I'm really struggling with how to balance archiving and preserving the history and history in the making with ASLWrite, especially so its accessible, and protecting the IP and personal rights of those who made the content.

Its so difficult to find information on early si5 and probably the biggest direct source is the way back machine - a service that specifically makes other people's material available for free. It tracks the history of the internet and we recognize it as crucial.

But the founder also took down his websites and retired his stuff from the web for choices of his own.

I've been writing a lot of drafts that sit in the back ground because figuring out how to cite fully, how to capture fully, how to set it up so that is preserved down the line (my laptop where a lot of it is stored is going to end up crunched in a landfill some day) while still not hijacking other people's creations, work, images, videos, and direction of their own materials is confusing.

What would it be like had someone captured and posted all of the work that Adrean Clark put in to responding to people's posts and making updated suggestions that everyone worked off of? How much was lost and now has to be recreated? And still, as a creator in general, much less a Deaf creator, who often are underfunded and under supported in their work, who has that right?

And yes, Adrean is around and if you were able you could go ask, but she is busy. The level of cognitive and time burden to check each of these posts and comments going back years is unrealistic.

And people have reached out to todd, and Bee, and JE etc. I don't think they're still on fb, so how do you find them? And what about when people pass away because after ten years, where it hasn't happened yet, it will. Will they have estates to ask? Will they care?

Emily Dickenson put her poetry in the bottom of a drawer because it was for her and who shared it, and that was respected until it was found and shared after she was dead. Same with Gentleman jack, who went to lengths to encode it.

But these are people who hid their work away from the world in a time where it was easy to do.

If people have put it out freely in a platform whose work is designed to share at the speed of light...wouldn't they want their contributions to live on? Except these platforms are for personal interaction. Who has a right to spread them elsewhere? Except if its not chronicled, it will disappear, and without a mass of materials so will eventually ASLWrite.

There are so many people whose work is up for posterity, but it really for posterity if the service its on eats it?

I genuinely don't know, so my drafts folder is full and what I share is fragmented and ephemeral as long as it relies on links back to a service that already decimated at least a third of critical materials rather than saving and posting the materials directly themselves.

I decided to try some different games since candy crush and minesweeper have been go to's for super long. I stumbled onto Atlas earth but it requires an ios and doesn't allow web play. Someone mentioned upland so I made an account yesterday and its so incredibly frustrating. It seems like most people are there to make money by selling plots at a marked up rate (which is essentially a ponzi scheme if you're not getting something out of it) I've read pages of tutorials but things aren't making sense. Plus, my daily bonus card has disappeared and the bonus it "gave me" when the clock switched over never uploaded.

I feel like I'm doing something wrong and actual players could help orient me (their chat isn't useful)

(Also, I'm not 100% sure I'm on the right server since I'm interpreting this as different city builder games rather than a game called city builders , so if I've posted in the wrong place I apologize and would love to be pointed in the right direction

Edit: probably going to abandon upland. Its one of those games people will enjoy most if they're into finding cryptic pieces of game play off a 2001 interface and try to make money by being willing to lose money, in a psuedo game environment. Its not an investing or money making game like people will lead you to believe, and its not a fun game unless you're into learning nooks and crannies from a boring interface and interested in doing math from a boring interface (I'm not against math, it all just feels like drawing people in for get rich quick schemes to fleece people of their money, rather than providing entertaining game play.)

My best advice is if you join treat it like a game and not a money making enterprise and watch out for game players who will fleece you to try to turn it into a money making enterprise.

The wires coming into the village going down like donkey kong really messed up my flow. I'm behind on everything life, which makes me behind on ASLwrite cataloging. I don't even know where to start at this point. I've made too many account and that works if I work diligently all week (not full time but something every day), but now I'm stalled out so they're sitting their decaying.

I think I'm going to open comments on this thread. I don't know if it will make a difference or not, but This is supposed to be more like reddit than a blog.

I originally had them off because I didn't want people coming to me to critique their writing. I want them to go to slwrite.org where one of the OG's is. But I'd love people to share here parts of their journey that they share over there and what feedback they've gotten.

I don't really know. I really like this portion of the internet even though its just me piddling into the void but I'm not sure I'm using it right.

