What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People

[jesse_the_k]

kestrell, who's been involved in SFF fandom for 2/3 of forever, is a regular writer for Green Man Review, an aficionado of horror, and was half of the team to bring Better Access to WisCon31, just got back from Readercon. She presented on "What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People"

 begin quote Because my goal is to discuss specific representations of blindness and blind people, I am going to use concrete examples from specific works. I don't wish for this to be interpreted as personal attacks upon the writers who wrote these works; I specifically mention in the title of this talk that these are all good writers, really, the best writers. The problem, I believe, is that there is so much mythologizing and misinformation about blindness and blind people that it is difficult for even the best authors to always distinguish fact from fiction, reality from stereotype.  quote ends 

part one of three
part two of three
part three of three

Dissociative Identity Disorder & ableist tropes in fiction

[softestbullet]

staticnonsense @ I Am Not: Your Plot Device

I [1] have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

Before you start thinking about all that you know about the disorder or its American historical counterpart Multiple Personality Disorder, probably influenced by media portrayals such as that train wreak of a movie Sybil – stop. Now. These portrayals are so wrong and full of tropes it’s not even funny.

[…] For now, let’s just go through a list of these tropes and just why exactly they piss me off.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a decent portrayal of DID/MPD/multiplicity. :/

(I don't remember how I got this link, sorry!)