From Fiction: Metaphysical Fictionkin

Essays, information, and advice, for and about metaphysical fictionkin.. Fictionkin.org Fictional since 2006. Asks Always open

[fromfiction]

Important Links and Frequently Asked Questions

Articles on Tumblr:

What does someone mean when they say “I kin that character?”

Basic questioning guide

Questioning a Specific Source

On "Doubles"

Soulbonds vs RP muses

"Problematic" Kintypes

Visit our website Fictionkin.Org for easy to navigate access to a variety of arcticles on fictionkin and soulbonding topics

[fromfiction]

i do apologize in advance because this has probably been asked before, but would you have any advice on how to make your home feel more like.... home?

Granted I'm a fictive, so that probably has something to do with it-- but nothing ever really feels like it's mine 😅

Speaking as a fellow fictive, the first thing you need to do is negotiate- with your fellow system members/host, whoever you need to talk to- your way into being allowed to make an impact on your shared environment.

To feel like a home is your home, you have to add something to it. Pick out the shower curtain, or the bedsheets; buy decor or knickknacks and other things that you want in your space. Make decisions about what you have in the fridge.

The thing is, and this can be very frustrating, if you don't have any impact on your environment, it will always feel like it belongs to someone else.

[memories-of-forgotten-years]

[thetadelta]

Teenage therianthropy in the 2000's

Just reminiscing a bit. TL;DR: I love you modern teenage therians & otherkin, and also if anyone was on Chicken Smoothie circa 2008-2012 please say hi!

When I first stumbled upon therianthropy back in 2006, I quickly realized that there wasn't a place for me in the communities whose essays and information I was excitedly reading. It had been so freeing and exhilarating to know that I wasn't alone in how I am, but all the therian forums were for adults, and I was a teenager. I probably could have joined the "adult" forums and talked to grown-up animals instead of just lurking, but I didn't feel comfortable talking to strange adults (this was back when we actually taught kids to not disclose personal info online!), and the people on therian forums didn't feel like my peers anyway. So many of their conversations just sounded like dry philosophy, or referenced "adult" things I didn't relate to. I resigned myself to just reading what people wrote, and being a lonely teenager with nobody to talk to.

My first time really talking to other nonhumans, not just lurking, was on the forum for a digital pet website called Chicken Smoothie. It was barely even a browser game at the time, just a cozy little forum with a pet adoption feature, and the users were a few hundred teens and preteens chatting and making art. But, in probably late 2008 or early 2009, someone started an otherkin thread and I finally found my peers. We spent hours a day swapping information we'd read, figuring out what people were, and just having fun. There was no gatekeeping or unfriendly grilling or essay-writing, and no sanctimonious adults to tell us we weren't being "serious" enough about nonhumanity. We were serious, but in the way kids are serious, before society makes them afraid to be authentic and silly. Conversations about spirituality and phantom shifts were interspersed with people roleplaying and making animal sounds, and we enjoyed both just as much. It was a space for all of us to act openly nonhuman around other people for the first time, and we did it like teenagers. We chatted through text and made art for each other because that's all the Internet really was at the time, but if had been possible (and socially acceptable) to take and share photos and videos of us acting like ourselves we would absolutely have been doing that, too. I can't even begin to imagine how much fun we'd have had with access to modern social media, when just talking to each other about who we were was already so fulfilling.

I don't know how many of the people I was friends with still call themselves therians, otherkin, or vampires. It's likely some of them were just roleplaying and left those things in the past. But I'm still here 15 years later, so I know I was far from the only one genuinely expressing who I was. It doesn't matter to me whether those people I was a nonhuman kid with "grew out of it" or not, because that sense of joy and community was real. There wasn't a space for nonhuman teens online, so we carved one out ourselves.

Modern teens don't have to search so hard to find their community. When I look at the therian and otherkin tags on tumblr today, and when I see videos of teens on tiktok wearing homemade masks and running in the grass, what I see is a bunch of young people doing the exact same things I was doing on a forum in 2009. The infrastructure of the internet has made it hard to find and share accurate information the way we used to so there's a lot more misinformation, but the joy of teenagers learning they're not alone is still the same. There are so many high schoolers out there talking about shifts and posting silly animal sounds the same way I did, and that makes me really happy.

