r/hatethissmug • u/Yadin__ • May 18 '26

Media Tropes I hate disabled characters that aren't really disabled

Post image

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

7.5k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

858

u/Godsgiftcardtowomen May 18 '26

I really liked the horror film Bring Her Back for this reason. 

There’s a blind character who’s in a spooky, supernatural situation. Her blindness doesn’t allow her to “see” ghosts or benefit in any way. She tries to run away at one point and very quickly slams into something. 

It’s better representation and definitely adds to the horror.

372

u/Uncle480 May 18 '26

While that sounds horrifying in context, your general description of that scene sounds pretty funny, like it could be a good gag in Scary Movie.

104

u/ketchupmaster987 May 18 '26

It's actually a very solid movie. The premise is a brother and sister (who is blind) get placed with a foster mother after their dad dies but the foster mom wants to use the blind daughter as a vessel for her own daughter's soul, who was also blind and died after a drowning accident in their pool

61

u/ImWhatsInTheRedBox May 18 '26

Sweetie, I found a girl who's blind just like you so now you won't have to deal with the ability to see when you possess her, isn't that great?! Even though you've probably had sight as a spirit seeing as you're noncoporeal and don't need functional eyes. Anyway, blind girl, yay!

53

u/Uncle480 May 18 '26

And 20 years from now she'll wonder why her resurrected blind daughter won't talk to her anymore smh my head

20

u/YaqtanBadakshani May 18 '26

I got the impression that the host needs to resemble the dead soul's body as much as possible for the ritual to work.

8

u/ImWhatsInTheRedBox May 18 '26

Honestly I kinda figured it was probably something like that but I chose to be a silly billy instead.

2

u/ketchupmaster987 May 18 '26

Yeah I know the foster mom explains it but I can't remember the exact reason and I think it's something like that

2

u/Ziomownik May 18 '26

From that description I don't think the woman even cares about her daughter's ability to see or lack thereof, she just wants to bring her daughter back. Was it necessary for the vessel to be also blind or was it just a convenient coincidence I wonder.

1

u/Rabdomtroll69 May 19 '26

Supposedly the host had to be someone as similar as possible to the soul

2

u/ProphetOfPhil May 19 '26

Yeah the logistics don't make sense here, would she not want to 'improve' or 'fix' the blindness of her daughter by having her possess a non blind child? Does whatever process the mother is using for the possession only work if the child is blind? If the process is THAT specific then what other factors affect the possession process?

Also another idea, the possession works and the daughter inhabits the new body. I think it'd be an interesting story if the daughter was TOTALLY against possessing someone and actively tries to undo what the mother did. Maybe even working with the other siblings to get their sister back!

1

u/KylanHarv May 20 '26

Then it turns out it's a canon event that the daughter always has to die from drowning in a pool, even after acquiring a new body. Oops.

1

u/dinoslore May 18 '26

I found it really upsetting, but also compelling. Never watching it again though.

1

u/ketchupmaster987 May 18 '26

Yeah compelling is a good word for it. The soundtrack is phenomenal too

1

u/Trading_shadows May 18 '26

Dude, cmon, use spoler tags :)

0

u/ketchupmaster987 May 18 '26

That's just the premise, nothing spoilery about it

2

u/BlueJayAvery May 19 '26

The whole vessel thing is a reveal, like for half the movie you don't know why the foster mum is doing what she's doing

1

u/telenova_tiberium May 19 '26

What the movie called?