Not All Magical Girls Were Good Upon Receiving Their Powers. Some Let It Get To Their Heads. That's When

Writing A Blind/Visually Impaired Character: Canes, Guide Dogs, O&M

Wow, back in June I decided to take a few months break from blogging to recharge and focus on my mental health. About a month ago I began writing this specific post, slowly and in stages because of how demanding, detailed, and long it is.

I’m not sure when I planned to come back. I have about 200 posts with tags and image description in my drafts folder, waiting to be queued, but I wanted to finish this guide before I fully came back.

Come back with a bang, right?

But this blog, and specifically, my Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character  guide, has gotten so much traffic and support that I felt incredibly motivated to come back now.

So I finished the guide, and now here it is. It’s been a year+ in the making. Since the very beginning of this writing advice series about writing blind characters, I’ve promised to write a guide specifically about canes, guide dogs, O&M, and other accessibility measures the blind community relies on. 

In fact, if you look at my master post for this guide (now pinned at the first post on my blog) you’ll find that it was reserved as Part Four, even as other guides and additions were added over the last year.

In this post I’ll be explaining 

What Orientation and Mobility (O&M) is

How one learns O&M

About canes, from different types of canes and their parts, as well as how to use a cane. 

I will be explaining the sensory experiences of using a cane and how to describe it in narrative. 

I will include small mannerisms long-time cane uses might develop. 

At the very end will be a section on guide dogs, but this will be limited to research because I have no personal experience with guide dogs, being a cane user.

Disclaimer: I am an actual visually impaired person who has been using a cane for nearly three years and has been experiencing vision loss symptoms for a few years longer than that. This guide is based on both my experiences and my research. My experiences are not universal however because every blind person has a unique experience with their blindness

Continuar lendo

do NOT download persona 5 royal to your computer. it will install a virus called persona 5 royal

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~~The lone star who sought the heavens~~

A fanart of Sunday because I loved his character and I'm excited for his release <3

bust... or maybe i'll take it all!

Theo Hair

For all frames

Basegame compatible

24 EA swatches

For teen to elder

Custom thumbnail

Hat compatible

Shadow map

Specular map

Normal map

Disallowed for random

Compatible with Universal Hair Overlay

Read my Terms of Use before downloading!

Download here

Public release: 18 July 2024

the kids share one braincell and its purpose is to help people

AHHHHHH

Apparently nobody did this meme with them yet (as far as I'm aware) sooooo here

When you see yourself in trash (Gachiakuta Discussion)

So with the positive reception of my recent thinkpiece, I wanted to make good on my promise that I’d post more. And this has kinda been one I’ve been wanting to do for a while. But due to the deeply personal nature of it, I wanted to really give it the time it deserved to come together.

This is going to be a post about Gachiakuta, which if my multiple posts on it haven’t been an indicator, I'm kinda a big fan. But what’s more, I really wanted to talk about why Gachiakuta speaks to me more in depth.

Background 

So for those who don’t know, Gachiakuta is a weekly manga series by mangaka Kei Urana. Urana is a former assistant of the student of the Soul Eater and Fire Force creator, Atsushi Okubo. This series premiered shortly after Okubo’s Fire Force finished up, and stars a young boy named Rudo who lives in the slum area of a place called “The Sphere” (Or Heaven depending on the translation). Rudo has a habit of stealing from waste deposit sites and repairing broken items he finds. He lives with his adopted father Regeto after his biological father was sentenced to “The Abyss” for murder. The Abyss is a gaping chasm where all of the Sphere’s trash and prisoners are dumped. 

Rudo is a somewhat surly child, and noticeably struggles with properly expressing his emotions despite the fact he is a highly emotional person. Smiling in particular is a struggle for him. Rudo one day comes to find Regto killed by a mysterious masked man, and blamed for this crime. Rudo is sentenced to the Abyss where he cries in anger he will return and kill everyone here. In the Abyss, Rudo is met by monsters made of trash and people devoted to fighting them, the Cleaners (Or Janitors depending on the translation). This fighting force of magic garbage men use the power of a “Giver” to empower items dear to them known as Jinki. With Rudo discovering that he can do the same with his gloves given to him by Regeto. Now he’ll work with the Cleaners killing trash monsters as he unravels the mystery of who killed his adoptive father and how he’ll escape the Abyss.

And it has been the newest manga series in the last four years that has not only made me feel hyped but await every chapter since its release.

