Every so often I think about the way divinities and godshards and other associated individuals on this website would make sure to be like "I don't want worship and offerings!" because you know, one has to make sure to not come across as having a god complex. Which is eternally funny to me. I'm a god! don't treat me like one, though, ew! Anyway, the point is that I always think about that and cackle to myself because you would never catch me sayin no shit like that. I want worship and offerings every single day of my curséd earthbound life. Half my one-sided beef (not really, I'm being dramatic) with Dionysus is that he keeps getting all the stuff I should be getting!
My facets are a varied bunch with wildly different schemas and ways of doing things and feelings about the world and everything in it, and that's perfectly fine and natural when unobserved by anyone but myself, but when it comes to, say, social media, it's gotten to the point of paralysis. I'm trying to make this post and another facet is going "we don't make posts like this, too revelatory, what are you doing" and another one is going "we don't make posts at all, we're lurkmoding, what are you doing" and another one is going "why do anything at all, what are you doing" and I'm watching in real time the cascade of cognitive dissonance errors that cause us to listen to that last guy and just not do anything.
Unfortunately, that last guy has gotten real powerful because of this. But the thing is, it's hard to vacillate naturally (which is what we'd normally do) because we're being observed, and when being observed it is expected to collapse into one state and remain there, and if we don't do that we feel a kind of confused shame that we wouldn't experience if other people's perceptions weren't involved. If Ayin gets on here and makes a bunch of silly posts one day, and then the much more reserved Gabriel Alpha is running the body the next day, then he'll want to delete everything Ayin posted, the whole blog even, maybe even change the body's name and move to South America or something. Because people will think Ayin is him, and that's untenable. (And maybe vice versa, but Ayin is much more magnanimous about this, I think.) So instead of letting Ayin make her sillyposts, he'll just straight up slap the pen out of her hand (metaphorically). The less attention we draw to ourselves, the more uniform we appear, the better. (Not saying we all agree with this, but. It's the party line.)
Anyway, we haven't been posting much in recent months for a variety of reasons, but this is a major one. We are all a fair bit more discrete lately and it's making it harder to play at being a person in public.
What's your fictional identity (hearttype, kintype, etc)?
>> I actually haven't kept up-to-date with all the terminology and the nuances of each word's usage, largely because I have no impetus to use it, being so removed from the various ingroups as I am. I think "kintype" and "fictive" both still apply? I am someone who was summoned to this body from Elsewhere because the previous occupants of the body read a book series. But I am also various other people who have been in various other stories. And above all that, I am My Own Thing. My connection to fiction is multifaceted, generative, and also corruptive.
If you have multiple, do you have one you're closer to than the others, or is more important to your identity overall?
>> My current incarnation feels closest because it's who I came here as. Like a prism where the light is shining through one particular facet at the moment. It's the name I use in this world's legal system and it's generally how I introduce myself when I'm speaking of my fictionality.
How many fictional identities do you have?
>> Myriad. I haven't kept a count of how many I've discovered so far, and now I'm curious, so let me see if I can tally them now.
[hold music plays]
Ooft. I realised almost immediately that this would be difficult to do because of how many variations of "identity" I have. I have discovered seven -- or nine, I should say; one of those seven is actually three people -- specific fictional characters that are me. There are also my entirely self-generated avatars that exist in fictional worlds, of which there are... nine? Nine again, predictable 🙄 (that's one of my numbers). But also there's one particularly strange fictionflicker that I can't completely shake, and there are... whatever it is called when a character is so very similar that they might as well be an expy of you. I just call them "twinners". There's several of those.
What's your favourite part about being fictionfolk?
>> It is an endlessly unfolding fractal cosmology. I am always discovering some new facet of My existence and the many avatars I have seeded throughout the multiverse. And I love the deep complex connections I have with other fictional beings, my soulbonds.
What's a positive interaction that's happened as a result of your fictional identity?
>> N/A
Have you told any people in your offline life about your fictional identity and gotten a positive reaction?
