@booasaur replied to your post “i just want to know why, over the course of 4...”:
I know! I feel like they thought in the first season it'd send a message, to show hearing people what it's like to not be able to understand, but it really has locked them into such awkward storytelling. Either her closest friends and family STILL haven't fully learned and need an interpretor on screen, or people just constantly have to repeat what she said except in affirmative, it's terrible. It's a language, like any other, subtitle it!
it's like, on the one hand i love all the characters of different races/sexualities/genders that we get in the show, and i do appreciate their attentiveness to that. but disability is something that needs to be considered with just as much care, and are you telling me that after two years together, amaya's girlfriend can't properly sign "will you marry me?" like, the first two eps of the fourth season were easily the worst of the show so far, and the fact that gren had to be there to either translate a proposal, or just for comedy purposes bc no wait, this miscommunication is the "cute" kind.......really rubbed me the wrong way
especially when, in every other scene between janai and amaya after that, janai pretty flawlessly understands amaya's signing! it's just lazy, and it makes all of their other attempts at portraying a diverse and layered world feel all the more performative
