#strabismus

I'm never going to shut up about this btw

That eye is almost as obvious as mine and that makes me so fucking emotional. This is their big heroic scene, they've done it and they saved stars and they're both okay. And Ryan's lazy eye is so so noticeable. They did it and he looks like me. He saved TWO worlds and he did it with the same disability that I've been bullied and ostracized relentlessly for.

And THATS why this movie is so special to me. On top of it just generally being a cinematic masterpiece, the main character has my disability. Usually we're portrayed as stupid, as insane, as cooky. But he's the smartest person in the whole fucking universe here.

[ID: various screenshots from the wonderfully weird world of gumball. the first has characters with phones in their hands and zombie-like expressions, all with exotropia. the second image shows gumball and darwin dazed from cologne fumes. gumball's left eye notably is exotropic. third image is richard with wall eyed and bloodshot eyes. end ID.]

i've been really excited to watch the new season of gumball but i'm just constantly thrown off by how the artists constantly make fun of strabismus, mostly exotropia (eyes point outward)

i don't get why visible disabilities (or disability in general TBH) are still an acceptable target for jokes in media. real people look like this. why are we making fun of that???

having strabismus doesn't make you silly, disgusting, loopy, or "stupid". it's a real disability and i'm sick of seeing artists using it as a quick and easy visual shorthand :(

strabismus isn't even the only target! someone who has crooked/yellow teeth is untrustworthy. someone who drools is "dumb" and childlike. someone with trouble balancing is drunk/confused/has brain damage. someone who god forbid has facial scars is a villain and wants to kill everyone!!!

[ID: a CGI Minecraft sheep. it has exotropia and is making a funny face]

my eyes are not a joke. my eyes are not "derpy" they aren't funny. real people's eyes look like this. my eyes look like this. it's upsetting to have a movie make a joke out of your eyes and more upsetting to see everyone else not only follow along but amplify it.

yes, the Minecraft movie CGI is unsettling. it is bad but the problem with the sheep is everything except the way its eyes look. real. people. have. eyes. like. that. I cannot emphasize enough that real people have eyes like that. I promise you are capable of criticizing the Minecraft movie's appearance without mocking exotropia.

atp i might actually make that video on disability because this is absolutely awful to see a spike of in real time

come on. flappers from gameoverse is a lazy eye (specifically exotropic strabismus) stereotype that checks all of the usual boxes and more! he only has a lazy eye when hes being "silly" or "stupid"!!!! that exact character trope used to be called another name thats now considered too bad to say, now dubbed ~the r-slur~. baffling how its fine if an "indie" company constantly makes fun of lazy eyes but as long as they dont pull out the autism slurs its fine ? hi, local strabismus AND autism haver here, nahhh fuck off.

I feel very sour about it now

This is deformimisia.

It often takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to far objects, and I can get pretty annoying double vision as that happens. I’m mostly not getting stereopsis (fusion of the images from the two eyes), but occasionally I am. In general there’s less subjective change in vision than I’d expect—it’s often just like the times before when I wasn’t noticing any double vision. And getting rid of the double vision was kind of the point so that’s cool.

I’ll probably add more updates. For context, I was also working on developing stereopsis before this surgery and could grt limited stereopsis at short distances and with peripheral vision when it’s dark and I’m not wearing glasses. Also, I am (was?) an alternating esotrope, meaning my eyes are crossed and I switch between using one or the other (often switching very frequently).