Temptations Of Father Basil Part 1 (18+) Is Out Now!

Here, take these

btw while people continue to fight the system don't forget about Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt), a charity that buys and forgives medical debt. on average a donation of $10 will forgive $1,000 of medical debt.

Things I want for werewolf families:

● Entire families purposefully turning into wolves just because it makes a better cuddle pile.

● Newborn werewolf babies still shifting wildly in accordance with their time-consuming emotions and new werewolf parents (sleep deprived and high on hormones) temporarily losing full control over their shifting, because whenever their baby howls instead of cries they immediately shift into their wolf form.

● Small children engaging in “comfort shifting” where they turn into wolves because their human feelings are a bit too much, or because they really need to roll up and hide their face in their tale right now.

● Adult family members teaching the kids, especially the girls, that while they can and will teach them how to shave if they want to, it is not necessary, not required, and absolutely not needed to look good, neat, or presentable.

● Werewolf teenagers shaving/cutting cool patterns in their fur.

● Little werewolves having to be reminded “count your thumbs!” before they run up the stairs / stick their face into a bowl of minced meat / try to jump out an open window, etc.

● Werewolves who only start transforming later in life getting completely overwhelmed by the smells and other sensations.

● Older family members making a big deal out of a child's first controlled, full-night transformation and the kid being grumpy and embarrassed about it but secretly really proud.

● Pre- and post-transformation care. Hot baths, massages, heating pads. Being a werewolf is very hard on the still-human body.

● Certain werewolves being born with the “pack instinct”, but other werewolves suddenly unlocking that part of their personality when they get or start taking care of kids. Suddenly they start filling the house with more and more food and start aggressively adopting everyone (of all ages) in their vicinity that seems in need of (better) family.

● Mixed werewolf-human families adopting big dogs to keep their werewolf kids company when they shift.

● Werewolf parents full-naming their howling cubs to get them to calm down instead of to scold them.

● Werewolves of all ages running amok in play. Everyone who knows them can tell they’re playing and not fighting, but to strangers it’s extremely worrying to watch.

Further Notes on Writing Signed Language

So I had a good think about this, based off of what I have written lately. As I go further into my novel, do even more research into different types of sign, and start on the arc that is written solely from the POV of my deaf character, I’ve begun to realize some other differences between signed and spoken dialogue.

For one thing, punctuation doesn’t apply in the same way. There is punctuation in sign language, but as I’ve talked about before, it is mostly facial; therefore, you describe it as a part of the dialogue tags. So then, what do about the commas, colons and semi-colons? In this case, the n-dash is your friend! The aforementioned punctuation marks indicate changes in tone, alterations of pace and pauses. Therefore, they can be replaced with an  n-dash, like so

“You and I – I don’t think we can continue.”

And fingerspelled words would be written as single letters, hyphenated into a word:

”You and I - going to L-O-N-D-O-N.”

For another, the syntax of your translated signed dialogue is subtly different. One sign can ususally mean several different words and filler words are absent. If someone were to say “really big.” in sign, they might just make the sign for “big” and super over-exaggerate.

So, verbal dialogue version:

“It was really, really big!” Lottie jumped and down in excitement, her eyes shining. 

And the signed dialogue version:

“The dog was huge!” Lottie flung out her hands into the word, making it larger than it needed to be, bouncing on her heels.

Keeping in mind that large, big, huge, bountiful (and other connected synonyms) are all the same sign.

I don’t like to write signed language in the syntax that it would be signed in (Name, yours, what instead of “what is your name”). Not only is this confusing for non-signing readers, but it also reads as childish or overly-simplistic for readers who don’t understand sign, which reinforces the harmful stereotype of deaf people being stupid/infantilisation of deaf people. It is impossible to truly do signed language justice in writing, because it’s a language made for hands, bodies and faces.

This all comes together to mean that the sentence structure of dialogue in sign will be different. You would use less contractions (isn’t, you’re, might’ve etc), fewer modifiers and shorter chunks of dialogue with the description of the sign in between.

If it reads differently or feels strange, that’s okay: signed language is different to verbal language and so they won’t sound the same as one another in writing. They’re more like cousins or step-siblings than part of the same direct family group. You’re utilizing different descriptors and tools.

Hopefully, this also answers the repeated issue of differentiation, which has come up time and time again from various people. Best of luck to you all with your writing x

Resources For Worldbuilding

Culture & Society

Creating Fictional Holidays

Music For Your Fantasy World

Creating Religions & Belief Systems

How to Design Your Diabolical Cult

Historically Accurate Sexism in Fantasy: Let’s Unpack That

Debate with the Squirrels: Sexism in Fantasy

Feudalism

Using Politics In Fantasy Fiction

Mythic Justice – Crime and Punishment in Your Fantasy World

Government Worldbuilding

Realistic Political Strife

A Politics Of Worldbuilding

Language

Creating a Language

The Language Construction Kit

The International Phonetic Alphabet – Audio Illustrations

Fantasy Name Generator

Geographic Names

Medieval Names Archive 

Squid Name Generator 

Model Languages

Xenolinguistics 

History

Prehistory

Mythos

History

Today

Myths, Creatures, and Folklore

Encyclopedia Mythica

The Ancient History Encyclopedia

Using History as Inspiration for Fantasy

Victorian Era Family Day Life in England

Peasant Life in the Middle Ages

Everyday Life in the Middle Ages

English Monarchs

Feudal Japan

The Story and Structure of the Iroquois Confederacy

Science + Geography

Dimensions

Solar Bodies

Climatology

Planetary Geography

Water Geography

Cartography, Maps, Star Charts, and Writing

Fundamentals of Physical Geography

Dating of Middle-earth events, using Precession of the Equinoxes and Tidal Friction

Orbital Operations in Science Fiction

Planet Designer

Artificial gravity calculator

Natural gravity calculator

Selden’s Catalogs of Objects for Celestia

Medieval Technology

Defining the Source, Effects, and Cost of Magic

How to Create a Rational Magic System

Miscellaneous

/r/worldbuilding

Fantasy World Generator

SciFi World Generator

Focused Ambiguity: Using Metaphor in Fantasy Writing

Space Engine

Terragen

The Five foundations of Worldbuilding

Setting the Fantastic in the Everyday World

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Just finished reading Maus for the first time and this part really spoke to me.

when the character who's like "i will never reveal my trauma to anyone" gets a high fever and, while weak and delirious, starts spilling every.

last.

secret.

can't get over how much jacob sounds like pilot louis in this scene. louder, more expressive, more movement, more humor. he has a light-hearted dinner table of family members to joke around with again, a lover he doesn't have to walk around on eggshells with, a daughter who's never been happier and it's like he finally feels like himself. "will he get out the door with that BIIIIIIIIG head?"