Blindness fic resources/beta

[whatimages]

 Hi all--
This is a great resource, I've really enjoyed reading through it. I'm looking for help with a canon-divergent disability fic I'm writing. In canon, the character is blinded and then cured; I'm diverging from the cure part. I've been googling things like "experience of blindness," "sudden vision loss," etc which have been helpful but only up to a point.  

In canon (Fullmetal Alchemist: brotherhood, if anyone's interested), the character loses his vision suddenly and completely, but most of the accounts I've been reading are about people who either have partial vision or became blind gradually. Any suggestions as to what to google/good links to look at?  Most of the fic in this fandom that deals with this is frankly a little icky, and I would really like to avoid the pitfalls of the clueless. 

Thanks!

Comments

[zippitgood]

I've been interested in this too, but have also had a hard time finding links. I hope some good advice on how to go about searching turns up.

[chordatesrock]

I'm deeply interested in fictional portrayals of disability and have spent time looking for this kind of information, but resourceress7's fandom-specific guide is all I've found that's blindness-specific. (Well, that and articles put out by the NFB, which I'm sure you've already found.) I suspect you might get better results for sudden vision loss if you add "accident" to your search terms. There's also a fic about this character that was posted for Festibility, if you go through the comments.

By the way, do you recommend that anime, given that I gave up on the first one in disgust but think the premise still sounds interesting?

[whatimages]

That link is awesome, thank you so much! And that is a good idea about adding 'accident,' thanks.

I would wholeheartedly recommend fmab! I've never seen the first one, but apparently they couldn't be more different. Some of its treatment of disability is problematic, and it starts out seeming really supercrip-y, but overall it's a really great series.

[feathercircle]

Would you mind elaborating a bit on what it was that turned you off of the first series? All I know about the anime is through internet osmosis, but several friends have recced it to me and I'd been planning to eventually give it a try.

[chordatesrock]

It tried to tackle philosophy without acknowledging the belief sets through which its own look childish. That's not to say it shouldn't take a stand that won't be universally approved, but there's a huge difference between showing the problems with another philosophy (or explaining your own) and outright ignoring the reasons why people don't all agree. And if all it means to do with that thematic element is just explain its own idea, then I don't see what more can happen with that in the series, but I also doubt it gets dropped, considering how much weight was given to it in the episodes I saw.

(Or perhaps you can ignore me as yet another complaining Christian who wishes everything conformed to xyr morals.)

It was also different from the manga, of which I read a couple of volumes a few years before I started on the anime. Perhaps I misremember, but I recall things happening in the manga that didn't in the anime, such as a scene where a character spied by hiding inside a suit of armour. The equivalent scene in the anime had the villain simply decide to start talking about his true plans in front of her.

I also found the series a bit creepy. Why should that be a turnoff when I like other creepy anime? I don't know.

Finally, Roy Mustang is one of the few anime characters that consistently look Asian to me. (I acknowledge that he might be unmarked like the others and I just haven't noticed.) I originally thought he was Japanese because the series was set in Japan, but... it isn't. That would have made sense: a single Asian-marked character surrounded by racially unmarked characters could easily adumbrate the racial makeup of the place without placing undue restriction on character designs. But no, it's Europe, so Mustang keeps breaking my suspension of disbelief, which is also odd, because I can think of reasonable backstories for him that don't stretch my suspension of disbelief at all.

(That last part didn't actually contribute to my giving up on the anime.)

[whatimages]

fwiw, FMAB has one of the best considerations of ethics, philosophy and violence I've ever seen in any media. Whereas I've heard the 2003 one is sort of aggressively nihilistic/grimdark.

(sorry. I really love fmab and I try to aggressively shove it at anyone who will listen. IT'S JUST SO GREAT!!!111)

[chordatesrock]

Well, it's better than the other one. I'm giving it a chance (and writing up a Where I Watch). Thanks.

[lilacsigil]

A useful source might be memoirs/autobiographies - there's a few written by US military personnel who were blinded while on active duty.

[whatimages]

Oh, that's a great idea, thank you! Do you have any title/author recs off the top of your head?

[chordatesrock]

Not military, and not a typical experience of blindness, but there's always Jacque Lusseyran's books. I can't remember exactly what his autobiography is called, but I think it's a Biblical quote, either Let There Be Light or And There Was Light. Definitely one of those.

[jesse_the_k]

These are mainstream resources, and excellent reads:

Sight Unseen by Georgina Kleege
She's a poet and literary critic; she mixes up her own experiences with dissection of literary representations of blindness.
(Her second book, Blind Rage: Letters to Helen, is the most eloquent rant ever about dealing with supercrip expectations.)

In addition the the NFB, there's the American Council of the Blind at acb.org and the American Foundation for the Blind at afb.org

The ACB is a parallel group to the NFB: an organization of blind people for blind people.

The AFB was founded to help blind people get on with their lives, but has a certain charity hue. But for basic info, especially the "dial a disease" details on common causes of vision loss, the AFB will have more details. (In the U.S., I believe, macular degeneration is the most common cause of vision loss for older folks; diabetes for younger folks, I'm just babbling, hope this helps!)