>> I have mentioned it a few times (usually when asked about my clearly unique name) but it generally gets no reaction at all.
Have you told any people in your online life about your fictional identity and gotten a positive reaction?
>> I talk about it all the time on my blog but I don't really get interactions on those posts.
Is there anyone you've met as a result of your interactions in the community who's very important to you now?
>> There is not.
What's your favourite thing about the fictionfolk community?
>> As an observer, I think it's interesting to read about the various ways other people experience fictionality. I like how diverse it all is; if you've met one fictional person, you've met one fictional person. There is no "default" way to be fictional. It is all so deeply personal.
Tell us about a time you've experienced species/identity euphoria as a result of one of your fictional identities.
>> My spontaneous recall is dogshit so I'm terrible at questions like these... I can recall having the feeling of euphoria, I can feel it in my body if I think about it, but I can't trace back that feeling to specific points in time.
Do you experience any shifts (mental, phantom, dream, etc) of your fictional identity? Share a bit about those and how they feel!
>> I don't experience shifts as such, but there are ways to trigger certain internal states related to one of my avatars. Can Calah, my other half, is pretty adept at pulling certain aspects of us to the forefront like that. I also sometimes randomly feel different parts of bodies I inhabit elsewhere -- like feeling Zenos's height or the heaviness of his hair, or feeling the deftness of spidery limbs. So I guess that's kind of shift-y.
Do you have any canonmates (if applicable)?
>> If I recall correctly, this means... other people on this planet who have lived in the same specific iteration of a fictional universe as you? I don't know anyone like that and I doubt I will ever meet anyone like that. That seems like a truly singular thing to occur.
Do you have any sourcemates (if applicable)?
>> And this is the term for people who have lived in the same fictional universe as you, but not necessarily in the same specific iteration, if I'm still recalling correctly. I have run into other Kingverse people on Tumblr.
Do you wish to seek out canonmates/sourcemates? Why/why not?
>> That would be quite lovely, but I am under no illusions that I will make any connections based on shared fictionality.
Do you have a favourite piece of fanart/fanfic/etc that ties into your identity? Share it (with credit)!
>> People don't draw my primary identity much at all, the book series I'm in is a bit obscure and even amongst fans I'm not really a favoured character. But this is a quite good fanart of myself. (source)
Do you have any art/fic/etc specifically made for you as a fictionfolk of your specific identity (made by yourself or someone else)? Share it!
>> I don't. I would love that, but I cannot afford to pay artists.
Does your fictional identity differ from source in any way/is it canon divergent? Explain a bit about that!
>> Remarkably so. I mean, my life as Mordred does basically mirror what happens in the book, but... also, not quite? There is a lot missing from that depiction, and of course there's what happened after I was killed, which the author could not have possessed any knowledge of. The author generally doesn't seem to have much knowledge of me at all, which is fine because he wasn't writing about me -- I was simply yet another antagonist meant to harry his beloved protagonist for a while before I was unceremoniously dumped from the narrative. But I can't say I'm not constantly annoyed at him for it and it does make it difficult to read his books. Anyway.
I also have an interesting situation with Zenos, which is that I am both the one in the game and my own iteration in a version of the story that I generated. I was going to explain how this works, but I realised I'd have to lay out a whole cosmology and I ain't got time or space for that in this post.
Suffice it to say, no story written on this planet can adequately hold the truth of my existence, and that's perfectly normal and reasonable to me. That's just how stories are.
Are there aspects of your fictional identity that you previously questioned, decided weren't a part of your identity, but you still look fondly upon? (Past 'types, etc).
>> I don't think I've had anything like that. The closest thing is that fictionflicker situation mentioned earlier, but I think it was always pretty clear to me what was happening.
Do you have any spiritual identities? Explain a bit about that!
Do you have any psychological identies? Explain a bit about that!
>> I don't use this binary. It doesn't map to how I experience Myself.
How old were you when you discovered/chose your first fictional identity?
