attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2010-06-17 01:48 am
attackfish) wrote2010-06-17 01:48 am
Entry tags:
If I Woke up Tomorrow Without Disabilities...
On a side note to the current discussion going on in fandom over some really really ablist undertones to the hurt\comfort bingo, kaz has written an essay about the popular fiction trope of curing a disability. Instead of condemning the whole idea as irredeemably offensive because of the way it’s just about always handled, she goes into what she, as a person with disabilities, would like to see in any kind of fic (or original work) in which this trope is invoked, and how this can be used to deepen the understanding of living with disabilities, and would also fascinate her as a disabled reader.
Instead of writing fic on the subject, I may someday do that, but it’s the wee small hours here, and my brain isn’t working well enough for that, I’m going to conduct a little thought experiment. Many people with disabilities have an abiding resentment to the idea of a cure. Disability has become part of our identity, and besides, it’s society that needs to change. I’ve never been one of these people. I hate, hate, hate the patronizing notion that people with disabilities need to be “fixed” to be happy or to lead fulfilling lives, or that we need to be striving for a cure for our disabilities instead of for equality while we still have them, but if there were a cure for my disabilities, I’d take it in a second. If such a cure existed, What would my life be like? What would my life be like if I woke up tomorrow without disabilities?
In the interests of simplicity, I’ll be giving up all of my disabilities instead of just one, but like many people with disabilities, I have several. Actually, before we begin, I’d like to note that addressing this is something I’d like to see in any work where someone loses a disability. Do they have more than one? I’d love to see someone lose one or several disabilities and retain one or several others.
If I woke up tomorrow without disabilities, my whole way of relating to the world would have to change. The social model of disability says that disability isn’t determined by medical problems, per se, but by society’s reaction two them. Society is designed to cater to a certain ability level, and people with disabilities run into trouble because their natural abilities are different from this standard. For example, if most people had four hands, the world would be set up for four handed people, and people with two hands would be disabled, unable to drive a car designed for “normal” four handed people, for example, or open this world’s equivalent of child proof medicine bottles. Whereas if most people didn’t have any hands, the world would be set up for hand-less people, and it wouldn’t be a disability. All of a sudden, society would be set up to accommodate my ability level, but my carefully designed life would not be. I wouldn’t have to schedule all of my classes around which buildings I can’t access because of their mold content or chemical outgassing, or scientific experiments they house, or I could even go to a much better out of state school, because I wouldn’t have to live at home, but I would have to reorder my whole day. I'd lose my handicapped parking and suddenly have to pay for parking. I wouldn't be invisible on the street, and thus I might actually, *gasp* have to deal with people. The sudden ability to handle visual data would probably boggle my mind for a long time. I'd have to actually learn how to shop instead of float around a clothing store in a drugged haze to prevent a seizure while my mom pretends I'm a doll. I would have to turn off the little voice in my head constantly planning every single activity, saying "I can't, I can't, I cant..."
I would have to make a pretty radical paradigm shift. Suddenly, I wouldn’t have to think of my health first and every single other thing in the world second. My first consideration for every decision from picking out a career to whether to snag a free sample of olives at the grocery store wouldn’t be made first and foremost on the basis of whether or not I could physically do something. I have never thought that way before. I’ve had my disability my whole life. So many choices would suddenly open up for me that I’d probably take a while just to absorb and plan and pig out on foods I can’t now eat.
It wouldn’t just be the huge life-changing things either. I could look my cousin in the face when she and I talk. Currently her odd mannerisms and my visual processing disorder combine to have me talking to the insides of my eyelids in her general direction and her answering for some reason. I could walk down the street and not have to worry about someone “helping” me by picking up my oxygen concentrator without talking to me first. I could travel somewhere with a friend without becoming invisible and having everyone assume said friend is my care-taker. I could go out to eat and not pester the waiter for ingredient lists. And you know what, I would be able to turn off the part of my brain that does all that, which would be really restful for a change.
