It's been a long time since I've posted here... Though I still am in communities and join new ones from time to time, I've mainly been keeping everything regarding my otherkinity to myself and close friends lately.
I've discovered quite a lot about myself since my last post, and have accepted several more identities. And I thought I'd share an experience after being absent.
Trigger warning for violence? And mentions of wars. Though I don't go into extensive details.
I've thought more and more about the pattern(s) in my past lives, and one of the consistencies that has stood out most to me is how I was often involved in fights or wars. As a wild creature, the occasional fighting over mates or territories are to be expected, but I'm more so referring to the lives where it was a substantial part.
With my Indoraptor form, I was created to attack and kill whoever I was ordered to.
In my Trico past life, I suspect I was taken from my home planet and forced to fight creatures from other universes. I went from resisting to eventually enjoying the "thrill" of fighting a bit too much.
I believe I've had many lives in the Warriors universe, and border fights and full on wars weren't too uncommon.
With my lives in Wings of Fire, I think I was involved in the war shown in the first arc.
I also feel like I had another dragon life where I was used to fight. I remember wearing armor.
For my lives in the Satellite City/The August Few universe, though everyone is immortal, that didn't stop most from attacking and injuring others. If anything, it only encouraged it.
I also feel like I was a Protogen in a past life, made to accompany and protect my creators as they explored planets. If we ever came across anything that could harm them, I was ordered to handle it.
I hold regret for many of the things I've done in past lives, and I'd never hurt anyone in this life. But I think fighting is kind of ingrained into me due to my long history of it. In some lives, it felt like that was my sole purpose. I still have the instincts, and it sometimes makes me feel restless.
i love you therians with tons of kintypes. i love you therians with kintypes that are polar opposites of each other. i love you therians who gave up on naming all these kintypes. i love you therians that feel like you have too many kintypes. i love you therians that lost track, i love you therians with one really big neat list stashed away, i love you therians that dont even know what half your kintypes are.
I would like to offer this resource for therians, an extensive list of all of Sir David Attenboroughās nature documentaries that are available on soap2day, and a full list of what species* they each (notably, prominently) feature the natural behaviors of, separated by episode, and omitting species that were only shown dead, juvenile or being predated on. This took me a while (I have been working on it since Prehistoric Planetās release) because I did in fact have to watch every single series in full in order to list all the species and the episodes are around 50 minutes long, but enjoy.
never understood the stigma around polykin with lots of 'types. why is it any of my business? or anyone's? everyone always jumps to the conclusion that they're either faking their 'types or confused, which, even if that we're true, it does not and probably will never affect me. as long as you're usin' the right terminology and bein' respectful to your fellow nonhumans, you're cool in my book. alterhumanity in itself is this massive journey of self-discovery, we should never expect anyone to have it all figured out right off the bat.
The trick to avoiding the too-many-'types brand imposter syndrome is recognizing that your alterhumanity is who you are, not a performance for other people. I was polykin before I joined Tumblr and I will be polykin after the whole site goes down. I would still be polykin if the entire Internet eats it in 2050. Why should I care if some stranger on here thinks I'm KFF. I don't identify this way for them.
reminder that if you are otherkin but are anti songkin, objectkin, conceptkin, fictionkin, or anything else like that, fuck you i hate you all my homies hate you
saying your identity and experience is valid but then totally invalidating other peopleās identity and experiences because you donāt understand is such shithead behavior. if they arenāt hurting anyone/being offensive/just trolling you shouldnāt be pissing your pants over it
I don't want to invade the community, but I genuinely can't tell if my kin feelings are voluntary or involuntary. Does that mean I'm a KFF?
Tl;dr: No. Also heads-up that I get very emphatic in this post; that's not because I'm mad at you or anything, it's because people in general keep either misunderstanding or intentionally twisting what "KFF" is supposed to mean to make it sound way more exclusionist and gatekeepery than it actually is and I'm getting frustrated with that.
You're only "KFF" if you are knowingly, actively, intentionally using the word "kinning" to mean relating to, projecting onto, etc. a character while not actually at all identifying as them. That is, if you are "kinning for fun," "kinning" for the purpose of having fun, and it's not at all a genuine identity thing for you. It's in the phrase they use for themselves from which the acronym "KFF" came from.
