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[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between deaf characters

“The Month I Suddenly Went Deaf”

What It’s Like Going Deaf In Your Thirties

9 Women Share What It Feels Like To Lose Your Hearing

What It’s Like Being a Deaf Teenager (video)

Parenting With Sign Language (video)

Deaf Teen Talks About Losing His Hearing To Meningitis (video)

Things Not To Say To A Deaf Person (video)

Deaf Kids Shining in High School (video)

I recently discovered the youtube channel of the amazing Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, a vintage-loving, lesbian, happily married queen, who talks about her deafness in many of her videos.  I can’t recommend her enough.

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

Things Not To Say To A Blind Person (video)

What It’s Like to Go Blind (video)

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

As does Molly Burke, “a typical sushi and makeup loving millennial girl who just so happens to be blind.”

And Alyssa Irene, who talks about her experience going blind and life as a blind person.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Deaf and Blind:  Being Me (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

CONCEPT PLAYLISTS :)

witchy dark academia wlw: a house on a hill, a house of old magic. misty woods, green shadows and the rustle of long dark skirts. whispers in the dark of a starlit room. // songs of girls who walk in strange shadows and love surreal things.

voices in the hills: a longing in the pit of your stomach to tear a way out of the throat of the city, into the gaping moor. // songs that seep into your skin like mountain fog, like the woodsmoke rising in wisps from an abandoned village.

strawberry sapphics: milkshakes, sunsets, brush of silk on bare skin, that overwhelming rush in a sleepover when you realise, soft shampoo smells, long mermaid hair. // songs about wanting a love that’s kind on both ends.

love, where have you been?: old names and old regrets, lipstick stains and hafheartedly burnt letters. // songs about love that’s a little rough around the edges.

don’t do it, francis: “without warning i had a vision of francis- twenty years later, fifty years…..and of myself- older, too, sitting around with him in some smoky room, the two us repeating this exchange for the thousandth time.” // songs for my absolute babies who are completely fine and together :)

rich + grace: romeo + juliet, now make it bristol. // songs for my first and dearest ship ever, rich hardbeck and grace violet blood from skins.

personal ost: thinking of all the dreams i scribbled into my journal when i was eleven, all the lessons on girlhood stuffed like straw down my lungs and how I had to split myself open to learn to breathe again. // songs i would pick for an ost if my life was a film.

sakhiyani: you are desi, you are gay, but bollywood is a steaming pit of heteronormative melancholia. // have some bolly songs that can be read with a queer subtext whether canon demands it or not.

noor and abha’s cassettes: nostalgic songs that the characters in my story must have listened to growing up in old kolkata. inspired by the cassettes of my parents and grandparents, and my own childhood as a desi kid.

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

literally most things that people write off as just ‘textures’ to use in graphics are stolen & unsourced material created by artists or photographers NOT meant to be used as elements in projects without royalty payments. you can say ‘it’s just random tumblr posts they don’t care’ but you wouldn’t want someone to take your work and edit into their work so they can be praised for their beautiful style and creativity even if they just post it on social media w/o profit, would you?? so maybe if you browse pinterest or google images for pictures without finding the original source, you’re using images that you’re not allowed to use without realizing it.

you see it on here a lot especially in (i won’t link anything but i’m sure you know what i mean) those album track ‘aesthetics’ posts, au ‘aesthetic’ posts (ie where people use ‘pinterest-y’ images to kinda craft a visual au), and even just rather typical graphics that have a lot of ‘texture’ elements. and texture packs too!! that’s often where the problem starts; people just collect images (often literal art), compile them in a folder w/o sources, then insist no one can repost those images w/o crediting the person who compiled them. what???

SO may i suggest some of my fave places you can get FREE, ROYALTY-FREE elements that are totally legal to use

creativemarket has 6 free high-quality resources (textures, brushes, fonts, etc), different every week! wow awesome i check it every week

search ‘freebie’ on behance. awesome stuff!!! lots of v nice templates textures and fonts

mockup zone freebies

unsplash: tons of very nice free photographs, not shitty stock photos

pexels: same idea. + they have an adobe plugin so you can get photos without closing your editor damn nice

as to not make this too long: spoongraphics, lostandtaken (textures galore), pixeden, freebiesbug.

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

I wake up, shower, and get dressed.

I choose black jeans, more rips than jean, and a thrift Pink Floyd shirt. My combat boots lace up tight. My friends and I wait till after dark to go running around town. The sign says no swimming so one of us jumps in the water. By 3am our music is getting a little too loud but we don't notice. Life's too short to spend it all doing what someone else says. Somehow we ended up climbing onto the roof of the elementary school for a better look at the stars. We lay for hours, talking about how we'll burn this place to the ground when we finally get out. When we talk about our plans after we all know that they might not happen, but what the hell is the point of not dreaming.

Wait no...

I choose a daisy skirt; everytime I put it on I am excited to have pockets. We have to enjoy the little things in life. My shirt has bell bottom sleeves that I like to call wings. When I go walking I find an old field that isn't being mowed and walk through to the pick the dandelions. Who decides what is and isn't a weed anyways? I sit by the water and tie them in a crown. Later I give it to young boy that called me pretty. The world can be dark and scary, but we can make it better one act at a time.

Wait no...

