Untitled- Yup, That’s Me. Untitled

In the episode 72 hours, we find out Rose may have contracted AIDs during an emergency gallbladder surgery.

Rose: Why me, Blanche? I'm tired of pretending I feel okay so you won't say, 'Take it easy', and I'm tired of you saying 'Take it easy' because you're afraid I'm going to fall apart. Dammit, why is this happening to me? I mean, this isn't supposed to happen to people like me. You must've gone to bed with hundreds of men. All I had was one innocent operation. Blanche: Hey, wait a minute! Are you saying this should be me and not you? Rose: No! No, I'm just saying that I am a good person. Hell, I'm a goody-two-shoes! Blanche: AIDS is not a bad person's disease, Rose, it is not God punishin' people for their sins!

In Isn't it romantic? we find out Dorothy's childhood best friend is a lesbian who recently lost her partner. She confesses she has feelings for Rose. Rose turns her down but makes it clear that she still wants to be friends even though she doesn't return those feelings.

Sophia: Jean is a nice person. She happens to like girls instead of guys. Some people like cats instead of dogs.

Jean: Rose, about last night. I should never have said anything. Rose: You only said what you were feeling. Jean: It's just that this last year has been so difficult for me. Pat was the person I planned to spend the rest of my life with. And when she died, I just felt so terribly alone. Empty. I thought I could never care for anyone again. Until I met you. I just got very confused. I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable. Rose: Well, I have to admit that I don't understand these kinds of feelings. But if I did understand, if I were, you know, like you, I'd be very flattered and proud that you thought of me that way.

Ebbtide's Revenge gives us Phil's funeral, and Sophia addressing him wearing women's clothes.

Rose: So what if he was different? It's okay that you loved him. Sophia: I did love him. He was my son, my little boy. But every time I saw him I wondered what I did, what I said, when was the day I did whatever I did to make him the way he was. Angela Petrillo: What he was Sophia, was a good man.

Sister of the Bride, where Blanche's brother Clayton brings his boyfriend to town, because they're planning on getting married.

Blanche: Oh, look, I can accept the fact that he's gay, but why does he have to slip a ring on this guy's finger so the whole world will know? Sophia: Why did you marry George? Blanche: We loved each other. We wanted to make a lifetime commitment. Wanted everybody to know. Sophia: That's what Doug and Clayton want, too. Everyone wants someone to grow old with. And shouldn't everyone have that chance?

The earliest quasars yet observed are shedding light on the infancy of our cosmos

An international team of scientists has discovered 31 of the most ancient quasars ever found

Quasars are among the brightest, most energetic objects in the universe, powered by supermassive black holes devouring matter at the centers of galaxies. Their extreme luminosity makes them visible across tremendous cosmic distances.

An international team of scientists has discovered 31 of the most ancient quasars ever found. Two of these are the earliest yet observed in cosmic history. They radiated the light of a trillion suns back when the universe was a mere 670 million years old. The findings, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, mark a significant step forward in our understanding of the early universe.

“These objects provide the best clues for understanding how supermassive black holes form,” said co-author Joseph Hennawi, a physics professor with joint appointments at UC Santa Barbara and Leiden University. “These monsters — weighing billions of times the mass of our sun — somehow already existed when the universe was in its infancy. We don't yet have a good understanding of how they grew so massive, so fast.”

Bright, yet elusive

Astronomers have been hunting for the universe’s very first quasars for decades. These objects reveal what was happening during the cosmos’ earliest days, including how the first supermassive black holes and galaxies took shape.

Yet, quasars from earlier than about 770 million years after the Big Bang are exceedingly rare and difficult to detect. Few galaxies had yet grown large enough to create a quasar. Even then, the light from these primordial quasars is both faint and easily mistaken for signals from stars lying closer to us.

What’s more, their light is stretched from ultraviolet into near-infrared wavelengths by cosmic expansion, falling into a range where Earth’s atmosphere glows brightly, drowning out faint signals. Scientists actually use this “redshift” as a measure of an object’s age and distance, since light from farther away (and thus earlier in the life of the universe) has been shifted more toward longer wavelengths by the subsequent expansion of spacetime. “A redshift of 7 takes us to when the universe was just 750 million years old, less than 6% of its current age,” Hennawi said.