Anyway, for treats, here is the grammar conversion key for my stories on Ao3 that one day might be put up if I can ever make it happen 🫠

Also my way of trying to write repository (https://aslcore.org/computerscience/entries/?id=repository&navset=1)

Full title: I've got it translated as Archive Found, but honestly a better sense of the concept is Repository Presents or Repository Presented

The Chapter summary - which is basically "The program awakes" in sign language, the english translation in the ASLWrite fingerspelling digits, and in English gloss. It includes what someone should see if they copy and paste the english string in the ao3 story (Green) and how I would type it if I could use the full range of word processing features, in this case including text boxes (orange)- which is not translatable as an english string without intense instructions someone would have to strip out.

Fuck it, I guess I'm putting it all here (not the english parts) because I'm proud of it. I am thinking now that I should change the group title (if possible ) on literature social to not just writing prompts but also reading? Or if I write something is that not a reading thing? Not sure. It was brilliantly clear last night, but fuzzy again today

UPDATE:

Like the foofoo head I am, the problem was me. My internet was off.

Also this is highly unedited; I'm trying to polish it in the other post.

Old note:

I tried to post this in the cafe literature instance because I felt thats where it best fit. I was editing it over time and today I started getting the error "Type error"

I though maybe I messed up the formatting so I started a fresh post there and the same thing happened.

As part of my aslwrite journey, I guess trouble shooting stuff like this is part of it, so I'm testing it here to see if I'm given the same error.

---

Its my hope to eventually figure out how to get in touch with Todd so that I can ask permission to save his videos to share in case facebook goes down. For now, it will just be the story with credit, since he has shared it educationally in the original public ASLWrite group.

(Note: I'm adding these pieces in over time, and cleaning up the presentation, so this post will be half finished over the next 48 hours but hopefully will be completed by then)

---

Today, instead of a prompt, I'm posting something in ASLWrite.

This version was written by Todd Hicks in (Date here)

Todd has this story posted in the ASLWrite Facebook Group, in about 8 posts, which is publicly available, so I'm posting it here under educational use. If you want to do anything else with it, you will need to contact Todd Hicks and ask for permission.

I'm providing screenshots of the text in addition to links, because if facebook burps wrong, it will be lost. I'm not currently providing copies of the videos where he signs the work because I haven't been able to get a hold of him for permission. Technically, since its publicly available in the ASLWrite group for educational purposes, it might be fine, but there is a difference between one's image and one's writing, so I'd like to wait until circumstances change before replicating the videos off of facebook.

I'll be translating the title but nothing else.

Keep in mind that writing can change over time and from person to person. Todd is an expert at ASLWrite, but you might see sign variations elsewhere, or some signs representations may have changed over time.

Ahem.

Key

• paragraph = link to the original image on facebook
• signed version = link to Todd Hicks signing the paragraph

The Lumberjack

Written in ASLWrite by Todd Hicks

Title Intro

"The written telling of "The Lumberjack and Deaf Tree, coming soon!""

Todd Hick's Video Commentary

• Discusses him changing how he wrote a single finger moving "RED"
• Discusses experimenting with brackets to indicate quotations
• Discusses his prep to get skilled enough to write something like this in ASLWrite, how he landed on the beloved Deaf classic story-joke, and his process of getting it written and in shape
• Explains how he chose to write "CHOPPING-DOWN-TREE" in ASLWrite -Explains that he will be dropping the story in chunks in the ASLWrite facebook group

Paragraph One

The Lumberjack and the Deaf Tree: Paragraph One

• Todd Hicks signing paragraph one of The Lumberjack and the Deaf Tree

Paragraph Two

The Lumberjack and The Tree Deaf: Paragraph Two

• Todd Hicks signing paragraph two of The Lumberjack and the Deaf Tree

Paragraph Three

• paragraph
• signing it

Paragraph Four

• paragraph
• signing

Paragraph Five

• paragraph
• signing

Paragraph Six

• paragraph
• signings

Paragraph Seven

• paragraph
• signing In the comments someone asks for more explanation about todd explains and decides to change the written sign to

Paragraph Eight

• paragraph
• signing

comments asks means what

no response, but I (ASLWrite fan) believes this means "I said/he said etc)

commenter notes todd signed two hands but the sign is written one handed

tod responds with

"Hi (commenters name), thank you for [translators note, can't replicated the next word, but I think it means "catching the writing for thank you"]. It does mean two hands, not one hand. I was thinking about writing the two handed way like this [shows method]. Is it ok?"

