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wooooo guest culture + sign language + how it affects our guest cast headcanons!! well half headcanon half au because it is pretty divergent at some points
uh there's two main sign languages used in robloxia, one by admins and one by guests. (ofc there's plenty of people who use neither and have their own home signs for stuff, esp people who fall into neither of those categories and didn't have access to resources for learning either)
guests are pretty heavily discriminated against (which is why most of them are capital d Dead nowadays) and due to this it's seen as more "proper" to use/learn admin-sign. schools prioritize teaching admin-sign, but it's still pretty far behind most other languages because of Ableism 💪💪🔥🔥
one of the few exceptions to the preference towards admin-sign is for hackers, both because there's a LOT of guest hackers (driven towards hacking because of desperation) and also for the tactical advantage of admins not knowing what the fuck you're saying. hacker guest-sign is its own dialect, actually! a few signs do differ from the "base" language. this does unfortunately bring more stigma to guest-sign and guests as a whole which Sucks but y’know the stigma was going to happen no matter what, it just happened in this specific way this time. A lot of guests are very chill with hackers because, yk, they get it.
names are handled differently than most other cultures. Guests pretty usually go by their assigned number, although later in life chose a "true name" that they go by with close friends/family. They often don't care how you pronounce their number because the sign for it will be the same anyways. (True names often don't have translations into vocal language, because they're often unique signs) (same with the use of "true name”; it has its own sign that isn't translatable into other languages, true name is the best approximation) It's fairly common for Guests to have multiple true names and use them for different sets of people/different situations (I think 1337 would have a name roughly similar to "shrapnel" [for use during rounds] and 666 would have one roughly similar to "hurricane" [xe used it during xyr hacker days])
Because of the way guest's names work, the signs for number/name are the same! there is a sign for true names, but it is deemed offensive for non-guests to use it. if you're a non-guest you have to sign "my number is [just a normal ass name]", although this is often translated into English as "I go by [name]"
a lot of guests hate admins, especially builderman, for having the GALL to make them in his image and then also take their voices and control over their own bodies away. also not being able to change their appearance SUCKS for any and every transgender quest (of which there are many) which is partially why so many were hackers.
guest discrimination is its own thing in-universe but it's definitely very closely tied to racism + ableism + classism and it has a lot of the same affects those have.
666 was actually a very prominent hacker. they were in the process of dabbling when they and noob cut off, but after that she went off the deep end. it's one of the most infamous guest hackers out there, being very skilled at avoiding bans and admins, and xe kinda took up the mantle of being a "guest protector" of sorts. very heavily punishing places & people known to be against guests. most non-guests thought they were terrifying, and most guests thought they were fucking awesome.
1337 & 666 both have to deal with micro aggressions (very often unintentional) from the other survivors/killers which sucks bad.
Noob & 007n7 have to translate for 1337. and one time someone asked "why don't you translate for Taph too” (taph uses admin-sign) it took a lot of restraint for Noob & 007n7 to not punch them. And even when being translated it feels like people will talk more to the translator than to 1337 himself. Taph has probably accidentally made offensive remarks toward him which is never fun, especially when they’re the only other survivor who can’t speak. It took a long while for anyone to actually try to learn guest-sign even after 1337 gets forsakened; it takes 1337 having a breakdown and blowing up at someone about it for anyone to actually realize how important it is to him. even after, when people ask 1337 to slow down so they can understand him better, they often won't listen when he asks them to do the same for vocal languages. (That isn't his first language give him a break!!!) They all get better at it over time, of course, because they're not being assholes on purpose. But maybe that's almost worse.
666 also has it pretty hard considering xe lost a lot of dexterity when transforming. she can barely sign anymore (not to mention only having 4 claws on each hand instead of 5 fingers, which means a lot less to work with) and she has a hard time writing too. (new hands + less dexterity double whammy). the people paw likes the most are c00lkidd and Noli, because both know guest-sign and paw doesn’t have to go through the mental struggle of translating their words (heavy brain fog from The Specter). Even if xe can’t communicate back, it’s nice enough. Eventually Jason gets in on it too - i hc he never learned any sign language, but still can’t speak - and he’s super excited to have other people finally understand him.
Charlotte technically can speak - but it hurts, she doesn’t like it, and her voice is quiet/raspy anyways. She prefers to sign but is often forced not to in school because of stupid ableist rules about “gang signs”. It sucks even more now that her dad is dead and her biggest tether to her culture is just…gone. In a hypothetical killer!Charlotte au she’d get along great with c00lkidd because they could actually sign to each other, and Charlotte’s never met a kid her age who knew guest-sign.
anyway ☝️ let’s fucking go
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(This was made in a reblog of the original post)
FINALLY MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE HAS BEEN ANSWERRREDDDD YEESSSSSSSSS FREEDOM YIPPIEEEE
fun bonus headcanon I made since writing this. I think when c00lkidd was young 007n7 would swear in guest sign all the time so CK wouldn’t know. But CK eventually started copying him and n7 was like “ah, the consequences of my actions, how nice it is to see you again” and started actually teaching CK guest sign. He stopped swearing once CK knew what he was doing LOL
once he’s in forsaken he picks up the habit again, because no one else (for a little while at least) knew guest sign. at least to his knowledge. noob did, though, and eventually timidly asked why he swears so much LOL and that’s how they became friends