Learning Through Genuine Relationship

The Reality of ‘Being Nice’, When Good Intentions Miss the Mark – part 6/8

This is Part 6 of an 8-part mini-series examining how well-intentioned kindness in the Malaysian cosplay community can sometimes achieve the opposite of its intended effect, and what genuine inclusion actually requires.

Published on 2 December 2025 by Maya Sharma

  Series Table of Contents

1. The Performance of Kindness in Cosplay Communities 
2. The Problem with Lowered Expectations
3. Infantilization: The Hidden Power Dynamic
4. The Burden of Being ‘Special’ 
5. When Help Becomes Harmful 
6. Learning Through Genuine Relationship (current)
7. The Challenge of Community Education
8. Building Genuinely Inclusive Spaces

In Part 5, we examined how well-intentioned interventions can cause harm by operating on assumptions rather than actual understanding of what individuals need. This pattern of assumption-based action stems largely from lack of experience—from forming ideas about disability based on stereotypes rather than real relationships. In this installment, we explore how genuine friendship built through sustained interaction provides the foundation for real understanding, and how that understanding often reveals that individual reality bears little resemblance to general assumptions about disability.

The Gap Between Knowledge and Experience

Many cosplayers in the Malaysian community have knowledge about disabilities. They might know the diagnostic criteria for autism, understand that anxiety can be debilitating, recognize that physical disabilities affect mobility. This knowledge often comes from educational materials, media representations, or brief encounters rather than from sustained personal relationship.

Knowledge and experience, however, produce different types of understanding. Knowledge tells you what a disability is in general terms. Experience teaches you how a specific person navigates their particular circumstances. Knowledge provides categories and generalizations. Experience reveals individual variation and complexity. Knowledge feels sufficient until experience demonstrates how inadequate it actually is.

The gap between knowledge and experience becomes particularly evident when someone forms their first genuine friendship with a person who has a disability they previously only knew about in abstract terms. The friend’s actual lived experience often contradicts many assumptions derived from general knowledge. Behaviors that seem characteristic of the disability in general turn out to be personality traits unrelated to diagnosis. Assumed limitations prove to be stereotypes rather than realities. Expected needs turn out to be unnecessary while unanticipated needs emerge.

This gap explains much of the problematic behavior explored in previous installments. Cosplayers operating on knowledge rather than experience default to stereotypes because they have no other reference point. They assume people with autism need protection from criticism because that assumption aligns with general ideas about sensitivity and social challenges. They intervene in conflicts because knowledge suggests people with anxiety cannot handle stress. They infantilize because media representations often show people with disabilities as childlike.

What Friendship Teaches

Learning Through Genuine Relationship

Cosplayers who have close friends with disabilities report learning over time what their specific friends need, which bears little resemblance to general stereotypes about those conditions. This learning occurs gradually through the natural process of deepening friendship—through shared experiences, through observation, through conversations about preferences and boundaries, through occasional missteps and corrections.

Through sustained friendship, people learn that having autism does not mean someone cannot handle criticism or wants constant praise regardless of their work quality. One friend with autism might be direct to the point of bluntness and prefer equally direct feedback. Another might process criticism better in written form than verbal conversation. A third might welcome constructive feedback but need time to process it before responding. The diagnosis provides some context but does not dictate how the individual person functions.

They discover that anxiety does not necessarily mean someone needs others to approach them rather than approaching others first, or that every moment of discomfort requires intervention. A friend with anxiety might have developed sophisticated coping mechanisms that allow them to manage situations that would have been overwhelming earlier in their life. They might know their own triggers and limits far better than any observer could guess. They might prefer being given space to manage their anxiety rather than having others attempt to manage it for them.

They understand that disabilities affect individuals in highly varied ways, making generalization not just unhelpful but actively counterproductive. Two people with the same diagnosis might have completely different support needs, completely different strengths and challenges, completely different preferences for how others interact with them. The diagnosis is only one piece of information about the person, and often not the most relevant piece for understanding how to be a good friend to them.

Learning Individual Support Needs

This individualized understanding allows friends to provide support that actually helps rather than support that stems from assumptions. They learn when to step in and when to step back, when to adjust expectations and when to maintain them, when to offer help and when to let their friend navigate situations independently. Most importantly, they learn to ask rather than assume, checking in about what would actually be helpful in any given situation rather than imposing help based on preconceptions.

The learning process often involves making mistakes. A friend might initially offer too much help or too little, might intervene when intervention is not wanted or fail to intervene when it would be welcomed. These mistakes, when they occur within genuine friendship, become opportunities for communication and adjustment rather than sources of lasting harm. The friend can say, “Actually, I’d prefer if you didn’t jump in when I’m discussing things with others,” and the relationship is strong enough to accommodate that feedback.

Through these adjustments, friends develop sophisticated understanding of individual patterns and preferences. They learn that their friend with autism appreciates specific, concrete feedback but finds vague suggestions unhelpful. They discover that their friend with anxiety prefers advance notice about plans but is fine with spontaneity once they are already engaged in an activity. They understand that their friend who uses a wheelchair wants help navigating crowded convention spaces but prefers independence in less congested areas.