If you identify as them in some way (voluntary or involuntary imo - the words copinglinker/otherlinker exist specifically for voluntary identity, but as I've said in a recent post, I find hardline enforcing that distinction less and less useful as time goes on, though certainly having the words available is useful, and anyway 'linkers aren't KFF either), you're not KFF.
If you aren't sure whether it's an identify-as thing or something else, and you're figuring that out, you're not KFF.
If you're not sure whether it's an identify-as thing or something else, and have given up on figuring it out because that line isn't clear for you and just want to settle somewhere and talk about your experiences genuinely, you're not KFF.
If you enjoy being 'kin and like to joke around and have fun with it, but it is still a genuine identity thing for you at its core, you're not KFF.
If you have a "weird" identity (in literally whatever way you can think of), that does not make you KFF.
KFF has a very specific meaning and "my experiences are weird and/or blurry in one aspect or another and I'm not quite sure what to make of them" is not it. (Nor is "having fun with being 'kin" and I really wish people would stop confusing those two.) It specifically (again, as is in the literal name) means people who are intentionally misusing "kinning" for something they KNOW isn't an identity thing.
So I wasnāt ready to open my commissions up just yet as Iāve been busy trying to get them set up and work things out, but some stuff has come up.
So long story short, my spouse and I were hit with an $800+ bill for an issue with our car that we need to get fixed (especially since it was destroying our tires) and we do NOT have that kind of money. Our money is stretched so thin with us having to finance this new horrible expense that weāre fumbling rn.
So Iāve opened my commissions to help handle these expenses so we can afford this new payment along with keeping up with our other bills.
So if youāre interested in commissioning me, check out my CARRD where all of my commission information, prices, and examples are. Youāre free to DM me here, ask for my Discord for easier messages, or message me on my other accounts also listed on my CARRD.
Also, if youāre feeling extra generous, feel free to donate to my Ko-Fi as well~ Anything and everything helps right now!
Please interact with this post if you are any kind of dragon / drakn from a to How To Train Your Dragon / DreamWorks Dragons universe or very similar universe
Iād love to know if thereās anyone out there with kintypes relating to How To Train Your Dragon or Pokemon! If so, feel free to reply to this with your kintype(s)!
Iāll start~! Iām Streamflow and I am a light fury and shiny tapu koko kin~!
Idk what fictionkin needs to hear this but it's in my mind so:
It is perfectly fine to have a kintype develop after you've consumed a particular source of media for the first time. You don't have to have been the thing prior to consuming it or even the media existing.
This applies to otherkinity in general as well. You can just randomly have a new kintype one day, that's fine.
Iām 37 years old, I found otherkin when I was sixteen. In the groups I lurked in, if you claimed on your application you were a system with Fandom characters we respectfully declined your application. I was grilled constantly in my teens because my own perceived memories as a dragon seemed too farfetched to some, it helped me introspect and to know myself better.
Fictionkin were commonly dismissed. If they claimed a character as an archetype they were often welcomed as that showed introspection and maturity, but they were not ākinā, just associating with an archetypal character which gave them strength or comfort.
Coping mechanism stuff was discussed, and those who were open about such could stay in the groups. But they were honest and it was often understood they werenāt otherkin, just playing a role of a persona that gave them strength.
Perhaps its my rose colored glasses for a perceived golden era or Its just that I was in an ideological bubble only seeing dragonkin forums and not the broader community, but regardless, everything always appeared more spiritual and philosophical back in my time, otherkin in result became the closest thing to a faith I ever had.
I cannot accept kinning, I cannot accept ākinning for funā, I can not accept impractical claims without the claimant having a strong personal self understanding to defend oneās belief.
I said seven or eight years ago that if otherkin were going to continue to evolve to become a thing of public mockery then to drop the suffix kin, nothings changed, I still find otherkin cringe compilations, I still hear conservatives using the communities worse as ammunition to degrade the trans community. The very things I warned would happen if open delusion were continually embraced in the name of inclusivity.
The open acceptance of delusion and blind inclusivity has now destroyed otherkin beyond recognition.
I propose that those who spiritually identify need to separate, segregate, gatekeep, rebrand with a different name, form some form of soft canonical definition of our beliefs, formulate some public centralized means to provide reliable reasonable resources to the curious or to rebut future media misrepresentations, and finally to work to gradually differentiate from what otherkin has become and back to a traditional understanding of what it was.
