actuallyclintbarton:

officialnatasharomanoff:

ok, all you boys and girls who read comics, listen up.

if you read matt fraction’s hawkeye comics, you know that clint barton has been stabbed in the ears with arrows, and as a result, is now deaf.  furthermore, if you read the comics, you know that today was the release of the asl issue.

in case you don’t know me, i’m hard of hearing.  i grew up hearing, and my hearing wound up getting fucked up the older i got.  now i’m 20 years old and wear hearing aids.  my signing isn’t as good as it could be since i’m surrounded by hearing people who won’t learn asl to communicate with me, but i use it as often as i can.

when i read the asl issue, i found a superhero that i could actually relate to, an actual, real, human being, flawed superhero that d/Deaf/hoh people can relate to and understand, particularly those people who have lost their hearing as they’ve gotten older the way i have.  this asl issue speaks more than anyone can understand.

admittedly, the issue didn’t quite use proper signs all the time, and the grammatical structure was more english than asl (asl has a very different grammar syntax), but for now, it was enough.  it was representation.  it was a step forward. (and why was clint talking on the phone if he’s deaf?  honey, if you deaf, you deaf.  i’m hard of hearing, and i can’t hear shit on the phone. like, i get he was letting jess know that it was him talking, but son, you are deaf and cannot hear her response.  but that’s ok, it’s just details.)

so marvel, you don’t know how much your asl issue meant to me, but i’d like to thank you, matt fraction, and everyone else involved with this from the bottom of my heart.  thank you for giving representation to a group of people who don’t really get very much representation at all.  thank you for for showing me a superhero who gets it.

deaf clint barton is important.  

disabled superheroes are important.

disabled superheroes getting back on their feet when their disability makes things rough for them is important.

disabled superheroes trying to figure out how they fit into the abled world around them is important.

deaf clint barton is important.

This.  All of this.