numbly listening to McCoy's speech about how he can never understand the glories or agonies of romantic love triangles or passionate love before waiting for him to leave and then wiping Rayna from Kirk's mind. Just two bros who are totally normal about each other!

[thatgarden]

Some of you only think of transmasculines as skinny and/or white and GOD it fucking shows.

[impish-baby]

Also to my friends who are scared with everything going on in the U.S. right now, you are not alone!! I love you all very much, and my blog will always be a safe place, we'll get through it together/gen

[little-saw]

Has someone been a little grumpy lately? :(( I think you might need some tickle tickle ticklessss! Don't you agree?

Aww! Already so red? How about after, we can cuddle up and watch a movie? Do you like that? :3

Gonna whisper how cute your giggles and snorts are while I gently tickle and squeeze your sides. Maybe you deserve some little wiggles in your armpits<3

My nails will be soo long, and I'll go soo slow, and antagonizing too! All you can do is stifle your giggles and beg me to actually tickle you :) HEHE!

@lopsidedghoul <3

[bonefall]

it is healing to come onto this blog and see basic respect for diasbility after being in other corners of the fandom and reading the words “snowkit could never be a warrior because he wouldnt know what anything is. he wouldnt even know what a clan is because nobody could explain it to him” said in full seriousness

Im..... That statement is so ableist I cannot even imagine the worldview you'd need to have in order to come up with that.

They really think the only way anyone learns anything is through verbal-speaking-words-noises? No one has ever observed something before? Not even once?

This is beyond touching grass, this person just fell out of the fucking Jurassic Period when all they had was ferns and stegosaurs.

I just...

OH YES. I remember my first day of Society Lessons as a hearing person, where the everything was explained to me. Via Audiobook. FIRST they spoke and said, "you are standing on the ground." It was a life changing revelation, and the world began to spin.

But it did not stop.

THEN they said, "there are fingers on your hands." The sensation of flesh and bone crackling into existence is indescribable, but I did not yet know pain, until they told me, "that hurts." I began screaming immediately.

And yet... it continued.

They explained so much. Chairs. Tables. Walls. The sky. Frogs. Ionizing radiation. Breathing. I was told all of it, in one sitting, and only then did I understand. Only when my ears were bursting with normal hearing knowledges, did they begin... my final test.

A strange wall-chair-finger emerged from the sky-of-the-wall, stood on the ground several times, until it was in front of me. A second one came behind it, this one slimmer. The audiobook gave these things names;

Human. Father. Mother. Door. Walking. It was completely impossible to know what these things were until that very moment.

I watch a human dip a hook into water and produce a fish, and I recall my Society Lessons where they called that "fishing." I am decked in the face by a nefarious hooligan, and I have only the audiobook to thank when I know I have been "punched" by a "bad guy." It was only the magic of verbal-speaking-words-noise that made me understand that there are "other people" and that they "do stuff."

Sometimes, even, in "groups."

Before the Society Lessons Audiobook, I knew nothing. I was pure, innocent, uncorrupted by concepts such as "parents" and "door." I am grateful every day that there is no such concept as "being shown things" or "simple logical reasoning" or "looking."

Blessed be those amongst us who escape the horrors of the Society Lessons Audiobook. I pray that you never learn what anything is. Be free! Free as a bird, which also knows nothing and famously cannot learn. 🤗

DEAF/HOH FOLLOWERS I'm losing my mind do you want me to bump a 'Hearing Disabilities Herb Guide' to the top of my priorities? Something you can use to bludgeon whackadoodles like that. This is ridiculous

Obviously not a MEDICINE guide but like; common causes of hearing disability in clan cats. Accommodations for hearing loss vs congenital deafness. Actual difficulties of not having that sense Clan-by-Clan. Debunking of misconceptions like... not being able to learn APPARENTLY.

[leejeann]

(I have been sitting here with a virtual piano website open for like, 30 minutes trying to plunk out the notes to make sure I'm even hearing this correctly and I'm still only like 70% sure BUT-)

Man, I love the fact that iirc throughout Epic Penelope's little leitmotif always ends on a note that's fully just like, not in the chord. Or at the very least it's a weird note for the chord under it. Her leitmotif caught my ear immediately on my first listen of Epic for that exact reason. It never quite fit the chord. It always felt a little out of place and was definitely a deliberate musical choice to sound that way that I couldn't quite pinpoint but you know, trust the process.

Then we get to WYFILWMA, and Penelope gets MAD that Odysseus would ever doubt her love for him. Because of COURSE he's still her husband. And she's been waiting, waiting, waiting. And Odysseus sings her leitmotif and the landing doesn't fit the chord whatsoever. It's still entirely out of place, not quite reaching home. Then he sings it again, transposed up a little bit, and oh shit it's would you look at that?

(I've always had trouble matching notes across octaves by ear, but I THINK in the last note for that instance of her leitmotif ends on the same note as the bass note in the chord (E) and I ~THINK~ Penelope's note is a 5th above his (B), which if I'm hearing that right very nice, give the newly reunited couple a Perfect 5th harmony, 10/10 and if I'm hearing that wrong then please, uh, disregard all that lmao)

[jewishvitya]

Still thinking sometimes about how I asked my dad to go to therapy so we could have a relationship, and he responded with "I don't need therapy because my religion instructs me to always be happy."