Now if everything I said previously sounded like “well that sounds like a fairly straight forward if somewhat interestingly flavored revenge action manga. What makes it special?” Well then we’re going have to talk about Rudo. 

Rudo

So Gachiakuta is a series with a lot of weirdos in it and some unconventional story structures to it (and we’ll touch on that later) but I think the character who embodies the core of this series is its MC, Rudo. 

On the surface Rudo is a character that could feel at home with any number of shonen manga protags. Really expressive, yells a lot, spiky hair, and a power that’s kinda special amongst its power system. Basically, If Deku from MHA was a bit more angry and sleep deprived, you probably think he and Rudo were the same person on the surface. And for the most part, Rudo seemed to be that way, an angry kid out for revenge who treasured the last remaining gift he received from his foster father. Yet then we get to chapter 15 of Gachiakuta. A truly special chapter. 

When Griss, Rudo’s teammate for this mission, was run through with claws by the villain, Jabber Wongar, Rudo seems to suffer some for of PTSD as the world goes hazy and he sees Griss as Regeto, stabbed and bleeding. We cut to Rudo as a child in Regto’s care and there, Rudo is banging his head against a wall to the point blood is coming out. 

When Regto asks why Rudo would do this, the only thing Rudo can describe is how he has nothing. He has these feelings he doesn’t know how to describe yet he believes he’s nothing from the abuse he suffered at the hands of parents. All he has to really express it it this sort of frustration. While Rudo’s parents being murders may have been a lot for any child, Rudo carries literal scars given to him by his father. His hands peeled and scared and burnt black. The pain in his hands stops when he wears the gloves Regto gave him. 

And when Regto wants Rudo to find something to focus his passion into, the thing that catches Rudo’s attention the most is a broken mannequin. Rudo cries letting out those feelings he said he couldn’t describe. Wanting to fix something and can’t believe it was tossed away because it was “a little broken.” At that moment, Regto realizes something about Rudo. He sees himself in those same objects that weren’t valued and tossed away.

So this is where I get to one of the things about Gachiakuta and Rudo in particular that speaks to me. Rudo, to me, is an example of a neurodivergent child and the text actually bothers to focus on how this affects his life. Now I know the moment I’ve said that there will be a lot of people who want me to explain, and the first thing is, no the manga doesn’t come out and say that Rudo is on the spectrum. But rather it lays a pretty explicit analogy to someone who may not be typical in some regard mentally or emotionally. I know in the space of neurodivergent individuals representation is… difficult. Not just to find in the media, but also represented in a way that isn’t just “they’re a super genius.” Because there are many many forms of neurodivergence and how the manifest can be different for many individuals. Someone with ADHD may have their life affected in ways different than someone diagnosed with Autism. This is where I think it's very important for me to say, I’m just one guy on the spectrum. I’m speaking from my personal experience but you shouldn’t take my opinion as gospel. This is just me and my experiences. And my personal reading of this  

So when I say, a “mentally different character” in the media can be a tricky tightrope to walk, I mean it. Wanting there to be a positive representation for a community that may not get representation, but also not wanting to be like some monolithic depiction of what living with one of these conditions may be like. And there are plenty of ways where this could go very wrong (Anyone remember the time Aquaman cured Autism?). So when the text can’t just say “I am X” it's not uncommon for the readers to begin to see or relate to how a character may act. Speaking of how they act, in the case of anime and manga another “complication” can occur in the fact that many of these characters can act… well whacky and that’s treated as most acceptable in the universe. Whereas in real life, its likely anywhere from Gon to Goku would get side eye with their behavior. And thus you have the basis for plenty of head canons, one prominently being a character’s place on the spectrum. 

Let's take any character, say Rill Boismortier from the series Black Clover. He’s a relatively second character in the series with an aptitude for art magic, who had locked himself in his room isolating himself from others till his butler reached him and now he’s a very eccentric, excitable, outgoing character. From the fact that he has a fixation on art to things like making sounds that could be read as vocal stimming, Rill could be read as an autistic character.

Or how about we look at one of the more memetic takes of the internet and all the jokes that Fern and Frieren from Frieren: Beyond the Journey’s End are autistic. This joke mainly comes from how in this world everything has a cool, somewhat mellow vibe with many people acting very muted. With Frieren herself struggling with making a distinction in the passage of time thanks to her elven aging and trying to understand the human condition. And Fern also a relatively reserved and subdued individual only really expresses her feeling a sensation of frustration or annoyance through “Kawaii pouting” puffing out her cheeks.