Maybe some of them are roleplaying and will stop calling themselves therians or otherkin in a few years, but that doesn't actually matter. There are people out there exploring nonhumanity for the very first time, and the joy is real.

[duckwithdeviousintent]

I wanna refresh my alterhuman knowledge, if you see this please feel free to yap and/or rant/vent about your alterhuman identity to me, I am accepting of all identities so please don’t be scared of judgement if you wanna share

[interstellarsystem]

Berserker/Absolute Shifts and Plurality

We've been seeing talk about berserker shifts on here lately and it's got us thinking. For those who don't know--berserker shifts are, in a way, a type of mental shift where you feel so much like your identitype that your mindset is entirely changed into theirs and your regular human brain rationale has been changed to match. We prefer "absolute" instead of "berserker" so we'll use that for the rest of this post.

Anyway, it's mainly used in older therian and otherkin spaces (with some criticism that's not relevant to this post)... but we've seen fictionfolk describe their experiences with that whole mindset shift as well recently, which wasn't something we thought about being a possibility before now.

Which led us to thinking... Is this a thing headmates like fictives and extranths get? I mean, if it's experienced at least once then it's a thing that can happen of course, so yes! But it's not really talked about from what we see--especially not in those terms. It's a vulnerable state to be in so it'd be understandable why it's rare to find talk of... But in our experience, it absolutely happens! It feels almost in the same sort of way that an emotional flashback might, with some added intensity and usually less traumatic origins. Maybe that's what other plurals use, if they even have a word for it?

Sometimes--though not often--we wake up in the morning and get completely disoriented because we feel like we're not where we're meant to be and our body is wrong, in a way deeper than regular dysphoria. A fictive will wake up in the front and for a little while, feel completely as if they were in their source and get very confused as to whose house they're in and why they're wearing the clothes they are. How did they get here? Where's their family? Their friends or partner(s)? Maybe they'll freak out that our body is different and wonder what happened to it, maybe they'll get up and move to get ready for work before realising that's not a thing we do. It happens in different ways but I think we would call those absolute shifts now that we've thought about it. More animalistic headmates of ours have had similar stuff on occasion but they're much more rare so we can't really speak too heavily on those.

It's most common when we just wake up but it happens at other times too. Shrapnel for example has had what he calls "memory flashbacks" where he'll remember a tiny bit about his life as Bakugo Katsuki, then for a few seconds after, he just feels like he's 100% his fictive identity and gets a bit concerned as to why he doesn't recognise his surroundings. He snaps out of it pretty quick but he's our main example and guy who experiences them.

We've known that shifting is not an exclusive thing to otherkin for ages. I mean hell, we see fictives and fictionkin as basically the same thing aside from origin (in most cases) and extranths and otherkin get the same sort of thing in our mind too. We don't see a huge reason to draw a big divide between them for us. And we know our headmates get phantom shifts and mental shifts of their identities all the time... But I guess we just never thought to attribute those flashback states to what is essentially an absolute shift.

We didn't really think we ever experienced one of those shifts until we leaned that yes, fictionfolk can get them and those things do pretty much count. Interesting to think about, and interesting to wonder if there's any other plurals out there who can relate.

[the-bar-sinister]

sinister, ive been recently realising i might be plural, but its kind of complicated because im fictionkin, so it just feels like all my headmates are just........ versions of vriska? like its like all of my headmates are vriskas. i was wondering how you experienced being plural and also fictionkin and if you had any advice on kinda dealing with the mix of both?

Plurality is a spectrum, and that spectrum often intersects with Fictionkinity when you're kin. This is honestly, pretty common. We've met a few systems who have more than one version of the same character as headmates.

Also, being familiar with the source material, 'a bunch of versions of this one homestuck character' is not an unexpected result when you're homestuck kin, tbh.

My advice if it's stressing you out would be to look into plurality spectrum terms and see what fits your system - facets, median, etc.

Our system has a Vriska, an Aranea, and a Mindfang who's a composite of Vriska and Aranea acting as a fusion!

