okay, a few people asked to hear my thoughts so here we go. [context]
i. it's ableist to diagnose bill at all.
i want to start off by saying that i hate diagnosing fictional characters with mental health conditions. i don't talk about it a lot publicly, but i do have a phd in clinical psychology and i have 13 years of experience in the field having served in outpatient, PH/IOP, inpatient, and forensic settings. i have the knowledge and training to do it, if i wanted, but not only do i usually not want to do it but i actively avoid doing it whenever i can.
while diagnosing people seems as simple as cracking open the DSM and going through a checklist, or going through a short-form screener and totaling up the score, it's not supposed to be that simple. sadly, even a lot of trained clinicians treat it as this simple which is one of the reasons i think clients get treated badly and have poor results. (i remember being on my internship [the last year of training before you graduate] and having to explain to my cohort that you cannot diagnose depression with the PHQ-9 alone. it's dire out there folks.)
let me give you a personal example to highlight why this is so complicated: a sample of the things i have been diagnosed with are ADHD, CPTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, schizotypal personality disorder, and avoidant personality disorder. and while i was never diagnosed with it, i've been evaluated for ASD multiple times. now, the problem here is that these diagnoses have come from 3 different therapists and 2 different neuropsychologists at different stages in my life. not a single one of these providers have ever agreed on what i have going on so i have no idea what's going on beyond my own personal opinion. there is no consistency even on things that in psychological theory """shouldn't""" change, like a developmental or personality disorder.
there's a few reasons for this. 1) the symptom overlap for these conditions is extremely high (both literally [what's written in the DSM] and functionally [examples a patient may self-report]); 2) the co-morbid diagnoses inform each other (e.g., if your primary diagnosis captures 80% of your symptoms then your secondary diagnosis should capture the other 20%) so once you've started down one path the other paths are almost predetermined; 3) since these tests all took place at different times in my life i had a better understanding of myself and the world, i had different life contexts with different things bothering me, and i had different examples to self-report.
a good clinician will listen to your self-report, will gather the examples and what you think/feel about your examples from across your entire lifespan, then will tell you what they think and discuss with you what you think about what they think, then you and the clinician will figure out what fits best together.
and you can't do that with a fictional character. you see them in a specific context with very cherry-picked personality, behavioral, and motivational examples used as driving forces for a story being told. you're seeing the best of the character for the story, not of them as a fictitious person. so, while talking about these examples and mapping them onto extant diagnoses is a very fun thought experiment and can enrich transformative story telling-
it in and of itself is inherently ableist, in my opinion. the idea that you can take a snapshot of a person and know exactly what's wrong with them is dehumanizing.
yes, obviously all the counterpoints you, the reader, jumped to when i said that are true: it's just playing dolls with friends, the writer coded a character a certain way either intentionally or on accident because of biases within the genre, making it that deep adds a layer of richness and depth to transformative work that makes for a higher quality product, keri you have fucking done this you goddamn hypocrite. and yes, you're right, i agree with you. i do personally agree with the people who have assessed bill's character and say he has trauma and dissociative disorders. but until alex hirsch comes out and makes those disorders explicitly canon, then he does NOT have them and any advocacy for them is simply playing dolls with friends. and when you do that you do then have to grapple with the implications of playing dolls in that way.
i could pontificate on this point for hours, but this is long enough. the point is, from the very jump, diagnosing bill with any definitive, extant diagnosis, already begins to tread into ableist waters. i believe this because if bill were a real client i was treating, i would consider it a violation of autonomy and ethics to take information about him told to me by someone else and use it to justify not only a diagnosis but involuntary hospitalization. you just wouldn't do this (or, rather, you shouldn't do this) and therefore. well. you shouldn't do this.
necessary disclaiming caveat: there's a difference between a doyalistic reading of the text that analyzes the ways hirsch intentionally designed bill as a character (e.g., him studying cult leaders) and a watsonian analysis of bill cipher as a person. this entire point is rooted in a watsonian reading, if that wasn't clear.
ii. it's ableist to diagnose bill with human disorders.
so, for various reasons you've decided you're going to diagnose bill anyway. that's fine, as i've said, i also do that. there are cases where i think it's irresponsible not to. and worse than that, it's boring not to. he's a character in a story for god's sake. but this does mean we run into our next hurdle: bill isn't human.