There are plenty more examples, but I wanted to illustrate that there are characters in manga and anime that I believe-yes, someone with neurodivergence could identify with, however, would I go as far as to say that this was the writer's original intention? Well choosing to err on the side of caution, I'm going to guess not likely. Someone could easily say, “you’re reading too much into it. There is nothing in the canon that outright says that. Rill is just a joke character, Frieren is a completely different species so it can’t really be neuro-atypical from a human standpoint, Fern’s pouting is just a gap moe trope.” And to be honest, I don’t necessarily think people holding these beliefs would be wrong. Nor do I wish to imply that if someone sees themselves in one of these characters that means they’re on the spectrum.

I'm saying there’s nothing wrong with either option. If you are someone neurodivergent and you see yourself in someone like Rill, that’s great. If you are someone who isn’t neurodivergent but still sees themselves in someone like Rill, that’s also great. The point I’m trying to make is that it may be unintentional, but a neurodivergent person seeing a neurodivergent story inside a specific character can happen and in many ways offer insights into the character.

And for someone like me who has spent a long time coming to grips with how my atypicality has affected my identity, Rudo’s story hit me. Hit me in a way I don’t think many series have. Rudo is a character who shows a fixation on trash, particularly broken pieces of trash. His old wounds he covers and just the feelings on this specific piece of clothing is able to make the feelings of his wounds go away. And just the way he described having emotion inside, but not being able to properly express it to the point he was doing self harm, it tore me up inside. 

Made even more dramatic by the fact that Rudo is having this flashback being triggered by Griss being stabbed. Griss is a guy Rudo has known for a day who is shown to be a cool guy, but most importantly, when Rudo spent his welcome party sulking in a corner all tied up in his shell, only for Griss to ask him about his future. Rudo truly was feeling like he was losing a fatherly figure again in front of him

This was one of the moments that in my mind showed me the sort of direction this series wanted to go in with Rudo. Edgy, dark, cool, and stylistic revenge series in manga have existed for years. In fact, they’ll exist long after Gachiakuta and myself have expired. Many of these series can vary on the portrayal of their MC, conflicted, ready to embrace destruction, righteous in their pursuit, yet Gachiakuta has been unique for me, seeing Rudo have all the hallmarks for a vengeful story yet people always come to speak with him on his behavior. 

Not in a sort of guidance counselor way, but more in a natural way of trying to make this kid who has had a life where he hasn’t had to properly think about/experience certain things life can throw at you and they want him to improve. From telling him it's okay to not know what he wants to do in the future, to letting him know it's okay to make mistakes, to learning how to properly have a conversation and connect with others. I think a lot of these moments can feel like sweet nothings, but for me I saw it as a part of growing up. Or rather something I wanted growing up. I’ve experienced many moments of my life where I felt lost not in small part to the fact it felt like no one could meet me on my ground. And something about Gachiakuta is the attempt that almost every character has made trying to reach Rudo and show him a form of empathy. And as the series has gone on that empathy has really changed. He went from a kid not understanding what was wrong about saying “I'm only working with you till fulfill my goal!,” demanding cooperation from others, to actively trying to ask for help when hears of an opportunity to come closer to his goal. 

This sort of vulnerability I think was present in his moment screaming his revenge. He’s visibly crying. Despite all the bluster and crassness, there’s clearly a frustrated and overwhelmed boy who has been condemned by a society that brands him “unclean.” This is also where I should mention Urana is an absolute master with art and expressions. Making everyone feel so alive. Rudo’s faces are an absolute highlight. Despite a person who seems set up to have a chip on his shoulder, he may be one of the wackiest in just how big he can let his emotions go. Which ties into our next part.

Zodyl and the Watchman Series

Now I'm sure you’re wondering, “Arkus, you said that this manga hasn’t hard confirmed Rudo is actually neurodivergent, yet you say the text makes the analogy so does someone finally say it?” Well to answer that, I’m gonna need to talk about the main villain of this series and the tools he’s after, The Watchman series.

Our seemingly main antagonist of the series is a man named Zodyl Typhon, leader of the organization The Raiders (Or the Vandals depending on the translation) a group of evil givers who seem to be devoted to the destruction of The Sphere. As they living in a world where the natural order is simply that they are a people who have garbage raining down upon them. Polluting them, crushing them, and people of the Abyss have gradually become accustomed to it all. Zodyl wants to shock the system and he wishes to get his hands on all the various powerful Jink known as the “Watchman series.” So far it's known that only Rudo’s gloves, Amo’s boots, and Zodyl’s coat are part of this set. 

