Abby Spinach

But like…I always read italics in a different tone like they’re thoughts. It seems quieter than using normal quotations which makes what they say look less significant on the page than other character’s dialogue.

I really don’t think my audience needs me to use completely different punctuation around a mute character. There’s no need to act like they’re speaking a different language since their muteness isn’t a focal point in the story.

You can add little things for emphasis though, like how fast or flippant a sign is given, also a lot of our “punctuation” is in facial expressions, so wild looks is kind of normal. Also messing up signs and just.. pushing them aside. Like, you mess up a fingerspell and just take both hands and shove the air in front of you to your side, people who sign eventually end up doing this for other things, like a “forget it” motion. It’s like a “wave it off” gesture.

I

Love

What about Luke? I still imagine him as an Special Agent from the 80s and this would absolutely be his fit. Of course all black 😎 This is really my all time favourite AU 🤩 still thinking about writing a fanfiction myself 🤔😅

I fell down the rabbit hole of trying to find old Eaton's catalogs, but we're going to make do with Sears, because Internet Archive has a scan of the 1922 spring catalog.

One of the reasons I like to pin 1922 on the fanciful "whenever" of The Blue Castle is that waists started to descend toward the hips, and the silhouette was pretty straight up and down. While most dresses are shown with sashes, a girdle of red beads isn't impossible. (It's also a good year for squishy hats.)

Placement of the waist is critical. Back in the early 1910s, there was a shift from the Edwardian S-curve to a more straight silhouette, too. But that one was Regency-inspired, so waists started high. By 1913, they'd dropped to the natural waist line, as this Ladies Home Journal spread shows. This is almost the last gasp of that straight-ish silhouette.

By 1915, skirts are wide and fluffy, as this page from The Delineator shows.

Now, if we want a fairytale reality in which WWI didn't happen, I'd love to put Olive in the fluffy fashions above, but Valancy in the straighter styles of 1918, also from The Delineator. The lower, looser belts could count as a hip-level girdle.

Waists retreat to the natural waist and skirts become a little more gathered in 1921, per the Eaton's catalog.

Then waists get softer and lower again for 1922 (back to Sears).

By winter 1923, waistlines have fallen below the hip bone (Eaton's), so Valancy's beaded belt would no longer be daring.