(translators note: this is how I read it, that doesn't make it correct as its not todds translation and there is no video accompanying it. Also later, the double line for two hands has been adopted as part of the writing indicators)

commenters asks if this sign in Todd's response means "thats all" or "finish" and Todd indicates it means, in this context, "one hand"

The commenter asks about this word:

Todd responds

"These opening and closing brackets together indicate quotation marks"

(translators notes: currently quotation marks are done differently, which I will add later, if I remember)

🎶Its been 16 hours and 17 days🎶...since I took my love away from youuuuuuu 🎶

Or rather, there is a reason I haven't posted for over half of January.

Mostly its because I've been overwhelmed, as a lot of us get. Its been because I got turned around about what my point and purpose is. Its because I didn't want to write something here just to say I wrote something. I want it to make sense and have a goal. Even if its a meandering approach to that goal, I want it to match the platform.

I've been writing some drafts on Tumblr, and apparently have a whole obsession with newsletter posts on substack (not that I've released a lot, but man o man am I drafting and redrafting).

I'm re-orienting to making sure that I catalogue and preserve, so I'm working on some of that. but I'm running into the concept of how to preserve remnants scattered across the internet for anyone to find when the authors aren't reachable, or seemed to have moved on.

but also, given I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to be asking so I'm only using what I have a reasonable feeling is fair use, educational use, or public domain.

the former (can't actually reach people) is more pressing than the latter (don't want to reach out) because I can always make myself sack up, but I can't make people appear out of the ether. Still, honestly, the sheer thought of collaborating with anyone as more than a passing sneeze in dedicated platforms is a little terrifying.

I'm working on a post on Tumblr about the ASLWrite version of the Book of Ruth, which I think is a pretty important version of history. I'm working on a post comparing options for "YEAR" on Tumblr and options for "TEASE" on substack, and showing what the SLWrite interface looks like for everywhere, and probably options for something else. I dunno.

I'm typing words I haven't typed before, crashing libre office and everyday checking my email to see if todays the day ao3 accepts or rejects me as a volunteer to clean up the ASL category.

Still, somehow I don't feel like I'm progressing very much, especially for the public view, the raison d'etre.

I need to rewrite "write/written/writing" and I'm now confluxed and confused about "ASL" vs "How much" versus certain movements and I don't wanna ask anyone their thoughts. Which is exactly how not to do things.

I haven't touched any videos and I feel like I'm doing something wrong if I don't include pics on the blue sky or MeWe feeds regularly. I've totally neglected the MeWe group (a version of this thread), but absolutely using it as the place to upload PDF's though I don't have any trust this is a stable place to do so.

Fantastically, I've discovered that the old si5s website was catalogued on the way back machine and this is essential history for ASLwrite. It also means I'll be able to recover old PDF's but it leaves me in a conundrum

What do I do with old materials without screwing things up? Its not that some of the things were wrong for their time, but they're different than now (for example you can't write "NO" the way its written in a new years card by Adrean Clark from 2013, you need a thumb curve to make it the NO handshape or you're writing an entirely different sign thats more like WAH-WAH or pac man munching. Or the handshape for new in new years has been updated to look different. The 13 waggle (those two curved lines next to each other in different signs) can go on top or where it is, and the NO waggle is in dispute by a tiny group of people, all late signers, me included). YEAR now has a side profile view as well. Honestly this makes me want to do an article on the evolution of "Happy new year" but I need to do more research to make sure to expand it beyond one or two people).

Wayback Machine 2013 happy new year card Copyright Adrean Clark Original Image Copyright Adrean Clark 2013, used under Fair Use with credit, annotated by ASLWriteFan in 2026.

Which leads me to how to track evolution of a writing system when it moves so fast. How to organize, archive and notate differences so people can understand what was written but also develop what to be written?

I dunno.

