#pu ask

my first personal exposure to DID was that fabled conversation in my mafia community, yes.

however that happened a couple years BEFORE the idea for pipe up actually came to me.

in between those two events, i started integrating more in mental health communities for my own primary diagnosis, and that community overlapped pretty heavily with the PLURAL community. like i'd see people around using pluralkit, discussing their issues, etc.

once pipe up was in pre-production, i was like. admittedly. too nervous to create a character that i knew for certain had DID. its such a stigmatized disorder and a CONTENTIOUS issue on the internet. it was a highly intimidating prospect. thus, i didn't like. do a lot research, on DID, specifically. i did research into PLURALITY and the plural community, in which a lot of people have DID, but not everyone!

i didn't, KNOW for sure, that the warren had DID until after the comic came out and people who are smarter than me told me they met all the diagnostic criteria. i was too nervous to look at said criteria myself so i just didn't really know and figured it could probs go either way. i was actually kind of hoping the warren would qualify more for OSDD because that felt less?? big???

but once i knew for sure they had DID, i doubled down on that, did even MORE research, and so on.

the warren's sensitivity reader, thus the person making sure we weren't being ableist for the entire script, is someone diagnosed with DID (as well as a couple other things). thus even before I knew for sure the warren had DID, someone w DID was checking my work. this helped me feel comfortable proceeding w the project once the comic was releasing and actual readers were giving feedback on the warren's diagnosis.

this comic is, about DID yeah, and that is technically an accident. however from the start what this comic has always been about is a celebration of the plural community. i have learned so much about the world, humanity, the people around me, and myself from you all, your writings and your resources and willingness to answer the questions of a plucky clueless writer, and my gratitude for that is immense. this is, me trying to gift you all something meaningful, in return, once from an assumed outsider, now from someone who actually feels like i belong here. i'm a bit transactional by nature, i suppose: you do good thing for me, i try to do good thing for you dsfghdsfjghdfjkgdgk. it helps that this comic feels really well supported by its readership.