Writing A Blind Or Visually Impaired Character

“One time my Nanny and the Gardener were having a heated argument in the car and he took her Queen tape out of the player and threw it out the window with rage and she looked him dead in the eyes and pulled out a second copy of that same tape and put it back in the player.”

— Warlock, probably

Finja Brandenburg // unknown

Give me weird daemons. Give me ugly, creepy, fragile, impractical daemons. Give me spiders and slugs and hyenas and poisonous frogs and easily-crushed butterflies and daemons that are too big to take into crowds or through a doorway and aquatic daemons that mean you can’t ever leave the coast. Daemons that come with more symbolism than their human was prepared to deal with. Daemons that don’t settle “properly”.

Give me daemons that bicker with their humans. That drag them out of bed in the morning when they don’t want to face the world and force their humans to face things they don’t think they’re ready for. Give me the fallout from daemons that push their humans too hard. Daemons that don’t follow the usual social protocols, that don’t like interacting with other daemons, that talk directly to other humans even though it makes some people scandalized. 

Give me daemons that are the same sex as their humans. Daemons that are the same sex as their humans and their humans realize they’re trans because of it. Daemons that are the same sex as their humans and their humans are cis. Daemons that are trans. Daemons that transition when their humans do or before their humans do. Daemons that are as fluid as their humans, that can present along the entire spectrum of their species’ sexual dimorphism, that sometimes have manes and sometimes have more colourful plumage and sometimes grow extra horns.

Give me daemons that intentionally settle as something soft because that’s what their human needs to hold. Daemons that settle as something small because they’ll both be happier if they can ride in their human’s pocket and always be in contact or always be out of the way of others or be more easily hidden from the prying eyes of others. Daemons that settle as huge, dangerous things even though their humans don’t feel very scary at all - daemons that settle as huge and dangerous things because their humans don’t feel scary or safe. Give me daemons that are misunderstood. Snake daemons that have similar markings to a much more venomous cousin but are harmless. Daemons that are huge but gentle. Swan daemons that look graceful and pretty and have broken 3 people’s arms already.

Give me daemons that pull back. Daemons that hide in pockets or in shadows. Daemons that aren’t ever going to let their human’s romantic partner touch them, and that’s okay. Daemons that don’t understand or like their humans sometimes, because they are their humans, and honestly how often do we understand and like ourselves, especially when we’re young?

Give me daemons that mirror their human’s health, and daemons that don’t. Daemons whose fur loses its gloss when their humans are stressed or ill. Daemons and humans that are both deaf. Daemons who lose a paw when their human has to have a limb amputated. Daemons who are missing a limb in every shape they take in childhood because their human was born without it. Daemons that share their human’s disability because it’s a part of them just like the way they both hate the smell of citrus or they can both curl up their tongues. 

Daemons who don’t match their humans, or who settle as creatures with abilities that let them make the world more accessible to their humans. Daemons who settle as birds so that they can grab things off of shelves for their wheelchair-using humans. Daemons who settle as something big so their humans can climb on top when they’re tired or in pain. Monkey daemons that can type on their human’s behalf when they’re having a migraine and don’t want to look at a screen. Daemons that can perch on their blind human’s shoulder and whisper directions and sights into their ear, that describe colours and prints so their humans can paint and be fashion designers. 

Give me humans and daemons that fall in love at different speeds. Give me daemons that keep secrets from their humans. Give me daemons with unusually short ranges who can’t be parted from their humans, and daemons with unusually long ones that creep people out. Give me daemons that will check your teeth after you eat a salad to tell you if you have spinach stuck there. Give me humans that will check out a library book in a genre they never read because the main character settled as the same wildly obscure species their daemon is and they’re trying to make them feel better about it. Give me human/daemon pairs who have to re-evaluate the assumptions they’ve made about some species when they meet their college roommate and they’re a scorpion and you’re a frog and you’ve read this story - but you end up being best friends. Give me human/daemon pairs that so far have only dated people with big burly predator daemons, who are absolutely floored when they instantly fall for someone with a ladybug.

Give me daemons, please.

Halloween is a time for children to be with other children. So when the holiday arrived, James and Lily hesitantly dropped Harry off with a family friend so that he could play with someone his age. They were both understandably nervous as they watched their fifteen-month old wobble around the unfamiliar kitchen, his eyes lit up as the other children eagerly showed him their palace. 

They knew that they shouldn’t take this big of a risk with the prophecy. Why had they listened to Sirius? Oh, right, because Remus had agreed. And James had nodded and had said, “If we’re going to keep Harry alive, we might as well give him a life.” And Lily had smiled and had given in. Still, she clung onto her husband, as they watched their child disappear into a crowd of hyperactivity.

“Not to worry, dears,” said the smiling matriarch, giving them both a hug. “He’ll be perfectly safe on my watch.”