Zodyl is depicted as an amoral, somewhat sociopathic person, with intense eyes, viewing people as experiments to test his theories, and showing practically no emotion. He describes each piece of the Watchman series as containing extremely powerful emotions in them. A normal person couldn’t use these items with going mad due to these emotions. Yet people like Rudo and Zodyl haven't gone mad. Well that’s being they’re not like others.

In one of the most painful visual analogies, Zodyl describes that in this world there are people born missing pieces that every other human is born with. This leaves them as something sort of empty. WIth Rudo knowing exactly what he’s talking about. This was already hinted at by Amo who says wearing her Watchman boots feels as though she’s a toy that had a new battery inside. Zodyl doesn’t think that missing something fundamental is a bad thing though, in his opinion not being born with it has made him a vessel for this power. 

I once again cannot say with a hundred percent certainty that Kei Urana was intentionally channeling the experiences of those who may be told “they’re not like others because they were born atypical” but it's so hard for me to not read it that way. Especially the part where Zodyl rejects the idea that there’s anything wrong with this. He’s not wrong for how he’s born, look at all the cool stuff he can do now. While Rudo stands there and thinks about how isolated he felt from everyone else. It's easy to see these as two very valid responses to someone with a mental health diagnosis, lamenting how this puts you at odds with others and how being different in this way makes it harder for you to connect. While the other rejects needing the validation of others, there isn’t a problem. 

Once again, no one just flat out says it, but so much of the subtext is basically there in your face in regards to Watchman and Zodyl’s speech. But the fact this power is only wielded by something that is described as a missing piece. With the image of a heart in pieces. To me, the emphasis placed on the value of one’s emotional and mental capacity as something that can be filled, like its just so out there how can I not see something there? 

Well maybe its because I want to?

Artistic Interpretation 

Look, I'm not gonna to give you a dry lecture on the value of artistic interpretation. I think we’re all mature enough that multiple people can have multiple different interpretations of a single world. With art being something that lends itself to being read in a variety of ways. I'm not making this post to delegitimize any interpretation.

Rather I wanted to come all the way back to the pin I put in when mentioning the unconventional story structures. Now it should come to no one’s surprise that the woman who was an assistant and student of the guy who made Soul Eater makes some bizarre choices. Not the least of which being the characters and tone.

No, rather I wanna touch on something that I find Urana and Okubo do better than a lot of people which is visual interpretation. Both utilize the visual aspect of this visual medium to make some points. But rather, both of them allow these visuals to hang out there and allow you the reader to come to your own interpretation of this. 

This type of storytelling in my opinion can force the audience to actually engage with the work in a deeper meaningful way. While some would argue that it leaves things open in a way that may never truly be satisfying. I think in the case of Gachiakuta it has less of that tha an Okubo work, but there are plenty of things I do believe Urana leaves out there for you to read as you will. 

When I see her going out of her way to make a doll with their heart missing and a man describing a feeling of them missing, Uruana is not expressly saying anything, but allowing us the audience to decide how we read it. I'm certain she has her own way of viewing this story, but I do appreciate that she’s allowed Gachiakuta to be a series where we are allowed some creative liberties. Especially in the fact this is a weekly shonen manga. A demographic I feel often can suffer from needing to make everything somewhat obvious in its meaning or intent. 

But Urana really knows how to capture this sort of vibe. Allow the art to speak for itself and I find myself having to put some of myself in the series when I read and interact with it. So while I’m sure there will be people who think I have basically convinced them of nothing and that this might all be reading to deep, I do at least want to point out that Urana herself has at least allowed for me to make these connections on my own and I think that is worth something at least on her part as a creative.

Conclusion

So yeah what was that all about? Welp like I said this was to be a more personal thinkpiece. One where I wanted to work through my own feelings on why this series had me captivated. Also it's possibly my attempt to broaden the discussion of Gachiakuta. 

Despite the fact many have made the prediction its gonna be a “big deal” it really isn’t. At least by pure sales wise. Nothing bad, but nothing remarkable at the time of writing this. Honestly its doing much better than a series that’s not on the extremely accessible SJ app. It’s a good series but it may just always be underground. 

Every influencer wants to be on the ground floor, whether it's this, Red Hood, Kagurabachi, Nue’s Exorcist, Astro Royale, Mama Yuyu, Centuria, etc. I get that hype and memes are a powerful thing in this internet consumer world. But I do want a series that may be big or important one day to touch on things that make it good beyond hype and anticipation. 

