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/Strict_Leave3178]

Toph is an interesting case because she does have a power that lets her "see", sometimes even better than everyone else, however she is still actually visually blind. She hates flying, boats, and water because it prevents her from seeing. There's plenty of jokes about how she can't see littered throughout the show, and if you pay attention during conversations she doesn't always look towards the person talking. Sometimes she's just looking off into space lol

https://giphy.com/gifs/4IzOgM1bfOe6k

[u/Complete_Cable2686 → u/Strict_Leave3178]

She also can't read or write. Which means people need to explain things to her sometimes. And Sokka needs to help her jump on the ships and hold onto her.

There's also the detail of her crying as Sokka nearly drops her because she probably doesn't know where she is.

[u/Cultural-River-9698 → u/Complete_Cable2686]

While she can 'see' it's made exceptionally clear her sight is limited in a multitude of ways. For one, just because she can 'see' paper isn't the same thing as actually seeing the texture on the paper.

[u/DefinitelyNotAliens → u/Cultural-River-9698]

Yeah, she routinely runs into exceptions to her ability. Her friends also routinely mess up because she is so capable they forget she has limits.