to people writing for moonknight! /srs
hello! i am diagnosed with DID and have noticed a little bit of a trend with some fanfic writers, so i wanted to address it just to help people that are not educated about the disorder.
* i do also have schizophrenia and thought i should mention that for the section about the green goblin.
why is ‘personality’ not okay to use when referring to steven, or marc?
the only thing people tend to know about DID is what it was previously known as (multiple personality disorder) this term has since been changed, due to the inaccuracy that the term ‘personality’ has in relation to the disorder. personality is the way that you act and present yourself, to say steven and marc are personalities, or even alter egos would be inaccurate, it is not one person changing the way that they act (or changing their personality), alters in a system are different people, separate from each other, but in the same body. the term personality implies that it is one person that is consciously changing the way they act, but DID is not like that at all. the different alters can have their own personality, but they themselves are not ‘a personality’.
what can i say instead of personality?
alters is the term commonly used for the different people in systems, although there are other terms, such as headmates that some systems prefer. i personally think people should use alters when referring to steven and marc, but never personality/alter ego.
i have seen some people compare norman osborn/green goblin to steven grant and wanted to speak about that too.
norman does not have DID, i’ve tried to research and all i have found that it’s said that norman suffers from a form of schizophrenia and that the formula he created worsened that schizophrenia and brought out the green goblin. i believe the green goblin in some sort of hallucination or delusion, but i couldn’t find any canon evidence, besides a fandom wiki suggesting norman suffers from schizophrenia. schizophrenia and DID do have a lot of overlapping symptoms, so i understand the confusion, however they are both very different and should not be grouped together/compared. DID is a disorder that comes from childhood trauma, to say norman and steven experience the same thing would be incorrect. in norman’s case, the green goblin wasn’t present during his childhood, instead came around later in life, whilst what steven experiences would have been right from childhood.
trigger warnings for DID
i have seen several people put warnings for DID and frankly i see this as unnecessary and ridiculous. i personally find it incredibly dehumanising, as this disorder already has such a bad reputation due to the representation in movies such as split. there is no warning in the show for ‘mentions of DID’, the only mention of DID the show has is in the description of the show. no one that is ‘triggered’ by DID (which they shouldn’t be) would be watching the show, let alone be reading fanfiction about the show. stop putting warnings for DID on your fanfictions. it’s unnecessary and hurtful.
some extra information to help your writing
in a system, alters can have different views on people, not every single alter is going to like the same people, so keep that in mind. if there are people shipping marc and steven (although i do not ship it myself), it is not selfcest or incest at all! alters in a system can have romantic, platonic or familial relationships and it is not selfcest/incest.
my dms are open to questions, along with the comments. feel free to ask any questions and i will try my best to answer them :)
thank you for reading!




















