If you're writing an amnesia fic that revolves around how the amnesiac is repeatedly hurtful to their loved ones by reacting from a place of fear and confusion and lack of reference, and have your amnesiac character chastised over and over by other characters for working off their old prejudices and not recognising how much everyone else is suffering as well, I would like you to stop. Stop it right now.
No one suffers from a disability or illness more than the disabled person themselves. No matter how close they are or how in love they are, no one suffers as much from a disability as the person undergoing it. That's why a loved one wishes they could take that suffering on themselves— because no matter how bad it is to be with someone who doesn't know you, the person whose brain isn't working is the one suffering most.
It doesn't have to be a competition, but it is a reality. When you don't acknowledge that reality, you end up making the disabled person the source of the conflict rather than their disability. Whether you intend to or not, you end up concocting a narrative where the disabled person should be grateful that anybody sticks around and puts up with their problematic ass. You make the simple decency the disabled person needs from others to accommodate them into acts of great magnanimity. You make real life people who have cognitive deficits or mental illness feel like shit. If the narrative isn't focused on the disabled person's own interiority and what they need to navigate it, if you're using the disability chiefly to write about what an amazing partner they have that their younger version didn't deserve, you need to stop. And maybe repeatedly step barefoot on a Lego until you stop using disability as a weapon against characters you have a problem with.
The way you see disability and disabled people has a direct impact on the ableism that already dehumanizes us at every turn. The needs of your creative genius doesn't outweigh your obligation to stop making life worse for marginalized people. We can't curate away systemic oppression from our fandom existence any more than we can anywhere else. It's your obligation to write ethically.