I choose a white t-shirt and a flannel over it. My blue jeans are frayed at the bottom where they get caught under my boots. I am up early to have a cup of black coffee and get started in the garden before it's too hot out. Once I'm sweating heavy I take a break with some iced tea and watch the dog chase birds outta the garden. When my sister comes out she starts helping me but quickly drags me off to push her on the swings. I only pretend to protest. Maybe life isn't perfect, but with every passed day I feel fulfilled. I labour in the hot sun, but I cannot replace the immense pride that comes with the first vegetables harvested. Perhaps life isn't perfect, but today is, and what more could I ask for?

Wait no...

I don't pick any of this; or perhaps I pick all of this. Why must I trap myself into one role when there are so many calling to me? Why can't I rage against society while wearing my dandelion crown? How does my shirt with wings stop me from growing the food that feeds my family? None of this necessitates exclusion of the others, and yet trying to live out all three feels like a lie. Am I just too young to know which box I belong in? Will I reach a day where I stop feeling to need to build dandelion crowns, or stop jumping in the river for the sake of disobedience, or stop feeling the call to burry my hands in dirt, or fall out of the many other paths that drag me in? Would their even be a point to life if I'm forced to choose?

Someone please teach me how to properly contain multitudes

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

I'm desperate to create. I want to build words together in a way that makes people feel less alone. I want to design sentences that challenge everything you've taken for granted. I want to compress my thoughts to a single language to let myself feel the power in them, yet I crave to simply scream incoherently until my throat burns and my mind quiets for even 5 fucking seconds.

I need to create. I need to assemble the words I know in a stream that forces you to feel something. I need to share something that tells everyone that sees it that they aren't alone in their pain like I once thought I was. I need to feel a connection and a freedom on this no longer blank page, yet some part of me knows a blank page will express more of me than language ever will.

Perhaps coherency of thought is a lie we teach to protect ourselves from the fear we cannot face. The fear that we cannot truely know eachother, that we cannot feel a complete connection with another, that we cannot truely know ourselves, that we may never know who we are. That we will never actually connect with our own existence.

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”

And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”

Her response was, “Well, are you?”

My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.

The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”

I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.

Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies. Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.

Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.

Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.

Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

I havent seen anyone talk about this yet so im making a post. 

So lets say you’re researching something for a paper (or just for fun) and the research paper you want to read is behind a paywall, or the site makes you create an account first, or makes you pay to download, or limits you to only 5 free articles, or otherwise makes it difficult for you to read what you want.

do not fear! copy the link to the article

go to sci-hub.se         (the url is always changing so its best to check out whereisscihub.now.sh to find what the current url is)

slap the article link in there

bam! free access! 

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

Reblog if you want a terrible, 3 sentence fan fiction in your ask, based on your url

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

Okay but like, this is such an unexplored part of mainstream fantasy that...

Okay so like black vampires. Instead of being "pale as snow" they're dark as night. His skin almost blending in with the night around him, skimming close to the trees as he watches a bon fire surrounded by teenagers. His eyes bright, possibly the only thing that could let someone spot him. He watches the teenagers laugh loudly. Fools, he thinks, They no nothing of what horrors hide in these trees. Grinning at the thought, he moves closer to the circle of teens. He hasn't eaten in a long time, and he has finally spoted his prey. They would never see him in the cover of darkness. He rushes the crawling monster before it jumps at the kids. Not tonight. They have been allowed to forget the horrors of the forest; someone must protect them.

Or black fae (I know OP said faries but I love fae) that are hauntingly beautiful. Their dark skin reflecting the sunlight, making it appear as though they glow. The protagonist follows them over the hill that they someone glide over, not stumbling once. She can only describe the fae as beautiful yet it isn't enough. She wants to invent words beyond gorgeous, stunning, something more to even come close to the creature she follows. Their dreadlocks are woven back into intricit designs that could only come from centuries of experience. Their voice so soothing and musical she follows the fae for minutes, hours, weeks even; she has no clue how long they have traveled. All she can think about is their beautiful dark features as she is lured farther and farther from safety.

Or black elves, warriors that have been forgotten or maliciously ignored. The archers essential to battle, evil to history; yet they still stand proud when war comes. They may be cast aside by the rest, but their brothers and sisters, their fellow elves, will never forget. The leather clad over her chest and her quiver resting at the hip, her bow is gripped tight and an arrow already knocked. Her dark biceps glistening with sweat as she awaits the sign to fire. Each second testing her patience, but patience wins wars and she will win with valour.

Or black mermaids (how hasn't this been om screen yet) with dark skin beautifully contrasting emerald scales. When they are young they race each other, trying to be the fastest and bickering over who won. Fellow creatures can only see the bright greens, blues, and purples of their tails as the jet past. Soon after though they always here the laughter of the children as they tumble and whirl. Their chestnut hair tangling as they spin, only to be combed out later by parents, tsking at the ramboncous behaviour.

Guys this is the best, if mainstream media ain't gonna do it we sure as hell should.

black angels. black demons. black vampires. black werewolves. black elves. black mermaids. black fairies. jus… pls… more black fantasy characters… i’m beggin…..

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.

[bisexualandnotyourbitch]

Want to collaborate on a Google Doc with Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Dickinson, Dickens and Poe? 

Click here. Start typing. Enjoy the hilarity. 

Ninja Update: Wanna see something fun? Mention Shakespeare in a sentence and see what happens.