Also, my request for an account to the wayback machine so I can use it to help do this has fallen into a black pit of zero verification email.

anyway, its not bleak, its not bright, its just a lot to parse through when trying to reset on what I'm doing, get organized and not be so distracted by the scatter dust of so many possibilities.

Mostly this place here, is where I'm going to write things that aren't so polished, that maybe aren't so public eye--that if you really want to see it, you're going to have to commit to whacking through the bush to the fediverse.

so...yeah. Nothing compares to stream of thought, and you if you got this far.

#2025 Year End Review:

Early 2025: I started to get started doing more with ASLWrite this year after being introduced to the typing font and after receiving some handwritten text messages.

Mid 2025: I'm given some worksheets created by a friend. They start to get me jazzed up

Late 2025: I have a poem in ASLWrite published for the first time.

October 2025: I decide to post in the Facebook group, a place I lurk with happiness.

Nov 1st 2025: I discover I can't post - no one can. Facebook has nerfed the admin, who had post approval on, and massive amounts of language archives are wiped out.

Nov 15 2025: The nuked admin, an original founder starts slwrite.org to migrate the function of facebook. People start to slowly join.

Nov 17 2025: I begin to get concerned that without public access long time lurkers like me won't grow the confidence and interest to try things. People need to watch sometimes before trying. Without that it might end up an insular community where the language gains will not be accessible to others working on ASLWrite.

November 17 (to present):

I begin to ruminate on the potential loss and premature death of ASLwrite.

I obsess about getting more people into the group.

I search for others online, including original founders to see if they're still working on anything. I can't find much of anything, even a body of history I know existed once.

I notice the wikipedia page has a suggested delete because there aren't enough sources. Things I know about the creation and split of si5 because I have read them now can't be proved because many of the sources have been deleted or personal evidence buried under mounds of information. A lot of what I knew is fading from memory.

I lament on the loss of work and wonder how much out there has just disappeared since there is no place to catalogue it.

I can't shake the danger of a platform going down on a tenuous body of materials. Language survives by its mass of materials; Much of (but not all) ASLWrites accessible materials were in the FB group and now that development would be behind a join wall (totally free, go join) that might discourage people from improving their writing and creating more materials by writing on their own time.

I become more aware of the danger of information and direction being concentration in few (if dedicated) hands. I notice many of the original people working on it seem no longer active (at least on the internet). If the 2-3 I can verify are active quit (or die) with no one to pass the baton to, what happens?

Mid Nov: that friend of mine discusses starting their own ASLWrite page so their own stuff doesn't disappear and so what they do in the slwrite.org group can be more accessible.

Nov. 20: I decide that more than one person needs to be visibly and publicly active and work needs to be archived so that people can find whats spread out across the vastness of the internet and so history has a tiny fighting chance. I revive an old email.

Nov. 21: I start a reddit r/. I make it clear people need to go to slwrite.org and that I'm not an expert.

Nov. 21: Reddit immediately creates and nukes the reddit as against guidelines. I can't find any guideline its against. My fear of a single platform being able to destroy documentation and activity, which eventually becomes history, increases.

Nov. 21: An r/ on reddit complains about the insta bans and sends me to lemmy on the fediverse. I do hours and hours of research on the fediverse, unsure its its a good replacement.

Nov. 21: Out of irritation and determination I start a MeWe. I had found it years ago but only now remembered it existed. I fret MeWe will nuke the group I created too so I don't post yet.

Nov. 21: I spend a couple of hours educating myself on the fediverse and browing the groups. I realize instances can be unstable since someone running a server can decide to just quit.

I believe the fediverse is the best place to have the kind of reddit I wanted, since if an instance doesn't want it there I can join a different instance. But I want something that might have a shot at longevity. I also tell myself that if the instance fails, at least maybe information will be sitting in a landfill somewhere, waiting to be discovered by historians. I apply to a huge instance and wait to be approved.

Nov. 21: I decide to try other platforms, thinking the fediverse is probably a bust and MeWe will probably kill my group like reddit did, but am unsure where to start. I have a clearer vision now of what I'm trying to achieve. It will be part archival of any publicly available material, part sharing of what is shareable behind walls, and part me working on my own stuff with giant caveats, with the biggest goal of pushing people to the slwrite.org group.

