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I made something

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candylabs_mtl on ig

#stim

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Next up: the heron! Another from this series.

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#pokemon

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Different anon here! I have a character who's blindness is incident related, but it's been several years since then and the story isn't heavily focused on his trauma (or at least that specific trauma, as he has others that aren't related to blindness)

This was before I knew injury-based blindness was a harmful/potentially harmful trope though, so now I'm worried that I'll have to rewrite his backstory entirely to avoid writing about experiences I don't have, or pushing any harmful tropes that are already pushed far too much.

What do you think? Could I still use that as part of his story without focusing too much on that specific traumatic event, or do you think it's better for me to discard it entirely?

The Accident Narrative/Going Blind Through Trauma trope and How to Make It Better - (I’m just calling it that because I don’t know if this thing has a name)

My problem with this trope - and the problem many people have with it- is very specific. I’ll try to break it down for you so it is easier to understand. My problem is basically with the execution.

Characters go blind unrealistically often from traumatic accidents in media. Mainly because it creates a lot of drama, which is fair, if cheap. It is also a good story starter if the story will be about them being all sad that they’re blind. These stories usually focus heavily on the blind part rather than the trauma part, and they paint blindness as the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Including death. Sometimes the character grows out of this feeling and sometimes they don’t.

The way you portray this is what changes the narrative.

I like that your story takes place several years after the incident although how well it is done will depend on the portrayal of the resulting blindness. Blindness can be tough, but avoiding considering the incident a tragedy that ended his vision could help. Not having too much of a woe-is-me attitude toward it will also help. Starting the story years after the incident creates beneficial distance.

With this in mind, the story won’t be - about - him going blind and then adapting and possibly being sad, possibly not sad about it. That would be a type of story that is probably best left to blind people who lost their vision later in life. Your story avoids this issue by starting the story well after the incident occurred. When you said you didn’t want to write about something you hadn’t experienced, to tell a story that wasn’t yours to tell, this is what you want to avoid. If you aren’t writing about going blind/being blind, you’re good, at least for this question.

So, you have avoided writing about the experience of going blind (and having that be the focus of your story) and starting the story at another time so your character can have some distance from his trauma. Your story will not be showing your character tragically losing his sight and learning to adapt. -dramatic sniffle-

The other part of this ask that really works for me is the part about focusing on different traumas. It sounds like the character is going to have more to them, and the idea of the Blindness Trauma being not as significant as other more recent traumas sounds good and true to life. It also takes the focus away from any implications of blindness as particularly tragic and all-encompassing. Your character will expirience different things just as anyone else would. Focusing more heavily on other things in his life is a good idea. That, coupled with the distance from the initial traumatic incident makes it okay with me.

What else can you do?

Here are a few other options for you or other readers who are writing incident-related blindness:

1. Have them focus on the traumatic incident itself rather than the resulting blindness.

Yes, going blind can change your life. It can be scary and someone may need to grieve their vision loss as they would any other major change. However, this doesn’t have to be the dramatic take-up-an-entire story thing either.

If you decided to write flashbacks, you can show the character mostly dealing with trauma, with blindness as a reminder of it. This puts the focus on the traumatic incident itself healing from trauma rather than trying to heal from blindness. When sighted people write about this, it comes out as awkward, not relatable, and impossible to separate voice-type things - like worrying about never being able to marry - from the authors own opinion or worries about blindness.

Focusing on the trauma of say, extreme injury can help with that. It is important to make a distinction for the reader, who usually goes in not knowing much about blindness and conceptualizing it as one of the worst things that could happen to them. Make it as clear as you can that the character is upset due to trauma rather than being devastated their life is over because they are blind.

2. Have the trauma happen off-screen / have them not remember it much due to young age

It sounds like this is also what you’re going to do. You could mention the traumatic incident briefly, without too many dramatic details. A few descriptive sentences should be enough. You could write it for reference and only take a few samples from it you liked. This keeps the focus away from drama for drama’s sake. It also disrupts the usual narrative, putting you farther away from the Accident Narrative or trope. You could simply have had the character be too young to remember much detail.

3. Add more blind characters

This one is good for any story. You should always trace your logic for topics like the one you presented or consider how to do things better, but one easy way to avoid readers thinking all blind people are like your character (which they might), you can add another blind character or more who were born blind or went blind at a very young age. Who don’t struggle with being blind generally. This exposes your readers to more ideas of blind people.

When your story is standing on the line between nuanced character and meeting a stereotype, you should absolutely have at least one other if not a few blind characters. In fact, I would be surprised if a story like this didn’t have other blind characters and, if I were reading this story randomly, I might even feel less forgiving or open to what was different about the Accident Narrative this time.

Thank you for asking this question. It is kind of challenging to answer and I had to rewrite this a few times. Basically, you want to do what you can to disrupt the usual portrayals of blindness because there are actually so few and most are made by people who aren’t blind or even disabled. You cannot make this trope or stereotype go away, but you can try to shake it up. Because this can be done differently, to avoid writing about adapting the tragic blindness, I am ok with this type of story.