Please feel free to follow up if you have more questions/are looking for more specific advice ^^

[director-yomi-hellsmile]

I wonder when people are gonna stop being nasty to fictionkin maybe

[tevallen]

im going to barf

[fromfiction]

hello, I'm a new copinglink.. I'm still a little confused and i have to ask this because i don't know where else to find the answer

If the creator of the fictional character i link to doesn't allow shipping do i have to follow the same boundaries?? What if i get a romantic partner? Am i just not allowed to have anything romantic as long as im still a copinglink?

You never have to listen to a creator who says they "don't allow" shipping. Ever.

That's not a boundary that a creator can reasonably make. That's an attempt at tyranny.

Fandom is not about what the creator wants, it's about fandom.

If the creator doesn't want to see shipping of their characters they can block the tags like everyone else.

[interstellarsystem]

On Being “Cured”

I’m Jayfeather, a fictive of the character by the same name from the Warriors books. In those books, as well as my own memories, I was blind. This came with a lot of challenges and quite frankly ableist bullshit I had to deal with back there. Now, since my own death, I’m here. Stuffed into the body of a twoleg, sitting here with our kittypet on our bed next to me as I write this–an uncanny reminder, in a way. But this isn't about him. With all the weirdness that is being here, there’s one thing that unsettles me the most. I can see.

Our eyes are far from perfect. We need glasses, our vision is degrading over time and will continue to do so, we’re light sensitive as a result of our autism. But we can see, and we can do it well enough that I can see the individual leaves on trees, ants running along the ground if I look closely, and the faces of those we care about. You’d think this would all come as great news to me, the blind cat can finally see what grass looks like. While that’s interesting and all, it’s a very surface-level, watered down version of what I really feel about it. It’s nice to see, I guess, but it’s also so inherently wrong.

My disability came with its own struggles. I suffered greatly because of it in a lot of ways, both due to ableism in my clan and the things it prevented me from doing in life. But in the end, it’s a part of who I am, who I shaped up to be, and it dictated the path of my whole life. It’s as much a part of me as the fact I have ears, or paws, or a tendency to mouth-off at anyone who says something foolish around me. Those things can cause struggles too, those things can hurt me, just as my blindness often did. It doesn’t make any of them less healthy to accept as a part of my being. Now I’m here, and along with other traits my body once had, my blindness is also gone.

(Read more below.)

You’d expect me to miss those other things. Species dysphoria is known about, of course if you had a limb taken away you’d struggle to cope with that loss. People can understand why I’d miss my tail when I need to balance better, or my fur when I feel cold. Missing a disability, though? That’s something a lot of folks tend to be unable to wrap their heads around. People are quick to jump to assumptions of “wanting to be special”, eagerness to fake a disability, or the feeling itself being indicative of being ill in some other way (which also, mind you, tends to be brought up in ways that are pretty ableist to those conditions anyway, leave them alone). People expect those who were disabled in memories who now aren’t disabled in those ways here to feel happy, to feel “cured”, to feel like this is a new chance without the horrible terrible disabilities weighing them down. But I think it’s worth discussing as a genuine form of dysphoria one can have, related to missing an inherent part of themselves, just like any other thing normalised in the community to miss.

I don’t want to pretend to be blind here. I don’t want to make the body blind, either. Being blind, like any other disability, also doesn’t come with a magical “special person” card so it’d be ridiculous to even think of it that way (not to mention ableist). I don’t want to be blind to use it as an “excuse”. I don’t want to be blind for “fun”. All those stereotypes we’ve seen brought up when someone misses a disability they once had? They sure as hell don’t apply to every case, and assuming they do is honestly ridiculous. In my case, it’s not even because I’m delusional or have BIID–though those things also should never make the feelings less acceptable to talk about. Hell, I don’t necessarily want to be blind here, in the same way I don’t want to transform into a cat. I would not be able to live this life the same way I’ve been doing it if I suddenly was a cat again, or if I was suddenly blind again. Despite the fact I miss both those things about myself, I can also just… Live this life, even if it does hurt sometimes. A person can miss something, be dysphoric about something, or even actually want something without implying anything else about actions they’d take around that.

