#(please..)

if you strip away ink's driving force, his whole motivation for protecting the AUs and keeping up his morally grey rules and never touching scripts — the WHOLE point of ink's character - then what's left? that's not ink, at that point. that's a completely different character.

people will agree that ink is autistic coded and ADHD coded, but will then turn around and call his emotions fully fake/artificial. can we see the... obvious issue with that?

yes, he does get his emotions from something that isn't a soul. they have the ability to choose what he does and doesn't feel. a small part of it is pretend, because he can't get the full experience. but he chooses to keep his vials balanced anyway, because it's pretty disorienting for him otherwise and he doesn't like it when they aren't. his emotions coming from vials instead of a soul doesn't make what they feel and experience any less unique to him. there is obviously a disconnect between how he experiences emotions VS how other people experience emotions (neurodivergent people experiencing emotions differently from neurotypical people COUGH), but it doesn't mean that they should be discredited and written off as completely fake. he has real love and care for his dads; even when he forces himself to abide by his own rules in a scenario where one of their dads dies, he is still so CLEARLY distraught, grief-stricken, and torn up over it. should that not be taken into account at all?

ink protects the AUs to keep the creators happy, because without the creators, they have no source of paints. and without his paints, he isn't anyone or anything. he isn't alive. they're a hollow, dead husk of a skeleton, forever unmoving and lifeless. if we take that away — and the only real consequence of them not being able to access his vials are oh he's still alive they just can't feel things — then what's the point? what are they doing all this for? what is he protecting the AUs for, what is he protecting the scripts for, what is he doing all of this for? the backing behind his actions and morals become a lot less impactful, and seem a lot less important, if the only reason he's doing it is to feel things. it lowers the stakes by quite a lot.