Deaf Character - Tumblr Posts

Can you hear my heartbeat?

Ship: Kim Namjoon/Jeon Jungkook

Rating: Teen

Word count: currently in progress; 5/12 chapters posted; 11k

Summary:

Jeon Jungkook has spent his life without hearing a single sound. The world around him moved as mute as a butterfly’s wings. Then, on an ordinary day during a train ride to class, he runs into an upper classmen named Kim Namjoon; he shows him a whole new perspective to his life and helps him learn that being deaf might not be that bad after all.

New chapter just posted!

Chapter 7 out of 12, posting every Monday now that I’ve finished the first draft of all the chapters!

Final Chapter Posted!!

I am a hearing person with a question to the Deaf community:

I wrote a story and am thinking of making it become a podcast with voice actors for the characters. There is a deaf character in the story and she communicates via sign language. Whenever she says something, should I get a voice actor for her, should I narrate what she says or something else? Please let me know if this offends someone

Is there a "I've gone too far" with writing research?

Let me clarify my odd question. I write marvel fanfiction and original stuff at the moment. In order to understand and write Clint Barton, and other deaf characters in the future, better I've taken my interest in ASL off the back burner and decided to more seriously pursue it. Got a couple textbooks for my bday. Found Vicar's ASLU resources online along with some other promising resources I want to look in to.

Am I taking it too far by considering a degree in ASL/Deaf studies? I mean it's all for you Hawkeye but college is so expensive and I'm still finishing my first BA.. I gotta say some colleges look promising though. Liking some of the coursework options at one I found up in Boston.

Anyway, help a friend out? I always knew I'd be a jack-of-all-trades to be a full time writer but another college? Another degree? Too far you think? I just don't think online will do enough for me you know. Gotta have that in person instruction.

Deaf!Will HC:

Will loses his hearing as an unfortunate side-effect of his Vecna Connection (Vecna wanted to make sure Will always remembered their connection, so he took what Will loved most—his music). Will struggles to accept his new reality and withdraws from the world, grappling with his altered body.

Time goes on and Will slowly comes around, taking small steps to reenter society. His friends and family learn ASL and agree to “Voice Off” hangouts, so Will feels included. They rent subtitled movies, buy him a TTY machine (captioned phone), and Hopper even shaves his face to make lip reading easier. Their support keeps Will afloat and he eventually accepts and embraces his identity as a Deaf Man.

Nights prove the hardest—Will wakes up screaming at 3 am, feeling the sound reverberate in his chest, unable to decipher between reality and flashback. Mike tries everything to calm him, from deep pressure to night lights, but nothing grounds him. Mike’s voice always calmed his traumatized mind, and Vecna cruelly ripped away Will’s ability to hear it. Mike finds himself at a loss after months of sleepless nights and Will begins to fear bedtime, terrified of his own mind.

Once again, Will wakes up screaming and frantically signing that Vecna is back and everyone is going to die. Mike knows it’s a flashback, but Will is too overwhelmed to comprehend Mike’s words. He stares at Will, desperately wanting to help, and then it hits him. Will’s hand is on his chest, feeling his breaths and cries through vibrations. Mike gently coaxes Will to lie down, pulls him to chest, and starts to sing. Low and quiet, just loud enough to create strong vibrations through his chest cavity. Will latches on like a sponge, pressing himself tightly against Mike’s body. He takes a deep, soothing breath and finally relaxes, falling limp against his boyfriend. Mike smiles to himself, relief washing over him. He wonders if Will can feel what song he’s singing, if he knows the rhythm to “Boys Don’t Cry,” the song that saved him from Vecna. Tears soak Mike’s shirt as Will realizes, after six agonizing months, he never lost Mike’s voice at all.

As a Deaf person, I appreciate this person’s want to offer some form of representation of the Deaf community despite them being hearing themself. However, I don’t believe it’s correct to do so without having the most basic knowledge on the language we use to communicate. It’s easy to know when the author doesn’t know anything about the culture they’re trying to write. Like OP mentioned, it’s not to be fluent in sign language, but it’d be nice to actually delve into your character enough that you learn a little bit. Otherwise, this lack of investment makes the Deaf reader feel very used and/or like you didn’t really bother getting to know us as a community to begin with — a feeling we know all too well. We’re so much more than what people think, I guarantee you’ll be surprised.

Something I think could be helpful is to ask yourself why you want to write a Deaf character?

Anyway, I wish you and anyone else who wants to write Deaf characters well.

I have a question, if it's not too much of a bother. I'm a hearing writer who describes tones and voices more than anything, maybe. I have a character who is deafened near the end of my story and learns sign language to communicate. I've read posts saying that instead of describing a loud voice, for example, I should talk about exaggerated movements in sign. Now, I don't understand sign (the particular character learns BSL). How do I do the description anyway? Thanks, Luna 💛

Hi! I answered this ages ago but Tumblr is a piece of shit and didn’t upload the answer (•ˋ _ ˊ•) But anyhow, take two: 

Don’t worry about the description until you’re ready to edit your manuscript over with a fine tooth comb, or you’ll never get anything written. Being a hearing writer, you’ll be used to sounds, and that’s okay! I’ll come back to the actual craft in a moment, but before I do, your ask has a few points in that I’d like to address. 

Firstly, make sure you understand at least some sign. I’m not saying that you need to learn to speak the language fluently or anything, but it would be awesome if you could do some research into the basics such as grammar and facial punctuation. Once you’ve got those straight in your head, it ought to be easier to describe the signed dialogue in a more natural way. 

Secondly, I highly doubt your character is 100% Deaf. That is incredibly rare. It’s more likely that your character will have a limited amount of residual hearing–ie, they can hear noises that are low-pitched and high-volume, but the sound is “murky” or unclear. So while some background sounds could filter through to them, others wouldn’t even register. Whether they can hear human speech or not depends on the levels of hearing loss. (I talk a bit about the levels of Deafness in this post; you should do some further research yourself)

As for the craft itself, here’s the method I use for editing: 

Find all of the instances where you’ve described a sound and highlight them (either by hand or with something like Word’s highlighter tool)

You could also use the Find or Search tool to hunt down any sound descriptors by searching for hearing buzzwords like heard, sound, loud, quiet, noise etc

Some of these descriptions won’t even be necessary, which is a normal part of editing whether you’re writing a Deaf character or not

But once you’ve found the necessary descriptors, see if there is something that they can be replaced with

For example, instead of “The leaves on the trees whispered in the wind” you could write about the source of the sound: “She could see the tree branches shiver in the rising wind out of the corner of her eye.” 

Or maybe focus on another sense–there are four left, after all!

Sight, taste, smell and touch will all be compensating for the lack of sound. Use them. 

It’ll take some re-training, but you’ll get there eventually. Practise and experimenting is key

And for dialogue, here is a list of what you’ll want to be taking note of: 

facial expressions

body language

proxemics (ie, does one character move nearer to the other or away?) 

tics or non-sign actions (fiddling with clothes, tugging hair, shifting weight from foot to foot etc)

Hope this helps!

people be like “omg this is my comfort movie” and it’s a bunch of people having the worst day of their life