My blindness, in the end, is the same as any other bodily trait you’d be likely to miss from one's own exomemories. Not because it was perfect, not because it was without flaws, but because it was me, and now I no longer have it. I miss my paws, despite the fact that it’s easier to get by here with the addition of thumbs and fingers to grab things. I miss my blindness, despite the fact that it’s easier to get by here while being sighted in a body known to be sighted too. Those two things feel almost exactly the same to me, and yet, one is much more normalised to talk about than the other.

This inherent tie between disability and sense of self isn’t even unique to myself and my past life memories. It’s really similar to how we’d feel about a “cure” for our autism here, in the present, in this body. Our autism disables us, it means we will never live a “normal” neurotypical life. It’s caused us plenty of suffering, and it still does and will always do so. Yet, a “cure” for our autism is a cure for our selfhood, our being, our own identity. There is no us without what we were born with. Who would we be otherwise, if it was suddenly gone? We wouldn’t know ourselves. 

This even applies to more “scary” things we have. Our schizoaffective disorder especially. We struggle with disorganised thinking and speech often, yet we make fun with it. We have plenty of injokes because of silly things we’ve said while struggling to remember a basic word. Our hallucinations may be scary, but we’ve learned to live with them and cope well. We ask them to pay rent, we laugh about it, we have jokes about them and we’re used to visions and voices buzzing around our head. With our dissociative identity disorder, we wouldn’t even be a “we” in the same way we are now if we didn’t have it. We have some tulpas, soulbonds, daemons… But a lot of our main fronters would never have existed. We wouldn’t be where we are today. We suffered to get to this point, and we still suffer, but this is us. Our head would feel empty without all of this. We’d be missing fundamental pieces, or even our own selves altogether. You cannot strip us, a disabled person, of all our disabilities, and expect us to feel whole.

You could argue, maybe, that a mental disorder is different from a physical disability. There’s a separation between body and mind, or whatever. But honestly? If you could really and truly cure most of our physical issues, there’d still be a struggle there, for the ones we’ve had most of our life. Aside from needing to pay for them (even if we wish we didn’t need them sometimes) we’d be confused to look in the mirror and see no need for our glasses. We’ve always needed them, always will, that’s a part of us, we look wrong without them. We’d also feel naked without our cane to help us walk, and our ears would strain to hear the satisfying clack of it hitting the floor in time with our steps. We’d listen for that little reminder to us that we have something to hold onto to ease our pain and help us walk at all. These things being lost could be coped with, but they’d leave a mark, just as my blindness has left on me.

Some things that we deal with are newer. Symptoms and struggles we’ve yet to learn to cope with and integrate into our daily life as parts of ourselves. Those things would be easier to let go, a lot of them we’re actively trying to fix. But for those things we know will be lifelong, and we’ve made peace with? Those things that will walk with us always, until we die? A part of ourselves would die with their “cure”. That’s the point, really. It’s a loss of something that’s shaped your life, even if it’s shaped it in more negative ways than positive. You can’t take a person's shadow, even if it’s dark, cold and gloomy, and not much more than that. It’s tied to them. There’d always be something “off”. And with my death and arrival in this body, I had mine taken.

Aside from it being a major part of my sense of self, since getting here I’ve learned that my blindness also protected me from what seeing is really like. It’s horribly overwhelming. I know being visually overstimulated can come from the autism the body has, but I think my point still stands no matter its origin. Lights are far too bright oftentimes, colours can feel like burning, and being able to see gross or horrific things just adds another sense that has to be forced to perceive them. I’m one of the folks in here that often walks around wearing our sunglasses, not because I think they look cool, but because being sighted really does hurt me physically. It’s absolutely something I still haven’t adjusted to, even being here in this body for 3 years now. I doubt I will ever adjust to these things.

Another thing I’ve learned since my arrival is that I do think my vision is actively worse than some of my headmates. This isn’t really new to us–we have multiple headmates who can’t hear, see, walk or speak as well as the general collective can. I’m still not blind for sure, but our glasses don’t work as well for me. They still do something, at the very least, but it’s noticeable that I just can’t see quite as well as the rest (aside from other headmates who struggle). Things are more blurry, I have trouble getting them to focus on anything at all, and our lazy eye even seems to drift more when I front. 

