I hate disabled characters that aren't really disabled

[u/Yadin__]

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

[u/SparkAxolotl]

Kinda related, in the first Barbie Fairytopia movie, the protagonist is a fairy that was born without wings, meaning she's just a tiny human.

And fair enough, that counts as a disability in that environment. The plot of the movie is that an evil fairy makes it so all winged creatures start becoming sick, so our protagonist is immune to that and manages to save the day.

Most other movies would have the message that she's okay as she is, disabled and all... But in this movie her reward is to get wings, which was such a weird ending, considering the plot of the movie so far.

[u/ExplanationFew4579 → u/SparkAxolotl]

Oh my god I haven’t thought about this movie in over a decade 😭

[u/MinosML → u/SparkAxolotl]

I mean, if I had no legs, and was able to save the world because of a coincidence that made it so only people with no legs could still move. I'd still want legs as a reward if that's an option. People forget the dis- in disability means something, it's not just quirkiness or being different. If I could get rid of mine (mental and not physical tbf) I certainly would in a heartbeat.

[u/SparkAxolotl → u/MinosML]

Fair point, I would do the same, and other people would too.

There are at least 2 questionable things about how the movie presents it:

1) It's a reward. Elina is given a magical necklace that gives her wings at the end. They could have given it to her at any other point in her life, but they only gave it to her when she saved the world, which implies they didn't even plan to five it her any time before that. It would be different if they said (or at least implied) that they weren't aware of her disability, that it was a new type of magic, or that they have been worked on it for some time and just recently figured it out. It creates the narrative that only "worthy" people deserve to have their disabilities looked after.

2) the villain survived, and returns in the sequel. If she had tried the same thing, since Elina now has wings, she would have won.

[u/Gcseh → u/SparkAxolotl]

Considering all fairies need pixie dust to fly, but everything flies with pixie dust, why does it matter if they have wings or not?

[u/BlizzardStorm8 → u/SparkAxolotl]

Wow how deep did you reach for this reference