# color blind female



## SeverinR (May 18, 2012)

Color blind female, 
I only know a couple color blind people in my life(both men), no one I can ask about this.

Would a color blind woman still like flowers? (aside from smelling good)
Do color blind people have improvement in other senses?
Do they see in various shades of White-gray-black?

Any suggestions or incidents that might make a color blind fantasy thief (Cat buglar) more believable.  She couldn't tell color, but clarity, carat, and cut she could still do. She might have problems with stealing "good" art. I think she could tell silver from other metals.

I don't think I have ever read about a fantasy character being color blind. (Mixed race-daughter of a half elf and human.)

Might have her like music, which would fit in with the story.


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## SeverinR (May 18, 2012)

Wiki-provided some information.

So I will answer what I learned;
There is a total color blindess, but it is a brain issue not an eye issue.
Different shades of colors are seen as other colors. Red-green is most common.
Color blindness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Deuteranomaly:
[/quote]These individuals have a mutated form of the medium-wavelength (green) pigment. The medium-wavelength pigment is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum resulting in a reduction in sensitivity to the green area of the spectrum. Unlike protanomaly the intensity of colors is unchanged. This is the most common form of color blindness,





> They have a nice rainbow chart showing what each type of blindness sees.
> 
> Also men are more likely then females to be color blind. 8% of males, .5% females are.
> 
> Red and green are import now days(stop lights), but how big was it back in 1200-1700?


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## Butterfly (May 18, 2012)

I've looked and can't find a thing on the subject of attitudes, or problems. Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places, or it's a question that's hard to answer. I think we are going to have to use our imaginations on this one.

I do know, however, that different colours had different meanings in medieval times. Renaissance Clothing: The Meaning of Renaissance and Medieval Clothing Colors as flowers also have their own symbolic language THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

I'd assume the main problem your MC will have is a difficulty in distinguishing class, status and rank, if seen by colour alone. Could possibly offend someone with this one. She would have to notice other things such as the type of fabric used.

Reading text might be one problem with those fancy scroll work pictures they used to use. Stained glass would look different. It all depends on the type of colour-blindness she has.

In her day to day life I doubt there would be many other, generalised problems, but that again would depend on her position in society. The lower classes would be less exposed to bright colours than those higher up the ladder.

An issue could be food. It was generally believed that to eat anything red would poison you, be they tomatoes, strawberries, etc. Likely she couldn't tell by looking if a piece of fruit was ripe or not, but through other means, firmness etc. 

Hope this gives you some ideas to work from.


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## gavintonks (May 18, 2012)

hahahahah I am sorry colour blind people do not know they are colour blind until someone tells them. I can see both colours on a colour blind card so one is red and one is green, Why would seeing a red flower as green make you not like the flower when you have no idea what the colour is in the first place?
It is not like you have a reference.You are confusing colour blind with seeing in black and white. Colour blind people see colour just a different one to what you think it is.


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## gavintonks (May 18, 2012)

there are 8 basic colours that colour blind people misconstrue and the only reason we make an issue of red and green is they tend to drive through traffic lights which is dangerous unless they know the light at the top is red
People still see normally so I do not think there would be cause for heightened senses, the biggest problem is infra red beams will be green, and her decor would have a preference for lilac which she will see as a pale green


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## Caged Maiden (May 19, 2012)

I think this could be really funny if you do a Language of flowers type of thing.  Imagine receiving a flower which your friend meant in friendship, but you see it as love, or worse, "I'm not interested".  AHAHAH okay sorry I just went off on my own humor there for a bit.  

Gavin is right.  Colorblind people don't know they're colorblind.  They just live like we all do, and even when you have red-green colorblindness, the worst thing that happens is your clothes don't match.  If I were you, I'd pinpoint the exact type of colorblindness that you want her to have and then expand from there.  Imagine, dogs see in greyscale but manage to function perfectly fine, and if you're worried about her not recognizing a noble based on color alone, I think that's unrealistic.  

Nobility favored saturated colors.  Black was really popular, as was red and dark green, salmon, white... it doesn't matter.  You could identify them from a mile away by their hand-servants or men-at-arms, embroidered doublets, pins earrings rings or necklaces, layers of clothing, slashed and pinked sleeves, fine leather shoes instead of utilitarian boots, etc.  To think she'd mistake a noble for a peasant based on colorblindness alone is highly unlikely.  In fact, a completely blind person probably wouldn't make the mistake.  They'd smell perfume, hear the crowd around them speaking in a hushed whisper, and hear the nobles speaking in upper-class dialect.  

However, if comedy is your goal, it's all plausible to some degree.  You might make your thief dress garishly or as you mentioned, not appreciate some types of art as much.  I think colorblindness that gets someone into trouble would be hilarious, but I think it can be very challenging to anticipate exactly what things people have problems with if you personally don't have the condition.  Have you thought about asking one of the people you know personally who has the issue?  I know my teacher in middle school was red-green colorblind and he happily shared funny stories with our class (mostly about how his wife dressed him).  I guess that could be a pretty funny joke if she was asking a friend for advice on what to wear and the friend purposely mismatched her for a laugh.


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## SeverinR (May 20, 2012)

anihow said:


> I think this could be really funny if you do a Language of flowers type of thing.  Imagine receiving a flower which your friend meant in friendship, but you see it as love, or worse, "I'm not interested".  AHAHAH okay sorry I just went off on my own humor there for a bit.
> 
> Gavin is right.  Colorblind people don't know they're colorblind.  They just live like we all do, and even when you have red-green colorblindness, the worst thing that happens is your clothes don't match.  If I were you, I'd pinpoint the exact type of colorblindness that you want her to have and then expand from there.  Imagine, dogs see in greyscale but manage to function perfectly fine, and if you're worried about her not recognizing a noble based on color alone, I think that's unrealistic.
> 
> ...


Red green color blind is the most common.  I copied the rainbow scale that she sees on her stat sheet.
I figure one problem she could have, the uniform of a trainee vs a full rider,  will be how she meets the main char. Looking to steal from an officer in service to the king. But she is only a trainee and has very little to steal.
Uniform of trainee is purple and full rider is blue. Both look the same to a Deuteranomaly.


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## Caged Maiden (May 20, 2012)

If you're using a similar uniform in two different colors, it could be very funny.  

don't know whether you have considered the colors carefully, or whether those two are the only ones which appear the same, but Purple, historically is a rare color because of the VERY expensive way it is made (from sea snails).  And Royal Blue (duh, haha) is the same dying technique, but made from another sea snail.  I am not trying to be nit-picky, of course in a fantasy world you could just invent a flower which will produce the color you want, just wanted to mention it.


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## gavintonks (May 20, 2012)

the light spectrum the eye sees is not the same as the created color [printing  
if you mix all the colours starting with red blue and yellow you land up with white/] so if she was colour blind she would see black which is the absence of colour and be blind [really blind]

the elctromagnetic spectrum of white light to infra red red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet and ultra violet- however we mix pigments using red blue and yellow - printing is cyan magenta yellow and black [see cmyk] in a dot to produce colours

royal blue and azure blue are made with copper carbonates as they can produce colours from green to blue, the egyptian paste is copper carbonate and cobolt oxide which is very expensive

Indigo is a color named after the blue dye derived from the plant Indigofera
tinctoria and related species

red was cochineal bug which lives on cactus and was replaced with poisonous lead which gives the best reds, that is why sausages are pale pink now there is no more plead paint in them


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