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The mirror replied "To whom?"

"The miller who made the flour for my bread," the queen would say, or "Whoever spun the thread my shawl was made of".

The second time, she says "To the King," and she is pleased to see herself once more.

The third time, she says "To the Royal Advisor," and is once more satisfied to see herself.

The fourth time, she says "To the scribe who takes the King's letters." She is shown the man's wife. And she seethes, but quiets herself, for it is only right that a man loves his wife.

The fifth time, she says "To the Court Wizard," and is shown the man's departed mother as he remembers her from his youth, radiant and smiling and warm and larger than life.

The tenth time, she says "To the Stable Master," and is shown the fastest horse in the stable, majestic and free as the wind even in captivity

"To the baker," she is shown the man's daughter, young and adorable and full of joy and laughter.

"To the artist who did my portrait," she is shown a painting of a woman done by the man's teacher, who he still looks up to now that he is well established himself.

"To the Royal Knight," she is surprised but not displeased to see the castle's entire guard force in the middle of doing drills.

The one hundredth time she asks the mirror, and it asks her "to whom?" she once again says, "To me." And she does the same the one hundred and second, and again and again and again.

So. You want to write a blind character for your story or AU, but you yourself are sighted and don't know any blind people irl. The media is not your best outlet for finding good or accurate portrayals of blind people, and you're a little stumped on doing your own research. Maybe I can help fill in a few gaps?

(Note: I AM a blind person but I am only one blind person with one blind experience. There will be others with different backgrounds, different acuity levels, different overall conditions, different points in their lives of when they lost their vision, all of these things that will color how their blindness impacts their lives. Please when doing any research into representing a minority group ALWAYS seek out multiple experiences to gain a better, fuller understanding. I will be offering a viewpoint as someone who was born blind (ocular albinism), uses a cane, grew up relying on old school screenreading and magnification tools (and mainly just uses magnification now), reads and writes Grade 1 Braille (but has begun Grade 2), and has participated in many blind programs and communities since I was a young teenager. There is no "correct" way to be a blind person, there are just "different" ways, and they are all equally true and valid.)

First things first, canes:

Give your blind characters a cane!!! Most blind people are very interested in being self-sufficient and independent, and one of the best ways for us to achieve this is the freedom to navigate our own surroundings. Your cane is your best tool for this!

A lot of blind folks will also want a guide animal and that does take place of a cane, but also there will be a lot of instances where you will not be using your guide animal! They will take breaks!! They will need to sleep or rest!! They will not be suitable for every outing or excursion! Blind folks, even with guide animals, will still own a cane for these instances.

(There is also an instance where a blind person will want to use sighted guide. It's most comfortable doing this with people you are familiar with, but it works in a pinch with strangers too who are willing. However, a lot of folks don't know how sighted guide works. So to explain, essentially all it entails is the blind person will hold onto the space just above your elbow, and will walk about half a step in pace behind you. You do not need to do anything with your arm besides leave it relaxed (do not fold it up), and give out some verbal cues of changes in direction, warnings of upcoming steps up or down, or pauses for other passerbys or traffic. Reading out signs or keeping the blind person informed of what street you're on might also be helpful, but ask the individual what it is they desire from the sighted guide. Sometimes we don't need much, just someone to keep us from running into things if the sun is in our eyes.)

(Relatedly though do not do not DO NOT grab a blind person without their consent. DO NOT grab them, move them around, or any other nonsense like this. Do not TOUCH THEM without asking first, and if they say no, that means FUCKING NO.)

Now, how do canes work?

Most blind folks will use a white cane that is about to the height of reaching your chin standing up straight, so that when you extend it outwards it will reach far enough ahead of you to anticipate things at a distance (and you can also just as easily pull your cane in a little more to better reach things closer up).

Canes are most commonly made of metal or fiberglass, and these days a lot of them are folding canes (easy for stowing away while in transit on a car or bus or when seated anywhere).

The grip is soft with a cord hanging from its top that is used to loop around and hold in place the cane when folded, and when you are holding your cane outward in use your pointer finger will extend downward for best control over your tool.

The tip is made of hard plastic that can be slipped on and off because it will need to be regularly replaced as frequent use will wear it down, and these tips can come in a number of shapes, but the most popular you will see are a marshmallow tip (large and, well, shaped like a marshmallow), or a pencil tip (long and thin, this tip is my preference). People might switch out which tip they use depending on the terrain as well.

