inkboundprince

Latest Posts by inkboundprince

negative affirmations

I can be worse

I still have time to fuck things up

I can kms any time I want

nothing that a haircut and a wardrobe update and a detox and a sex change and a fake ID and getting medicated and selling all my stuff and faking my death and moving country can't fix

ugh. forget everything i’ve ever said. unless you thought it was smart or funny in which case remember it forever

Had a dream last night that i was a knight and this bigger scarier knight had me on the ground and right before he swung his sword at my neck he said smth like "i mourn the loss of life for the tree who will become your coffin" which shouldnt have turned me on like it did but alas

"I did it for you" has gotta be my favorite form of betrayal. You gave me a gift I never asked for, and now I have to look around at the world you destroyed with the knowledge that it was gift wrapped and addressed to me.

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

"A society that separates its lore masters from its horny posters will have its headcanons written by prudes and its erotic fanfic by fools."

Trying to revitalise my never-really-active writing account by looking through my old material and wow.

Starting to think being a writer is just a cycle of writing something, thinking it's incredible, then coming back and wondering who thought it would be a good idea to let you have access to the English language.

*trying to solve a friend's problem* hmmm. well you could use me as a blade, perhaps? and slay your enemies? just a thought

jason: why are you looking at me like that?

damian, age 4, wondering why jason looks white if he's his brother: you're colored wrong

jason: what the fuck?

The thing about reclaiming slurs is that once you've been affectionally called 'faggot' by friends, loved ones, and amiable fellows on the internet for long enough, you almost forget that it means something else to people who hate you.

Honestly at this point if a stranger on the street yelled "hey faggot!" after me, I'd probably turn around like "what?" like they'd just casually called me by name, and they were only trying to get my attention because they wanted to tell me something, before processing that they're being hostile.

IT'S ALL FOR THE PLOT!!!!!

Reblogs were turned off but I wanted to be able to find this again

What they don’t tell you about speaking multiple languages is that your brain does not in fact have a box labeled Spanish and another one labeled German. Instead it has a box labeled “Not English” and sometimes when you’re talking or writing in one of the languages you speak it will just start pulling random words from that box.

sometimes you’re hit with a friendly realization that yes, life is good. you have your comfort characters and you have archive of our own. life is actually beautiful

Me reading another person's writing: Oh they missed a period there, no worries mistakes happen :) Three adjectives in a sentence? Adverbs for days? No worries I love descriptions and this story is fire.

Me seeing the same thing in my work: Wow am I illiterate? Am I actually ok? Who the actual fuck told me I can write so I can go and curse their entire family for the time it took for me to carefully craft this GARBAGE.

me, struggling to write: hmm, this part is a little difficult. maybe i should check my planning document, which i created as a helpful tool for my writing process!

the planning document:

I feel like we don't give enough appreciation to the fatherly side of the gods. How about Zeus, who taught young Artemis archery? How about Poseidon, who proudly made Triton his herald? How about Ares, who carefully brushed Eros' wings? How about Hades, who lovingly lulled baby Zagreus to sleep? How about THAT

Your body is a temple, drink wine and get tattoos

hello! i love your blog and I wanted to ask a question, do you/how do you balance science & faith? Do you completely ignore science (especially things like evolution), do you work it into your practice, or something else?

sorry if im not getting my question across well, this is coming from someone who has been practicing as of almost a year, i've been asking myself this recently and I wanted to know other practitioners opinions on it.

Khaire, Nonny!

I do incorporate science into my practice. Personally, I believe that trying to separate the two is kinda...not great. Being spiritual shouldn't mean that we can't be scientific also, in my opinion; both things absolutely can coexist. I'm not a mythic literalist, for the most part, so I'm sure that makes it a bit easier for me lol. Spirituality isn't an "illogical" thing, and I think that's a common misconception spread throughout the U.S. society especially: that spirituality is purely hogwash, and no spiritual person can be a scientist.

I believe in evolution, and I also view it as a very beautiful thing! I love animals and plants, I love the history of the earth, I love the science of weather and the ocean and the sky and space. I incorporate it into my practice as subtly as breathing. I say this in the sense that it's not really a big deal for me; I don't draw a line between "science" and "spirituality". Spiritual things can be scientific, and vice versa. Are the stars that burn millions of light-years away from us just beyond our atmosphere not filled with a divine beauty? Is the fact that trees that have lived for millions of years still being alive today not a reason for pause? Is the existence of our bodies at all not indicative of some divine intervention, some living miracle? There is SO MUCH that had to go right in order for us to even be here.

So yeah, I tie these things together because I don't believe they were ever meant to be separate. Someone once told me that only fools separate science and religion, and to some degree, I feel there is truth in that statement. Those who ignore vaccines on account of their religion, who deny the existence of evolution, who deny things that have been proven time and time again - those are fools. I'm not really a judgemental person, but when it comes to these things, I have rather strong opinions (some family members of mine are like this, and that's partially why; I've seen the harm directly). My advice is to not separate these things, but I'm obviously quite biased. It's ultimately up to you on what you decide to be right for your practice.

I love how Odysseus and Telemachus meet the goddess of wisdom and battle strategy, a literal force in their world, an immortal, all powerful, being, and they go, oh look she's friend shaped!

It's genetic. It has to be.

"You're not upset that our alternate universe selves aren't together?"

"I don't know. Being together in every universe would make it seem... inevitable. I like that I chose you. I like that this version of you chose this version of me. Does that make sense?"

Someone on reddit described the difference between romantic and platonic love using chemistry terms and the periodic table, and not only do I love the analogy as a science nerd, but it's one of the first times that an explanation on the topic has fully made sense to me, so I figured I would share it with all of you ^^

My wife and I have a little game we play called "Speaking From Ignorance."

To play Speaking From Ignorance, all you need is a phone with a voice recorder, and another person who knows considerably more or considerably less about a topic than you do. The topic can be anything: from "how to bake a quiche" to "what happens in the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies" to "who is Florence Pugh" to "how does the traveling salesman problem work." All that matters is that one of you has a firm grasp on the material, and one of you absolutely the fuck does not.

Then the person who knows about the topic turns on the recorder, and says to the person who knows barely anything: "Hey - tell me everything you think you know about [X]."

The speaker is then not allowed to ask any questions. Nor is the expert allowed to volunteer any information. The expert is allowed to pipe up with a faintly incredulous "Oh--really? Do you--do you think so?" from time to time, but for the most part, the expert's job is just to sit there and make encouraging sounds while the speaker digs their own grave.

This is never not funny.

The reason you record it is because, very often, the first thing the speaker wants to do after finishing the recording is find out how you actually make a quiche, or whatever. Then you both get to go back and listen to how wrong they were.

We have a small library now of Speaking From Ignorance recordings, and I'm going to be listening to them until I'm eighty.

If you’re being questioned about a murder by one of those hobbyist detectives. it is an absolute rule that you have to be washing the dishes or pruning some plants while talking, so that when they finally get around to asking a pointed question about where you were at the time of the murder you can freeze for a second with a knife in your hand. It’s enrichment for them you gotta understand. They thrive off of red herrings, it’s their favorite treat, so even if you have a rock solid alibi and weren’t involved with the murder at all you have to give them some reason to be suspicious of you. It’s what friends are for.

So I had a funny dream the other night.

It involved a very gay witch.

Me while writing: oh hell yes this is such a good sentence I'm the master of poetic imagery

The writing when I go back to edit:

first time writing fanfiction of a character : uughh i hope this is all canon accurate... it cant be canon innacurate at all or the enitire fandom will throw rocks at me...

10057th time writing the character: heres them working at a mcdonalds