Fuck It I'm Taking Back The Pyro Tags And Flooding Them With Info Posts Myself I'm Tired Of This Shit.

Just for once I’d like to tell the gate agents and flight attendants that my folding wheelchair is going into the onboard closet and not have them tell me there’s “no room”. Bitch that’s a wheelchair closet, not a “your bags” closet. Move your damn bags where they belong.

Things I Want to See More of/Less of in Blind Characters

Format borrowed from WritingWithColor]

Note: This is not an excuse to harass blind/visually impaired/low vision writers writing in the ‘Less of’ category. You’ll see I have included several instances where a story should be written by a blind writer. You should also consider that blind writers have a lot more insight and flexibility about what they can write than you do, by nature of being blind themselves and therefore able to portray things in a more nuanced way. They cannot misrepresent themselves.]

Here are some things I personally would like to see in stories about blind characters!

-Characters with varying types of blindness.

I wanted to include more information at the request of my followers who felt confused by some of the wording, so I have edited this post as of 2022.

Types of blindness include: cortical blindness, progressive vision loss, blind spots, total blindness (meaning no light perception), characters with only light and shadow perception (note that some people also refer to themselves as ‘totally blind’ or ‘totally blind but with some light perception’ for ease of communication outside of medical contexts, but totally blind generally refers to people without any light perception at all), eyes with differing kinds of blindness (partial blindness, total blindness in one eye but not the other, etc), characters with low vision in both eyes, characters with prosthetic eyes. Keep in mind that visual acuity is measured through a person’s best eye with best correction.

-Blind main characters. Blind heroes and blind villains. Blind love interests!

-Blind characters who are considered attractive or charismatic

-LGBTQ blind characters! Polyamorous blind characters. Blind characters with additional disabilities. Blind characters of color.

-Active blind characters: in sports, martial arts, theatre, nature-y things, and art. Blind characters doing unexpected things. Playing instruments, being competitive, etc. This also applies to jobs.

-To add to the last point: I want to see them using adaptive technology or skills rather than magic that completely erases their disability. So rather than magic that enables someone to read, magic or technology that reads to them, like real-world technologies, or use of Braille.

-Using technology. Using phones, especially modern phones which have more accessibility options. Too many people don’t believe blind people can use phones and if you perpetuate that idea in your modern styled narrative, you need to fix it. Blind people also have radios, TVs, etc, and they do use them.

-Reading and writing in Braille

-Using canes, guide dogs, or a combination of both. Learn the pros and cons of these and maybe include more than one for different characters

-Stories with more than one blind character. Especially stories with blind characters interacting and having a sense of community, perhaps exploring diversity of opinions and ways of navigating the world. One thing I try to show on this blog is that blind people are diverse even in how they interact with their blindness.

-inventions or magic for blind people being invented/developed BY blind people

-acknowledgment of difficulties that blind people face: economic challenges, ableism from family (although stories focusing on this as a plot/theme just might be best left up to blind writers), barriers in transportation due to being unable to drive, lack of accessibility in entertainment and education

Things I Want To See Less Of:

Blind characters: -being portrayed as sad or broken because of blindness

-wanting to be sighted

-hating their glasses or canes

-being innocent, helpless, or unrealistically kind and selfless only because of their blindness

-being portrayed as ungrateful or rude in general but mostly when refusing help they don’t need. Characters like Toph are fine because her attitude has nothing to do with her blindness when refusing to make strangers feel good.

-being portrayed as rich or overly privileged in order to portray the character as spoiled/ungrateful, particularly for refusing unnecessary help or for asking for accessibility. [This worked with Toph because riches and privilege were used to explore different sides of her, such as a more socially competent/powerful side. It is important to remember that many disabled people struggle with income and finding employment due to various factors such as ableism in hiring, transportation difficulties, lack of accessibility in the workplace, changing vision conditions and other resulting health problems.]

-going blind due to accidents or trauma. I want to see this less often, as the leading causes of blindness today are unrelated to tragic accidents/incidents. The leading causes of blindness worldwide, according to the World Health Organization in 2022, are uncorrected refractive errors and cataracts. Workplace accidents, however, are the exception to this according to my research. In instances where you want to write a character going blind due to accidents, incidents, or other traumatic injury, it is helpful to consider how blindness is often portrayed as tragic. Narratives about traumatic accidents can strengthen the idea that blindness itself is inherently traumatic and tragic, even for those who are born blind. It can also increase the misconception that an accident is the most common cause of blindness. Because this idea is so strong, I usually prefer to avoid characters going blind through one-off traumatic accidents, and instead prefer characters going blind through other ways. However, if someone wishes to write characters going blind this way, such as due to a workplace accident, it is helpful to make an effort to separate trauma from the blindness itself where possible, rather than focusing on blindness as trauma throughout the story. These posts may help: one and two.

-avoiding certain words. Blind people do not go out of their way to avoid sight-related expressions unless it is an ironic joke. No one casually says ‘I was listening to a show’ unless it is audio-only. “Listening to a show on TV’ is not a thing unless it was on in the background- ‘watch’ is perfectly acceptable

-blind characters being ‘cured’, at least when they have conditions that cannot be cured completely or at all, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa—and, no, fantasy is not an excuse. The cure narrative is especially common for totally blind characters who have never been able to see, which would require lots of adjustment in real life. Cures also tend to erase blind characters from stories. I feel that stories like this are best left up to blind writers themselves. However, this post may help when writing a blind character’s remaining vision improving, complete with an addition from a person who had visual rehabilitation.

