Re: blind characters in games of any media, present and discuss.
#My problem bookrage is so often in media (games included). Blind characters are either super awesome ninja assassins of doom! or utterly useless helpless little tiny Tim knockoffs, indeed frequently both. Look at Dyna from the Langoleers.
Whichever guise they fall into, the blindness is always the central part of their character. They aren't just characters who happen to be blind among many other traits they are always blind! characters! with a capital blind.
They rarely if ever have relationships, they always fumble around and either work so hard to be awesome and enspiring "despite!" their blindness they might as well not be blind at all, or spend so much time being blind and useless you honestly wonder what the hell else they do.
This is why Jordi laforge was the least developed character in startrek Tng, because he spent so much time being a blind engineer, that he was never anything else.
going along with this dichotome, it is also interesting to note blind characters, even sighted characters who become blind are either not affected at all by their blindness due to some superpower, piece of technology or shear awesomeness to the point that their blindness doesn't matter at all (look at Kenshi as a great example), or they are so blind! that you literally wonder how they dress themselves.
Its odd, there is a lot these days about "Positive representations of disability in media" people with physical disabilities (in wheel chairs), have been through the phase of being helpless, been through the phase of being enspiring! and now can be pretty much normal characters who just happen to use a wheel chair.
The same is rapidly becoming true of autism, and deafness indeed a paper I read recently on "representing the disabled identity in literature!" listed several examples, of "positive protrayals oof disabled protagonists" all of them either autism or deafness.
Blindness, along with pretty much any other disability that alters someone's appearence on a basic physical level, for example making them slightly deformed or have an odd limp or a facial diplegia never get a look in.
When you raise this point to people, people will point to the likes of Kenshi and dare devil and say "look! there are awesome blind characters" and yet if you ask them to tell you about a blind character who has relationships, or makes friends does other character stuff they struggle badly.
Whats worse, is this keeps happening. One of the many! things that appauled me in starwars rogue one was the blind jedi guy who spent the entire film mumbling koung fuu, backflips his way across a beach through laser fire, then fumbles his way along a console to find a bomb disarm switch!
both awesome, and incompetent and blind! with a capital blind.
Even good writers do this, I waas shocked that in the fools assassin, trilogy, robin Hobb keeps discussing how the fool has become blind and yet "gropes blindly for things" or Can't use his knife and fork" or "faces the wrong way when speaking to someone", and yet this is supposedly someone who has crossed half a continent with assassins trying to kill him, survived for six years on the run, and whats more is supposed to be amazingly good at blending into different environments, ----- yet make him Blind! and he can't stop being blind.
I will say there are a few actual blind characters in literature I've noticed. Justin cronin's passage trilogy has a couple, one an arsy guy in charge, one a liscivious old man which is awesome! since when is the last time a blind character got to be either (just becaused people should be characters doesn't mean they should be nice ones), he also had a really awesome deaf character as well.
the other that occurs to me immediately is Toth in Avatar the last airbender.
Like the monk you mentioned above, she is able to pick up the environment around her picking up tremmers in the earth since she is an earth bender. However this doesn't make her automatically awesome. She can fight extremely well and wins many earth bending championships, but the second Ang hits her with an air bending attack she's lost since she can't pick up where its coming from.
Similarly she is cocky, smart, and self reliant to the point of aragance, ---- and yet her family just see her as a tiny blind helpless twelve year old girl.
She even develops a crush on Socka, the main boy of the series, and though she loses out (socka being 17 very firmly with someone else at the time), its nice to see that people remember that blind people, ----- mmmmm, have a libido!
So it has been done, I just damn well wish it was done more, and that blind characters could get away from being either super aweosme not really blind or completely useless, and indeed do something more in most games and books and films than sit around and be blind!
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