Nov. 21: I start a bluesky. I figure I will use it to put vocabulary words and collate links of existing work as I find it. I create my first post, convinced I'm going to end up a

Nov. 22: My friend sends me the song "I hope that you forget about your Myspace" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avxpn_MsPYs and realize that not only is everything from that era gone, never to be retrieved, FB is the current embodiment of that song, and it has no problem nuking critical sociocultural documentation and history, so longevity of a platform doesn't mean preservation of information, and longevity can be stolen at any moment.

Nov. 22: I do hours and hours of fediverse digging. I realize I might never be approved for the large instance.

I apply for a writing group instance, but realize that the admins might not get around to approving me and am concerned that a thread there that the admin would accept would have to be very very limited.

I apply to another instance that had been catching my eye over and over. The admin very clearly explains how they back up the instance and seems to do regular updates. I apply and wait.

I stop applying for instances because I don't want to get banned for spam.

Nov 23: lol the third instance I applied for let me in. I am thrilled, excited with a hint of trepidation, and embarrassed by my dramatic lack of patience.

Nov. 23: I create my group and my first post on the lazy social instance and pray the owner won't bounce it like reddit did.

Nov. 23: I make my first post on MeWe. Nov. 23: I make my first post on lazy social fediverse

Nov. 25: I am approved for the writing instance in the fediverse. I wait a few days and make a group. I don't post in it for fear wit won't see ASLWrite as legitimate since all of the practice will be basic and there is no main literature; I don't want to be seen as spam. Nov 30: I make my first post in the writing instance.

December 1: Now convinced I need to diversify in hopes some harddrive survives somewhere as entropy inevitably eats social media I make a tumblr. I have no idea what I am doing. I discover a few bits of ASLWrite on Tumblr and realize that there must be many more places where fragments exist and strongly feel that there should be easier places to find these.

December 1-7: I realize tumblr has ASLWrite material (not a lot but enough) that I never found. Its important stuff to archive. I start scheduling posts.

December 2: I make a snapchat. I have no idea how to use a snapchat. I harass a friend to help me understand the complete mystery that is snapchat.

December 2: I'm on a roll now deciding to make accounts left and right. I realize I can't keep track of anything. I have already forgotten I have a MeWe. I decide to make a linktree.

December 3: I make a Chirp (chirp.me) instead. I found it through Peet Montezingo and like that I can do different layout things that I can't do on linktree. The promise of payment is nice but I'm pretty sure I'd have to be famous to make more than ten cents a month.

December 4th: I make a youtube. I put nothing on it.

Dec. 5th: I decide to get an Ao3 after Tumblr enlightens me it has an ASL category. I have no idea how to make it work.

Dec. 6th: I have been struggling with how to archive and preserve for the public the broadly scattered work in ASL, especially from founders and early interveners. I don't know what I can reshare from the fb group since its publicly available but I can no longer ask most of them if its ok to download and reshare as defense against facebook eating stuff. I don't want to step on original creators who work hard for their platforms, but can see if something happens to them (car crash, life circumstances, death) alot of work goes up in the air, poof. I am afraid to ask for permission and I am afraid to put anything up without it. I don't know how to do centralized and then mirrored preservation activities for the public (if I die what good does it have to have it set to private?) and still be respectful of d/D/HH/HI (yes HI is politically incorrect but thats what I and countless friends identify with) creators, who have had their agency hijacked as a matter of course before even being born. I still fret over this, and haven't figured it out.

Dec. 11th: I apply for an Ao3, having decided I can write the English underpinnings (which look like keyboard smashes) and give instructions how to turn it into ASLWrite.

Second half of December; ao3:

I write stuff for ao3 and read documentation while I wait to be let in. I am approved for ao3. I put a test document up immediately. I discover the ASL category is flooded with English. I find the original ASL works (which are awesome) but there are buried and I can't find any others. The documentation tells me I can apply to have the tags change. I decide to make an album so it would be easy for moderators to find. I start reading all the fanfic in that category to make sure I don't accidentally report something that belongs there and download it so I can upload it to a collection later. I am impressed, I am confuddled, I am horrified, my head explodes, I am amused; I am impressed again; I am scarred and choose not to download some things because I don't want to go on a list. But mostly I'm super irritated. I've combed through almost 100 pieces and none of them even have the remotest mention of signing.