The otherkin and therian concepts have become too public. When the trans panic ends transhumanism will be the next victim of the right wing hate. By that time a segment of our community must be sane, pragmatic and capable of defending our beliefs in the public sphere, otherwise itāll be a social metaphorical blood bath.
A theoretical self identified system comprised of kinned fandom sonaās for the sake of coping and fun will be swiftly destroyed in the public sphere and bring mockery and suspicion to the rest of us in the wake, the psychological argument will be scoffed away to oblivion by the right and lead only to constant ostracization, more rational otherkin need to form a breakaway sect with a defensible simple philosophy that reaffirms we are normal people just with different inner perceptions based off reasonable introspection and experience.
I feel, that the spiritual association argument of the traditional community I came of age in, alongside traditional views of therianism have parallels in world religions that are the most defensible in my personal view.
I call for a potential gradual reformation and ideally an ideological theological divorce in favor of the older otherkin/therian ways and understandings of the early 2000ās prior to the disruption caused by social media influence.
I firmly fear that transhumanism is in the crosshairs and that the sane among us must begin to organize, group up, network collectively and prepare with self understandings and firm introspections of our identities and beliefs.
Otherkin was never fun for me, it was always a faith, a battle, a burden, the sense of knowing a truth from within that I would never be able to prove, it brought fear of discovery and rejection, it made me feel insane and alone, to have always throughout my life a dysphoric irrational sense of something I could not reject no matter how many tearful nights I tried.
To see my pseudo faith become associated with senseless identity fodder, some irrelevant fad youāll all forget and cringe off of in three years, itās an insult.. I am the bad guy, fine, the villain so be it, the adult, if I must, but youāre wrong, all of you, the broad community collectively, this is not what it once was. Destroy me, hate me, fine, I said my piece, Iāll leave.
I am/was a dragon, I died in the realm of Tycosa, I reincarnated here, I am here simply to experience, to learn what it is to be human. It once gave me pride to find rare others like myself and to hear their stories. Stories and forms not stolen from WoF or some other media, but instead hearing the pains and journeys of their own inner expressions of their true selves and souls.
Today, otherkin has become a game. One I donāt want to play anymore. Iām still the reincarnation of a dragon or two. But I can no longer in good conscious call myself otherkin anymore, at least not with that old spark, Iāll have to be something else moving forward, just a dragon spirit I guess.
Iām willing to talk, to sit down and debate these points, you can educate me, or try to convince me otherwise. I simply did not evolve.. My view of otherkin is still that of 2002, its a matter of things changed, but I stayed the same, the rug was pulled from beneath me over the last decade or two, this isnāt what I signed up for, not what I once could draw hope from those twenty years ago when I first discovered that word for my sensations, that I was otherkin.
VRChat: Jafira-dragon
Discord: Jafira#4295
Twitter: Jafira,
or of course respond here.
Just meh, Iām bitter, frustrated and done for now.
I've never been able to understand how someone can so confidently shove aside others beliefs as fake or less serious. Kinnies and kff are a problem, but grouping every single individual who identifies as a fictional being in the same category is incredibly ignorant and ridiculous.
To use dragons as an example, the concept of them is incredibly broad. The descriptions of them vary so widely that so many things could be considered dragons depending on who you ask. And to most, they are nothing more than works of fiction. What's so wrong about someone seeing themselves as a specific species or creature in existing media? What's fiction to you may be very real to others.
Depending on someone's beliefs, there could be an infinite amount of universes with an endless amount of timelines and endless possibilities. You can't claim that someone's belief is wrong. Our experiences are real. Just as real as yours.
If you're going to be a part of the kin community, it should be a given that you're going to meet people with a wide variety of beliefs and experiences. It's common decency to not make others different than you feel lesser or like they're "doing things the wrong way."
There is no wrong way to be otherkin. We're all just individuals who identify as something. That's way too broad of a description and concept to start placing limitations on people and their experiences. Our differences are what makes this community and who we are.
You can't read others minds. You don't know what struggles people have gone through. I've met so many fictionkin who felt like they had to hide who they are or doubted themselves because of thoughts like these. I attempted to push away my fictional kintypes for quite a while because of the fear of being looked down upon and it made me miserable. Things shouldn't be this way.