“These two things make finding quasars at these distances incredibly difficult,” said lead author Daming Yang, a doctoral student in Hennawi’s group at Leiden University. “For every one of them there are thousands of stars in our Milky Way and nearby galaxies that look almost identical in the imaging surveys. And since their light is stretched to the infrared at such distances, we need a survey that is both wide enough to capture these rare objects and deep enough to detect their faint light.” The task is nearly impossible to carry out on the ground. You need to get a view from space.

Eye in the sky

In 2023, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Euclid space telescope to help demystify this era of ancient cosmic history. It views the universe from above our planet’s infrared haze, surveying an area of the sky far larger than ground-based observatories could cover at comparable depth. The telescope has now discovered an unprecedented number of 31 new quasars in the early universe, pushing back to a time when the cosmos was just 5% of its current age. These appeared in data from the Euclid Wide Survey, which will cover more than one-third of the total sky once complete.

The earliest quasars we knew of until now were the rare, bright outliers that had been easiest to spot. We hadn’t yet found enough quasars from the universe’s early days to study them properly as a group. “Euclid is a true game-changer,” Daming said. “Before, we could only find a handful of the very brightest ancient quasars, but Euclid lets us search far more efficiently across huge areas of sky to capture much fainter light. It’s a unique tool for quasar hunting.”

Beacons from the early universe

The second most ancient quasar found by Hennawi, Daming and their colleagues was recently studied in more detail. The analyses revealed that the quasar was embedded in a dusty, gas-filled galaxy that was furiously forming new stars, hinting at what the host galaxy of an early supermassive black hole may have been like.

These quasars hark back to a fascinating period in cosmic history — known as the epoch of reionisation — when the first stars and galaxies ionized the dark, neutral hydrogen fog filling the early universe. This was a crucial era that set the stage for everything we see today.

Of the 31 new quasars, 14 are at or above a redshift of 7. The two most ancient of the batch have redshifts of 7.69 and 7.77, setting a new record for the earliest quasars ever found. Both lie just over 13 billion light-years away, and emerged during the universe’s first 670 million years. They also break the previous record for earliest quasar that Hennawi’s group set back in 2021.

But each new record isn't just a record for its own sake. “Every step further back in time makes the puzzle more perplexing: How did the Universe produce supermassive black holes so quickly?” Hennawi said. “We're finding black holes with hundreds of millions of times the mass of our sun at a time when the universe was barely getting started.” Answering this quandary will require looking even farther into our cosmic past.

Pushing ever earlier

A combination of better telescopes and smarter searches have enabled astronomers to continue peering deeper into the universe’s history. Discovering the first 10 or so quasars at a redshift of 7 or above took astronomers more than a decade — but Euclid has already discovered more than that in a single year. This finding more than doubles the number of quasars we know of that are so ancient.

In addition to revolutionary observatories like Euclid, new machine-learning methods enable scientists to sift through tens of millions of sources and reliably pick out the handful of real quasars from the far more common imposters, Hennawi explained.

Hennawi’s group has spent years developing the algorithms that proved critical in these recent discoveries. He’s also the lead developer of PypeIt, the software that astronomers at the University of California use to process the data that they collect at the Keck telescopes. Two-thirds of these new quasars, including the three most distant ones, were discovered with Keck through the UC’s privileged access.

The team’s new goal is to push the distance frontier even further, and find the first quasar beyond redshift 8. That would place it within the first 630 million years of the universe’s lifetime.

But discovery is just half the story. The team already has approved programs with the James Webb Space Telescope to study many of these quasars in detail, including measuring the masses of their black holes, probing the chemistry of the gas around them, and using the imprint of the intergalactic medium on their light to trace how reionization progressed. Meanwhile, telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array will target the cosmic dust glowing in the host galaxies themselves, revealing aspects about their dust, gas and star formation.