I start commenting on old stories asking them politely if they will change the tag. I start doing this to new stories.

I'm working on a chapter for my story and realize that I can put an image of the ASLWrite. I have to find a place to park the image.

December ?: I go to the fediverse and pray the mod has the patience to host the pic for a03 and won't delete it since its on content for my fediverse group. I can't imagine it will ever get a bothersome amount of traffic.

Second half of December a03: I'm super glad I'm reading everything because I find a piece partially written in GLOSS. This is amazing. I feel sheepish I was already gearing up to ask them to change the language, growing tired and deciding not to read as much anymore.

However now I'm even more annoyed. I only saw that one as a fluke and everyday stories come in mistagged and its pushing that story off the front. I comment even more vigorously; some people change the tag some people don't. I become obsessed with reading works. My brain starts to fray. I can't keep up. A03 starts marking me as spam. I have to come up with a comment system to keep from getting marked as spam. I am proud to see I've kept the third ASL piece (the other two being the originals that sparked the category). The category still floods. I'm checking my email all the time. I'm reading pieces all day. I'm carefully crafting comments. I'm hardly posting anywhere. I've lost the thread of archiving or doing anything else. I forget I have a dog, a wife, kids, a job. I actually may or may not have any of these but ao3 has consumed my entire existence. Tumblr is on autopilot, MeWe is neglected; anywhere I do post its out of sheer obligation and mostly about a03. I'm not looking for any work to archive, creating anything that doesn't have to do with Ao3, or posting educational materials unless I begrudgingly drag myself away and force myself

Dec 29: I realize my obsession with ao3 is out of controlling and distracting me from my original goal. I put in a ticket with ao3 and ask them about the ASL category. I volunteer to be a mod. This way I can use their process, change the language tag if they're ignored (especially for orphaned work), not feel like I'm spamming, and make room for what I actually want to do. I obsessively check my email to see if they've responded even though I know it could take months.

Dec 30th: I otherwise take a break from ao3 and begin to prepare videos to be posted on youtube and snapchat. My goal for youtube is January 1st.

Dec 31, 11:59 pm: I have made 69 cents on chirp me, most of those me trying to navigate out to my own accounts. I am clearly going to be rich.

January 1st: I make a year in review post. Its took long and I give up on trying to find exact dates or editing. I leave out a lot of things and cut my losses. I decide its time hit post in MeWe and the fediverse, close out 2025 and open 2026 by working on getting those videos up.

Here's to a new year.

So, I can't remember if I mentioned that I put up a test fan fiction on ao3. It wasn't actually the fan fiction as Ao3 lets you tag your post with testing to see how it shakes out. At first I thought my post was visible in the "testing" fandom and planned to clean it up toot suite. Then I thought, oh, tagging it as testing makes it not visible. Cool.

So I took my sweet time on it, choosing instead to work on writing a few more chapters where I slowly inject signs into the finger spelling, and working on a different story entirely in ASL/PSE.

Ok, blush blush cheek cheeks because no, in fact the messy half illegible post is very visible. So now I need to fix this ish quick quick.

Ok, so new screen shot of the updated story:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 (only one forth drafted and not edited, the green are the written signs, and black are fingerspelled english

so...yeah...we'll see how this goes.

So, it seems that Ao3 strips out double spacing. Thats not a problem for most stories (I assume), but for my purposes -- writing American Sign Language (technically Pidgeon Signed English, a variant) in #ASLWrite, I gotta have those double spaces. I type it out, I copy paste, anywhere without the font installed (which is most spaces) it turns into English letters, then you (or me, or whoever) copy's and pastes it, pops it into a program with the font, and voila, there it is again, written sign language. But I gotta have the ability to double and triple space because its necessary to properly mush the sign components together.

No biggie; the font comes with a nifty feature (totally for unrelated reasons than ao3) where a space can be replaced with aaa or zzzzzz. So if I want to type (I hope thats two spaces and the fediverse didn't strip it out too) then I can type aaa or zzzzzz

(there should be a space in front of each of these)

Given that I also added a tiny little intro in actual English I need to retake my screenshot all over again. But never fear, I'm not actually ready to publish publish. Everything is sitting in the "testing" fandom which is like a draft but...not.

