rnbos said:

Hello. I saw your art on Twitter and made a DA account specifically to comment here.

Firstly, your art is very good, you have great style.

I, along with the rest of the people in my system, actually suffer from real-life Dissociative Identity Disorder. I wanted to let you know that I, we, find your representation of a person with this disorder to be highly offensive, and factually inaccurate.

Violent alters are a hugely over-exaggerated stereotype that contributes to a false understanding and negative predisposition towards people with this illness. Dissociation as a coping mechanism geared for the purpose of survival. Violent or destructive alters are almost always focused on self-destructive, or inter-system issues, as they are in some way attempting to subvert further or future abuse to the system in misguided ways (I.E., if I punish you for this now someone else won't do worse to you later)

Furthermore, although it is not unheard of, it is incredibly uncommon and unrealistic to have a system with only two alters in DID. When I look at your character, I see a someone who would make more sense with OSDD / DDNOS, if they had been suffering some long-term adult trauma (such as brainwashing) which would be contained in this alter, who is outwardly expressing these violent, mind-controlled messages. DID LITERALLY can not form after the ages of 6-9 years old. You have simon working in a hospital, so this is impossible for him to have DID. Furthermore, dissociative disorders DO NOT form from isolated traumatic events (unless the individual has already learned to dissociate previously) and so Simon would make far more sense having PTSD from an event such as the one described.

We do not take issue with you having a character with DID, we think representation is important! But misrepresentation is actually dangerous, and this is a great opportunity to really have a deep and meaningful character with a believable story.

I highly encourage you to do some reading into this topic before continuing, a great place to start is did-research.org


Please understand that dissociative disorders are the result of long-term / repeated childhood abuse/trauma. This is a very sensitive subject, please treat it with care and do not continue to contribute to an uninformed and toxic mindset regarding a mental illness which over 70 million people have worldwide.

Best of luck to you.
-Isabelle, The Rainbow System