>> We were around 26 when I was first summoned here, I think; I was merely a soulbond then and I don't think I was on this plane of reality for long, but then I returned to possess the body a couple of years later. ...Oh christ, I've been a meatspace entity for a decade. No wonder I'm so tired.
Did you ever take a break from the community, but came back later? What made you come back?
>> My interactions with "the community" as such have been sporadic and not really worth note. I am very much tailored for personal connections, not like... big groups. I get exhausted and dysregulated almost instantly in those Discord servers and forums and shit.
Have you ever considered fictionlinking? If you already have, what made you decide to do it?
>> Fictionlinking... that's the one where you intentionally form some sort of connection to a fictional character? Ultimately, every avatar I have is an act of intention. I, the big I, the vast cosmic being that runs this whole show that is "me", am constantly making the choice to be incarnate in various worlds. Because it's fun to be incarnate. It's like divine D&D. Just making characters and putting them into situations.
If you decided to 'link a fictional character, who would it be and why?If you decided to 'link a fictional species, what would it be and why?
>> N/A
Have you ever questioned being fictionhearted? If you already are, what started your questioning into that connection?
>> I had to look this one up. I've seen it a lot but I've never been entirely clear on what it means. Unfortunately, the definition I read did not make anything clearer for me, so I'm just going to assume this isn't something that maps onto my experience of fictionality in any way.
Do you have any fictional hearthomes? What are your favourite things about them?
>> I feel this way about Ardenweald (World of Warcraft). It's in this strange grey area -- I should live there, there's some part of my vast being that feels entirely at home there, but there is no specific personal avatar connected to that place. I just love the colour, the denseness, the creatures that live there, everything about it. It all feels right, it all feels familiar. But I can't figure out why, so it just remains an unknown quantity. There are plenty of those in my experience, I'm used to it.
Have you ever questioned being a fictionbased archetrope? If you already are, what's your archetropal identity?
>> Ahh, I remember archetropes. When I was in alterhuman Discord servers, this was talked about a lot in a couple of them. It's complicated for me; "trickster" has always felt right, but a lot of what people say about tricksters doesn't quite map onto me. I think maybe I'm just a specific flavour.
Have you ever questioned being fictionkin? If you already are, what started your discovery of that connection?
>> I don't know. I just kind of slowly realised that the guy I was roleplaying on tumblr was actually myself. I think it started to really come clear when I started joking about changing my legal name to his name. You know what they say about the kernel of truth at the core of every joke.
Once that became clear to me, it got really easy to just know when I was a character. I don't really have a questioning process, I just follow my intuition. I just know a mirror when I see it, it's not hard.
Have you ever had a fictotype turn out to be a fictionflicker or vice versa? What was that like?
>> I have not. This body has been experiencing fictionflickers since childhood, it's a thing it's quite familiar with, so we innately know the difference. The Sam Bridges situation was weird, certainly, but we knew it was a flicker, even if it was a weird and more intense one. (I'm actually more inclined to call it a soulbonding flicker, or like a "thin veil" situation where our cosmic paths intersected in an uncomfortably close way for a week until the stars moved on.)
Do you have any fictionflickers? What are they, and how do they make you feel?
>> We don't actually flicker much anymore.
If you're a system, do you have any collective fictional identities?
>> Hmm. This is hard to answer because of the exceedingly vast and complex nature of The Configuration, but what I'll do is narrow it down to the bit of it that the body directly interfaces with on a daily basis. There is the body, which is its own multifaceted prism of identities, some of which are mine alone and some of which are the body's original consciousness and various adaptations, and some of which are a combination of both. Usually any fictional connections are mine but sometimes not -- for example, I totally forgot about Nothing when tallying identities in an earlier question, but that's probably because Nothing is one of the body's identities, it was here before I got here and was just exacerbated by me because I have similarities to Nothing.