I would also suddenly become an outsider to the disabled community, from which I draw so much support. I would lose a main social bulwark of my life. Also, would I be allowed still to be personally offended by blatant ablism, or would I suddenly only be allowed to be angry on behalf of the currently disabled, and not for my past self? What would I identify as? One of the able-bodied, most of whom have always been able-bodied, or only very temporarily disabled? One of the disabled even though I no longer have a disability to my name?
For much of my life, I’ve drawn a huge amount of strength from the way the world has seemed against me and my disabilities. I’ve constantly had to fight both society and my disability, and this has rooted into me a stubborn will. Would I lose that desperate need to win and show everybody I can if everybody didn’t think it was impossible anymore?
I would probably suddenly hear a whole new sort of ablist comment all the time too, about how lucky I am, how glad I must be to be normal now, how. How they’re so glad the ordeal is over. How there isn’t a cure for that person over there with that disability, how sad. Would I smile and nod, or would I have the courage to tell the people saying these things where they could stick them?
As happy as I would be not to live with my myriad disabilities, I would suddenly be adrift, and it would take me a long time to come to terms with the sudden possibilities open to me.
No matter what, even being cured tomorrow wouldn’t erase a lifetime of having lived with multiple disabilities. They have shaped me. They’ve made me stubborn and self-assured, defiant, and even introverted by shaping the circumstances of my life. They’ve shaped my family and friendships. Not only would I always be someone who had once had disabilities, I would also have to deal with the legacy of much greater dependence on my parents and family. My mother would still be terrified at the thought of me leaving home, because subconsciously, I would still be her sickly youngest. My dad would still try to move the family wherever I was going, to be close in case of emergency. My siblings would always be more protective of me then they are of each other. My friends would always have the education on what living with disabilities was like and the little voice in their head saying “Fish couldn’t do this, because of this reason.”
Perhaps most telling of all, I rarely think about being cured, except when I read the ingredient list of a potential new food and find it has something I can’t eat in it. Usually I have dreams about society changing, about the way my world has to work suddenly making sense to others, about perfume being outlawed, about the American Bar Association not having its ridiculous absence policy that bars many of the best and brightest chronically ill people from ever becoming lawyers utterly needlessly, of people not laughing at the twinkie defense. I’m a queer, almost mind-blowingly liberal woman, I got to say, if I ate a twinkie, I’d not be responsible for my actions. Many foods, including ones with as many preservatives and artificial flavorings as twinkies would send me into a violent seizure that looks a lot like a psychotic break... Yeah, you get the point. The cure isn’t the be all and end all of most people with disabilities’ dreams. It only seems to be on the mind of the able-bodied, as an expression of discomfort with dealing with people with disabilities. So long as this is the reason for the presence of the cure in a work of fiction, it's doomed to offensive failure. If this is no longer the reason, if the creator understands the trope's history and works against it with the realization of people with disabilities as full human beings who can have happy endings with their disability intact, a fic with a cure in it has the potential to be a thing of beauty.
All told, I don’t know entirely what my life would be like if I suddenly had no disabilities, but it wouldn’t be a pure improvement. It would be fraught with conflict, and though I’d gladly be cured, I know that it would only be the beginning of a story, not it’s conclusion. And it would be a fascinating story. The sort of cure for a character with disabilities in fanfiction that I would like to see wouldn’t be the happily ever after, but the beginning, the once upon a time. These stories would address what it means to be formerly disabled, and they wouldn’t make the cure some sort of reward. They wouldn’t be the best thing that ever happened to the character, or the only way to have a happy ending. They wouldn’t be a way to “fix” the character so that they can be just like every body else, and “able to have a full life” as if people with disabilities can’t have full lives. One of these days, I’d love to read a work where the cure is given against the will of the suddenly able-bodied character, and have them struggle with the mixed feelings that come from that. In short, the cure would be part of the adventure, not some tacked on bit of rotten fluff in the perfect happy ending.
