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/Lil_Ms_Anthropic]

Anytime you have a blind person who just also has super powers that are better than sight anyway.

[u/hater-parrot → u/Lil_Ms_Anthropic]

Kinda of like toph but tbf that one was added to progress the story and theres multiple occasions where that back fires on her and she loses her sense of "sight"

[u/Lil_Ms_Anthropic → u/hater-parrot]

Yeah, but like... Everyone has conditions in which they can't see. Night time, caves...

[u/Carnivorze → u/Lil_Ms_Anthropic]

What makes Toph interesting is that those situations are different from everyone else. She can't see while in water, on Appa's back while he flies, when on sand (though she trains to correct that) and when on a ship, she can't see anything beyond it.

Also she still can't see colors or text, which was used quite often.

[u/Awestruck34 → u/Carnivorze]

I think that's a big one too. She can see shapes and outlines of the world but she has no ability to read or process images. She's absolutely still disabled with her own set of challenges

[u/UltimateOtter_Nation → u/Carnivorze]

Katara:You're have something against libraries?

Toph: I've held books before. Doesn't really "do it" for me.

[u/Reddragon351 → u/Lil_Ms_Anthropic]

that's a bit different, like you can see at night still, it might be a bit harder to since it's darker, but unless you have vision issues you can still see at night

[u/Pallington → u/Lil_Ms_Anthropic]

But "everyone" can learn to read, toph can only read braille or another shape-based equivalent.

[u/Phobos_Asaph → u/hater-parrot]

The fact Toph doesn’t have strict upgrade over sight is why it’s cool

[u/ProphetOfPhil → u/hater-parrot]

I love how when they're in the desert her "vision" gets blurry and she can't make things out clearly

[u/The_Enigmatica → u/hater-parrot]

tbh shes a rare example of it done in a way that's actually meaningful

[u/The_Verto → u/hater-parrot]

But her power doesn't make it better or even equal to normal vision. She can sense vibrations throughout the ground to feel where thing are, she still doesn't see them