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Or, things people often get wrong when writing people like Nenya. ;-)
1) Red hair: Your red-haired character does NOT need to have ginger parents!
( Red hair is a recessive trait... )
But on television, soooooooo many families are wall-to-wall redheads if there's a ginger in the mix at all. This is pretty uncommon in real life! It throws me out of so many stories. It's much more likely for a couple of redheads to pop up in the middle of some browns and blondes.
So, Blossom family on Riverdale, I'm looking at you. (Though in that specific case, I have to laugh, because they're practically lampshading it at this point. Not only are a pair of fraternal twins and both parents redheads (the dad at least is less fire-engine red), about half the members of their board of directors are also redheads! It's a purely symbolic casting/hair dye choice by now--which, fair enough.)
2) Deaf people & lip reading: Your deaf character WILL NOT be able to understand people 24/7 based ONLY on lip reading.
They just won't.
Lip-reading (aka speachreading) is the skill of understanding speech from watching the movements of a speaker's mouth and face while they're talking. It is an extremely important part of the adaptive skillset of most deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Especially in combination with a clear voice, it adds tremendously to the amount of information a person can understand.
However! Only about a third of English language is visible on the lips at all. ( Did you say 'shoes', 'chews', or 'Jews'? )
A quick reference here has some of these thoughts in bullet-point form--might make a good bookmark or info sheet.
It's a good thing if you have your deaf character's friends and family face them when they speak! That's excellent. (Please do that in real life too!) But it can't be the only thing. And it's simply not plausible that they won't have developed other adaptive behaviours to understand the world around them.
1) Red hair: Your red-haired character does NOT need to have ginger parents!
( Red hair is a recessive trait... )
But on television, soooooooo many families are wall-to-wall redheads if there's a ginger in the mix at all. This is pretty uncommon in real life! It throws me out of so many stories. It's much more likely for a couple of redheads to pop up in the middle of some browns and blondes.
So, Blossom family on Riverdale, I'm looking at you. (Though in that specific case, I have to laugh, because they're practically lampshading it at this point. Not only are a pair of fraternal twins and both parents redheads (the dad at least is less fire-engine red), about half the members of their board of directors are also redheads! It's a purely symbolic casting/hair dye choice by now--which, fair enough.)
2) Deaf people & lip reading: Your deaf character WILL NOT be able to understand people 24/7 based ONLY on lip reading.
They just won't.
Lip-reading (aka speachreading) is the skill of understanding speech from watching the movements of a speaker's mouth and face while they're talking. It is an extremely important part of the adaptive skillset of most deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Especially in combination with a clear voice, it adds tremendously to the amount of information a person can understand.
However! Only about a third of English language is visible on the lips at all. ( Did you say 'shoes', 'chews', or 'Jews'? )
A quick reference here has some of these thoughts in bullet-point form--might make a good bookmark or info sheet.
It's a good thing if you have your deaf character's friends and family face them when they speak! That's excellent. (Please do that in real life too!) But it can't be the only thing. And it's simply not plausible that they won't have developed other adaptive behaviours to understand the world around them.
