#i've had moments myself where i judged a show/movie before watching it based on what other people saw and i have been proven wrong before

[jazajas]

i wish a lot of people would be more open about the last airbender live action show

i can do a whole rant on how diluting Sokka's sexism isn't a bad thing, because i keep seeing it everywhere and it pisses me off - and you know what? i'm going to. strap in losers, i'm not TLDR-ing this nor putting it under a cut and you better fucking read the whole thing before you comment

so, Sokka's sexism: doesn't actually make that much sense. now before the people who are all up in arms about this come at me, i can prove it to you

we'll start with Hama, the SWT waterbender the Gaang meet in the Fire Nation: she was an active part of defense of the SWT when they still had waterbenders. WHAAAT???! women defense? in my southern water tribe???? (please pick up on that sarcasm) a lot of people talk about how getting rid of Sokka's sexism is only a surface level understanding of the character and show, but his sexism IS a surface understanding of the world. i'm sure the writers had at least major plot points written out by the pilot episode, but there's no way they had the full series written and ready to go, no one does. which means that there is some world building that changed or was created that no longer supports initial decisions from the first episodes.

Hama is also Gran Gran's age - THEY WERE FRIENDS!! Gran Gran also LEFT the Northern Water Tribe, her BIRTHPLACE because of how sexist it was. And you think Gran Gran was going to let her son AND her grandson grow up sexist? Bitch, please. I just know that small sexist comments Sokka picked up from lord knows where were beaten (metaphorically) out of him by his grandmother, who basically raised him and Katara after Hakoda left for war.

speaking of Hakoda: he does not seem like the parent that would make his son, the only of age (so to speak) boy in a village with the heavy burden of hunting and defense. given what we know about Gran Gran, it's possible that a lot more women were doing hunting, even if the village was tiny, because of the desperate circumstances the SWT faced. especially given that Sokka hadn't completed his ice dodging trials and therefore hadn't gone through his coming of age ceremony. would Sokka have tried to do it all by himself? yeah probably. but it would have been because HE wanted to help, not because he was told his was his 'responsibility as a man' - though there's always the fact that he could phrase it like that to which i know Katara would hit him for. Hakoda literally wishes that his kids didn't have to grow up so quickly just to stop the war

given all of that, it makes sense that they would change his character to either not be sexist or just be less sexist. the world changed by the end of the show from where it started (world building wise) so it makes sense that they are now starting the story from the top but built into the world that was made.

also i saw someone mention that Sokka not making sexist remarks will keep Aang in the iceberg and i've never wanted to call someone an only child more than in that moment

[elinorwritesstuff]

I forgot that I sent you these messages a while ago. Because of that, I had to reread my message before. And, of course, too many errors on my part. I really hate noticing grammatical errors in my messages.

Sadly.. No. I've been distracted by some personal affairs happening in my life since the last time we talked. I'm still in the "research" phase in my writing. I write down notes any time ideas come to mind but I just haven't actually written any part of my story (for any fandom). But I'm wanting to. I blame personal events happening in life at the moment.

I'm most likely going to now. Like I already told you.. Asperger's is just one of my diagnoses. And I know for some autistic people, there are a lot who mask their autism to seem "normal" for people who may even judge them. I was never like that. I was the person who believed that I should be accepted who for I am, including my flaws (flaws being any disabilities I have in this situation). I never wasted my time pretending to be someone else. And, in a way, I feel the same way about fictional characters in my own story. I know original characters are often some idealized version of whoever you'd want that character to be. Well.. So maybe. Depends on the character. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else. But I feel like I can't pretend to be a normal neurotypical person even if I tried, even for characters. Because I'm not "normal" in any way. At least based on what has been said to me before. Because I also tend to have conflicted feelings about myself, because of who I am as a disabled person.. Writing a disabled character may even help feel differently about myself. And if this character is involved in some relationships (romantic and platonic) with canon characters, that just might also help with accepting yourself in different ways in that way. Find ways to write yourself in characters that can be more self-loving, more accepting of yourself if you have mixed feelings about yourself.

If it wasn't already obvious.. I tend to have conflicted feelings about who I am as a person. So this could also be self healing in some ways. My feelings depend on how I'm feeling that day. Like today, I've really feeling completely self-loathing about myself in every way possible.

Exactly! That's how I feel. If I see an extremely accurate portrayal of a disabled character, either that person has that or is knowledgeable of their research. But then there are portrayals of disabled characters in media that are so horrible isn't even close to that specific disability. And then there are situations where the disabled character in written horribly, but you enjoy the character because of how the actor would portray that character. Which has happened a few times for me.

That's fine.

The Gangsta. fandom is how I found you. I've read most of the story, and I'll have to go back into reading it again soon too. Because I tend to enjoy a lot of interesting series that have smaller fandoms way too often. Not the first time that happened. The series should be so much more popular than it is. And I don't know why it isn't either.

I'm not a fast reader. So if there is ever a time when I'm watching this foreign show or movie, I have to rewatch a couple times to fully grasp what was said or done. Pausing, rewinding and pausing, rewatching a foreign media that I have interest in.. That has to be done a few times for me. If I watched it a lot, then I won't always have to worry because I've rewatched it enough times to know what happens in the series.

Okay, here's another six-month-late ask response. And I feel bad because I reply to your messages literally in my head when I read them, and then I take forever to write them down.

Okay so OF COURSE you found me through Gangsta; thinking back to your first ask it makes so much more sense. I will tell you a secret. The day before your first ask, someone liked a bunch of my DMC fics, and then I got my first ever follower on this blog and it was someone with a very similar handle, so I just kinda assumed it was you. I am not an L level detective.

And Kohske is such a great example of like, she isn't deaf like Nic (I don't think she has hearing loss, at least), but I know that she has a chronic illness (I think it's a form of lupus), and I feel like that affects how she writes twilights and makes them a much more interesting portrayal of the "I have super powers and also a disability" type character. Like, not to knock Daredevil, but instead of "I have a disability and a superpower that conveniently helps me deal with it," it's like, "I have super soldier powers, but also a chronic illness that sucks and affects me like it would anyone else." Like I want to believe that really good authors can do a great job writing outside their experience, but I also think her own experience must be part of why she's so good at writing her particular story. And the fact that she did such a good job with Nic made it much easier to jump in as a hearing person and write him.

Speaking of L, and what you're saying about not writing neurotypical characters, like I just want to throw it out there that I want to read works about autistic characters (canon or OC) written by autistic people. Like not just autistic characters specifically, I want to read characters with all sorts of things outside my experience. But like, I'm neurodivergent but not autistic (I was confused about whether I was neurodivergent for a long time, but apparently PTSD is "acquired neurodivergence," meaning that it comes from how life has affected my brain, and that explains why I have half the symptoms of ADHD and not the other half. But I'm going on a tangent.), and also selfishly I have some probably-autistic characters I want to write some day (I dream of writing an L/OC fic, and there's also a character from an otome I like that I want to write), and I've found the best way to learn to write something outside of your experience is to read things written by people who actually have that experience. So go write! (I mean if that's something you want to do right now.

And I really like what you said about the idea of writing canon characters accepting your OC as a way to help accept yourself.