We're shunned by most outsiders and we have to deal with a lot from them. We shouldn't have this kind of stuff going on even from inside the community.
any suggestions/advice for someone who has always been anti-fictionkin, but who is now questioning being fictionkind? it's confusing and stressful and i keep getting angry at myself for even considering being fictionkin.
Alright, this one's a doozy, sorry for the delay on it - I wanted to make sure I had the time and energy to sit down and give this the depth of response it deserves.
First off: You are most definitely not alone. You'd be shocked how many fictionkin - and otherkin, for that matter! - I know who went from being antikin or anti-fictionkin to realizing they were 'kin/fictionkin. I can almost guarantee some of them will reply to this post sooner or later (and I encourage them to).
Second: The best thing you can do for yourself overall, I think, is to take it slow and be gentle with yourself. You are allowed to set it aside when you start wrapping yourself up into too tight of an emotional ball. It's going to be stressful no matter how this goes, but you're allowed to take it in as small of chunks as you need to to minimize that stress while figuring this out. Questioning a strong belief you've held for a long time is hard and it is stressful - the brain doesn't like rewiring pathways like that, and it will likely get panicky and may try to confirmation-bias you out of it. Questioning your identity itself is also extremely hard and stressful for a lot of people. It is only natural to be freaked out by all this. Pause, take three deep breaths (count 'em), and take it one step at a time.
Third: Regarding specifically questioning whether your stance on something is actually correct or not, the best tool in your toolbox is the word "why". Apply it liberally. You've been anti-fictionkin for a long time: why is that? What are your reasons for thinking fictionkin is [fake/stupid/misguided/etc.]? Write them down, it'll probably make it easier to keep track of your thoughts. Then take each of those bullet points, those arguments, and ask again: Why do I think this? What's my logic? What's my evidence?
Eventually you will hit a point where the "why do I think this" question no longer makes sense - that's called a base assumption, and it's what your current logic is based on, and thus is what really needs to be evaluated to see if that logic is sound or flawed.
For example: Let's say one of your reasons for being anti-fictionkin is "It's not possible to be something that's a creation from someone else's brain."
Well, why do you think that?
Your answer might be, "It's not real, and didn't exist even in imagination until that person wrote about it, so you can't have been that thing until that person wrote about it."
Now, you could ask "why do I think that?" again, but at that point it seems kind of to not make much sense and I would call this a base assumption, so I would re-direct the questioning in a different way. There are two ways to challenge this base assumption that I see: First, is it true that you can't have been that thing until the person wrote about it?, and second, if we prove that that is true, does that make the identity less real once it's there?
Now you go reading and researching. As someone who runs an antikin response blog, chances are that whatever arguments you have against fictionkin, they have been stated and refuted a hundred times before - which is great for you, because it means if you can find those old archived conversations, they might answer your concerns adequately and you might not have to start a new one!
In this case, for the sake of our example exercise, I'll tell you the answers I would give to these two questions that, in my opinion, pretty solidly demonstrate that the base assumption is flawed:
The short answer to the first question is that no, it's not true, my evidence being that you can find essays and other evidence of people who had the experiences linked to their fictionkinity long before they came across their source media - and in some cases, long before their source media even existed. (Example evidence here, here, and here.) (The longer answer includes some philosophizing about how really, species and character labels are often just a way of getting across "this is similar enough to what I experience that it's a convenient label to convey it to others with," especially in the case of fictionkin, and thus it makes complete sense that in the vastness of several billion people who've lived on this earth one person's experiences and another person's imagination have an awful lot of coincidental similarities even if they probably don't line up perfectly, purely through Monkeys With Typewriters theory.)
The answer to the second question is a bit more philosophical, but my argument would be this: in my opinion, even if someone didn't have a fictotype before exposure to their source media, that doesn't change that their experiences are happening and having a significant impact on them. Kintypes coming about later in life, for various reasons both spiritual and psychological, have been accepted for a long time in the otherkin community. Whether someone is otherkin has little if anything to do with how their identity came about*, and the same should logically apply to fictionkin - someone's identity is based on their experiences, and the source of those experiences is (or at least should be) secondary.
*Arguable exception for identities that were consciously, intentionally formed, ie 'links; I'm not gonna get into that here, that's a whole other discussion.