Oh God, I’m rambling. I’m incoherent, I need to be asleep, and I’m rambling. I’m trying to have deep thoughts, and they’re just coming out as vague, self-indulgent anger. I suppose this realization marks the end of this attempt at an essay. Anyway, I just want to say, I’d love to see some of the issues a cure for a character's disabilities would present brought up in any fiction dealing with such a topic. If I saw that, might not write off all fiction with a cure in it after all.
ETA: I made some rather snarky comments in this post about people who don't want their disability to go away. I was talking about people with physical disabilities as opposed to neurological or psychiatric ones, and as someone with all three of the above, I really should know better. People with neurological and psychiatric disabilities often find it much harder to tell where who they are ends and where their condition begins. If losing your disability means suddenly becoming someone else, someone who isn't you anymore, would you want to be cured? Me neither. The cures I wouldn't even consider refusing are the ones for my physical disabilities like my immune disorders and allergies and circulation problems, and my seizures, but the disabilities that come from the brain damage caused by said seizures, I would be loath to give up.
kaz has written an essay about the popular fiction trope of curing a disability. Instead of condemning the whole idea as irredeemably offensive because of the way it’s just about always handled, she goes into what she, as a person with disabilities, would like to see in any kind of fic (or original work) in which this trope is invoked, and how this can be used to deepen the understanding of living with disabilities, and would also fascinate her as a disabled reader.Instead of writing fic on the subject, I may someday do that, but it’s the wee small hours here, and my brain isn’t working well enough for that, I’m going to conduct a little thought experiment. Many people with disabilities have an abiding resentment to the idea of a cure. Disability has become part of our identity, and besides, it’s society that needs to change. I’ve never been one of these people. I hate, hate, hate the patronizing notion that people with disabilities need to be “fixed” to be happy or to lead fulfilling lives, or that we need to be striving for a cure for our disabilities instead of for equality while we still have them, but if there were a cure for my disabilities, I’d take it in a second. If such a cure existed, What would my life be like? What would my life be like if I woke up tomorrow without disabilities?
In the interests of simplicity, I’ll be giving up all of my disabilities instead of just one, but like many people with disabilities, I have several. Actually, before we begin, I’d like to note that addressing this is something I’d like to see in any work where someone loses a disability. Do they have more than one? I’d love to see someone lose one or several disabilities and retain one or several others.
If I woke up tomorrow without disabilities, my whole way of relating to the world would have to change. The social model of disability says that disability isn’t determined by medical problems, per se, but by society’s reaction two them. Society is designed to cater to a certain ability level, and people with disabilities run into trouble because their natural abilities are different from this standard. For example, if most people had four hands, the world would be set up for four handed people, and people with two hands would be disabled, unable to drive a car designed for “normal” four handed people, for example, or open this world’s equivalent of child proof medicine bottles. Whereas if most people didn’t have any hands, the world would be set up for hand-less people, and it wouldn’t be a disability. All of a sudden, society would be set up to accommodate my ability level, but my carefully designed life would not be. I wouldn’t have to schedule all of my classes around which buildings I can’t access because of their mold content or chemical outgassing, or scientific experiments they house, or I could even go to a much better out of state school, because I wouldn’t have to live at home, but I would have to reorder my whole day. I'd lose my handicapped parking and suddenly have to pay for parking. I wouldn't be invisible on the street, and thus I might actually, *gasp* have to deal with people. The sudden ability to handle visual data would probably boggle my mind for a long time. I'd have to actually learn how to shop instead of float around a clothing store in a drugged haze to prevent a seizure while my mom pretends I'm a doll. I would have to turn off the little voice in my head constantly planning every single activity, saying "I can't, I can't, I cant..."
