#hearing it is going to put me in therapy

[itsacruelsummerwithyou2]

the emotion that hit when i realized the stolas’s lullaby scene takes place when he’s only 22-23

[pup-pee]

this is basically my kyle playlist

california girls is rlly carrying the angst so sad((she eants me(2 b loved) is not the sadest song ots just the 1st))

[ashmp3]

i think when i’m like 30 i either gotta be an extremely rich architect in a foreign country or i’m killing myself no in between i’m sorry

[bueris]

okay maybe I should seriously reconsider my path in life and sell my soul to marketing or journalism instead

[candlebel]

I cared. I still do. I still think of you and I still cry over you. You were importat to me. You still are.

[ineed-to-sleep]

My therapist told me today that I'm one of her patients who's made the most progress in the last two years and honestly I have a feeling I'm getting a good grade at therapy

[bunnyboy-juice]

oughghgh

[whimsicalcotton]

.

[orcelito]

The upstairs thumping started again around midnight, right when I started trying to sleep. It's even more infuriating when I have to be up at 7 am. I've been getting absolute dogshit sleep this week, and it's largely because of them. It's been 4 nights in a row, and I am So Fucking Tired.

I'm going to leave a note on their door tomorrow asking them to stop. And if they do it again tomorrow, I'm submitting a noise complaint. I don't fucking care.

[hazlelnoot]

…

[pinkseas]

girls who have all their lives struggled with worthiness and have spent a solid decade convinced that they were undeserving of love fighting desperately to be good enough to be loved in any capacity by anyone at all, constantly failing constantly being left behind, when someone they dearly care for and genuinely trust just Very Casually tells them that they are easy to love

[floral-hex]

Can’t tell if I’m so anxious because of drug withdrawal or it’s just because I have a bad brain 😓

[lemonadebombery]

i dont know what the fuck hes going through but whatever it is im feeling it

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

When your narcissistic father with hypochondria he refuses to treat is such a crazy asshole that multiple medical doctors now know he’s full of shit and have told your mom to her face that they feel so sorry for her 🫠🫠🫠

[eats-the-stars]

reading some fics lately that have characters using sign language to hold secret conversations, which is fine. if two people were speaking French and no one else in the room did, that would be the same situation. my issue is that somehow, no one can tell that they're signing. like they're doing it secretly/discretely and yeah i can see a few signs that would be subtle, but you can really tell that the writer doesn't actually know signs because they're signing things that would be really hard to sign in a room full of people without making it obvious you're using sign. mostly, signs that involve bringing your hands to your face.

reading the way people write signing...they really heavily focus on the hands, and overlook that where you put them in relation to the body is a big part of signing. especially bringing them up to your face. also finger-spelling is a big headache to rely on. imagine instead of using full words, someone spoke each letter aloud to you, and you had to piece that into a sentence. big headache. alright for names and an odd word or two, but multiple sentences? sorry but that's just painful, and it's tricky.

Also, I can see how signing can be a way to communicate over the heads of everyone in the room who doesn't know sign, but bro, they will know you're signing. Just like if you were speaking French they would be like "shit I don't know French" and then they might catch a cognate here or there just like ppl might see the sign for "book" or "eat" and figure it out. But, just, sign language is very expressive, and it's totally visual, so it's meant to be very visible and clear to see. Most signs are oriented around the face and upper body, since most conversations are, you know, face to face, so you can't really like...sign them all behind your back or under a table or with only one hand.

Like "mom" is holding your hand vertical and touching your thumb to your chin. You can't do that sign without bringing your hand to your face. However, it's short, so finger-spelling would work. But that was just an example of a word that can't be done, like, behind your back.

"Red" however, could be passed off as a character briefly stroking their chin. "All done" could be made to look like a casual gesture. "Sit" and "Friend" could possibly be done under a table, or made to look like casual fidgeting.

Behind the back would actually be really hard, and most signs would be, like, upside down. You could probably do some really simple ones that just need two or one hand(s), like "More" or a color or something. I just tried "Help" and "Stop and it felt awkward and I don't know if it was legible, but those might work.

So, you could write covert signing, but my advice is to stick to a handful of words per exchange at most, and just simply look up the word online, and see if it's something that could be passed off as a casual gesture or a fidget, or done under a table or behind your back (not many will work behind your back tbh).

If you're only using a few scenes with simple exchanges, it shouldn't be too much work to look up a few signs until you get a combo that works.

I do think a quick fix to avoid all that would be to just state that the characters are using a modified/altered/original and simplified form of sign language, designed to be less eye-catching and pass as natural gestures/movements. And then add in that due to these limitations, it's also much more limited than fully expressive sign language.

You wouldn't even need to detail anything after that. Just keep the covert signs very simple and avoid overly long and detailed conversations that no one could probably sign back and forth without being clocked unless it was cool for them to suddenly be, like, really really fidgety.

It's not really a big deal. I love seeing people add sign to their writing. It just itches at me to see it being so commonly used as a "covert language" when so many signs honestly need to be oriented around the head/face and are not at all subtle because it's meant for daily conversation, and not, like, covert ops. And it's such an easy fix. So I just thought I'd throw this out there.

[andthen-light]

listening to balance at 15 fundamentally changed the synapses of my brain or whatever in many ways but most significantly i genuinely do not think id be here if i hadnt heard merle’s choose joy speech when i did