Of course, if you want to try writing some of these things, you are free to do so! I suggest consulting with a few blind people either way. My intention is not to hold anyone back, but to make people think. Many of my readers ask questions I had not considered and it is fantastic to engage with people thinking on this post and how to make some of these things work well in their stories.

I was thinking maybe I'd do a couple audio clips of me talking to kind of demonstrate what some speech disabilities can sound like, one of me just talking and one reciting a few scripted lines from work.

Oh Im a compulsive liar and it just never really occured to me that there are other compulsive liars? Like I knew logically that there are- but I just felt like I was different because I was lying about little things, not cheating on someone or something. Idk lol. I liked your post about it

Oh, well I’m happy my post helped you, kind traveler!! And if you wanna know something, compulsive liars are pretty much defined on how they lie about unimportant things! If someone lies for months about cheating on someone, that’s a pressure to lie—there’s a punishment if they don’t lie. But compulsive liars lie even when there is not punishment or reward for lying! Anyways, I’m glad that my tutorial/rant/confessional helped you!

Do blind people turn or face whoever is talking? The comic im planning to make has a blind character and i wonder how much should i make her eyes and head move. If the blind character (lets call her A) is sitting beside her friend, B and then B starts talking, does A turn her face around to B? or does she keep facing forward? Judging by where a voice is coming from, is it possible for a blind person to have eye contact without seeing where the other person's eye is? Or can a blind person only roughly guess where the other's person eyes could be? Im sorry if this is worded weirdly. english isn't my first language lol.

Yes, Blind People’s Eyes Move

This post discusses ableism briefly, centering on social issues for blind people around eye contact.

Your English is fine. Don’t worry. Thank you for this helpful question.

Blindness is a spectrum ranging from low vision to total blindness. That could play a role in how much eye contact blind characters make. Personal preferences and culture are other factors.

Generally, blind people face the direction of the other person unless it is uncomfortable or impractical to do so. They may be more relaxed about it around friends, though this depends on the person. Blind people also try to face someone when conversing so they can hear each other better, but how this is done might depend on the setting. So, yeah, I would suggest drawing blind characters facing the person they talk to, for the most part. This could mean turning their head or their body at some points in the conversation or the entire time. It doesn’t need to be all or nothing.

As for eyes moving, I actually encourage writers and artists to include blind characters with eyes that move. This is because it normalizes the idea that our eyes move. Sometimes they move even more than sighted people’s eyes do, depending on the condition the person has, as well as light perception or any other remaining vision.

Blind people are sometimes accused of faking when our eyes move or when we make eye contact (or look toward cameras in videos).

I remember learning that the animators of Avatar: the Last Airbender tried hard not to make Toph’s eyes move. While I can understand the thought process behind this, her eyes would move even if she is completely blind. She could make voluntary eye movements and may even have involuntary eye movements, as I mentioned, depending on her eye conditions. Overall, I would have liked a show that normalized Toph’s eye movements and perhaps even commented on it plainly for the benefit of children in the audience. While it is a subtle detail, especially considering Toph’s already groundbreaking character, I think it would have introduced many children to this idea at once and in a fun way.

Draw blind characters with eyes that move, please.

On the subject of making eye contact: it depends.

Many people can make approximate eye contact using the sound of someone voice or remaining vision. In some cultures or situations, blind people could be punished socially for lack of eye contact, or viewed as distant or rude. However, some people may not care about eye contact at all; not every person who isn’t blind cares about eye contact either. Some people find it offensive or off-putting. Again, it depends.

A blind person may be able to get away with lack of eye contact if they use a white cane and disclose their blindness upfront. Even then, this does not guarantee the person they are talking to will be okay with it or understand why the person isn’t making eye contact. This is especially true for people with low vision who don’t use white canes daily. You could probably play around with that in fiction. Depending on the culture of the characters, the setting, level of closeness, and their individual feelings on eye contact, a blind character’s level of eye contact may change. This could be an interesting way to show relationships between characters, so I encourage you to have fun with it.

If you have more than one blind character, it may also be cool to show different thoughts on eye contact.

I hope this helps.

This has been cross-posted on WordPress.

"Brain damage" only sounds like a harsh and offensive way to describe brain injuries because people constantly use it as an insult. It's a totally neutral descriptor of what it is. I have brain damage. My brain is damaged. It's not ableist to call it that, it's ableist to call people you don't like brain damaged because you think it's an inherently bad thing to be.

(Yes abled bodied neurodivergents, that includes you)

Can we please stop calling Republicans compulsive/pathological liars, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcicists, delusional, etc? And can we please stop calling Democrats the r slur? I don't care what they've done, cut it out

Yes, even when it's Trump.

I I think I mentioned this before but can't find the og post so I'm just gonna talk about it again.

I want people to understand that not all pyromaniacs are anarchists, not all anarchists are pyromaniacs and pyromania and anarchy do not go hand in hand.

I would much prefer if people would stop portraying every anarchist character as a pyromaniac esp cuz they're not actually doing acts of anarchy nor portraying pyromania properly. They're just burning shit and yelling "fuck (in-story mega corp here)"

That said, I am proud of actual pyromaniacs (and pyrophiles) who are anarchists. Because I too wish we could dismantle capitalism and shit.

Just please dont go around burning property and crap in the name of anarchy, regardless if you have pyromania or not, a crime is still a crime and there's enough parts of the world burning to the ground and purring people and general life in danger right now.

Pyromania and anarchy do not go hand in hand, do not make these your characters only/defining traits. Please.

Ones a movement/belief system, the other is a fucking condition.

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