Hi! Thank you for asking.

I would definitely advise against having her vision restored in the end. It sounds like the original concept has a lot of risk of reinforcing the idea that blind is the worst possible outcome and that a person cannot be happy if they go blind, and cure narratives are usually pretty uncomfortable and negative. Plus, it can also run the risk of giving the impression that all blind people would want to be cured if they could, or that wanting a cure is the common and most natural response to going blind. In reality though, most blind people are perfectly comfortable with the way we are and would not take a cure even if it was offered to us.

I also think it’s important to know that for most people, surgery that fully restores vision is also really unrealistic, especially if your story is set in a relatively realistic world. Total blindness especially is next to impossible to fix completely, and most of the time when you hear about it, it’s a one in a million experimental surgery done by a world renowned ophthalmologist, and it usually does not make the person fully sighted again. It’s also usually incredibly expensive and using very experimental technology, which often breaks shortly after or is incredibly cumbersome and difficult to manage and maintain. It often comes with lots of frequent follow up surgeries, and it’s not uncommon for it to be a very temporary thing that does not last very long because of all the complications. Surgeries like that usually also have a very low success rate, so there’s a pretty high chance that you will get them and it will not work, or it might even make your vision worse. Plus, with experimental technologically advanced surgeries like this, the vision you receive often isn’t exactly the same as real vision, either. Often times it is using technology, and what it’s really doing is creating a sort of artificial vision, and it will often look very different and not work quite the same or as well as real vision.

It is fairly common for real life blind people to get corrective surgeries, but most of the time, these surgeries only make minor improvements to the vision, and it’s not usually enough to make the person no longer qualify as blind anymore. It also doesn’t usually help if the person is completely blind or so close to that that they only see light and shadow. It’s usually only effective for people who already have a fair amount of residual vision, and again, the improvements are usually minor and not exactly life altering. Plus, just as mentioned above, these surgeries for this group of people that are more common still often have very low success rates, and really high rates of complications, so it’s not super likely that you will actually experience any improvement, and it might make your vision even worse.

I would generally advise steering clear of cure narratives, especially if you are not blind yourself. Not only can it come off offensive and reinforce negative stereotypes and public perceptions about going blind, but I think it’s also just not nearly as interesting as allowing the character to remain blind and learn that they can be comfortable and happy and successful regardless. Cure narratives are relatively common in popular media, so going against that is honestly more revolutionary and groundbreaking most of the time, and will make for a much more interesting story. Plus, of course, it will be much better representation of blindness, and blind readers will be much more interested in reading your story. We hardly ever find stories about us that aren’t sad and tragic and negative, so we love to share good ones around with each other when we find them.

LISTEN. I hadn’t even thought of that thing specifically but there’s something like that to everything in Gravity Falls. This is why my friend is still after me to do what I said I’d do and write a series of posts detailing how each episode foreshadows the final arc in some way.

(Spoilers follow, as usual:)

What stands out to me the most is the way Ford is introduced in the very first episode as a divisive force between the twins.

We don’t even know him yet: he’s a nameless, faceless, voiceless voice telling Dipper, “In Gravity Falls there is no one you can trust.” There’s a specific moment where Dipper is thinking this message over and Mabel turns up out of nowhere to ask him what kind of “nerd thing” he’s reading. And Dipper does a surprising thing, in light of the rest of the episode and the season: he covers up. His first instinct is to tell Mabel, “It’s nothing!” She laughs him off, though, because she knows it’s something: “Are you actually not gonna show me?” (Unthinkable!) Of course, when she puts it that way, reality sets in—there’s no way he’d keep a secret like that from her: “Let’s go somewhere private.” But for a moment, he wanted to take the author at his word. There was a moment when—perhaps for the first time in his life—he wasn’t going to trust Mabel. He was going to make the same fatal decision Ford made in the issue of the rift—that some secrets had better stay between the smart kids.

The entire first episode represents the tension of Dipper’s choice between following the dictum of the Author—who has told him, in all-caps, “TRUST NO ONE!“—or putting his faith in his quirky sister. And by the end of the episode, he’s already made his decision. On top of that, he’s no longer a passive reader of the journal—he’s begin to write in it himself, challenging the ideas it contains:

This journal told me there was no one in Gravity Falls I could trust. But when you battle a hundred gnomes side-by-side with someone, you realize that they’ve probably always got your back.

Thoughts on cliffhangers.

Love writing them, hate reading them xD Somebody is a hypocrite . . . and it’s me. 