When in use, you hold your cane extended outward in front of you, and while you want the tip on the ground to be angled centered to your body, you are going to want the grip resting somewhere off to the side around your hip or just above (this way if you encounter a crack or something else in front of you that your cane will snag on, you will not wind up stabbing yourself in the gut with the grip. That shit hurts, avoid at all costs).

Depending on your specific needs, the terrain, and other factors such as lighting, crowds, or space available, there are a few different ways you'll actually use the cane. You can either have it running straight in front of you, tapping to the sides of you at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, or shorelining (where you keep a regular tap at your center and then at whatever edge your are walking by, whether it be the edge of the sidewalk or a wall, etc). When at rest, your cane should be pulled to stand up straight and held close so that it does not become a tripping hazard for others.

Your cane is an extension of your arm, it is a part of you. Treat it kindly, and if you see a blind person with their cane, do not touch it!!!! Even when folded up, leave that cane alone!!!!!

While not all blind people will want to use a cane, especially those with higher visual acuity, it is HEAVILY ENCOURAGED that all at least own one just in case they ever find they need it. Your blind character SHOULD own a cane and know how to use it. The likelihood of your blind character being one of the few who do not use one/do not find a need for one is so unlikely that at this point if you choose to go that route it's uh. It's just kind of insulting, that us needing such a tool is seen as so unnecessary, by sighted people no less. Give your blind character a cane.

What about Braille?

Braille is a tactile way of reading and writing, and it is very useful for a lot of blind people! There are a couple of different ways to write Braille: with either a slate and stylus, or with a Brailler.

Slate and Stylus:

This (older, but still useful) method is simpler in that it is much less cumbersome than a Brailler, but it does take a bit of brainpower as it requires essentially writing upside-down. How it works is your slate is sort of like a long metal sleeve that opens for you to slide a piece of paper in between the two sides of the slate. On the slate itself is the shape of a Braille cell (two columns of three rows of dots), and with your stylus you poke holes into that cell to make up whatever shape constructs your letter/word/number/punctuation. Most slates will have several cells along a line, and several lines to work with so that you do not have to move your slate around the page too often.

Brailler:

A Brailler takes the job of the slate and stylus and makes it a bit more streamlined, but it is more cumbersome to transport as a Brailler is not too different from the size and shape of a typewriter (don't worry, it IS smaller, at least, and has much fewer keys). You roll your paper in and clamp it down just like on a typewriter, and you have six main keys that make up the six dots within a Braille cell. When typing, you will press down whichever of those six keys at a single time that makes up whatever letter/word/number/punctuation you are trying to write, and then move on to the next (there are also keys for entering down, a spacebar, and one other that, I will admit, I have never once used so I do not know what it does lol. I think it is some kind of backspace for if you miss something? Backspacing is very difficult to do in Braille, for obvious reasons, so there are more limited scenarios in which backspacing is going to be beneficial).

Braille, being what it is (a tactile form of written language that requires the reader to run their fingers over the words repeatedly, allowing for erosion of those shapes overtime) necessitates using paper of a thicker size and shape than normal 8.5x11 printer paper. And even with the use of contractions (you begin learning these in Grade 2 Braille, and it is A LOT) Braille takes up a lot of space to write, so Braille books themselves are often very large and weighty.

This often means that a lot of blind people will prefer audiobooks over Braille books, as that is simply more practical in this day and age, but Braille is still an incredibly important resource that we should not be quick to overlook. We can read and write our own Braille, and this freedom of accessibility should not be taken for granted. Though a lot of blind people who still have residual vision might not be taught Braille growing up (I myself was not put in Braille classes outside of the few things here and there that my vision teacher taught me — it was not until my teenage years of spending more time around other blind people that I started self-teaching), I think this is a massive disservice to the community, that EVERYONE (sighted people included) could benefit from learning Braille.

What else do blind people use to help them in their daily lives?

Your mileage may vary on what you as an individual might need, but I will try to break down a few other helpful bits of information that you might find useful in writing blind characters!

Magnifiers:

(Side note: Not every blind person is totally blind. In fact, most blind people do have some level of residual vision. This might only be some small perception of light and shadows, but sometimes it is a usable amount of vision. There is some relativity in what is considered "legal blindness" depending on where you live, but if you find yourself with vision even at its most corrected with glasses or contacts to still have an acuity that falls below a certain point (for example, in the US this point is 20/200), you would probably benefit from considering yourself blind and seeking out resources to help!!!)