And she was right.

When Voldemort arrived that evening, Harry was perfectly safe.

Instead of James and Lily, it was another set of parents who died, leaving their family behind. A family that needed a home…

There was no question from Lily, no hesitation from James.

And if anyone happened to see Lily on the sidewalk, with red hair that was almost as fiery as her eyes, well, who wouldn’t assume that the seven gingers following her were her biological children?

So I’m finally watching His Dark Materials, and uh…

I didn’t know the panserbjorn ran a children’s hospital.

On mother's day

Mum

I'm sorry

i love you i swear i do i just cant say it. i dont remember the last time i did. i do remember when i promised myself i never would again and now i cant anymore

im sorry and i know you are too i know you love me. you do say it. and you want me to say it back. you hug me and want me to hug you back. you kiss me and want me to kiss you back. i cant. im so sorry.

it hurts and i know it hurts you too. i know, because it kinda was the point. it was payback for hurting me. i was a kid and scared and powerless and the only thing i could take away from you and dad was myself. so i did. as punishment. i didnt know i was punishing myself too. i didnt know i didnt know any better im sorry.

and when we left him i thought we'd be fine. but we're not. we're so obviously not. we're alone with each other and i dont know how to love. and you dont know a lot about me.

you gave me my life and have been with me almost every second of it. and there's so much you don't know. so much i've kept from you. i kept myself from you for too long. i dont know how to give myself back.

and i don't know if you'd want it. if you'd like it. me. if you'd like me.

i remember you wanted me to do ballet, like my cousin. im sorry im black belt now. i remember you wanted me to go shopping with you. im sorry i couldnt care less about it. (i AM sorry. you like it so much and i just dont.) i remember every time i've had to put makeup on and how pretty you say i look. im sorry the mirror makes me want to cry.

im sorry we dont care about the same things. its not that i dont care about you. its not the only way you can care about me.

i remember when i wasnt too excited about doing my hair and you said i might as well have been born a boy im not a boy im just not a girl in the ways you want me to be

i know it hurt that you are not going to my graduation party im sorry, it hurt me too. it hurt me to. I hurt me too. im sorry dad's gonna get mad when he finds out he's not going either. im sorry he hurt us so much.

i remember when you said im cold. im not. i just dont know how to feel out loud. not anymore. not in front of you, anyway. and today you said you hope to at least be invited to my wedding. im sorry i dont know if im ever gonna get married.

but if i marry a girl, would you go?

please go.

im sorry this was such an awful mothers day.

im sorry im sorry im sorry i know im not what you wanted but its all i can be

please understand please love me please forgive me

x your only daughter

That post about Luna keeping her head in a crisis is making the rounds again, and it always reminds me of one of my favorite things about Harry Potter’s friends.

Can you imagine Head Auror Potter’s enemies deciding he’s too dangerous and they should go after the people he cares about?

“All right, so everyone knows Weasley only made it so far in the Auror force because he was Potter’s buddy, right? Let’s go after him.” Later, Ron is rubbing his neck in embarrassment as the mediwizards are dragging half a dozen neo-death-eaters out of a smoking crater.

“Fine, Granger, then. She sits at a desk all day, nothing to be scared of.” By the time they make it to Hermione’s office they’ve set off six alarms and four booby traps, one of them is permanently blue, another one is seven inches tall. Hermione’s waiting with a drawn wand and a half-dozen goblins that are super cranky about having their negotiations interrupted.

“Okay, how about we go after his wife and kids?” “No way, man, you do not f*** with that guy’s wife.” “Yeah, and his kid bit me! Look, I’ve got a scar!”

“What about the professor? I hear that guy’s kind of a dork. I mean, all he does is mess around in the greenhouses, right?” “I dunno, isn’t he head of Gryffindor house?” Later, “So, I heard you got your a*** kicked by a house plant…”

“The naturalist, then. Pretty little blond girl? Kind of vague? No problem, right?” “Oh, f***, s***, my eyes!” (Everybody always forgets that Luna Lovegood led an army…)

[This last one is largely due to @vivithefolle, so she gets credit for it.]

“What about the godson, right? Lives with his grandmother? Little old lady and a small child, no problem.” … “Okay, why didn’t anyone mention that she’s a Slytherin? And a Black! I’m pretty sure what she just hit us with was banned by international treaty!” “Yeah, what are we gonna do, call the Aurors?”

Ultimately they decide it’s just safer to go after the guy whose signature spell is, after all, Expelliarmus.

if you dont have me on facebook you are probably not missing out on any posts but the comment section is important too lmao

can we just talk about the time that Lupin was recovering from a full moon and Snape taught the DADA class and made all the students write essays on how to kill werewolves for Lupin to read when he got back I hate Snape so much it’s not funny