Cute Snoots, Cool Stuff!

South American Pond Snake (Pseudoeryx plicatilis), family Colubridae, Iquitos, Peru

@thechandraraj why would you do this to him

fic rec! This is actually a series, with the whole thing coming in at 292K.

Summary: How intelligent are velociraptors? Very, very intelligent, as Owen Grady discovers in the aftermath of the Jurassic World disaster.  But his quest to prove their intelligence and save his raptors will take him further than he ever expected, and the world will never be the same again.

Comments: I went searching for a fic to loose myself in, and lost myself for probably a week in this series. I will probably reread this all in a few years, it’s amazing on so many levels.

Let’s be honest, in the JW movies what we really like is the cool moments between Owen and the raptors. This series makes the movies look dumb - because this takes all those cool moments and ramps them up. We start with riding a bike alongside raptors, move to a raptor cavalry, and finish with dino detectives. It’s GLORIOUS.

This series starts out with the realization that not only are raptors intelligent, they’re sapient, and in the aftermath of the JW movie Blue decides that she’s never going to allow her people to be put into cages again. This story is an epic about the realization that raptors should be treated equal to humans and the struggle to get there. It involves lots of action adventures, kidnapping, arson, and…what I can only describe as romantic-only monster poly relationships. Like, raptors socially bond with humans for life (romantic only or QPR, take your pick) but they each totally also have relations on the side with others of their species. Blue asking Owen for his opinion on an egg-father is amazing.

I love how detailed and well-thought out the raptor culture is and how there’s a lot of layers to it. They hang off of Alan Grant’s every word, eager to learn about their old society, even while committing to building a different world where they live among humans. There’s different body languages, different body language capabilities, different point of views, even subtle differences in the cadences of their language.

EVERYONE THINKS THIS BUT It MEANS YEAR

I've made up very very few signs for RttS, and the in-universe ASL for sky hook is probably just a compound word of SKY and HOOK like the English term

It also bums me out a bit because YEAR is one of the first signs you learn and is very recognizable, so if more folks knew just a little sign they'd recognize it! But, you can fix that! Handspeak (above) is an excellent resource, and here are some others I like:

LifePrint for learning - they have a TON of free resources, including a self-guided lesson plan with a TON of video lessons. It's good enough that it's literally what my community college classes (run by Deaf professors of course!) used as their curriculum.

Lingvano - DuoLingo-style app, built and used/recommended to me by the Deaf community, full of good sign videos to get you up to speed, and even an overenthusiastic hand mascot to make the experience feel truly DuoLingo-like. Paid beyond the intro course, but well worth it!

Queer ASL, if you're looking for something more interactive - signing *with* other people is super helpful, just as with any other language! Classes availble anywhere via Zoom (in-person are in the works), solid instructors and curriculum. I have done...five? classes with them and learned a TON. It's a proper class so not cheap, but they have a sliding-scale and scholarship options depending on your means, and all the instructors are Deaf *and* queer!

Check your local community college! They often have ASL classes available to the public in their Community Ed department, sometimes even online! I took my first two courses from PCC with Prof. Worthylake and he was great.

Whatever you choose, make sure your teachers or resources are in the Deaf community - the One Big Rule is, don't go paying hearing people to teach you ASL. A good ASL 101 class is as much Deaf history/culture as it is language. Any reputable community college should have Deaf professors, but I don't know what's going on in every corner of the world.

Though I'd also like to add, if you live outside the USA, check what sign language your local community uses. Even if you're in an Anglophone country, it might be very different than ASL. British Sign Language and its descendants (Auslan, South African SL, New Zealand SL) for instance don't resemble ASL, as ASL is part of the French sign language family.

It's disgusting this is what we're dealing with, but people are losing money because of some truly evil people out there.

DO NOT TRUST ANY GOFUNDME OR REQUEST FOR CROWDFUNDING THAT PALESTINIAN BLOGGERS HAVEN'T VERIFIED.

At this point I'm fine receiving a bunch of inbox messages asking me to vet x y z so y'all can avoid this shit. But please have some critical thinking!

Whether you wanna read the whole thing or not idc.

REBLOG IT.