I don’t know if this one is harmful exactly, but it is frustrating to see and can certainly lead to some harmful ideas, such as blindness only being tragic even when someone was born blind. I have a review coming up for a book called Blind that might be helpful, as well as a post called Tropes I’m Tired Of that I hope will help. Your ask definitely helped me consider more ways this trope could be made more bearable and concentrate on what exactly I dislike about it.

All that said, this is not a post encouraging people to use this narrative in all their projects. Only if you feel like it is necessary and fits the character. I would like for this trope to be less common than being born blind or going blind in a way that isn’t so dramatic and, possibly, abrupt. When most characters go blind through traumatic accidents it contributes to people’s idea that blindness is not only traumatic for anyone at any age, but also cannot be anything but a tragedy.

I really hope this helps. Of course, I would really encourage a few different sensitivity readers with this story. Just to get different perspectives. There is another blind person who also offers sensitivity reading at @sensitivityreaders and it might help to get them or someone else, in addition to me. Because I would love to read this sometime.

-BlindBeta

#long post #another great explanation from this blog

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greetings from Earth 🌍 there's no place like home!!

#earth day

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[Video Description: A TikTok showing user @ jaynoen in their car, talking and gesturing while while driving. Above their head is text reading: (When you say English words while speaking another language.) End Video Description.]

I will open the fucking TikTok app just to watch this video multiple times

#cursing #fyi if you're someone who corrects an English speaker speaking English #when they say CROW-SAUNT or something #you're just as annoying as the asparagus guy #let people use loan words

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Guest comments temporarily disabled

Due to an influx of abusive spam comments, we've temporarily turned off the ability to leave comments while logged out. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to have guest comments back on soon! (16:06 UTC April 21, 2024)

#this is just sad #I've never seen them have to do this before

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this is a niche one but instead of "they would not fuckin say that" it's "they would not fucking use American sign language".

ASL is not the only sign language. two british characters in your fanfiction would not be using ASL. England in fact has its own kind of sign language, BSL, that forms a sign family with many other sign languages around the world.

ASL isn't even the original member of its sign family, it comes from french sign language. do you know sign languages aren't related to spoken languages? that's an important one! it's not a direct 1:1 with people speaking English around the world. people in other countries don't learn ASL just in case they run into an usamerican or Canadian (who do often use it)

i know the entire world is the USA or whatever and sign languages do sometimes borrow from ASL for signs they don't have, but please be aware that there are other sign languages and families in the world that are not in fact ASL.

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Saw some cool moodboards for some other identities, so I thought I make an autistic bisexual woman moodboard

#aesthetics

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#eid mubarak

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day 1534

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Pearl 🥺💝

Description: Pearl (Steven Universe) with short pastel pink hair, has whitish skin with light shades of blue and a pearl in the center of her forehead. She has her head down and eyes closed, holding with appreciation the Rose's Quartz sword, whose large, hot pink color. She is wearing a pink dress with blue sleeves, on the skirt there are some roses printed on it.

#steven universe

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Eid Mubarak to all those who celebrate 🌷💕 I hope this marks a turning point for u and invites fortune and blessing into ur wonderful life :)

#eid mubarak

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Experiencing an eclipse

Shadows grow weird

The hair on the back of your neck starts to prickle

Minutes before the totality hits the birds go silent and the bugs SCREAM

The danger sense in the back of your brain says something is w-r-o-n-g

Logically, you know the darkness is coming, you can track the moon’s path over the sun by the shadows on the ground and through your glasses

Totality still hits like a physical blow. The sky goes dark.

People scream, people cry.

The Sun is gone

It’s a devastating black void in the sky where warmth has always been. Horror and jubilation follow, people trying to grab photos and each other

Just as equilibrium settles, the moon shifts and the first piercing ray of sunlight is blinding.

The sun, the light returns, the sky becomes blue again.

People scatter, intent on returning home as quickly as they can.

Birds start singing again.

The shadows return to normal.

The eclipse is over.

#solar eclipse #poetry

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The most rare, top-tier eclipse photo would be the Solar Earth Eclipse, but the Apollo 12 crew's attempt to capture it was marred by camera shake. They said it looked spectacular, though.

Types of Eclipse Photo [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

Types of Eclipse Photo

[Eclipse during totality] The standard

[Partial eclipse with lighter sky] The partial

[Two Cueballs and Ponytail looking and pointing at the sky] The reaction shot

[Eclipse during totality with red "ribbons" around the Moon] The fancy lens

[A blurry ring of light in the center] The focus issues

[The rear of an SUV] The traffic jam

[A dark circle on Earth's surface] The astronaut

[A gray cover of clouds] The "frustratedly looking up the cloud situation in Australia for 2028"

#solar eclipse