And for me that is what I got with Gachiakuta. There’s an element to it that I haven’t really felt in manga in other media. And the fact it could make me feel that… that’s special to me. I know I’ve talked about some heavy topics and I do hope I was as respectful as I possibly could be. Opening up like this was hard for me. 

As I do truly love this series and hoped I could illustrate why it resonated with me, perhaps it resonated with a lot of people who can see themselves in this one trashy boy.

I hope everyone reading can have that sort of character they see themselves in, and if you enjoyed please like or reblog as it tells me you'd be interested in reading more

Writing Blind/Low Vision Characters

Time for another one of these I have decided! As always, this is based on personal experience with blind low vision people, classwork, and research. I do wear glasses, but I am not blind/low vision and this is not my lived experience. Please feel free to question, correct, and comment, as long as you are respectful! Thanks so much for reading :) On to the good stuff!

Vocab

Blind describes a person who has very little to no vision. This can be written with a lowercase or capital b (blind or Blind). Blind does not always mean no vision. It is medically defined as having vision of less than 20/200 in the better eye. Someone can be able to distinguish color, light and dark, or shapes, and still be blind.

blind refers to the medical condition of having little to no vision.

Blind (note the capital b) refers to the sociocultural experience of being a nonseeing person in a predominantly vision-based society. This distinction is newer and less common than with the Deaf community, but is becoming more popular, particularly with DeafBlind people. As always, the important thing is respecting what people identify as and want to be called

Visually impaired is a term that covers the spectrum of vision differences.

The term does not include disorders that affect one or more of the “basic psychological processes.” What this means is that though vision or the use of visual information may be impaired, if the nature of that impairment is not related to the structure of the eye, it would not be described as “visual impairment.” Examples include perceptual disabilities, brain injuries, or dyslexia.

B/VI is an acronym, standing for Blind/Visually Impaired, that can be used to refer to the community as a whole.

Low vision describes a person who is not fully blind, but whose level of vision is significantly impaired. More technically, this refers to vision that cannot be corrected through medical or surgical procedures, or conventional eyeglasses.

Legally blind (in the USA) refers to an individual whose vision is affected beyond what glasses can correct. This is a bit difficult to describe in writing but: If the strongest prescription possible cannot bring that person’s vision up to 20/20, they are legally blind. This is not the same as having no vision.

Deafblind or DeafBlind refers to an individual with any combination of vision and Deaf gain/hearing loss, ranging from mild to profound Deaf gain/hearing loss and from low vision to total blindness.

Visual acuity refers to clarity of vision and is the source of numbers like 20/20, 20/30, etc. This is another one that’s weird to describe so stick with me. My vision is about 20/40 (last I went to the eye doctor lol) which means that I see at 20 feet what someone with 20/20 vision sees at 20 feet. The top number is always 20, and refers to the 20/20 standard, while the lower number describes the visual acuity of the person in question. If their visual acuity is 20/10, that means they see at ten feet what a person with 20/20 vision would see at 20 feet. If they see at 20 feet what a person with 20/20 vision would see at 200 feet, they are medically considered blind.

Visual functioning is (basically) a measure of how well a person can use visual information in completing tasks. This is assessed a number of different ways.

Residual vision is another way of referring to the functional vision of a person with low vision or blindness. 

I’m not going to go through all the different kinds of blindness and eye conditions, because that would take too long, and this is already a pretty long vocab section. But there are lots of different kinds of conditions and disabilities affecting eyes and vision! Please explore them :)

Blind Culture?

Is there Blind culture in the same way that there is Deaf culture? Difficult to say. It’s an ongoing debate, and I’m going to briefly address each side, and then leave it up to you to research further how this might affect your character and your story.

Historically, the blind community have rejected the idea that blind individuals have a shared culture. The reasons for this are very well outlined in this letter, which I highly recommend reading. To summarize it here: Blind people are not isolated from sighted people in the same way that Deaf people have been historically isolated from hearing people. The reason for this is generally acknowledged to be the lack of, or existence of, a language barrier. Blind people use the same language as the sighted people around them, while Deaf people have used signed language as opposed to spoken language. Where no language barrier exists, this position argues, no separate culture forms or needs to form.

