I think we should normalize not being similar to out kins in any ways there is. I don’t look like any of my fictionkin identities. I don’t necessarily want to look like any of them. I am a mix of them, but more than that, this body has its own past. In this life, I have memories, friends, a situation that is completely separated from my other identities. And I don’t think it should be erased for the sake of being a copy of a kin. Obviously, it gives euphoria to sometimes look like them or be compared to them, but it is not necessary to want to look and behave 100% like one of them 24/7.
First, I have multiple fictionkin identities. All of them are more or less influent and “here” depending on the time of the day or the period of the year, so how would I chose which one to change my appearance for ? There isn’t one in particular who is necessarily more “there” than the others. Those are my identities. All of them are.
Secondly, even if I am quite similar to all of my different identities in term of personality, I can not be the exact same as one of them. You can not put Vanilla Periwinkle, Wanderer and Nagisa Shiota in the same body and possibly think “mmh yes the mix of those will obviously be the exact copy of only one of them, even if all of them are very different”. No. That’s not how it works.
Of course, it hurts to be a character and people around you not seeing how they are you. It feels invalidating. It hurts. Personally, I even start to doubt my own memories and feelings in the worst of it. But at the same time, it is understandable. The mix of all of my personalities, contained in this body which has an identity of its own, will sometimes be more similar to others than to myself.
As an example, I am Wanderer, from Genshin Impact. There is no doubt about it in my mind. He is me, I am him, all the shit around that. Yet, my friends never associated him with me at first glance. They see me more in Xingqiu or Kaedehara Kazuha. And yes, it makes sense. They are not aware that I am Wanderer. And as of now, who I am and the image people have of me is indeed closer to those characters than to myself.
I shouldn’t have to change my ways just to act more like one character when it isn’t natural to me. If I changed just to be recognized as Wanderer, I would get what I want, but I would be erasing everything else that makes me.
Even if the mix of all the identities I have is someone unlike any of my actual identities, at least it’s me, at least I see all of them in who I am, and I am not erasing them for the sake of validation for just one identity. I won’t always talk like Wanderer, because the youth of Vanilla will always be in the back when I chose my words, because the poetry of Ellana or the dreamy phrasing of Whiteout will always have an influence on the way I form sentences. And seeing all of me like that validates me way more than if I ever chose to shut some of my identities down for the sake of promoting only one of them for validation.