“The bigger vision is to stitch all of this together into a coherent timeline,” Hennawi said: “a quasar chronicle of the first billion years.”

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

Here ya go

(Alt text descriptions copied from nasa)

Happy Pride!

I decided to do this post for Pride to help fellow creators. Finding an audience for our creations can prove difficult, especially when we are marginalized artists that don’t fit the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) mold. We creators need to look out for each other so we find an audience.

It is hard to find new titles by queer authors of Color. We can attribute this to the attacks on such authors thanks to certain conservative parties in power and legislative threats. It’s all the more reason why we have to protect these titles and make sure they come out into the world. And we are more than happy to hear your recommendations of which titles felt cathartic for the LGBTQ communities and individuals online. 

If you are queer and scared of the present, please stay alive. We need you out there, living, feeling, and finding your true self and friends. 

2026 Releases

Buy links:

You’ll Never Forget Me by Isha Raya 

Shimmering Lake: Summer Camp Collection I by Laika Wallace 

Journey to the Heartland (Second Edition) by Xiaolong Huang

On Sundays, She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

The Forest Bleeds by Rachel Kitch

The Perfect Match by Adiba Jaigirdar

The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto

The Case of Elmwood Ranch by Deanna Grey

Milk & Mocha Comics Collection: Our Little Moments by Melanie Sie (USA release)

The Covenant We Cut by tzipporah-creates AKA WWC Mod Sci (ongoing webcomic)

Honey Bee and Lemon Balm 1 by Jil Hashikura (USA release)

Perfect Princess By Bambi Nieves, illustrated by Alison Nieves

The Most Magnificent Me by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Sophie Bass

I Don’t Wish You Well by Jumata Emill

Love, Gods and Sinners by Camille Chong

Lake Life by Tanya Boteju

Good Luck, Babe! by Erin Baldwin

Love Makes Mochi by Stefany Valentine

Adult Books

You’ll Never Forget Me by Isha Raya 

I’ve been trying to study noir. It’s a gritty genre where people rarely get their justice, and cruel people escape the consequences of their actions. We see a 2020s take on Hollywood noir when rising star Dimple Kampoor in a fit of rage pushes her Asian-diaspora actress rival down a flight of stairs in her own house during a party. She didn’t mean to kill Irene, but she can’t admit she’s sorry when offered a great acting role that Irene had won. The rival’s family hires private investigators, believing the fall was no accident; disgraced P.I. Saffi returns to the US to help the investigators. Despite the two women engaging in a high-stakes battle of wits, they also demonstrate a mutual attraction. Saffi promises to deliver the proof when she’s a hundred percent certain after a botched investigation five years ago, but getting to that hundred percent is the rub. Dimple will do anything to keep her acting career, no matter how many bodies ensue. 

The story establishes itself as LGBTQ noir in a racist Hollywood with double standards against women. No good person wins in this story, and we know that from the outset. It is fun to read though, and delivers on the noir promise. The “dead dove: do not eat” labels are very clear, however, and this time the dead dove has a red carpet.  

Shimmering Lake: Summer Camp Collection I by Laika Wallace

Shapeshifters, vampires and werewolves are too absurd for some families, but not for the ones featured here. A bullied child with a narcissistic mother gets bitten by what looks like an injured wolf, and the decision empowers him, while another is determined to photograph what they call a frogcruncher. Pride parades show promises of friends banding together despite a few insensitive remarks, and vampires debating the power of LED versus the sun. 

Be prepared that plenty of stories occupy these 530 pages. It’s a long time investment, but fun and going by fast. 

Journey to the Heartland by Xiaolong Huang (Second Edition, originally published in 2023)

Content warning: This story covers grooming, parental abuse, and child sexual abuse.

Oy, what a hard story. And yet a necessary one, as a boy named Hanwei endures an abusive father who beats him for crimes like not brushing his teeth. Neighbors gossip about how Gaoming Zhu brings men home and how cute they are, embarrassing Hanwei and his mother Rulan. Rulan never loses her temper, but she also refuses to accept needless blame when Gaoming rails at her. Hanwei starts emulating her as a teenager, protecting his mother from Gaoming’s abuse. Gaoming then leaves when Hanwei is seventeen; a situation that should freak them both out becomes liberation. 

