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By the Eyes of the Blind: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''Greta''': As a Keeper, I have the gift of Sight. I can pass this into few chosen people, and you, Elena, are one of them.
'''Bombo''': Hi, Elena!
'''Elena''': Huh? Bombo, I... I can see you! The Bobaks, Bursties, Snyakutz Bu, I can see all of you!
|''[[Monster Allergy]]'', ''The Devourer''}}
A creature, or [[Invisible Aliens|entire race of creatures]], can only be seen by individuals who possess a certain trait. For anyone who does not share that trait, the creature cannot be perceived at all. Usually, losing the trait will also cause you to lose the ability to perceive them, though in some cases, once you have encountered the creature, you will always be able to perceive them.
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== Literature ==
* Thestrals in ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' can only be seen by those who have witnessed someone die. Harry joins this group in the fifth book after he comes to terms with being there at Cedric's murder. It comes as a bit of a shock when he arrives at Hogwarts and sees that the "horseless" carriages are actually pulled by skeletal, reptile-faced, winged horses.
** The [[Public Domain Artifact#The Hand of Glory|Hand of Glory]] introduced in ''[[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (novel)|Chamber of Secrets]]'' is a specialised example: its ''light'' can only be seen by the person holding it.
* [[Discworld]]
** Death can be seen by animals, witches and wizards, and small children. And people about to die or who are having a near-death experience. In brief, anybody whose [[Weirdness Censor]] is off. ...And Carrot, who used him as a witness for a murder in the short story 'Theatre of Cruelty'. The book ''[[
** ''Discworld'' also brings us the expression 'First Sight' from the Tiffany Aching books. Apparently Second Sight is the ability to see things that aren't really there (most people have this), but First Sight is the ability to see things that ''are'', whether or not you're expecting them. Wizards are trained to have this ability basically as soon as they start at the Unseen University, and it's a great help to naturally have it if you're going to be a witch. Carrot's extremely straightforward nature may correlate somehow.
** Ghosts can, according to Death, be seen by close relatives, the magically-receptive, and cats.
** The Bogles (weird humanoid demon-animals that inhabit the Underworld) from ''[[
* "''The Ten O'Clock People''", by [[Stephen King]], had monsters that appeared as human but could only be identified by people who smoke a certain amount (roughly a couple a day, but not heavily).
* ''[[The Emperor's New Clothes]]'' plays with this trope. The cloth for the titular garb allegedly can only be seen by the wise, or those well suited to their jobs. [[It Was His Sled|Of course, there is no cloth, so the emperor is nude.]] The [[Fridge Logic]] is, of course, why anyone would want stupid people to see them naked.
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** Then there's the fact that most things from the Hedge, such as [[Our Goblins Are Wickeder|hobgoblins]], can only be perceived on Earth by changelings or any humans a changeling has chosen to ensorcel.
* In the 3E [[Ravenloft]] supplement ''Dark Tales & Disturbing Legends'', many bogeymen [[Invisible to Adults|can only be seen by children]].
* ''[[Stars Without Number]]'' (Original Edition) describes weird creatures dubbed The Shibboleth. Anything who sees them catches aversion field, which prevents people from noticing them — even if they erect a large building in the middle of the same city (they can make human-like minions to order humans around), and if one grabs and drags away the next guy, this will be explained away, usually by blaming someone else. They are problem due to consistent malevolence and not having a recognizable standard shape, so it's impossible to simply collect recordings in some clean place and program a bunch of robots to kill these things on sight. However, any psychic who suffered damage from "[[Superpower Meltdown|torching]]" is immune, and telepaths found a way to reproduce the effect in non-psychics, leading to the weirdest [[Secret War]]s in the setting.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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== [[Web Comic]] ==
* The gods of ''[[A Moment of Peace]]'' are invisible to the stick figure humans they walk among, but apparently Monster Food, limbless worm-like creatures hanging from the very bottom of the food chain, can see them. Or at least [https://web.archive.org/web/20140212171822/http://www.amomentofpeace.net/comic.php?num=113 this one] can.
* [[Monsterhood]] has an interesting variation. The monster town is contained in an energy field that makes those outside it believe that whatever is inside is fantasy—they'll rationalize their experiences within as a dream, a movie they were acting in, or anything else, and monsters trapped outside too long will even forget they are monsters, as monsters exist inside the field and are thus fantasy. The "Blind" here? People who can't distinguish between fantasy and reality are entirely unaffected, as what's within the field doesn't seem any less "real" to them.
