Bawbixo

them and their miichains ☺️💖

In a lot of scifi and fantasy, some people are Special, but also mundane. Ie. they are just a part of everyday life in the world. It might be amazing to people in the world, but you know, it's also kinda just a thing that is. It might be an inherent quality, like a kind of magic or mutation, or it might be acquired, like cybernetic implants.

And what I often wonder is: how do people who don't have the Special fit in the world?

If the story isn't specifically about this, I find a lot of writers just forget that. Especially if the Special is the Cool Thing of the world.

Example: Avatar: the Last Airbender and the Legend of Korra.

Short explanation of the mundane Special: Bending is an ability where someone can exert power over one of the elements, Air, Water, Earth and Fire. You are born a bender, you can't learn or become one (except that one time).

Let's put aside that all benders are bristling with destructive potential and could go on a murder spree any time they want to. Let's also forget for now the ways one can combat that. No, let's talk about what kind of jobs benders and non-benders can do.

Throughout the two series, we see a lot of jobs that only benders can do and the society relies on that. Earthbenders can move rock containers around, waterbenders can heal, firebenders can conjure electricity from thin air to use in power plants.

Non-benders can do a bunch of jobs as well. You don't need to shoot fire and lightning if you're an office worker and there's plenty of labour that can be done by hand. Or you can just own a big company that has benders and non-benders working under you. Capitalism!

But benders can do all that too.

Benders are just normal people, but with the Special. They can still be office workers, do non-bending labour, AND do a capitalism.

What are the other consequences of this? What does that mean for the job market? Do people rather hire benders or non-benders? Are bender jobs better payed? Is there a bending pay gap in jobs that don't even require bending?

And let's go further. Do people rather want bender children so that they got a better chance of getting a job? How does this affect the dating market? How does it affect politics? What is the difference between the wants of the bending and non-bending voting cohorts? Which one are the politicians going to cater to more?

So on and so on.

The first season of the Legend of Korra is practically famous for how it sort of kind of alludes to an inkling of this, but doesn't do anything with it. It doesn't so much drop the ball as looks at the ball and decides to skip PE. The whole franchise is about the Special so it doesn't have time to look at what is not the Special in detail.

Also, you know, kids' series.

A lot of worlds where the Special is the Cool Thing do their world building by asking: "how can I show off the Special?" There's sports, there's special jobs. But there's very little "what about the not Special?"

I personally always believed LI dynamics and personalities could change with gender, even if they're not noticeable at first, because they'd be treated in different ways and have different social norms. Sydlar is probably one of my top ships in regards to li x li, and I feel like there's a lot of subtext that could be interpreted towards the ship in QNAs (though of course it makes sense platonically, too,) which makes the ship very plausible.

This will get very long so a bunch more will be beneath the cut! ⬇

not true

rude actually

minimizing a disability

"everyone's a little weird"

true

human brains are very different

not diagnosing random people