Now, once you have those arguments presented to you, either via your own internal logic or by someone else through conversation, you get to evaluate them and decide whether they make sense and are internally consistent (ie, if their arguments contradict themselves, either you've misunderstood something, or their argument is badly flawed). And, if you decide the argument is flawed, to ask yourself why that is. What logic enables you to break down their argument and refute it? What parts of their argument make sense and are solid, if any?
If this seems a bit cyclical, it's because it is. The idea is to break every argument, for and against, down to its basic building blocks, and then look at those building blocks to make sure they're actually sound. If one of your base assumptions is false or flawed, the argument/opinion based on it is inherently flawed as well.
This whole process is hard and intimidating work, especially if you haven't practiced it before. But it's necessary, and to me at least it's rewarding when you get the hang of it. There's a reason I run an antikin response blog - I genuinely enjoy this process; I enjoy ripping debates apart to examine them piece by piece and see what makes sense and what doesn't. It's mental enrichment for me, and it can be for you too. It feels good to look at your stances on things and know that you have put effort into making sure they're as logically sound, factually correct, and morally correct as possible with the information you currently have. It's also a never-ending process - you should always be ready to re-examine your opinions on things in light of new information, should new information arise. (People also don't always like it when you tell them you're not gonna open your fat mouth until you've examined all the information thoroughly and have sorted out your opinion, because the internet wants your opinion now, but oh well. They usually (usually) appreciate it after the fact, when you've come back with a well-informed opinion instead of a half-baked and reactionary one.)
That's how things are supposed to work, anyway, but confirmation bias is a powerful force. I'm proud of you for standing up to it and trying to re-examine stuff in your own brain - that takes grit. We are allergic to admitting we're wrong in today's society, and it's genuinely a massive problem - we're getting more and more reactionary and polarized because of it, because we're so used to being shamed for admitting we were wrong that instead it's often easier to double down. Props to you for not going the easy way and just doubling down.
As one last thing, a list of resources for you regarding fictionkin and some of the common anti-fictionkin arguments I've seen and had a hand in refuting (not including the ones I linked up there):
A more in-depth explanation of fictionkinity from @/shadowfae
A more general guide on questioning a kintype, also from@/shadowfae
A thread of someone asking questions and fictionkin answering
āIsnāt being fictionkin disrespecting the creator?ā, from @/anti-kin-cringe
On fictionkin and how thereās no realĀ ālineā between fantasy/mythological creatures like dragons (hi) and fictional characters/creatures, also from @/anti-kin-cringe
On the history of fictionkin, from@/liongoatsnake
houseofchimeras dot weebly dot com, which I can't link directly because Tumblr is stupid about external links, but I recommend their entire website and the websites linked in their Bookmarks page, though you'll have to do a bit of sifting to find stuff that's specifically relevant to you of course
Finally, my "fictionkin" tag on a-dragons-explanations (the aforementioned antikin response blog I run) for your perusal, which contains every discussion about fictionkin I've had on that blog.
...Phew. Hopefully that wasn't too much alphabet soup for ya ^^;
As a PS - if you want to chat with someone about all this, I'm more than happy to either simply provide answers to any questions you have, or to actively grill you and challenge your arguments for you (to your comfort level, of course) as someone who has a good deal of practice doing that. I'm available in DMs or on Discord (Discord would be preferable, since it's a bit more functional than Tumblr DMs) if you want either of those things - no judgement here.
If you find that you are fictionkind, you might also have to deal with some (for lack of a better word) internalized fictionkinphobia. It can be incredibly tough to get over. The best solution I've found is basically 'fake it till you make it' - force yourself to be open about your fictionkinity. Force yourself to talk about it.
You might feel compelled to say stuff like "I know it's cringe but-" and "I know it's silly but-". Don't do this. Self-derision, even when you rationalize it as self-awareness, does not help you accept yourself. Practice being neutral/positive about your fictionkinity and avoid negativity. Even if you do feel cringe, realize that fictionkinity is not inherently cringe, but rather that you've been led to believe it is, and that you need to get rid of that mindset if you want to thrive.
I dislike the sentiment that confirming a kintype is something that always needs years in order to do
It only took like a month each for me to consider my kintypes confirmed, and they've held steady in the years since
If you need to spend years doing introspection before you feel confident in saying that your kintype is confirmed, that's completely fine, everyone goes at their own pace
But it's not everyone's experience
Awakened Dragon @awakeneddragon - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
