#it just erases community tbh like we can't have a conversation or interaction or difference in opinion (harmless ones anyway) anymore??

[soaked-ghost]

You know, something that hits very very close to home about Ink's canon character is how much he seems to struggle with social understanding.

People often say that Ink canonically*just* has a hard time understanding social interaction but while that's true, it kindaaaa misses the entire spectrum of problems. It's said in the F.A.Q 'With him hardly having a proper social understanding,. As a Psychology student, the use of this particular word caught my attention a little tbh. Since it's widely used in academic contexts and studies conducted in relation to social competences and not very much used in more informal/non-academic contexts, where 'social skills' is more used for example.

According to academic sources, most can agree upon the fact that social understanding stands for 'our understanding of social features of the world, as people with beliefs, intentions, wishes, emotions, and desires. Think of social understanding as ''big-picture' thinking, It envoles observing and processing the larger social environment.

(In those academic paper that i have said, 'social understanding' is used to mean 'Theory of mind', since they're the same defenition but with different words. Comyet sayin' that Ink has a hard proper social understanding is the same thing as saying that he doesn't have a proper theory of mind, which, again, proves that those social issues run much deeper than 'hes blunt sometimes'

Not only that, but he has a problem with understanding people's underlying messages and emotions, mainly with people arr bit being obvious about it. His social issues affect the way he communicates with people too! (He's stand as 'blint' as a result, which is a way of communication). Adding ti, but he seems to have problems with back and forth styles of conversation too.

As an autistic person, i just relate A LOT to Ink. I really wished people portaryed his social problems tbh.. people often erase it, infantilizes it or dmeonizes it... It sucks.

i keep getting asks like these from people way smarter than me and all I can respond back with is something stupid like 'haha isn't it funny that ink is a painter and can't get the bigger picture lol'

but seriously, it's sad that people only look at the surface level things when it comes not only to ink, but also pretty much every other autistic/autistic coded character

because to them, autism is just stimming and special interests, just the disorder that makes u 'silly' but never the disorder that affects every part of my life, and often times if affects my life badly

It just makes other autistic people uncomfortable that sometimes, autism fucking sucks, so they choose to ignore the 'unsavory' parts of autism in favor for something digestible, free of discomfort and mainstream

(god forbid autistic characters act violently or latch out and GOD FORBID they ever have a meltdown)

we never see ink's side of how he is really affected by his autism, he's always either 'silly', or bothering other people. we only see how the people around ink react to his autism, and it's always with annoyance

Ink didn't choose to not understand people and be alienated from them and feel alone and disconnected from everyone

u can tell me as many time as u like that he has no empathy and doesn't care about people and is inconsiderate, which all are autism behaviors that are demonized to a hellish degree

but guess what, the only one that will always be affected by his own carelessness (and his own autism) is ink, because he's the one that always ends up alone in the end

repeat after me kids: the only one affected badly by ink is ink

[posi-pan]

I know we’ve all had this conversation a million times but I always get so... almost irrationally annoyed when I see a few people call a character from media I enjoy is bi and then everyone else just decides that that’s 100% IT and there’s no debating it or disagreeing. I want bi rep just as much as I want any other lgbt rep, but as a pan person I want pan rep too, and it’s so tiring when people continuously look over other mspec identities that may also fit characters and act like they can ONLY be bi. And then whenever someone brings up other identities or says they see characters differently, they get shot down as “biphobic” more often than not. It just really sucks. I wish we weren’t so horribly overlooked by nearly everyone all the time :(

i’m kind of glad it took me a while to get to this message, because yesterday i was scrolling through the replies on a tweet about how barbie “has a girlfriend” and saw someone say she’s a bi icon and other people were pointing out that she could be pan or ply or omni or multiple/all of those, and oh my god all the hate those replies got........people spamming them with “no”, yelling at them about how those labels are biphobic and transphobic, and accusing them of “derailing bi posts” and it’s like.....y’all hate us so much and are so buried in “discourse” that you’re this aggressive over people interpreting a literal fucking DOLL’S sexuality differently???

but yeah. it’s frustrating. and shitty. and isolating.