Tanya McGee Wheatley 💜☘️Why is it that authors who portray visually impaired people in their books always portray them as having had surgery or some miracle to give them sight as the way to go? Why not have a totally or partially blind person be the genius detective or whatever? Why must that person have once been blind but can now see? #Blind #BlindFrustration #PetPeeve
Joy Tilton@NicksWorld @blindquilter I guess some authors aren't original enough, so they have to come up with some miracle cure to get rid of whatever is deemed offensive, of which blindness, generally seems to be amongst the top 10, if not top 5, things to be so bloody catastrophic, almost up there with cancer, if not there already.
@NicksWorld @blindquilter which is just utterly stupid, imho, although, I say this as someone who was born totally blind. So, ... yeah.
@tinygirl @NicksWorld I agree. It is stupid. I lost my sight less than a year after graduating high school so have been blind longer than I could see.
Anthony C. Bartman@blindquilter Same way they treat autistic characters as quote unquote "inspiring", but leaving the bad parts out.
@rommix0 It’s just wrong. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with us so show us as people capable of doing what needs to be done! All of us!
@blindquilter indeed. I never really liked that trope either. They did all sorts of people wrong from Rain Man, Radio, to Music.
@blindquilter I've thought about this before. My guess is because a book written from the perspective of a blind character would necessarily be devoid of visuals. The vast majority of readers are sighted. Sighted people need visuals. No matter how something feels, sounds, or tastes, the sighted reader would feel a lack of detail and reference points. I'm sure a compelling story could be written this way, but I doubt most authors could manage it. Just my guess.
@alexhall Possibly but if it is written in the third-person perspective, all the visual details should be there. If written in first-person, that might be different. 🤷♀️
@blindquilter True, third person omniscient would work. What I read tends to be first person or third person limited.
Mike McCaffrey@alexhall @blindquilter I would absolutely love a Sherlock/Watson style story where the super smart detective is blind and relies on his sidekick to vividly describe the scene so he can figure out what happened. It could even be written entirely in dialog without any third person narration needed to set the scene for the reader.
@mikemccaffrey @alexhall That would be interesting but I’d like to see something more modern with the blind sleuth using technology to ‘see’ the scene. 😀
@blindquilter @alexhall Nothing saying that Watson is a human!
If you do want an AI sidekick detective story, I recommend Anabel Scheme by Robin Sloan, which was way ahead of its time.
@mikemccaffrey @alexhall @blindquilter The Carrados stories I mentioned earlier are often like that. From around the same time as Holmes as well. There's also Stagg's work
https://archive.org/details/thornleycoltonbl00stag
Sadly, he died before he could produce much, but what he did produce is fairly good. There's also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baynard_Kendrick
but I could never really get into them myself so can't say whether they would suit.
https://archive.org/details/thornleycoltonbl00stag
Sadly, he died before he could produce much, but what he did produce is fairly good. There's also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baynard_Kendrick
but I could never really get into them myself so can't say whether they would suit.
@blindquilter If you're interested in detective stuff particularly, see the Max Carrados books
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/529
https://freeread.de/@RGLibrary/EBramah/EBramah.html
note that this is by no means new, these were published more than a hundred years ago now. See also the more recent Fielding series
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/SIJ/sir-john-fielding/
As to why, it's the usual thing, there are fairly few people with vision that can't be corrected, people think blindness is worse than death so readers find blindness which isn't curable depressing, blind people are seen as, and generally are, less capable than people who can see, it's harder to portray the world of a blind person, particularly for a sighted author and particularly for a completely blind person... and so on.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/529
https://freeread.de/@RGLibrary/EBramah/EBramah.html
note that this is by no means new, these were published more than a hundred years ago now. See also the more recent Fielding series
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/SIJ/sir-john-fielding/
As to why, it's the usual thing, there are fairly few people with vision that can't be corrected, people think blindness is worse than death so readers find blindness which isn't curable depressing, blind people are seen as, and generally are, less capable than people who can see, it's harder to portray the world of a blind person, particularly for a sighted author and particularly for a completely blind person... and so on.
@blindquilter Maybe because none of the authors in question are blind?
@maerlynofmiria Possibly but why not just make the character fully sighted instead of making them less capable unless they have sight? 🤷♀️
@blindquilter Because ableism is the last bastian of idiots these days. It's no longer possible to use racial stereotypes in a story without getting lynched in the court of public opinion, but since disability laws have no teeth, the same people who'd have put racial stereotypes in stories a half century ago have to use disability in the same way.
Karen Conlin@blindquilter Greg Doucette's "The Apocalypse Seven" features a blind woman, with guide dog and cane. At the start, anyway. #NoSpoilers
@GramrgednAngel But is she an awesome detective solving complicated crimes without sight?
@blindquilter sorry, no, but having read the book recently i was keyed in to "blind character who is blind with no magical/technological assistance." Only her intelligence and natural abilities. As part of an ensemble, she contributes to keeping them alive.
That in itself felt worthy to me (legally blind in 50 states, as my childhood ophthalmologist told my parents).
I'll keep searching for blind Holmes.
@GramrgednAngel Thanks. ☺️ I am currently listening to a book with a woman who was born blind but had a miraculous surgery to give her sight and she now uses her sight along with her other senses to discover things the FBI does not see. 🙄 Her best friend from childhood who is blind is in the book and she is very independent and well-established. My pet peeve is that the only way the main female character can be so accomplished is that she now has eyesight.
@blindquilter UGH. So wrong.