This understanding extends beyond practical support needs to encompass the full complexity of the person. Friends learn about their interests, their sense of humor, their values, their goals. The disability becomes contextual information rather than the defining feature of the relationship. It matters in specific situations where it affects how the friend experiences or approaches something, but it does not dominate every interaction or define the person’s identity in the friendship.

When Friendship Replaces Performance

The process of learning through relationship also tends to reduce the sense that someone is being helpful or kind, replacing it with simple friendship. Genuine friends do not conceptualize their interactions as performing kindness toward someone less fortunate. They simply relate to each other as equals, with the disability being one factor among many that shape the relationship but not the defining feature of it.

This shift from performed kindness to genuine friendship transforms the quality of interaction in subtle but significant ways. Compliments become specific responses to actual accomplishments rather than generic praise. A friend might say, “The way you did the gradient on that prop is really cool, how did you blend the colors so smoothly?” rather than “You did such a great job!” The specificity reflects genuine attention to what the person created rather than obligation to say something positive.

Conversations develop naturally based on mutual interest rather than following predictable scripts designed to make someone feel included. Friends might spend hours discussing character lore, debating the merits of different construction techniques, sharing frustrations about real-life challenges, or simply enjoying comfortable silence together. The conversation flows according to genuine engagement rather than performed inclusion.

Criticism and disagreement become possible within the safety of established friendship. A genuine friend can say, “I think you’re wrong about that,” or “That approach is not going to work well,” without the statement being devastating or requiring protective intervention from others. The criticism emerges from caring about the person and wanting the best for them rather than from judgment or condescension. The friend receiving criticism can consider it, disagree with it, or accept it without the interaction threatening the foundation of the relationship.

The Contrast Becomes Visible

For individuals who have both genuine friendships and performed-kindness interactions within the cosplay community, the contrast between the two becomes sharply visible. They can feel the difference between being treated as an equal and being treated as someone who needs special management. They notice how genuine friends hold them accountable while performed-kindness acquaintances excuse their missteps. They observe how real friendship includes the full range of human interaction while performed kindness stays relentlessly positive and superficial.

This contrast often makes the performed kindness even more frustrating. Once someone has experienced what genuine equality feels like, differential treatment becomes more obviously condescending rather than seeming like simply how interactions work. The person gains a reference point for what genuine inclusion actually involves, making the gap between the community’s stated values and its actual practice more apparent.

The contrast also provides hope, however. If some community members can develop genuine friendship and authentic understanding, then presumably others can as well. The question becomes how to spread that understanding beyond the small number of people who happen to form close friendships with individuals who have disabilities.

Transferable Lessons

Some aspects of what friends learn through relationship can transfer to interactions with other people who have similar disabilities. A cosplayer who has learned through friendship that their friend with autism prefers direct communication might approach other autistic cosplayers more directly than they otherwise would have. Someone who has learned that their friend with anxiety has developed strong coping mechanisms might be less likely to assume all people with anxiety need constant intervention.

However, this transfer has significant limitations. Individual variation means that what works for one person may not work for another, even when they share the same diagnosis. The cosplayer who learned to be direct with one autistic friend might discover that another autistic cosplayer finds directness overwhelming and prefers gentle, gradual communication. The assumption that lessons learned from one friendship automatically apply to others can become another form of stereotype, albeit a more nuanced one.

The most important transferable lesson from genuine friendship might not be specific information about how to interact with people who have particular disabilities but rather a more general understanding: that individual experience varies enormously, that assumptions are often wrong, that asking is better than assuming, and that people are experts on their own needs and experiences. These meta-lessons apply broadly while still respecting individual variation.

Building Opportunities for Friendship

The challenge for the Malaysian cosplay community involves creating more opportunities for sustained interaction between members with and without disabilities, moving beyond brief convention exchanges toward genuine friendship. Brief encounters at conventions, while better than no interaction, cannot provide the sustained exposure necessary to move beyond stereotypes and assumptions.

Genuine friendship requires time, repeated interaction, and contexts that support depth of engagement. A five-minute conversation in a crowded convention hall cannot accomplish what months of regular interaction can. The community must create structures and opportunities that facilitate longer-term connection—smaller group meetups between conventions, collaborative projects that require sustained engagement, online spaces where ongoing conversation can develop.

These structures cannot force friendship to develop, but they can create conditions where it becomes more likely. When people spend time together working on shared projects, planning group cosplays, or simply hanging out between conventions, they have opportunities to move beyond surface-level interaction toward genuine connection. Some of these connections will develop into real friendships, providing the foundation for the kind of individualized understanding that counters stereotypes.

In Part 7, we examine the practical challenges of spreading understanding throughout the broader community—exploring why peer education has limitations and what structural factors make community-wide sophisticated understanding difficult to achieve.

Maya Sharma

Hello. I’m Maya Sharma, a psychology student with a deep curiosity for how people think, feel, and navigate the world. Writing is my way of making sense of it all—sharing my thoughts, challenging perspectives, and reflecting on the moments that shape us.

“Life isn’t just about having the answers; it’s about asking the right questions, and I’m here to explore them, one article at a time.!”