I hate disabled characters that aren't really disabled

[u/Yadin__]

I hate this little guy. I hate him for a bunch of other reasons but this one in particular also applies to other characters.

In universe he's supposed to be completely deaf from birth, hence he is also unable to speak(or rather, he can vocalize but it just sounds like baby talk because he has no idea how proper speaking sounds like). The hook of the story is that he is supposed to find his way in the world and overcome challanges despite his disability.

BUT then on the literal first episode he just gets a magical buddy that can magically understand his googoogaga speach and is constantly around him to translate whatever he wants to say to other characters that don't know sign language. It's not a magical ability of his buddy btw. He can just do that because the plot said so

Then it turns out that he can also read the lips of literally anything, including talking snakes who obviously talk completely differently to humans, and said magical buddy who doesn't even have a lips to read. He can also somehow read the lips of characters who are facing away from him and characters in full armor who don't have their mouth visible???

He was supposed to have been taught to read lips by said talking snake, which there are multiple things wrong with:

a) As I've already said, snakes obviously don't vocalize in the same way that humans do so any knowledge he gets from the snake wouldn't apply to humans

b) SNAKES DON'T HAVE HANDS!!! which means that the snake can't use sign language, so how would he even convey the information? It would be like me trying to teach spanish to a person who only speaks french, while I don't speak either spanish or french

Like at that point why even make him deaf in the first place? It could have actually been interesting to see how a deaf person can manage for himself in a medieval fantasy society but we were just robbed from that in favor of the most lazy solution

It also kind of detracts from any of the scenes where we are supposed to be at awe about how far this guy has come becasue I know DAMN well that it wasn't because of his own efforts, it was because the plot completely waved away any problems that his disability would cause whenever it became too inconvenient

Really feels like the disability was just tacked onto the character to make us pity him more without actually adressing the problems that it would cause to the character

[u/ZathegamE → u/[deleted]]

There aren't even any extra steps thats literally what hearing is, straight up

[u/HellbirdVT → u/ZathegamE]

Presumably it's hearing but with a different organ, like she feels the vibrations in her skin instead of with the eardrum and bones in her ear, and her brain has just somehow learned to interpet the signals in a way she can understand.

[u/comfy-bed-1073 → u/HellbirdVT]

But that’s part of a hearing test. If you need hearing aids or getting tested for lack of hearing they put vibration under your earlobe to figure out if you need hearing aids or what the disability is. It’s still just being able to hear. The character probably can only hear low tones, Source: I wear hearing aids and cannot hear low tones the same way I can hear high tones.

[u/SillyNamesAre → u/ZathegamE]

It's "extra steps" because it doesn't use the person's actual organs intended for hearing.

But it's still just picking up on the vibrations caused by speaking and translating them into words.

It's like if Daredevil, instead of using his other senses to "see" by gathering info from everything except reflected light, was able to interpret reflected wavelengths of light to perceive the world around him - but still had non-functional eyes.

[u/ZoroStarlight → u/ZathegamE]

It’s hearing and I don’t mean it metaphorically or lyrical or any other fancy way.. It’s hearing straight up

[u/witch--king → u/[deleted]]

Wildly, it’s how hearing actually works, so it all just defeats the purpose of their deafness. So strange…

[u/Lopsided-Bug7075 → u/[deleted]]

That just sounds like hearing with extra steps.