I would have to make a pretty radical paradigm shift. Suddenly, I wouldn’t have to think of my health first and every single other thing in the world second. My first consideration for every decision from picking out a career to whether to snag a free sample of olives at the grocery store wouldn’t be made first and foremost on the basis of whether or not I could physically do something. I have never thought that way before. I’ve had my disability my whole life. So many choices would suddenly open up for me that I’d probably take a while just to absorb and plan and pig out on foods I can’t now eat.
It wouldn’t just be the huge life-changing things either. I could look my cousin in the face when she and I talk. Currently her odd mannerisms and my visual processing disorder combine to have me talking to the insides of my eyelids in her general direction and her answering for some reason. I could walk down the street and not have to worry about someone “helping” me by picking up my oxygen concentrator without talking to me first. I could travel somewhere with a friend without becoming invisible and having everyone assume said friend is my care-taker. I could go out to eat and not pester the waiter for ingredient lists. And you know what, I would be able to turn off the part of my brain that does all that, which would be really restful for a change.
I would also suddenly become an outsider to the disabled community, from which I draw so much support. I would lose a main social bulwark of my life. Also, would I be allowed still to be personally offended by blatant ablism, or would I suddenly only be allowed to be angry on behalf of the currently disabled, and not for my past self? What would I identify as? One of the able-bodied, most of whom have always been able-bodied, or only very temporarily disabled? One of the disabled even though I no longer have a disability to my name?
For much of my life, I’ve drawn a huge amount of strength from the way the world has seemed against me and my disabilities. I’ve constantly had to fight both society and my disability, and this has rooted into me a stubborn will. Would I lose that desperate need to win and show everybody I can if everybody didn’t think it was impossible anymore?
I would probably suddenly hear a whole new sort of ablist comment all the time too, about how lucky I am, how glad I must be to be normal now, how. How they’re so glad the ordeal is over. How there isn’t a cure for that person over there with that disability, how sad. Would I smile and nod, or would I have the courage to tell the people saying these things where they could stick them?
As happy as I would be not to live with my myriad disabilities, I would suddenly be adrift, and it would take me a long time to come to terms with the sudden possibilities open to me.
No matter what, even being cured tomorrow wouldn’t erase a lifetime of having lived with multiple disabilities. They have shaped me. They’ve made me stubborn and self-assured, defiant, and even introverted by shaping the circumstances of my life. They’ve shaped my family and friendships. Not only would I always be someone who had once had disabilities, I would also have to deal with the legacy of much greater dependence on my parents and family. My mother would still be terrified at the thought of me leaving home, because subconsciously, I would still be her sickly youngest. My dad would still try to move the family wherever I was going, to be close in case of emergency. My siblings would always be more protective of me then they are of each other. My friends would always have the education on what living with disabilities was like and the little voice in their head saying “Fish couldn’t do this, because of this reason.”
Perhaps most telling of all, I rarely think about being cured, except when I read the ingredient list of a potential new food and find it has something I can’t eat in it. Usually I have dreams about society changing, about the way my world has to work suddenly making sense to others, about perfume being outlawed, about the American Bar Association not having its ridiculous absence policy that bars many of the best and brightest chronically ill people from ever becoming lawyers utterly needlessly, of people not laughing at the twinkie defense. I’m a queer, almost mind-blowingly liberal woman, I got to say, if I ate a twinkie, I’d not be responsible for my actions. Many foods, including ones with as many preservatives and artificial flavorings as twinkies would send me into a violent seizure that looks a lot like a psychotic break... Yeah, you get the point. The cure isn’t the be all and end all of most people with disabilities’ dreams. It only seems to be on the mind of the able-bodied, as an expression of discomfort with dealing with people with disabilities. So long as this is the reason for the presence of the cure in a work of fiction, it's doomed to offensive failure. If this is no longer the reason, if the creator understands the trope's history and works against it with the realization of people with disabilities as full human beings who can have happy endings with their disability intact, a fic with a cure in it has the potential to be a thing of beauty.