in real life, diagnoses and treatments have to be normed. that means that researchers have to test to make sure each one maps reasonably equally onto each possible culture and subgroup. for example, a massive part of my early training was drilling into our heads that a patient reporting ghosts isn't necessarily experiencing psychosis and that just because grief lasts longer than the time frame in the DSM doesn't mean it's pathological. we have reasonable averages for things based on research, but there are also a billion and one exceptions and caveats (there are also a billion and one reasons the research might be unreliable). circle back to item one on actively working with your patient before you start slapping labels on them.
bill isn't human, he has no normed data. fuck, we don't even know anything about euclydia as a place! therefore we're given another reason to be cautious. i can't give bill a developmental disorder because i don't know what typical development on euclydia looks like. i also don't know what of his behavior is a function of a mortal being becoming immortal. i also don't know what's a genuine reaction and what's an act. we cannot say.
bill is an alien, an unreliable self-report, and within a foundationless context. we simple do not have enough information for the tools that we have to be of meaningful use. therefore we are acting unethically by forcing him to fit within our structures. it's ableist to make larger assumptions about him when we have no validated tools to even begin to have an informed opinion. (again, watsonian.)
for a bit of fun: the theraprism is also doing this. bill is the only one of his kind. i'd bet good money that the theraprism doesn't have a) medication that's been tested for safe, effective use with euclydians, b) have evidence based treatments normed for euclydians, c) have a DSM-equivalent normed for euclydians. their treatment is inherently unethical. UNLESS they do, because it's the afterlife, and they're able to hand-wave a perfect scenario for him. but it's funny that hirsch designed theraprism baked in with treatments we know are unethical, then, isn't it. much to think about. real keri-heads will know i've preached on this before, but this is not the place for it.
iii. it's ableist to not take any of it seriously.
this point highlights the absolute number one issue i have with the fandom's relationship to bill's mental health. i know i just wrote a whole essay about the previous two points, but i actually don't really care about them all that much. it's just stuff i think people need to think more about before they play fast and loose with serious topics.
but this? this one really boils me. i'm going to say it very bluntly and very plainly so my intentions are understood and the issues are clear:
1. when you do things like try to redeem bill or fix bill or change bill or tame bill you're siding with his parents. you're overtly and blatantly saying bill's parents were right to abuse him. you're saying that bill can only be loved and accepted and integrated into society if he becomes normal, which was the foundation for their abuse.
this is the main issue i have and is the one i think people are most scared to vocalize because, frankly, it's a pretty aggressive stance. but considering what i've seen from the fandom both contemporarily and historically, i do think it needs to be said.
making bill human in otherwise canon-compliant settings and "bill experiences human emotions" all come with the not so subtle implication that there's something inherently lesser about bill as he is. that there's a superiority to humanity and human thinking and human morality/ethics and human functioning and human life that simply cannot be replicated by an alien. there's the implication that not only the characters in the story but also the writer of the piece cannot empathize with or care about bill unless he's been changed to be like them. and boy do i detect a hint of racism?
2a. this subpoint is one in which i struggle to articulate well, but i'm going to do my best.
i don't know what it is about bill that makes people want so badly to punish him. is it that he did all that to children? is it that his actions were so unapologetically self-interested? is it that his actions were so over-the-top cartoonishly unrealistic that only an extreme over-correction feels reasonable?
and this is the part that i struggle to articulate, because i do think there should be consequences for ones actions and also the context one acted within should be taken into account and also i don't think people should be punished. i think it's a complicated set of circumstances and it can be difficult to toe the line between "having consequences" and "being punished."
for example, when i was working in PTSD treatment it was common for clients to stalk their spouse and children, no hyperbole. the anxiety around safety and protection was so severe that the compensatory behavior was completely out of line. this behavior led to a lot of interpersonal issues, as you can imagine. the times i did see couples, the question of how to respond came up often. how much unacceptable behavior do you tolerate let alone forgive when you recognize your loved one is experiencing a mental health crisis? how do you establish your own boundaries (e.g., consequences) without hurting them by not only disregarding their intentions but also forcing them to behave in ways they're not equipped to (e.g., punishment).
so, for bill, how can we recognize that his actions stem from a need for safety/control which stems from his trauma and has been reinforced by an immortal level of life experience and have empathy and understanding (e.g., no punishment) while also acknowledging that hey man you hurt me and it's not okay (e.g., consequences).
this, for better or worse, really is a personal and individual distinction. your (you, the reader) capacity for empathy, tolerance, resilience, and boundaries are individual and context dependent. the thing i'm trying to comment on is... i really just don't tend to see people do that work. i tend to see people just jump to punishment with the intention of change. and doing that says, to me, "i don't care about your context, bill, and also i don't care about you as a person. if you want to move forward, your perspective is to be disregarded and you need to fall into line." which, again, is what his parents said.
