#if he’s manipulative in your fic just call him manipulative bc insane just lumps in all mental health issues together and that’s bad

[transphilza]

actually. i do kindly ask that in the future nobody refers to c!wilbur’s mental state on my drawings or posts about him as “insane” or variations thereupon. and i wanna talk about why i hate this term in this context

pragmatically, the term is functionally useless: it’s not a clinical term and it doesn’t have any distinct meaning that you can’t achieve with better, less derogatory terms. if your “insane wilbur soot” tag can be replaced by “wilbur soot is not okay” or “wilbur soot has mental health issues” or variations thereupon that actually describe that he’s struggling, then use those. using the term insane as a catch-all for any mental health issues you deem scary or dangerous is just ableist

there’s plenty of ways to use insane colloquially that don’t demean mentally ill people and i think using it casually (a la “that was insane!”) is totally fine….. but using it to describe someone’s mental illness just feels straight up ableist. don’t think that it’s unnoticeable how frequently things on ao3 that are tagged “insane wilbur soot” are also tagged “villain wilbur soot.” associating c!wilbur’s mental illness with him being a bad person is… Bad. if you don’t like him or don’t forgive him that’s fine, go off, but don’t make it about his serious mental struggles, because that makes it very clear how you view mentally ill people and how you’re an ally until mentally ill people start to show symptoms that aren’t pretty.

before you use that word think about what you mean by it. what about his behavior or mental state makes him “insane”? are you using this word as a descriptor of him behaving erratically, being paranoid, or being manipulative? perhaps use those specific words instead! think about what definition of “insane” you’re using and think about if there might be a more clear and less derogatory way of saying it. because a vast majority of the time people call wilbur insane it’s because they see his mental health issues as something that makes him scary and dangerous, and not because they actually want to accurately describe him or his behavior

this also goes for other terms that tend to veer on the side of demonizing the mentally ill. “psychotic,” “sociopath,” “antisocial,” “narcissistic.” this isn’t to say these terms, nor “insane” can never be accurate descriptors. but this is to say that you should research a term and its connotations before using it - think about what you really mean by it. i find it helpful to use tags and descriptors that describe specific actions or feelings rather than a general mental state - this makes what you want to say both more clear and understandable and also less derogatory toward the mentally ill.

tldr; research terminology before you use it and stop using ableist catch-all terms for characters that exhibit mental illness in a way you associate with being “scary” or “dangerous”. being an ally to the mentally ill and reducing stigma includes thinking more carefully about your vocabulary sometimes :)

#SORRY FOR WRITING AN ESSAY ON THE DASH! I JUST HATE THIS TERM LMFAO #if he’s manipulative in your fic just call him manipulative bc insane just lumps in all mental health issues together and that’s bad #dream smp #wilbur soot #sorry i just wanted to condense this into a post lols #‘ableism’ #long post #discourse #i guess #myposts #info