But yes, magnifiers. Whether they be glass ones you hold, or digital software on your various devices, magnifiers can be useful for both looking at things up close, and even perceiving things far away! A magnifier with built-in lights for reading, a screen magnifier with various contrast options for browsing your computer, a stand magnifier you can jury rig with a shoelace to tie around your good eye for hands-free Lookin (shoutout to 13yo Awpie on this one lol), bioptics for watching live theatre or films or even reading a menu at a coffeeshop (designed as tools to help people with low vision drive, these binocular lenses mounted onto normal glasses lenses have countless uses beyond their original intent), or, yes, even your standard everyday binoculars if you wanna sight-see beyond your usual scope. Most blind people with some amount of residual vision will have an arsenal of preferred magnification tools to choose from, so you should put a fair amount of consideration into what your character might most enjoy!

Screenreaders:

Used by both blind folks with total vision loss and blind folks with some residual vision, screenreaders have been around probably a lot longer than you think, and are indispensable tools that almost every blind person has at least some experience with, even if they do not prefer to use it in their daily lives. Most magnification software comes with its own built-in screenreader, but there are plenty that have existed on their own without being part of a magnification software (shoutout JAWS), but even devices and operating systems now are being designed with screenreaders built in-house too. The quality does vary from program to program, and people who use these regularly are going to Have Opinions on what they prefer, but if your character has low enough vision that using magnifiers would be more tricky than helpful, then they are GOING to make a lot of use out of screenreaders. I recommend attempting to use the screenreader on your phone sometime, just to see what it's like. It's actually a lot of fun!

Large print, tactile tools, color-coding, etc.:

There are a lot of ways in which blind folks will help themselves navigate the world without/with limited sight. Whether it be large print/Braille labels put on all of their household appliances, everything in their bedroom or office organized by color/in specific orders/marked with something tactile (puff paint was a popular go-to when I was a kid), or otherwise, blind folks will make their spaces heavily curated to their needs, and if we've been doing it for a long time (years or even our whole lives) we're going to be very good at it. Don't move a blind person's things in their space around without their explicit consent — everything has a place and we for the most part are going to be very used to keeping together a carefully constructed mental map of our surroundings, DO NOT INTERRUPT THAT.

And on the subject of mental maps...

Orientation and Mobility!!!

Not every blind person has gone through some degree of O&M training, but if you grew up blind and had access to resources in education to accommodate your disability, you are probably familiar with this class. What this entails is essentially being taught the tools and tricks for navigating out in the world independently, and if you've already spent years of your life needing to do this, you likely already have learned plenty of things on your own without the instruction.

But what the instruction does often cover is using your cane, identifying landmarks around you (whether by sound, smell, keeping mental track of how many right and left turns you make from a specific location you can remember), how to navigate crossing streets, keeping track of what other pedestrians are doing to assist in your own understanding of the flow of traffic, and how to orient yourself in a situation when you find yourself lost.

Not every blind person is going to have the best memory or mental map, but it is something we do have to more heavily rely on than sighted people, so the likelihood of your blind character being pretty adept in navigating familiar stomping grounds or adjusting quickly to new terrain after going over it once or twice with assistance is, all things considered, going to be pretty high.

And while we're talking about what blind people are and are not likely good at...

Heightened senses???

Blind folks, and I cannot stress this enough, do NOT. HAVE. SUPER. SENSES. Our hearing is AVERAGE. Our taste buds are AVERAGE. Our sense of smell and touch is AVERAGE. What MIGHT be above average is the amount we rely on these things, and thus our proficiency in utilizing them is going to be HIGHER THAN PEOPLE WHO DO NOT. But even still blind people are not immune to comorbidity of disabilities. Sometimes blind people are Deaf as well!!!

Do not write your blind characters with super hearing. Do not write your blind characters with supernatural abilities to tell who a person is by smell across an entire fucking room (unless that person is particularly known for being...odorous (in a good or bad way!!!). Do not write your character able to feel a piece of cloth and know exactly what its weave and fiber is unless they HAVE REASON to be so familiar with textiles. DO NOT WRITE YOUR BLIND CHARACTERS TO MAGICALLY HAVE VISION (METAPHORICAL OR LITERAL) UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS WHEN THEY OTHERWISE DO NOT. Commit to your character Being Blind, or do not bother at all.