So I recently applied for an Ao3, most certainly biting off more than I can chew. There is a lot going on with how this simple seeming site is run so I feel quite a lot out of my depth. I am doing the test post and want to embed an image. I'm embedding it here and then there and see if it works. I don't know though if I can have permanently embedded links where lazysoci.al hosts the image and it is embedded on Ao3. Since this is just a texst, I'll try it for now and then dig around and see what the server documentation says. I think I can always delete it later.

Behold, a fingerspelled story using ASLWrite (technically the first paragraph of the story)

One of the things I 've noticed as I prep different posts to drop on different platforms for existing vocabularly words and whats out there, and for my own attempts, is the potential for variability.

I think there has been an assumption in the groups by a lot (I'm projecting so maybe not) so far that there is only one real way to write each word, or at least its highly restricted. And this makes sense to a degree. If the word is wrong, its wrong. If the thumb is going the wrong direction or you forget the vertical indicator, or if you use a hinge when you need a flutter, this isn't variability. Its confusion. Chaouse in the streatz, sukeye rayning kats and dewgs.

But recently (by recently I mean the last 6 months) watching some dialogue in the (now defunkt) facebook group I've been coming to terms with variability. Its not just variability in someone's handwriting style, I can see between handwriting and typing there are restrictions; what you might be able to do with drawing, you really can't do with typing, but typing has helped open up the writing system to more people than I think its really obvious publicly.

For example, when it comes to presumptions of rightness and wrongess, a certain writing view (I don't know what its called, I should look it up), like profile, front view, unanchored view, might be favored, by some, but for others the side view might be the thing

I favor front view for "Why", but I saw someone comment "Why?" using sideview recently during the fb group collapse.

In fact, that was my brain connection moment.

I went, thats not the official way to right "why", and then I went, but a) I completely understand them and b) they were actually using the writing to communicate, and the person they were asking it of responded back (in English) with complete understanding. ASLwrite was being used to communicate about something other than "did I write this right" or "how does this fit into the topic of language", (which there is nothing wrong with; still the whole point of asking if you wrote something right, is so you can use it correctly to communicate something later).

The response was in english not ASLWrite, but I really saw that what happened with the "why" is communication.

So did I need to nitpick side profile "why" in favor of the official front profile "why" when it actually served its purpose?

I'm beginning to form a much more flexible opinion of the variation of certain signs, while a more rigid opinion of the rejection of pther variations, and most of it is based on pronounceability by the hands (manual replicability?) or of the mind into virtual hands.

So this is a new metric for me; whats really affected my sense of how to "spell" or form written signs is now: do I understand it, and do I understand it in spite of or because of how its formed?

If I understand it in spite of how its written, there is something I can learn about writing it better, like fixing a thumb direction (thumbs are hard people).

But if I understand it because of how its written, then thats what matters to me; I'll count it as an acceptable variation until a larger volume of use shakes something out.

Did you use a flutter and a flutter worked? Did you use a B hand when someone else uses a 5 hand, but they both produce the sign? Then, I think that's the whole point of being able to write.

I think in looking for "The Word" or the one undeniable right way to write a word, like we do in a dictionary, we can lose site of actual writing, and the lovely variability that can occur. Eventually down the road those variations will either collapse into a singular preferred way of writing something or will solidify into multiple accepted version and create an accent in people's writing that is valid and uniqueifying (is that a word? what word am I looking for).

Kaos in the streetz, skai reigning catz and dawgs.

But it also comes at the risk of people who aren't quite there yet deciding for themselves that anything goes, which could result in some very proudly wrong assertions of competence, possibly announcing a very wrong way of writing something which other people run with because there are so few examples, and so somehow becomes solidified when it shouldn't. A language thorn that will be difficult to remove and bloody things up down the line.

I think thats what I fear - I will think I am too competent than I am in my confidence, but also that I will restrict myself too much and not be able to write anything in the search for perfection, with the the suspicion of this being a thing for others in the writing community as well.

anyway, I guess that's why this page exists in part (not just a documentation and spread the word thing), so that I can try and be cool with failing, and then make sure to mark it as such.