Is writing the whole thing beforehand better or worse than writing it as you go?

I mean, I’m sure it’s better, but I ask myself: where is the fun in that? xD For real tho, as far as planning and editing goes it’s probably much better, but if I had to rely on my own intrinsic motivation to get multi chap fics written, nothing would get written :'D

How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

Mostly I ask myself if there is something cute and innocent that I can ruin . . . jk, but I like titles that sound pretty and kind of juxtapose the fic, and/or have an overarching theme I can roll with. As far as most proud of, I really like “Glass Stars and Paper Moons” because it is definitely innocent sounding, but it is also a comment on how Ed finds the world on the other side of the gate to be “fake”. 

💐 Writer Spotlight 💐

Hey Allie, I had a question, but it was too long to fit in an ask.

So, I’m writing an essay on Over the Garden Wall for one of my college classes, and in looking at Wirt’s character, one of the things I discussed was that his arch is not learning to love Greg. One of my points for this being that if this were Wirt’s arch, the climax doesn’t make sense. If Wirt needed to learn to love Greg, then sacrificing himself by becoming the lantern bearer would be the natural conclusion. Then I realized, that that is in fact the Woodsman’s arch! He sacrifices himself out of love to save his daughter. But rather than being a hero in the story, he’s more of a cautionary warning. It’s his sacrifice that has kept the lantern lit, requiring more edlewood trees, and keeping the Beast alive. Wirt points out that this is dumb, but rather than blow out the lantern himself, he hands it back to the Woodsman, saying “I’ve got my own problems.” As the Woodsman told them at the beginning the lantern is his “burden to bear.” Thus, it’s his responsibility to blow out the lantern, not Wirt’s.

Am I way off base? Did that make sense? Do you have any further thoughts? I’d love to hear what you think about how the climax went down!

This makes a lot of sense–I love your observation that an arc about learning to love Greg might have ended more naturally in a decision to take the lantern!

I agree with you that his arc isn’t about learning to “love” Greg–if by “love” we mean what we usually mean in the context of a familial relationship, i.e. affection. Wirt clashes with Greg a great deal, he expresses constant frustration with him, he even thinks his life would have been better if Greg had never been born, and yet the love is paradoxically there–maybe you have to actually have a sibling to see it clearly, but I always think of the banter between them at the end of “The Old Grist Mill”, when Greg abandons his original intention to call their frog “Kitty” and decides he’s going to call it “Wirt”:

Wirt: That’s gonna be really confusing.  Greg: No, I’m gonna call you “Kitty.” Wirt: What? Maybe I’ll start calling you “Candypants.”

(For all you only kids out there, that means “I love you” in sibling. Trust me, I’ve made a twenty-year study.)

But fondness isn’t enough. Wirt’s journey, I think, isn’t about love but about responsibility: about shouldering the burden that’s appropriate for him, and that burden consists of both himself and his younger brother. He ended up in the Unknown because he was afraid to take responsibility for his own actions and ran from the consequences, proceeding to spend the rest of the show blaming Greg for everything that had gone wrong. It’s far easier for Wirt to perceive himself as a victim and to blame outside circumstances for everything that happens to him than it is for him to admit that he acted, that he did something to influence the world around him, for better or for worse. There comes a time when carrying himself becomes too much for him, let alone the extra weight of the younger sibling, and at that point he shrugs off the heaviness of being “captain” and lies down in the woods to die. 

When Wirt faces the Beast, he’s offered a choice that appears loving, even selfless: make up for what you’ve done to your brother by taking up the burden of the lantern and keeping his soul alive. But at this point it’s important to remember that Greg isn’t dead yet. Taking the lantern would be easier for Wirt: it’s his most persistent and damaging impulse, to quit while he’s ahead, to refuse to take the risk. By accepting the lantern, he could alleviate the guilt he feels about landing Greg in the Unknown, while ridding himself of the terrible task of saving his own life and his brother’s–forever.  He could be the eternal victim–it’s a role he’s used to. And, fleetingly, it appears to be the only option. The Beast isn’t extending a viable alternative. 

That’s why Wirt has to carve the path home out for himself. Accepting the lantern might feel better for him, but it’s not what’s best for Greg–it would only preserve him by killing him. Rather than check out of the game altogether and, in recompense, maintain some semblance of his brother in some vague state of undeath or suspended animation, Wirt finally takes on the responsibility he’s evaded all this time: it’s all or nothing. He got them into this mess, so he’ll get them out of it. “My brother and I are going home.”