A grown-up Hanwei explores his sexuality in California after a grad school program accepts him in Los Angeles. Though Rulan remains reticent, reminding Hanwei how his father hurt them all, she listens when he cites statistics of same-sex behavior and attends Pride with him. Settling in a new country brings its own woes, however; Rulan can’t speak English when she attends Hanwei’s doctoral graduation ceremony while wondering if he’s emulating his father, and immigration law along with systematic homophobia dog Hanwei’s partners. Bankers also screw up the US economy, adding only more woes. 

On Sundays, She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield (reprint; first published in 2020)

A sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut novel, about a woman who escapes into the uncanny woods of southern Georgia and must contend with ghosts, haints, and most dangerous of all, the truth about herself.

When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own. Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, she blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer. But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline. Written by a Black lesbian author, with a Black lesbian lead.

The Forest Bleeds by Rachel Kitch (Oct 13)

A dark academia horror novel about a group of PhD scholars held hostage by a billionaire in his remote mansion in the Appalachian mountains, who must use their combined knowledge of bioengineering and occult spellcraft to save themselves. A very eerie, claustrophobic and grotesque horror thriller, great commentary against big-pharma and unethical research in biomedical research–it's just refreshing to see dark academia that is centred around STEM disciplines for once!

The horror fantasy elements are inspired by both Appalachian as well as South-East Asian folklore. It's also quite a visceral study of exploitation of racialized labor, and the marginalization of Asian-American women in academia. Saige Chambers, the protagonist, is a disabled bisexual woman of Thai descent, and her love interest is an Indian-American lesbian!

The Perfect Match by Adiba Jaigirdar

Dina is done. She's burnt out after years in corporate London and now is working in her family's struggling Bangladeshi restaurant. The last thing she expects is to be roped into coaching a football team of disadvantaged amateur players–or to say yes.

Maya is back. She could have had a brilliant career, but it all went wrong. Now she's back home, back in her childhood bedroom. Her only escape is agreeing to coach her old secondary school's team.

It doesn't take long for them to bump into each other again and for as long as anyone can remember, Dina and Maya were rivals. But will the very game that tore them apart bring them back together?

The adult debut of popular Bangladeshi-Irish YA author Adiba Jaigirdar (The Henna Wars, Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating), this is an enemies-to-lovers, angsty queer sports romance set in London, featuring Bengali bisexual and sapphic leads.

The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto

An all-new, standalone sci-fi heist thriller about a bored hacker named Malia, who is forced by vicious gangsters to take down a crooked politician, only to find herself up against a code she might not be able to crack. This novel is part of a series of generally connected “lesbian heist” stories, each featuring an all-lesbian and trans cast, set in the Kepler space station–basically a futuristic Hawai'i. While I preferred the first novel in the series, Hammajang Luck, I also thought that the cyberpunk thriller plotline in this one was more interesting and impactful, using popular tropes like sentient AI systems and evil clones to criticize gentrification, unethical data surveillance and the many exploitative practices of big-tech companies. Malia is a Black lesbian, and Yamamoto is a Native Hawaiian and multiracial lesbian author.

The Case of Elmwood Ranch by Deanna Grey (Release date: July 15) 

A Black bi4bi sapphic indie romance between a legacy paranormal investigator and a loner horse rancher, set on a haunted ranch.

Octavia doesn't believe in ghosts, but she can't deny something's wrong with the land she's sunk her entire savings into.

Rae Jones is in the business of ending nightmares. She comes from a long line of paranormal investigators. One of four, she's set herself apart from the Jones sisters by making their legacy into a commercial success. After years of enjoying said success, she's hit a wall. Whether it's burnout or a full-blown existential crisis, she doesn't know. One guaranteed way to avoid a downward spiral? Take every interesting job she can get. And that includes one from a very stand-offish, non-believing rancher who thinks she's a scam artist.