Headmates with differing levels of disability (or entirely different disabilities altogether) are no new thing, I believe the concept has even been studied a little.  It’s familiar to us, for sure, as stated we have plenty. I know that technically, these symptoms are “all in our head” and they don’t “mean” anything, there’s not always going to be a connection to our previous bodies in how our symptoms manifest… But, on one paw, I’m a little ticked, because if I’m going to be forced to see… at least have me do it properly, without worse vision or pain? On another paw, I’m a little upset that I didn’t end up being blind when I front. We know other folks who have similar stuff, and some little part of me is upset that I end up stuck struggling against bright lights when the brain could have just kept me blind even though it would come with its own struggles. Hell, maybe I’d be mad that my headmates can see and I still can’t, in that theoretical? And on another, this is as close as I’ll get to how I was before. Maybe my pain from being sighted would be worse if I could see properly? I know for sure if I was entirely blind in front, I’d be unable to do a lot of stuff my system does regularly here. Maybe a middleground is for the best?

In the end, I don’t see this as a cure. A cure implies I’ve had something fixed, and this is not something that needed healing. I’ve been changed, altered, or given sight, but not “cured”. A nonhuman being born into a human body is not “cured” of their paws any more than I am “cured” of my blindness. It was a part of my body and self as much as anything else, and I will stand by that. I also don’t see my feelings about it as something to be ashamed of, despite a lot of ideas we’ve seen floating around. It’s not wrong to miss a part of yourself, even if it was a disability you no longer have. I honestly think that line of thought gets too close to “disabled people can never be happy while being disabled or they’re faking/not really disabled” ideas, and I’m very happy to stay right the hell away from that ableist nonsense.

I’ll cope, I’ve done so for 3 years now, and I’ll continue doing so. I’d just like to get this out there, and maybe see a little bit more kindness about the whole concept of missing your own disabilities, maybe share some experiences with others who might not have felt okay to talk about it. Others with similar experiences might feel differently to me, they might feel cured and happy that they’re no longer disabled–this is in no way anything against those folks either, more power to them, I’m glad they’ve found joy. This is more of an account of my own experiences than it is any sort of one true way to feel about it, don’t misconstrue it as anything beyond my own emotions, gripes and experiences being offered and shared to the public.

At the very least, I’m an angry old cat with opinions who can’t for the life of him hold them in for too long. A cat who can’t front without going on a rant at least once. So… I personally won’t be going anywhere, blind or not, and my system as well as everyone else is stuck with me.

[bidimensionality]

As someone who also currently has different disabilities than I had in source, your story rings very true for me. The scars that I had in my source timeline are gone now, and having complete vision in my left eye is still very jarring. I've been thinking of it in the same way as you have, the niceness but also the wrongness. I still remember exactly how it felt, and it's strange and difficult now that it's not here anymore.

I'm hopeful that with time (as someone who only claimed/discovered this kintype a little over two years ago) it becomes easier. I think that it's something that a lot of alterhumans have to deal with.

Have you noticed any things that you still do that you used to do/did in your source/timeline? I know that I've noticed that I still tilt my head a little to the left when I'm looking at things intently or things that are far away from me, like I would have in source when my left eye was weaker so that my right could compensate. It's a strange little quirk.

[interstellarsystem]

It's very nice to hear I'm not alone and that this has been well received by a lot of folks. Thank you for sharing your experience. I'd assume, as with most things, that time does make it less jarring of an experience. I'm certainly less distressed over it as time goes on.

Because the body I'm in now is very different, it's a little hard to tell what carried over and what didn't. I at least am aware I touch things more often when moving around--having my hands run along a desk slightly when I walk past, walking so I'm just brushing against a wall, etc. Though it's hard to tell if this is a product of my prior blindness or if I just prefer that extra stability.