And on this note, if you want to supply your blind character with some magical ability that allows them to bypass some pretty average blind person needs like using a cane/sighted guide/guide animal, reading Braille (or otherwise utilizing magnification or audio tools), or taking the time to put in the effort to learn how to navigate, organize, plan ahead, or customize their space to be accessible to them to their specific needs, If Your Blind Character Can Essentially Pass For Sighted Except When Being Blind Will Look Cool, you need to rewrite your character. Full stop.

What else are bad stereotypes, inaccuracies, or otherwise offensive mischaracterizations that should be avoided when writing blind characters?

We do not, have never, WILL never, want to touch your face. Cut that shit out right now.

Barring very specific conditions, a lot of blind people do not have white/cloudy eyes. For a lot of us our eyes look not too different from how a sighted person's eyes will look. But please please PLEASE actually research what condition your blind character has that caused their blindness so you can accurately portray what that would look like (for example, my albinism doesn't really effect the color of my eyes beyond they do SOMETIMES look red under certain lighting due to how easily light passes through to reflect off the blood vessels in the back, but this is under specific conditions and is not ALWAYS. Also people with albinism often have nystagmus, a condition that causes the eyes to constantly shake in a specific direction (mine shake from side to side). Knowing these details will allow you to most accurately describe/draw your character's features).

Also barring specific conditions/light sensitivities/personal self-consciousness in how the eyes might look (again, depending on very specific conditions), blind people typically do not walk around in sunglasses outside of any same reason a sighted person would have them on. A blind person with total vision loss will, quite frankly, probably not a give a fuck about ever paying for a pair of sunglasses that they do not need. It is so uncommon for blind people to needlessly rock a pair of sunglasses that at this point it's just a weird trope that y'all need to slow the fuck down on. We have pretty eyes that we will want to show off too!!!

Characterizing blind people as not having opinions on looks and appearances or even being above racism/colorism (????) is uh. Not true. Just not true. There is a degree to which blind people will not care about theirs or others appearances, especially to the point of really small details that a blind person might not even be remotely aware of if it does not come up in regular conversation (your clothes being wrinkled in a certain way being very easy to miss on a social level vs. something like, fatphobia), but we are just as capable of bigotry and prejudice. We do not have to see a person to have biases about them, and we are not immune to sucking in this way.

Characterizing blind people as being "wiser" or more open-minded about others and the world around them, having an "inner vision" of beauty or some shit... also Big Fucking No. Being disabled does not make you a more patient and understanding person. It does not make you smarter or more kind-hearted. It does not make you gentle. Cease this. We are all Just Some Guy like any other non-disabled person.

This is a lot of information, but I really do hope more people take the time to get to know what real blind people in real life are like. I hope that more sighted people take the time to care about viewing blind people as people, and not an interesting commodity to put in their stories for angst or spice or whatever the fuck. I hope that sighted people start pointing out ableism and bigotry in their communities so that we are not always left to do it ourselves, where other sighted people are less likely to listen to us, anyways. I hope that more people think about inclusion of blind folks in their spaces, of accounting for translating visual mediums into something we can engage with too, of acknowledging that we are just as likely to exist on the web and irl as sighted people are. I hope that including us is seen as less of a burden, less as something to complain about, less as something that sighted people feel the need to get our sympathy over when we simply ask to be given just as much of a chance to participate as anyone else.

alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.

so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.

there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.

when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.

why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!

this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.

so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:

the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered

the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate

shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)

bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.

so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".

(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)

and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!

MASSIVE appreciation for the tags based on my work. It's refreshing to hear a such thoughtful analysis of my contribution to MC-related surrealism.

As for what either of them mean.. I'm not at liberty to say ;) but like any abstract sculpture, I think the meaning of each and what their purpose serves is entirely up to interpretation.

Morning -Part 1 -Part 2 [to be linked]

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

And then I made a throwaway joke about a character in a story (who was a writer) and a book she had written.

And then NaNo was coming and I didn't have a plot in mind.

And then that line jumped out at me.

And I said I couldn't do that, because it wouldn't work.

And then I decided to try it anyway.

And that is how I ended up writing roughly 30,000 words of a book titled The Questions of My Life, which was about the 2000 US Presidential election (and would have eventually also covered 9/11 if I had continued it) from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy in the form of his diary written entirely in haiku.