I read Grey's sapphic romance Outdrawn last year; it was the sweetest story, so I'm definitely excited for this.

Speaking of BIPOC sapphic romances:

Tanya Boteju also has a Christmas romcom coming up: Setting the Stage for Christmas (Oct 13, pretty rare to find a festive lesbian romance with non-white leads), and Zakiya N. Jamal has a Black sapphic sports romance coming up: Two Can Play That Game (Nov. 17).

Graphic Novels and Webcomics

Milk & Mocha Comics Collection: Our Little Moments by Melanie Sie

The title characters aren’t explicitly labeled as queer, given they are mascots for an international messaging service LINE. Milk and Mocha live together, however, ordering food and sharing their sleeping space. They enjoy the little moments together, from playing video games together to vibing. Love doesn’t mean being happy together all the time, but it can mean putting in the work to not let little conflicts become big ones. Also, these two are so CUTE.  

The Covenant We Cut by tzipporah-creates

One of our WWC mods (Mod Sci) created this one! Content warning: This story covers mental illness and the parental abuse that results from it.

We see a queer Jewish adaptation of Tanakh (Sh'muel Aleph (Samuel I) 20:1-20:42). Caught between his lover David’s safety and his father King Shaul’s suspicion of David, Yonatan comes up with a plan to assess the danger. However, things quickly go awry at the New Moon banquet when his father finds out. You can tell how much Yonatan and David love each other and what Yonatan will risk to prevent losing him. The coloring adds to the tension while the two meet in secret. 

The webcomic comes in two languages: an English translation from Everett Fox (more text) and the original Biblical Hebrew (less text).

Children’s Picture Books

Perfect Princess by Bambi Nieves, illustrated by Alison Nieves

I knew this story would be good when Princess Amina winces when giving knights hi-fives but being too polite to offer constructive feedback. Her childhood friend Keiran opposes how Amina has come out of the closet, expressing it with a spell that sends her far from home. Amina has to find her way back without her cosmetics, sword, or silverware. A blue rabbit agrees, joining her and a tiny dragon on the long walk home. Amina has to accept her lack of perfection when not having silverware for a snack or a sword to handle enchanted townspeople. Likewise, Keiran has to accept that his friend has become her real self and watch what his magic does. 

The Most Magnificent Me by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Sophie Bass

This book is more LGBTQ+ coded than LGBTQ, but it does the job with internal validation and positive affirmations. Plus, if you have a toddler with doting parents, they will love hearing how magnificent they are; I can verify this courtesy of a video call with some younger family members. Babies have big egos, and they need to sustain them as they grow older. 

Manga

Honey Bee & Lemon Balm 1 by Jil Hashikura

I was on the fence about this manga because the situation seems contrived at first: a yakuza in a nighttime district gets a job at a flower shop following a stint in prison -- where he took the fall for some superiors -- and getting booted from his old gang. Kaoru Mitsuya tries to be tough but starts falling for the owner, 

The manga went from standard romance to great writing when we meet Yuichiro’s siblings -- and one very clearly defies gender roles. You can see a family that cares about each other but doesn’t know how to communicate their concerns, with Yuichiro working 24/7 and refusing to take care of his health and his siblings forcing him to rest.  

Young Adult Literature

I Don’t Wish You Well by Jumata Emill 

True crime can hit or miss for me; in this case, the hit comes from a fair-play mystery. College student and amateur podcaster Pryce gets a lead on a seemingly closed case. Five football players were murdered, ostensibly by a gay classmate they drugged and assaulted. One witness, however, has stated for years that the ostensible serial killer had an alibi. Pryce thinks he can expand on the story after recording the witness’s story, especially when finding out other witnesses are still alive.