Some of my headmates are different, however, and are clearly more affected by habits continuing into this life. We have one in particular (Toge, He/Him) who lost his arm in his previous life. Here, he barely uses that arm even though he maintains full functionality in it, essentially acting as if he still doesn't have it most of the time. He'll be more likely to opt to hold things in his elbow, mouth, or between his neck and shoulder if at all possible than to actually use our left arm at all. A lot of the time, that arm even physically alternates between hurting and feeling uncomfortably numb hen he fronts.

We have another (Shrapnel, He/Him) who does experience less hearing than our baseline in the body, and he will turn his head or move to stand next to you so his good ear is facing you whenever possible. If he's wearing only one earphone, he puts it in his bad ear so he's able to hear what's going on around him still.

Habits definitely carry over to some degree in here, whether or not you experience any physical symptoms.

[the-bar-sinister]

What whatawaht sorry if you have talked about it before (or the opposite and don't want to) what do you mean soul cluster and the multiverse fragmenting eveyrone so thats how you get multiple kintypes of the same universe

No obligation to answer or anything most of us are just very curious now and its weird if we DON'T have am outburst atp lol. 😅

Okay, so I'm happy to explain. <3 But disclaimer that these are our personal beliefs, and no one is obliged to believe or agree with them, as long as they just believe that we sincerely hold these beliefs. ^^

The people in Sinister System (us) and the people in Deluge System (our partner system) are all part of a combined "soul cluster" - a group of people who are continually reincarnated together into the same universes at (roughly) the same time, and end up meeting one another again and again, and going through similar cycles and relationships.

Sometimes when we're incarnated, as is the case in this universe, multiple souls are squished into one body, either consciously (headmate situation), or unconsciously (fusion situation). Usually it's just two souls, but something about this universe seems to have necessitated packing a lot more people into the same bodies! We have had other friends in the fictionkin community who have the same type of experience here, so we think it might be a feature of this universe.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, sometimes when we're incarnated in a universe, one soul ends up split and incarnated into more than one body. This sometimes results in a division of traits between the two incarnations, and sometimes also a lot of general mental instability. For us this was the case in our One Piece incarnation, where a LOT of our members were spread out over multiple bodies. The other incarnations where this seems to have been the case for a lot of us are Marvel, and Pokemon. XD

Does that make sense? feel free to ask follow up questions if you have them ^^

[aconstellationcollective]

dehumanization as horror is great and all but what about humanization as horror. Being forced into a role that was not made for you. Being forced to fulfill expectations that you can never achieve. Being made to exist in a society that so cruelly expects you to act in a way that is against your nature.

[the-bar-sinister]

I don't really know who else to ask, and this is probably a painful kind of question, and please feel free to delete it if you don't feel comfortable talking about it. Have any of your headmates... died? Like not just left, but died. Not just in their source, but like... permanently. For real.

I'm not going to get into it too much, but... I wasn't around before she died and I only exist BECAUSE she died, and my host refuses to talk about it, and I don't have access to those memories.

I'm sorry anon, that sounds like an awful thing to go through.

We don't have any experience with this, so I'm going to reblog it through our alterhuman blog in case anyone who has advice for you might see it.

[yuriartillery]

i remember you from my past lives. yeah. terrible lay. also a really boring kill. every single time we met even. wanna find out if the pattern holds

[fireboltsystem]

Being fictive heavy is like With my unique abilities, I can Complete a shift at work but if you figure out what planet I'm from you can use its earth to weaken me

[the-bar-sinister]

curious to hear what you think about doubles as a fiction kin, i have seen many takes on it and would like to know yours.

We, Sinister system, love doubles. Our belief is that fictionkin come from reincarnations from alternate universes, so there's nothing upsetting about meeting someone who is the same "character" as one of us, because their experience and world was different than ours.

Not only that but we're kin from Marvel comics, so we already have a lot of experience meeting doubles and alternate universe versions of ourselves in that lifetime as well.

It used to be that we didn't know any doubles of our own kintypes - doubles were rarer back in the day when fewer people knew about fictionkin - but lately we have met quite a few.

There's one double of Doflamingo in particular that our Doffy has become great friends with. It's no surprise that two Doflamingos get along like a house on fire.