Guess what? I ACTUALLY HAVE THESE BOOKS

This series is and always will be my comfort series, and i absolutely adore it.

HOWEVER. There are many valid criticisms on these characters, most notably Samirah. There are dozens of rants literally everywhere. If you'd like a brief overview of some of it, look up rr grit on tumblr or read riptide2406 book.

I have also seen some on how Alex was the stereotype of mean lgbt mexican, which is also completely valid. It's also a very bud trend within Ricks works, so please continue to call him out on that.

But I have never seen anyone talk about Hearth.

Now, I am not Deaf. I am simply learning ASL out my own curiosity. So, obviously if I do get something wrong and you are a CADO or a member of the Deaf community or and interpreter, please correct me!

And a brief overview of the language I will be using

CODA: child of a deaf adult. Basically, Deaf parents who have a hearing child.

ASL: American Sign Language

Deaf: there is a difference between deaf and Deaf. Deaf (capitalized) is the full community. So hard of hearing, deaf, CODAs, etc. However, deaf (lowercase) is being fully deaf.

HoH: hard of hearing

Non-manual markers: facial expressions that can change the meaning of a word/phrase. For example, if I were to sign "you" to either introduce someone to you or to speak directly to you, there would be no marker. If i were asking a question, such as how are you, but only sign you (though that can be quite vague) I would narrow my brows. That makes it a question.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get on with the rant.

Non-manual markers are an essential part of ASL  basics, as it is probably the easiest form of grammar to learn, and is used in every conversation you have in sign. The grammar gets more complex as you go, but non-manual
markers are the building blows to ASL

As you know, Hearth was described to never show emotion. Ever. His face was always stoic and a slight smile basically means he is jumping for joy/rolling on the floor laughing.

So, if he were to properly communicate within the Deaf community, he would probably fail miserably.

Now, because of Hearth's backstory, this could have been executed very well!

Allow me to set the scene:

Hearth was trying to learn ASL, with what little knowledge he had. Maybe he got it from a little book for kids to learn the alphabet or watched a video for babies where they teach you to sign "Mom" and "Dad" and "Brother" I'm not sure, but based on the ableist views of Alfiem, there probably was not Gallaudet Universities (the first Deaf university in America) or Deaf schools that use sign.

I assume that Hearths brother, who was hearing, took a course. People probably assumed it was because it was simply a cool language or something. So I think that he tried to teach Hearth more signs and grammar.

Then Mr. Alderman catches wind of this, and when Hearth tries to use non-manual markers, he is probably punished. He probably has trauma to revealing too much on his face even before trying to learn ASL, so this is just the cherry on top.

It became a habit, after a while, and one Hearth was trying hard to break. But, trauma is hard to get through. Especially when your trauma takes away what is essential to live in society. So, it fucking sucks to try and talk and have something in that back of his mind tell him to stop before he gets hurt

Alas, that is not what happened. Instead we just got a CODA (Magnus) and Hearths husband trying very hard to understand what their father/husband is saying with context. Hopefully amount of space each sign takes up is enough!

It's total bs, and I feel like Rick should have tried to learn the basics of ASL before going into Hearth. After all, it is a very easy language to learn.

So, please do not have Hearth be emotionless and allow him to scrunch his brows and make exaggerated surprises expressions. Because that's how ASL works

Also, if you would like to have Hearth write in ASL, please note that there are many different languages for that.

The most popular (to my knowledge, I could be wrong) are Stokoe Notation and SignWriting. I do not know either of these languages, and i recommend you learn them before you write them.

Guess what? That's the reason I haven't written any Hearth chapters in soulmates!

So, just do your research is really all I am saying.

I will be posting the next bit of the sims thing probably tomorrow, I literally just need to add some cat stuff to the apartment and then move them in and cheat my way into giving them talents, which will take about 45 minutes after school tomorrow.

other than that

love y'all and do your fucking research.