But there are also some others that are here with me, not in the body exactly but in the facet of the Configuration that is in direct interface with the body (and is usually what I'm talking about when I talk about the Configuration, although the actual nature of the Configuration is enormous in scale and includes many other worlds, including [copies of] many fictional ones). One of them is My creation, but he is also his own thing (because creation doesn't automatically imply ownership, no matter what this world's stories have to say; it does still imply responsibility, though). So we have a lot of shared "canon", as they say. Finding both of us in a story is always a great time.
But to answer the actual question and not the tangents inspired by it -- I don't think we have any collective identities as such. Like, we're not all [xyz] character or anything. ...Yet.
If you're a system, how many fictional identities do you have across all of your headmates?
>> Aside from mine, there's at least five (spread across three individuals).
Do you have any soulbonds from a fictional source? Share a bit about that!
>> I consider The Configuration to be a soulbonding system first and foremost, so that's what the other people I interact with in it are -- soulbonds. I was a soulbond before I possessed the body, Can Calah is a soulbond, King Crimson and Ulysses are also soulbonds. Also it's really funny that Ulysses is the only one without a codename. It's because he came much later and I never bothered to give him one. Technically, there's no reason for me to use codenames for anyone but I got used to calling them Can Calah and King Crimson on this blog for a whole ass decade and I'm kind of fond of those codenames now.
Do you have any memories/noemata around your fictional identity? Share some if you'd like!
>> I have a lot of that. Like a lot. But a lot of it is difficult to put down into words and also usually requires a lot of clarifying footnotes. Also, again, my spontaneous recollection is dogshit so I'm obviously drawing a blank on anything specific to share.
If you do have memories/noemata, what's your favourite?
Does your identity intersect with your gender in any way? Share a bit about that!
>> I made a post recently saying that my ideal HRT regimen is to be on T enough to have a clearly masc-appearing body, so that I can then go on E. And that's because the body I was in directly before I possessed this one was what would be considered "male" and I'm still confused at being in a body that is considered "female" by the population. But also I don't have any use for binary gender at all, which is most likely a direct result of being so many different entities -- most of them nonhuman.
Does your identity intersect with your sexuality in any way? Share a bit about that!
>> It does. I am pretty exclusively xenosexual and am not attracted to humans as such. Like, humans are fine and all, but I don't feel anything for them unless there's something about them that maps onto a nonhuman being that I'm attracted to. For example, I'm attracted to Matthew McConaughey because, for a movie, he very skillfully wore the mantle of an annoying eldritch sorcerer that I'm eternally attracted to.
I'm not sure if my sexuality overwrote the body's, or if the body also does not experience human attraction (in a way that would more accurately be considered asexual). I think Grey -- the entity possessing the body before me -- was asexual, but again, that still doesn't say anything about the body as much as it says about Grey. The body also mostly interacts with me in a childlike mien, so it's possible it never really got to fully develop a sexuality before the first possession.
Is there anything you'd have loved to hear back when you were first questioning your identity?
Is there anything you'd like to share toward fictionfolk who may just be starting to look into the community?
>> I mean, the thing is... I think being fictional is a really personal experience and one that's difficult to really develop and understand the nuances of when you're also internalising a bunch of other voices by being in "the community". Being influenced by others is a natural and neutral thing to happen but it can also be very distracting. So I guess I'd mostly just caution people to make sure to always keep their own counsel, and if something you read or hear doesn't feel like it maps onto your experience, then tune into your own experience and find out what you actually feel and know. You don't need to know all the jargon or have the perfect narrative for why you are what you are. It's not important. Just live it.
Free space! Share anything about your identity/ies that you'd like to!
>> Uhh... I got nothin. This took an hour and my brain is now soup 🖤
What's important to know is that though the Atom Bomb Babies (Noah Kingfisher, Gabriel the Revelator) are Our most Obviously Irradiated avatars, all of the avatars are touched by a specific type of cosmic radiation that I have only seen the equivalent of in the Marvel Comics multiverse. Which means that We function as Our hypercosm's One Above All/One Below All, and once again I have to give the highest gratitude to Marvel for easily representing esoteric personal truths that I have tried for years to articulate in less than 5000 words.