All told, I don’t know entirely what my life would be like if I suddenly had no disabilities, but it wouldn’t be a pure improvement. It would be fraught with conflict, and though I’d gladly be cured, I know that it would only be the beginning of a story, not it’s conclusion. And it would be a fascinating story. The sort of cure for a character with disabilities in fanfiction that I would like to see wouldn’t be the happily ever after, but the beginning, the once upon a time. These stories would address what it means to be formerly disabled, and they wouldn’t make the cure some sort of reward. They wouldn’t be the best thing that ever happened to the character, or the only way to have a happy ending. They wouldn’t be a way to “fix” the character so that they can be just like every body else, and “able to have a full life” as if people with disabilities can’t have full lives. One of these days, I’d love to read a work where the cure is given against the will of the suddenly able-bodied character, and have them struggle with the mixed feelings that come from that. In short, the cure would be part of the adventure, not some tacked on bit of rotten fluff in the perfect happy ending.
Oh God, I’m rambling. I’m incoherent, I need to be asleep, and I’m rambling. I’m trying to have deep thoughts, and they’re just coming out as vague, self-indulgent anger. I suppose this realization marks the end of this attempt at an essay. Anyway, I just want to say, I’d love to see some of the issues a cure for a character's disabilities would present brought up in any fiction dealing with such a topic. If I saw that, might not write off all fiction with a cure in it after all.
ETA: I made some rather snarky comments in this post about people who don't want their disability to go away. I was talking about people with physical disabilities as opposed to neurological or psychiatric ones, and as someone with all three of the above, I really should know better. People with neurological and psychiatric disabilities often find it much harder to tell where who they are ends and where their condition begins. If losing your disability means suddenly becoming someone else, someone who isn't you anymore, would you want to be cured? Me neither. The cures I wouldn't even consider refusing are the ones for my physical disabilities like my immune disorders and allergies and circulation problems, and my seizures, but the disabilities that come from the brain damage caused by said seizures, I would be loath to give up.
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The one thing that immediately comes to my mind is that Moody would probably not be happy at all if someone made his eye grow back.
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Well yeah, but Moody would lose his awesome rolly x-ray eye if that happened! Also, I think he revels in being disturbing to most of the Wizarding World. Hmm, maybe my next post should be about Disability Superpower (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisabilitySuperpower) (careful, the link takes you to the tv tropes wiki, and if you're not careful, you'll be there all day). Nah, I think it'll be about my crazy family vacation.
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- y y y y on the multiple disabilities bit and differing attitudes towards those disabilities!! I can't say I'd cure any of my disabilities in a heartbeat, but there is a large difference between how I would react if you gave me a pill to cure my autism (scream and take it as a death threat for the reasons you mentioned!) or my half-a-depression or if separable from autism the executive dysfunction (would seriously consider it).
- it occurs to me that this is really the main issue in terms of portrayal of disabled chars re cure - rather than that they want a cure (although it'd be nice to see some who don't but all that line of discussion seems to do is divide the community) that wanting a cure is such a big focus in their life. And in general even for people who really hate their disability, life goes on regardless and you can't put it on hold to wait for a cure. And I can't quite articulate it but I think there's something fascinating about your distinction between dreaming about a cure so you wouldn't be disabled anymore and dreaming about society changing so you wouldn't be disabled anymore. Because eg even if my stutter magically vanished tomorrow the world would still suck for other people with speech disorders, you know?
- also really like your point about not just you but also the people around you having been shaped by the disability(ies)!
Okay am becoming incoherent. Once again, I love this post, thank you for linking!
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Bizarrely enough, I have a perspective on autism I don't think anyone else who doesn't have it can. During the first part of the seizure halo, the part I remember, I act like someone with Aspergers or another form of high functioning autism. Then of course, my condition quickly worsen, but... Since I can say with a certainty that Fish with high functioning autism is a very different person from Fish most of the time, I don't have to imagine the kind of distaste the idea of losing one's autism would cause for an autistic person. The change in self that would involve would be the same as if I were suddenly forced to spend my whole life in the beginning of my seizure halo.