On the other hand - there are certainly experiences that are shared by people across the visually impaired spectrum that fully sighted people do not have. Blind or low vision people access and interpret the world in different ways. There is, analogous to Deaf communities, a history of blind or low vision children being educated separately from sighted children, and of discrimination throughout the lifespan that has isolated visually impaired people from sighted society.

What does all of this mean? It means that there is less consensus about what it means to be visually impaired, and what values or traditions unite that experience. It means that there is less of a framework for how your visually impaired character might relate to other visually impaired characters or their broader community. I highly encourage further exploration within your own story, as well as making sure that whatever choices you’re making about the character’s relationship to their vision is grounded in conscious choice and research. Just because there are no easy answers about a collective blind culture does not mean that a blind character can be written the same as a sighted character but without the vision.

Assistive Technology

Assistive technology (as a reminder, this is not specific to visual impairments) refers to pretty much anything used to make the lives of disabled people easier.

Official American government definition is:  “Any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of children with disabilities. The term does not include a medical device that is surgically implanted, or the replacement of such device.”

Braille is a tactile system of writing in which raised dots represent letters, numbers, and punctuation. More on this later.

A screen reader is a software program that either reads written text on a screen aloud, or produces a Braille display.

Speech-to-text programs are software programs that…convert speech to text.

Text-to-speech or TTS are programs that convert written text into spoken speech. These were also commonly used on landline phones by d/Deaf people before text messaging became commonplace. 

Seeing Eye dogs are service dogs that are trained to help their blind owners move and navigate independently.

White canes are white canes with a red stripe. These are both navigational tools for B/VI people, and used to communicate to others that the person carrying it is B/VI. Accordingly, it is illegal in some US states to carry a white cane if you are not visually impaired. Only 2-8% of B/VI people actually use them, though, and it requires dedicated practice to use them effectively. They are designed to vibrate differently when they come in contact with different types of surfaces, and proper practice can help cane users distinguish between different obstacles. 

Braille and the Braille Literacy Crisis

Braille, as mentioned before, is a tactile way of writing, which helps B/VI people read and write effectively. I’m not going to do an exhaustive explanation, but essentially, a different combination of raised dots represents each letter of the written alphabet. The sentence I’m writing, rewritten in Braille, would have the exact same words and structure, but would be expressed in raised dots. There are abbreviated forms that are less commonly used and may be used by more skilled readers or those reading texts with specialized, space-saving abbreviations.

Less than 10 percent of legally blind in the US can read Braille, and only 10 percent of legally blind children are currently learning it. This is a huge problem. Over 70% of blind adults are unemployed, and up to 50% of blind students drop out of high school. There is a strong, scientifically supported link between literacy and employment.

Technology should supplement literacy, not replace it. Screen readers and text-to-speech are great tools, but are not an adequate replacement for literacy.

Reading English text is not always the best possible method of reading. The misguided belief that reading Braille is isolating and stigmatizing leads many to push reading text over reading Braille, even when this is inappropriate or even impossible. Some children achieve higher levels of literacy through reading Braille.

Implications for your writing: Can your character read Braille? Why, or why not? What impact does their illiteracy have on their life?

Rethink

I’ve tried a couple different headings here cuz as always, don’t want to tell people unequivocally not to write things. But these are things you should really think hard about before you include them in your writing.

So, things to rethink:

Overused tropes for B/VI characters:

Blind seer/blind mystic

Innocent, pure, noble, sweet etc.

Bumbling oaf B/VI person

Feeling people’s faces as a way to “know what they look like”

Does not happen in real life, more of a stereotype/sighted person’s fantasy

“Helen Keller didn’t exist” TikTok conspiracy theory (not a writing thing but a pet peeve I can’t not mention)

This is ableist. The only reason people think she wasn’t able to accomplish things is because she was deafblind and that’s fucking bullshit. It is not a cute silly TikTok joke. It’s ableism, and it’s disgusting.

Blindness negating power/ability.

This can be anything from an actual superpower (X-Men) to a technological advance (Star Trek) to a supernatural ability (Avatar: The Last Airbender.)

In real life, this could be having someone with other senses that compensate to an unrealistic degree, or echolocation, which, while it proves successful for some people, is hard, takes a ton of effort, and doesn’t work for everyone.

Resources/Recommendations

Please add recommendations in reblogs and comments! I really haven’t watched a lot of TV or movies that have blind characters, which sucks :/

Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law By Haben Girma is an autobiography of a deafblind woman that is incredibly well written and discusses independence and activism.

The World I Live In by Helen Keller describes life as a deafblind individual and is really powerful and beautiful.