* ''[[Shan Shan|The Adventures of Shan Shan]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20140204075744/http://shanshan.upperrealms.com/view.php?pageid=004&chapterid=1 Shan Shan is special and can see and hear things others can't.]
== Web Original ==
* ''[[SCP Foundation]]'': The world accessible through SCP-093 is almost immediately found to be full of strange figures that are visible on the monitoring cameras, but which the people exploring the world can't seem to see. {{spoiler|They turn out to be the "ghosts" of the Unclean and those absorbed by them -- they can only be seen by machines or those affected by His Tears. They show no ability to speak, but seem able to communicate textually through machinery that allows it, and communicate telepathically with the affected.}}
* Implied in many works from [[The Slender Man Mythos]]. Typically, only Slender Man's intended victims can actually see him unassisted. However, he always shows up in pictures and videos, which is why the more [[Genre Savvy]] characters (i.e. [[Marble Hornets|Alex Kralie]], [[Tribe Twelve|Milo]],) start keeping a camera with them at all times. Then, when other characters review said pictures and videos, they end up going "Hey wait, why didn't I ever notice that rather obvious tall, faceless guy in the business suit when I was actually there?" Unfortunately, realizing that Slender Man exists is an easy way to get on his list...
* False Hydra, monster originally [http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/false-hydra.html from ''Goblin Punch'' blog] who became somewhat popular in part thanks to [[Reddit]]. Not noticeable for those in hearing range and with working ears, thus somewhat vulnerable to long-range observation (which is rarely possible until it's too late) or well-prepared suspicious people if it gets careless (not noticing the creature itself doesn't make those it rather won't eat today avoid "empty" place, or remove determination to apply standard "[[Alpha Strike|Kill It With All The Fire]]" procedure to all spots showing certain anomalies, or wherever the guy wearing layered ear protection points, etc).
== Western Animation ==
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:Sadly there are more serious consequences to this than simply being unable to tell if someone's had asparagus. There are poisonous gases which some people can't smell and so can't detect as leaking when they enter a room, which may have debilitating or fatal results.
* Certain high-frequency sounds — between about 15kHz and about 20kHz — can be heard by children and adolescents, but generally not by anyone older than 25. Sounds in this range have been put to use both as [[Teens Are Monsters|teenager repellent]] (because by nature it's an extremely irritating high-pitched whine) and as an [[Invisible to Adults|Inaudible To Adults]] mobile phone ringtone. As time passes, a person's hearing gets damaged and therefore lose some of their range. Those who take care of their hearing (protect them from loud noises, mostly) and/or have sharp ears to begin with will usually keep their ability to perceive these sounds. Conversely, some can never hear into this range, by a simple quirk of genetics.
** Those inaudible mobile phone ringtones have one (occasionally hilarious) flaw
** Some cat repellers use similar frequencies, making them inaudible to the average Western homeowner but highly irritating to their younger neighbours.
** Bat calls (not their echolocation 'chirps' but the sounds they make to signal to other bats) fall within this range.
* Certain bitter chemicals, such as phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) can only be tasted by people with the right flavor-receptors in their taste buds. People with the greatest variety of receptors and/or a denser supply of them are known as "supertasters", and tend to dislike flavors with bitter components, such as coffee or cabbage.
* Colorblind people can be useful in aerial recon. Some types of camouflage don't work on them.
* A lot of non-military camouflage looks a uniform pale grey in near-infrared. This is mostly a result of modern dyes being tuned for the visible spectrum, but has the side-effect that, for example, a game hunter's camo suit stands out as a solid block when viewed through a cheap near-IR camera. This side-effect is sometimes viewed as a safety feature: an injured person wearing camouflage is easy to spot if the rescue party uses an infrared camera (and near-IR cameras are a ''lot'' cheaper than the far-infrared "thermal imaging" kind).
** Some popular [[Virtual Reality]] headsets use near-infrared cameras to locate themselves in space, and for "passthrough" (where the wearer sees through the cameras). Add an infrared torch, and the wearer can see where (s)he's going in what, for everyone else, is complete darkness.
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[[Category:Otherness Tropes]]
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