And yes, if you're wondering, I keep having doctors who have seen me before and during my halos ask if I wouldn't mind being studied. I tell them what they can do with that idea with varying levels of politeness.
There's a fantastic portrayal of a disabled character who has a cure available to him but doesn't want to take it for a number of reasons, and his brother, who can't understand this and forces said cure on him in The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan. The author doesn't identify as disabled to my knowledge (though she has pretty severe visual impairment) which just makes the portrayal that much more remarkable. If you like Urban Fantasy, check it and the first book in the series, The Demon's Lexicon out.
Of course the disabilities' effects on the non-disabled people in the person with disabilities' lives is never mentioned in fiction unless it's some sort of "learning experience" about how "people with disabilities are people too!".
Not incoherent at all, very lucid, I swear.
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HP probably isn't the best fandom for such scenarios anyway, as people are either unscathed or dead, and neurological disabilities don't seem to exist. Although I very often see "Hermione invented a cure for lycanthropy" as filler for "what happened since the end of the book", and somehow I see that as going over about as well as SPEW.
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HP actually would be a fascinating scenario for exploration of disability. Given how poor the Wizarding World deals with magical brain damage and psychiatic issues, I'm betting the Wizarding World doesn't "fix" people with neurological disabilities, and for any more extreme than a learning disorder (which Neville has, dear God) the person with the disabilty is hidden away like a squib or his family seeks treatment in the Muggle world if they know how, and then they're hidden away. Great story idea I'll probably never pursue: Aspie and Aspie's family fight for his or her right to attend Hogwarts, or also, muggleborn with neurological disabilities never gets Hogwarts letter, and has dangerous magical accidents as an adult, Auror!Harry has to investigate.
Re- curing werewolfism: I've seen some excellent stories that discuss Remus' feelings that his parent's (fanon) obsession with finding a cure ruined his childhood. I have a huge soft spot for those. See, after my parents got me to the point where I wasn't a potted plant, cognitively, they were more conserned with reshaping the world around me
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At first I was a little surprised to read that some people wouldn't want to give up their disabilities, but then I began to understand. I've been dealing with depression since I was a child, anxiety as early as elementary school, and it really has shaped me as an adult. The anxiety isn't nearly as bad as it once was (I haven't had a panic attack in almost 2 years now!) but the depression is sometimes as bad as ever. And if I were given the chance to let all these psychological hang ups float away and be free of them, it would be great! But I would also be slightly scared of the shell that would be left behind. This has, unfortunately, been such a huge part of me for so long, I wonder if anything would be left if it were gone. I would be faced with the task of, essentially, reinventing my personality from scratch...
So yeah. Word to this, so hard. :)
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On a side note, You know how I mentioned I have psychological disabilities but didn't go into detail? Those would be depression, anxiety, and undiagnosed OCD. (seriously, I freak out when my dad feeds the dogs with the wrong colored bowls, even though it's not like the dogs care). I didn't have the depression until a year ago, when over the course of a couple of months, I spiraled into a suicidal state. The anti-depression meds also lowered my anxiety, but really, I just felt like I usually did on a good day, so... I didn't feel like a shell of myself, or like a different person, just a little calmer. I was still much more anxious than most people I know, so... If you find your anxiety or depression getting unmanageable, don't be afraid you won't be you anymore if you need to turn to medication.
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This is very, very good.
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Fic rec:
D.M.P.'s old (very old, pre-Goblet of Fire) novel-length Harry Potter fanfics, Sin of Lycaos and Wolf by Ears include werewolves like Lupin who would likely want a cure vs. werewolves who would absolutely never take it because it is such a part of their identity. Fair warning: Lupin accidentally bites a young girl, so it is darkfic. The underlying issues are interesting, though, and both are well-written stories with interesting characters.
