blind protagonist?

[Auro-Cyanide]

@Mink. But there are blind people. It's not so much that I can relate to them, because I can't. I have never not been able to see. However, I would be very interested in how they 'view' the world. To not acknowledge that part of them seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity to explore a perspective that we don't often think about. Having a story told from a certain perspective is all about showing a different point of view. That is pointless if you are going to palm off the hard bits just so you can align with your own point of view or the point of view of the audience. It would definitely be challenging, but it would also be unique, creative and interesting if done correctly.

[Crocosquirrel]

I've been avoiding saying anything, since I still have most of my eyesight, and I wasn't sure how I would handle the lack of sight in my MC. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've even considered writing a blind character.

As has been stated here, there are varying degrees of sight, from perfect to mildly impaired (like mine), to severely impaired like Mink and Auro. If it were me, I might consider starting out either fully sighted or entirely blind, and move slowly in the opposite direction. It would depend on what sort of story you want to tell.

For an MC that's entirely blind throughout, I would probably work with some sort of other input to composite an 'image' of the environment. I know a few people that are utterly blind, and they tend to mentally map out their surroundings by sound and touch. Normally, it's with the taps of the infamous white cane, but at least one person I know of uses a form of echolocation.

The blind are usually trained to put things on a dinner table in particular places based on a clock. I know one woman that was good enough at it she could sit down in any restaurant and it seemed like she was mildly OCD, and not completely blind. Taking that a step farther, you can accurately describe the environment they're in, as long as it is known to them beforehand. The first time in an area, and they have to wander around it a bit to get an idea of where they are in Spacetime. Colors are probably right out, although light and shadow can be simulated by changes in temperature.

So what I would do for environments is keep a black screen available for new areas, and do shaded black and white for areas they've explored before. When entering a new area, give them a choice to explore or not, and then do a fade in of the new BG. If they choose not to, then the scene stays black.

People are more problematic, as without touching the person, there's no way to accurately determine what they look like. Voices can reveal things like gender and rough age, but little in terms of what we would think of as visual information. Until there can be some sort of touching, maybe an indistinct fuzziness for a sprite, and depending on the amount of touching, varying levels of resolution.

For someone that's never been sighted, doing art of this sort is reasonably easy. For someone that has been sighted, then things can get really squirrelly. Imagination of what people might look like can run rampant, and the tall, skinny woman with the mosquito bites but the deep, sultry voice will be portrayed like Jessica Rabbit until evidence proves otherwise.

So here's the way I would write it.

Kenjiro Kimura was a normal guy, until last month, when he was standing too close to an explosion(probably something more or less common, like a gas main leak or a car accident). The flash from the explosion seared his retinas, rendering him entirely sightless. He is withdrawn from his school, and sent to another specializing in the disabled. Here he has to learn how to cope with not only the accident, but his new situation.

Now I realize you get echoes of Katawa Shoujo in this concept, but handled properly, the parallels can be dealt with. An entirely blind school might be one way.

Doing the same thing from a college setting might work, too.

Now, if you want to make it as an H-game, you would want an excellent writer to make the sex scenes interesting. You won't have the sort of visuals one would normally expect. Or if you do, they'll be heavily fantasized to begin with, growing more realistic as the scene goes on and he learns more about his partner.

As a family-friendly game, it doesn't have those challenges to surmount, and will be a much easier sell. YMMV.

Going the other direction, you have Keiko Shirow, who woke up one morning to a blinding headache, because her eyes have started working for no reason that can be immediately explained. For a fun horror angle, you can make it an experiment by scientist father or someone else close by way of Something Nasty used for good purposes.

So now she has to learn how to see, and deal with the way reality presents itself now that she can perceive it visually. The guy she thought absolutely adorable before she could see him might be horribly scarred.

Only after that do we get to what it was that caused her 'recovery'.

Make of it all what you will.

[wizzardx]

This topic reminds of this animated YouTube video about a girl going out for a walk through town, and having her bag stolen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qCbiCxBd2M

It's worth watching

[Wright1000]

I watched the video. At least, it has a good ending.
I know many stories about blind people that are worth converting into a VN.

[Rilxi]

It's a weird coincidence, but this semester at my college, my acting teacher decided we were going to do the play 'Wait Until Dark'. This is the overall plot:
"Susy Hendrix (Lee Remick) is a blind Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three con-men searching for the heroin hidden in a doll, which her husband Sam innocently transported from Canada as a favor to a woman who has since been murdered. "Roat" leads his companions into thinking they are going to be rich and will get the heroin soon enough, but in the end he murders all of his partners after they outlive their usefulness." -Wikipedia

Most of the play, everyone (except Susy) can see everything that's going on. What's interesting though, is that we'll be doing the last scene in complete blackout. The audience will only be able to hear us as we move across the stage and the final struggle between Susy and Roat take place.

[Mink]

@Mink. But there are blind people. It's not so much that I can relate to them, because I can't. I have never not been able to see. However, I would be very interested in how they 'view' the world. To not acknowledge that part of them seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity to explore a perspective that we don't often think about. Having a story told from a certain perspective is all about showing a different point of view. That is pointless if you are going to palm off the hard bits just so you can align with your own point of view or the point of view of the audience. It would definitely be challenging, but it would also be unique, creative and interesting if done correctly.

Well, I'm not saying don't acknowledge blind people (or a member of X group), I just don't think this would really work well as a visual novel (not to say that it's impossible or anything; of course not). Maybe we should just agree to disagree.

Random thought; anyone remember that story about those guys who decided to help a blind guy play a Legend of Zelda game?

[Aka-kami]

if the protagonist has always been blind, they will not know what things look like. Their imagination would conjure something quite different from reality. Again, you could do something really interesting with what they imagine, but you may have to do some research.

There's the problem. If one were to be born blind, then they wouldn't be able to perceive what colors are as they would not even know what colors look like. A person who's been blind from the get go may imagine things that we with sight could not comprehend. They might be able to describe it, but we won't necessarily be able to imagine it ourselves.

You could always have a protagonist who's legally blind (meaning their eyesight is so bad it's almost like they're blind). With that you can get creative and make all the images blurry, though for many people that might just result in headaches >A>;;