Players with disabilities, represent & share your feels!

[Iscah]

Adding to what I said before...

Let's not project things like that onto our favorite characters...

This hadn't clicked the first time I read your post, but are you seeing it as a negative thing to "label him with a disability" and I shouldn't be doing that? Because that wasn't my intention at all.

I have Asperger's, and don't really see it as a disability so much as a trait - it's a label that describes how my brain works. It might not be "normal" but it's an integral part of me as a person, and it comes with positives as well as negatives.

So it's nice to see a character with those traits who's just portrayed as another person on the team, with their own strengths and skills to add, and valued as a friend.

Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's coincidental (but of course it's something of a character archetype anyway) but he fits the description regardless.

Although I would have thought he'd have fit Scholar better than Astrologian, but guess it just shows to Aspies that they can branch outside of the stereotypes associated with them.

Astrologian is all about fortune-telling (and is confirmed to actually work in Eorzea's universe), and his "focus subject" is prophecies so it's not at all suprising that he would have studied it.

Though it might actually be for gameplay purposes, since Alphinaud is classed as a scholar for the trust system now, so Urianger may have only been shifted to astrologian so there would be more character variety. He's certainly previously acted as a healer-arcanist for solo instances.

[SturmChurro]

are you seeing it as a negative thing to "label him with a disability"

Yes, having a disability is a negative thing.

[Iscah]

Yes, having a disability is a negative thing.

But if someone has a disability, is it a bad thing to acknowledge it exists?

And you're pulling that half-a-quote out of context. DRKoftheAzure seemed to be saying that it's an inherently negative thing to give him that label - "let's not [do that] to our favourite characters", they said, like it's cruel to even suggest his personality traits add up to "a disability".

And again, I will argue that Asperger's is not inherently a disability, and I am certainly not proposing that he is "disabled" in any way. He just has a collection of traits including - as I said before - high intelligence and social awkwardness.

Is it a disability if it's not actually stopping him from doing anything?

I should also add that I'm not proposing he fits every point on a "textbook Aspie" description.


Oh, as a general note, also it's just clicked... Awkwardness with eye contact would totally explain his insistence on wearing opaque goggles at all times, right?

[AnnaRosa]

But if someone has a disability, is it a bad thing to acknowledge it exists?

No is not bad to acknowledge it exists personally is good to talk about it without having a clown judging you because of it or making you death threads based on it, as I had in real life.
In consequence I developed a fear and often dream that have a criminal clown obsessed by my health problem.

It is also good to surround yourself with persons who do not develop superior complex towards you just because you have one disability, or remove your human side as an excuse to their crimes of hate towards you or persons with disabilities.