#tbh i think po and toph are better at dealing with this trope than matt

[treefey]

#‘it didn’t occur to me; until it was too late; that I had disabled Po; then given him a magical cure for his disability #‘thus implying that he couldn’t be a whole person and be disabled. I now understand that the magical cure trope is all too common in #‘[Fantast]/[Science Fiction] writing and is disrespectful to people with disabilities. My failings here are all my own’ #that last sentence fucking hurt

Oof. I love Cashore for catching this and fixing it, but I am much less harsh on the way she wrote Po. I know this is a trope; Daredevil and Toph have the same "blind but see so much" thing. But I think in all three instances, it's obvious that their second sight doesn't make up for the lack of regular sight, and the characters are still whole humans. Matt has to steal a burner phone and have Claire read text messages to him. Toph is super disoriented on a boat, on Appa, or on ice. Neither one wants you to feel pity for their lack of vision.

And Po... It hit me on my last reread how much he loves looking at things. Katsa says he lost beauty. He loves the striking sight of po trees and his castle hanging over the water. He loves being overwhelmed at the sight of Katsa, being lost in her eyes. He will never see her again. We catch Po at the beginning of his journey where he is still accepting this-- Matt has accepted it years, and Toph's blindness always matters more to other people than to her. At the end of Graceling, I got the sense that Po's grace didn't "fix" him, but merely protected him from suspicion. It would have been really dangerous for him to be outted as a mind reader in the immediate aftermath of Leck. He is still disabled and is still grieving and learning a lot.

Maybe I think this way because Bitterblue was already published when I first read the Graceling series, so only had to wait like 2 weeks to see how being blind affects Po. And I think it's important to note that he's farther along in his journey-- he's accepted his blindness and hates that he can't just shout it from the rooftops.

I also think if you're in a world with magic powers, it makes sense that magic can be a... disability aid, I guess? In short, I'm really glad Cashore got input and wrote Bitterblue, but I don't think she needs to feel like she failed. But a blind person may feel differently!

I’m definitely not crying over the authors note at the end of BitterBlue where the author acknowledges that earlier in the series she disabled one of her characters just to immediately magic cure him and when writing a later book had someone to consult with about if she could get around said magic cure and have him still be disabled character so she could show him being whole and happy while also being disabled