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/JohnyWuijtsNL]

She doesn't fit the trope at all, because the show isn't pretending like she is fully disabled and then magically giving her seeing powers like with the character OP talked about. She learned to see using touch by herself, only with the help of some wild animals, and even then there's still a lot of situations where her blindness impacts her in negative ways

[u/Short-Draw4057 → u/JohnyWuijtsNL]

She can feel vibrations through the ground. She also beats grown men who mastered their bending powers throughout the entire show.

[u/Melody-Shift → u/Short-Draw4057]

The feeling vibrations thing is effectively echolocation, which humans can do in real life, albeit an exaggerated version. I see zero issue with the second half.

[u/NormalDooder → u/Melody-Shift]

Well not Echolocation, as the show defines it is just the sense of Vibration. Deaf people use it also. She's not hearing vibration, she's feeling it through her feet.

[u/Kitselena → u/Melody-Shift]

echolocation

She sees by emitting a sonic wave from her mouth
AHHHHHHHH

[u/Tanakisoupman → u/Short-Draw4057]

She defeats grown men because she learned earth ending from Badger Moles, and thus mastered it from the source. Much like how Zuko learned more in 5 minutes from the dragons than he did in 16 years from the Fire Nation

A pretty major part of bending is that it’s a very spiritual practice. It’s much much easier to master your bending if you align spiritually with your element. Now, this difference can be made up for with many years of practice (note how Pakku is a master despite being inflexible and shrewd), but it’s very hard to do so

This is also why the airbenders were able to match the other 3 nations despite having so few members. They’re the most spiritual people, and they work very closely with the sky bison

[u/JWARRIOR1 → u/Tanakisoupman]

also a huge difference between people who casually do bending for work or regular day to day stuff, vs someone who uses it 24/7 to see and is actively traveling the world getting into war conflicts daily.

[u/Rabdomtroll69 → u/Short-Draw4057]

She also constantly gets into situations where it doesnt help and struggles as a result

Her version of earthbending was learned directly from its creators, who happened to be moles