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Oct. 13th, 2018
For context, my day job involves studying animal communication, where I am a PhD student in evolution/animal behavior. I don't work on organisms that use non-standard sensory modalities directly, but I'm very familiar with the adaptations that electroceptive and echolocatory systems (mostly in bats, that latter one) generally require.
I also spend an awful lot of time watching my cat Dent, who has been blind probably from birth and definitely since he was about ten weeks old. (We're not entirely sure whether he can see light or movement, and he definitely can't see anything else.) Dent therefore has access to certain sensory modalities that are more sensitive than vision (cats can hear much higher into the ultrasonic than humans and have a wider range of olfactory sensitivities) without actually having vision to rely on, and thinking about what it is that specific sensory modalities actually bring to the table in terms of function.
What I am not is a blind person, nor have I lived or worked closely with someone who is. This is therefore going to be a discussion that focuses pretty heavily on "okay, let's assume Matty really does have ears like a bat--how does that constrain what he can and cannot do?" and less on the actual functional issues for someone who is, you know, a blind human--although if folks have comments on that, I would absolutely fucking love to hear them.
( TL, DR: radar isn't fucking magic, and neither is echolocation. And physics still matters when we get down into sensation, more than you might think. )
I like constraint in my headcanons, because it lets me plumb the unexpected boundaries of abilities, perceptions, and creates avenues for conflict and unexpected humor; if you don't--and the writers of Daredevil in all forms certainly don't seem to be particularly careful about this--seriously, by all means ignore me or pick out whatever you like and leave the rest. But I figured that this might be something folks here might be interested in, as far as meta goes, and anyway--it was certainly fun to write.
What I am not is a blind person, nor have I lived or worked closely with someone who is. This is therefore going to be a discussion that focuses pretty heavily on "okay, let's assume Matty really does have ears like a bat--how does that constrain what he can and cannot do?" and less on the actual functional issues for someone who is, you know, a blind human--although if folks have comments on that, I would absolutely fucking love to hear them.
( TL, DR: radar isn't fucking magic, and neither is echolocation. And physics still matters when we get down into sensation, more than you might think. )
I like constraint in my headcanons, because it lets me plumb the unexpected boundaries of abilities, perceptions, and creates avenues for conflict and unexpected humor; if you don't--and the writers of Daredevil in all forms certainly don't seem to be particularly careful about this--seriously, by all means ignore me or pick out whatever you like and leave the rest. But I figured that this might be something folks here might be interested in, as far as meta goes, and anyway--it was certainly fun to write.