Love, Gods and Sinners by Camille Chong

Harper and Tia are roommates, and interns at the same tech company. They clash, they fight, they flirt. And, under cover of night, the two of them adopt secret identities and head out on missions across the city for their respective magical clans. Tia is the beautiful descendant of the Moon Goddess, and Harper is secretly Raven, the leader-in-waiting of the feared and villainous Foxes. When each is tasked by their clan to kill the other, a deceitful game of cat-and-mouse begins. And Harper and Tia will start to understand that the concepts of right and wrong can be just as complicated–and dangerous–as falling in love.

Set in an alternate futuristic world, where descendants of ancient magical clans don secret identities and battle on the streets of Singapore, this debut novel, the first in a planned duology, is a glittering, action-packed urban fantasy, with an enemies-to-lovers romance at its heart. Singaporean author, Asian lesbian and bisexual leads.

Lake Life by Tanya Boteju

A charming sapphic summer romance with environmental activism themes, about two teens who agree to fake-date when stuck together in a quirky, scenic lake town. Written by a Sri Lankan-Canadian author, and featuring an interracial sapphic romance.

Good Luck, Babe! by Erin Baldwin

Reality TV enthusiasts Noelle and Yumi spent a decade attached at the hip—until one ill-fated night (and one awkward kiss) ended their friendship. After a year of no contact, fate throws the girls back together when they’re offered a last-minute spot on their favorite race-around-the-world reality show.

It’s a chance to put their superfan status to the test, a dream come true. Except for a few snags: it’s an all-couples season, filming starts in two days, and Noelle hasn’t spoken to her “girlfriend” in a year. But she already has plans to use the prize money on her ailing father’s medical expenses, and she would do anything for him—including fake dating her ex-bestie on national television. This sapphic YA romcom is written by a Filipino-American author, and features Filipino sapphic leads. 

Love Makes Mochi by Stefany Valentine

A cute sapphic YA romance between a goth fashion designer and a tattoo artist. Written by a Taiwanese-American author, featuring Asian-American and Japanese lesbian leads.

Lilyn Jeong is living her best life—in Tokyo! She gets to learn from the legendary yet notoriously terrifying tailor Mrs. Matsumoto. Getting a glowing recommendation from her could be Lilyn’s ticket into her dream fashion school.

So when the latter is tasked with designing an entire collection, panic sets in. She has only weeks to figure out how to mix her goth aesthetic with traditional Japanese style. Thankfully, Mrs. Matsumoto’s rebellious, tattooed, rainbow-haired daughter Yua offers to help. But going on cozy dates with this cute girl is way easier than sewing yukatas. Can Lilyn find a path forward in fashion and love? Or will she watch as everything falls apart at the seams?

Keep reading to see our recommended 2025 releases!

* you have power

* you're safe

You get to play at having power over someone else. This is your dominance sorts of things, your sadisms, etc.

You get to play safely. You can play with scary things while knowing there's safewords and a dom/top who loves you.

Wow! Beautiful!!🌟💥

Hubble captured an incredible sight of a star exploding in real-time in space!

How People Occupy Space (Body Language) 

˙⋆✮ Leaning in slightly when genuinely interested without realizing it

˙⋆✮ The way someone physically turns their body away mid-conversation

˙⋆✮ Crossing arms not out of coldness but because it feels safer

˙⋆✮ That one person who always finds the wall to stand against at parties

˙⋆✮ Mirroring someone's posture when comfortable with them

˙⋆✮ The slow backward step when a conversation goes on too long

˙⋆✮ Tilting the head when something doesn't add up

˙⋆✮ Sitting on the very edge of a chair when ready to leave

˙⋆✮ The way someone's feet point toward whoever they actually like in a group

˙⋆✮ Leaning back and crossing ankles to signal comfort and ownership of space

˙⋆✮ The unconscious open-palm gesture when telling the truth

˙⋆✮ Standing slightly outside the circle and never fully entering it

˙⋆✮ The way someone physically shrinks in a loud argument

˙⋆✮ Turning the whole body to listen rather than just the head

˙⋆✮ That very specific stillness that means someone is about to cry

˙⋆✮ Raising shoulders toward ears when stressed without knowing it

˙⋆✮ The way laughter changes someone's whole skeleton

˙⋆✮ Touching the face when lying or searching for an answer