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Sounds interesting. I'll have to hunt it down. Hey, I love darkfic! I wilt away and die without a daily helping of angst.
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And that is absolutely fascinating, re: your experience with seizure halos! It's actually really good to hear, because much as I think autism forms a fundamental part of my personality I don't know because I've never not been autistic. I just think so because the symptoms of autism feel as if they're natural outgrowths of the way I think, feel, process the world, etc. and that changing my brain in such a way as to get rid of them would essentially turn me into someone else. Not all autistic people think this way (although many do) and I've been accused of saying there's nothing more to an autistic person than the autism (not true, just as little as being NT determines your personality) so it's really interesting to have something like independent confirmation.
...although not interesting in the "must put you into a tube and study you now" sense, many sympathies. :/
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The reason they scare me so much and the reason I work so hard to avoid them is that they're like someone else getting control of my body and kicking me out. No, autism and other forms of neurological differences aren't all there is of a person who has them, but the way your brain works is a huge part of your essential self!
Given that I spent my childhood almost constantly seizing, you could see me not seizing as the interloper.
So aside from the fact that were docs going to study me (which isn't fun by itself, you ever been studied? It sucks) They'd have to trigger seizures over and over again, I'd also be formally diagnosed with seizures. As it is, I'm diagnosed with "seizure-like symptoms" with a sly wink from the docs. That that diagnosis means is I have seizures, but because my halos are so long, I'm safe to drive. My doc knows if she says "seizure", I lose my driver's license, and I think a few other privileges.
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Anyway, I have to say that this was fascinating. Speaking as someone who has always been able-bodied, I've never thought much about disabilities until recently. I'm a fanfic writer too, and I've been toying with the idea of disabled characters in my mind for awhile. The trouble is, I had absolutely no info to go on. But after this, I think I'll be a bit more equipped.
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Good for you! Unfortunately there aren't a lot of resources available to an able-bodied writer who wants to write characters with disabilities. I have another post here: http://attackfish.livejournal.com/44963.html in which I lay out my pet peeves in fiction and comments related to disabilities, and the comments are full of discussion from other disabled fans. The "disabilities" tag on Metafandom has some more information. My other bit of advice is once you settle on a disability (or disabilities) to use in your story, do a lot of research on how people have made accommodations for said disability. This becomes more difficult for stories set in specific periods, but it can be done. Also, you end up knowing a lot of fun facts. For example, I know more than you would ever want to about the history of glass eyes for a fic I wrote with a blind character.
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Awesome! I just read that other post of yours and that was really helpful, too. Now I want to work on a story... Actually, I'd randomly written about a page of a story with a blind character. No idea where I was going with it, but I wanted to write something. It's all from his perspective, and the challenge is to not include ANY visual descriptions - tricky, but fun.
I've read maybe one other person's blog where they complained about people not understanding, and I think the rants are actually more informative than straight-up info, like Wikipedia, if I want to know the direct effects on someone's life and their perspective on it. *wanders off to that metafandom thing for more info*
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I had a similar fun time writing "Quiet Shadowed Places" (the fic that made me go research glass eyes). I found that replacing the visual imagery with some other sort of sensory detail each time I spotted some worked really well.
reality of ADHD-my own
(Anonymous) 2010-08-28 06:26 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-08-28 06:34 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
Most of what I found out about glass eyes involves the fact that modern glass eyes are shaped like fried eggs and sit on top of a round ball used to fill up the eye socket to give it some definition. The history of replacement eyes goes back to at least as far back as Ancient Egypt, when they were made out of metal (which I almost used in that fic).
Re: reality of ADHD-my own
Re: reality of ADHD-my own
(Anonymous) 2010-08-29 03:29 am (UTC)(link)QSP
(Anonymous) 2010-08-29 03:33 am (UTC)(link)Re: reality of ADHD-my own