I hardly know where to begin with this. Itâs no secret that Iâm not an avid writer of anything. It just makes me feel pretentious, followed by embarrassed when I see my own words later on. Iâm never satisfied, but this is something that I have to put in words. Not only for my sake, since personally I could know what I know and walk away in silence. But a lie of omission is just as bad, in my view, as a direct one. Itâs for the sake of other people who care, and out of respect for the wider community of fictionkind that Iâm doing my best to make this coherent.
I wish there were others who I could ask. How did you do it? How did you leave? How did this come to an end for you? What did it feel like? Did you mourn? Did you lose faith in yourself? Did other people lose faith in you? Did you circle back again and again to see if it was really over?
Theyâre out there, of course. People like Lupa â a famous example of one who used to be a therian until they realized that theyâre not, and bowed out gracefully. Iâm sure there are others. Unlike former therians, I canât name any fictionkind who came to the conclusion that said label no longer fit them. In a very final way, beyond semantics. Who else has looked inside themselves and noticed a piece missing where a fictotype used to be?
By now, youâre at least mildly surprised.
I donât want to prattle on too long about my history. I awoke 16 years ago and identified as Ichigo Kurosaki. Itâs been a constant in my life like few things have. There are people new to this community who were still babies when I was networking with other fictionkind about it. Itâs been as much a fixture in my life as the color of my hair, or the sound of my mental voice when I think. Itâs how I knew myself, and itâs how other people know me.
Recently, that is within the last couple of years, I grappled with and eventually reconciled the fact that my fictotype was psychological. Before that, for the majority of the time, I was an adamantly spiritual person. In some ways I still am, but as far as Ichigo was concerned, I could no longer suspend my disbelief enough to keep up the act. I wasnât a reincarnated character. None of these events actually happened to me, though my brain was convinced they did.
This fictotype was something that developed over many years, beginning in my early teens. Untreated mental illness and an unstable home contributed to my need to form my identity around something else. In this case, someone else, and that was Ichigo. It helped that we already had a lot in common, to a degree that was almost unsettling. I was eager to forgo rationality and chose what was comfortable. What ultimately gave my life meaning, purpose, and context. None of this was conscious. As I said, I was a spiritual person, and I wasnât able to see these mental calculations taking place. Rarely do we ever see them for what they are in the beginning, or they wouldnât work.
Itâs now almost 2023. Itâs becoming a hell of a lot harder to hide from the truth. As my life improves, the need for old coping mechanisms fades, including the ones that were so covert. With each passing day, I have a little more clarity, and the guilt I feel increases.
Ichigo has begun to feel like a burden, not an identity.
Despite our similarities, and all of the feelings that Bleach invokes, the one thing it doesnât inspire in me anymore is sincerity. It feels, ironically, hollow. Strip away the other characters, the plots, the relationships â when itâs just about Ichigo, I feel a distance. It takes effort to be in that mindset â what you may call a shift â and thatâs a very big red flag that I canât pretend I donât see. There have been times where I tried to force myself to feel things about my source, because the fact that I didnât was terrifying. I felt like a failure and a fraud. The real Ichigo, I told myself, would be ashamed at my indifference.
When I accepted my psychological alignment, it was the precursor to this moment. It allowed me to see that the world wouldnât end if I changed. That I wouldnât become a wreck. That other people wouldnât hate me. That I could grow and be okay. My fictotype was a product of my mind; it gradually arrived, and it can just as well leave. Itâs a paradigm shift that feels like a fist in my chest, slowly unclenching.
My relationship to fiction is still uncertain, and it likely will be for a while yet. Simba on the other hand still feels very prominent in my psyche. My body is in a constantly shifted state that fluctuates perfectly between dragon and lion, or a mix of the two, whenever I want it to do so. This phantom body is overlaid on top of my human one. For even longer than my 16 years as Ichigo, this has been my life. My very first hazy memories in childhood are shaded with my animality. They are inseparable from me, and my therianthropy includes Simba (The Lion King predating Bleach by about 10 years). So technically, you could consider me a fictherian, and Iâll be using the label for a while to see how I feel about it.
There are other characters that Iâve felt connections to, some that I concluded were fictotypes and later decided were not, but none of them were as profound as Ichigo was. I could shrug off a case of mistaken identity without too much issue, but Ichigo felt like an essential part of who I was; a load-bearing pillar that would destroy me if I knocked it down. In all likelihood, it was. I would not have been brave enough, stable enough, to say any of this before I was ready.
Aside from fear of the unknown, my primary emotion at the moment is gratitude, because for all the pain and difficult years, this fictotype helped lead the course of my life down a good path. It got me here, after all. Iâm self sufficient, I have what I need and am working towards what I want, and I can live openly the way I want to. It helped me mature into someone I can be tentatively proud of. It influenced so much, from my masculinity to my sense of style. I learned a lot from my time as Ichigo. Seeing the world through his eyes was illuminating, and Iâm convinced that his portion of my identity kept me afloat during times where I might not have been able to survive. It wasnât all roses, but it made things easier to get through. Whether he's real or not, outside of my own head, isn't for me to say, but I'm grateful nonetheless.
Iâm not going away. In fact Iâm planning to be more active on @sundragon now that I feel more secure in my identity overall. Now that Iâm able to put this saga to rest, Iâm optimistic about who I can be going forward. Iâm still dragonkind after all, and a fictherian. The people I know here and on other websites matter to me. @sundragon, and my new account by the same name on Draconic.com, will be my main haunts for the foreseeable. My hope is that stepping out of Ichigoâs shadow will be just as enlightening as when I was under it.
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