2b. does there have to be a consequence? or can we all just move forward differently? it was either @/tempusedax-rerum or @/stemmmm who said what needed to be said on this subpoint, but i can't find the specific post right now. the gist from what i can remember was that the only thing that matters is that bill's behaviors change. his thought patterns, his motivations, his empathy, he genuine belief in the change don't matter as much as how he actually treats people and moves through the world. a "there are no thought crimes" take. whichever of you it was, please link the post if you have it and also let me know if i misunderstood your point.
this is the main conceit in my margaritabille au: bill is escaped not released from theraprism, he still has all his powers (e.g., capacity for extreme violence and unstoppable cruelty), and he still intends to take over the world, but, crucially, he isn't. and is that enough? does he have to do anything more in order to be allowed to live a safe, happy, full life? or is the internal change a requirement? if bill is internally without pain and suffering and is not externally causing pain and suffering to others is there a problem? even if he's always got world domination sitting on the back burner of his mind? was punishment and redemption necessary for him to move into a different position, or was choice alone enough?
let's shift back to the real world for a second. i personally and professionally believe that human beings only do what makes sense to them based on the information/circumstances available to them. if you genuinely sit down and hear someone fully out you'll realize they did the only reasonable thing they could do with what they had. if we're going to continue to entertain the idea of bill as a real person we have to assume this as well.
if you put someone in an uncomfortable or unpleasant context (punishment) do you really think they're going to respond positively? we have mountains of evidence that proves punishment is not an effective way to change behavior. you have to reward the behavior you want to see.
bill is seeking safety and he seeks safety through control and he has over a trillion years of life experience reinforcing that belief. if you put him in a context where he's denied control he's going to feel unsafe. do unsafe people make socially appropriate choices? it can take years for people to heal from trauma experienced within a human life span. how long do you think it's going to take an immortal? how much counter-evidence is bill going to have to accumulate before he can even begin to consider that maybe he doesn't need to be 100% in control at all times with the power to blow up a planet before he doesn't feel like he's being hunted for sport literally? and is it possible for his behavior to change before his internal world view does? and is that enough?
why do people insist that making bill's nightmare reality come true is the only way to make him change his behavior? it seems to me that if the guy scared to be backed into a corner is backed into a corner it may not go so well.
iv. conclusion
this has gone on wildly longer than i wanted or intended so i'm gonna wrap it up. the main points are this:
discussing mental health is serious and i think should be taken more seriously within fandoms. i think there's way too much pop psychology and stereotyping and projection that bleeds into how people engage with headcanoning their blorbos, and while in some ways that's not really an issue, i think it's an issue to not at least wonder if it's an issue. i definitely have more to say on it, but it's off topic. i just ask that you pause and ask what's drawing you to diagnose a character with a specific condition and more importantly why you feel the need to label them with a specific condition at all rather than just discuss the symptoms they're exhibiting and the way those symptoms are impacting them.
i also think there's a dismissiveness to the how serious mental health is and this dismissiveness starts to ping as unexamined biases when it becomes fanon. i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with making bill human, there are even contexts where it makes sense to do so. but when you almost exclusively see human!bill explored along side reoccurring tropes about redemption and punishment it begins to paint a specific picture.
i want to make very clear that this post isn't meant to deride anyone or moralize to anyone, i've tried to make clear that i'm in the same boat. i also do this. many of those within the fandom i respect the highest also do this. this post isn't an us vs them position. what i want to say with this post is: have you considered it?
have you considered what it means to apply labels to someone you don't fully understand? have you considered what it means to apply labels to someone without their consent? have you considered what it means to apply labels from your culture onto someone from another culture? have you considered what it means to say there is a correct and incorrect way to move through the world and i get to decide it? have you considered what it means to insist that ones internal state must always be in perfect agreement with ones external state? have you considered what it means to require punishment to earn a future? have you considered what it means to say there is a bad so bad that someone has to earn personhood again, regardless of motivating context?
and these questions aren't exclusive to bill. i see this within online culture constantly, which is why i kept having to reel my points back in. we do this to ourselves and each other in an escalating number of cases.
sometimes we haphazardly apply labels to fictional characters for fun and for flavor text. sometimes we do it because we hold unexamined core beliefs. have you considered which one you're doing?
anyway that's it, take it easy out there ✌️
