I need to fix something I did wrong with 'The Sound of Silence' story and all related content to the best of my ability.
I am human and make mistakes, but I'm responsible to learn from them and be better moving forward, and try to make it so as few people as possible are hurt by my past mistakes by at least pointing out I did something wrong and what that was so other people don't copy me and I'm not further perpetuating the spread of unhealthy, harmful and ableist ideas.
I shouldn't have used actual mental health conditions I do not experience or have professional knowledge about (for Raph; I personally experience everything Terri experiences), because I definitely slipped into stereotyping and that harms people who actually have those conditions and don't actually go around hurting people, and experience a lot of stigma due to those kinds of portrayals. I literally did the same thing Hollywood does with utilising societal ignorance about mental illnesses and personality disorders to scare people in film.
If I continue writing the story (something I wrote to process personal brain things and abuse experiences) I would need to do so without trying to label anything when I do not actually know anything about those things.
I don't like my mental health things and neurodivergence being written about and slapped on the wrong things and stereotyped and stigmatized and pathologised by people who know nothing about them. I can't be doing the same thing to other people.
Raphael can still be homicidal and scary and abusive and a shitty person all around. That's his character. That's what I wanted to explore. But I don't get to slap labels I don't fully understand let alone personally experience onto that character or any other characters to make the story sound smarter or cooler or more interesting, or whatever.
It's not fair or right and I sincerely apologise for doing it in the past and I will endeavour never to do it again in future.
Anything to do with 'The Sound of Silence' story (and the 'Gym Scene' that's technically part of it but was posted separately at the time) that involved actual mental illness/personality disorder labels and any ideas conveyed about them as though they are fact are to be critically consumed (they're on the internet now and have been reblogged a lot; nothing I can do about that now other than repost another time with edited versions if I keep writing the story), and definitely NOT absorbed and/or repeated.
Any new stuff will not contain that content and old stuff will be edited before being reposted/published on A03/etc. (Terri's experiences will remain the same though as so far I've only written her experiencing things I experience personally; I might tweak her a little bit to remove all connections to the stuff I am taking out. Raph will be the same person in his behaviour and ways of seeing the world and others. I will keep him who he is or the story just won't exist at all, but I can and will remove the labels/'diagnoses' I have no right to be slapping on him).
Please don't copy me and don't let my old stuff inform your perception of the actual conditions I appropriated.
I did a BIG shitty. I'm sorry. I'll be better moving foward.
