mem anon (honestly terribly sorry im spammin u w asks again) but i was wondering how you know if someone's a canonmate? Is it like you share the same memories (albeit from different perspectives or something??) or?? would it also be possible to have this rly strong gut feeling when you meet someone and theyre kin w someone from your source that you were rly close with and be like "This is them! It has to be!!" ???
Hey there!! Don’t worry about spamming me, it’s always fun to answer these!! As for canonmates… well, in my experience there’s always a few ways you can tell!The most reliable is having memories that line up - it doesn’t have to be ‘oh we BOTH remember x happening’ per se, it could just be like ‘oh hey I remember so and so was like this’ or 'i know we played the game’, things like that. Sometimes too it could be only one of you remembers an event that correlates to the effect it left on the group. For example, I found the Karkat for my doomed Kanaya timeline, and while we don’t have a lot of memories where we were both present, we both tend to remember things that fill in gaps - Karkat knew that some of our troll group went missing by the time we battled the black king. I’ve remembered seeing what happened to most of those who were absent, and it’s been those specific people. Likewise, if your memories don’t overlap at first, sharing memories with each other sometimes prompts new ones to be remembered. Or asking questions to each other about things can help prompt memories. It took someone asking me about my lusus in my eridan leijon timeline to help me remember how him trying to raise me like an otter led to my aversion to water.
Typically speaking, I don’t officially confirm a canonmate until we’ve had a few key memories line up. But I have noticed with my canonmates that a few trends will tend to pop up that lend itself to your question of intuition. For example, I’ve noticed many of my closer canonmates are often more of a presence in my life. Like we befriend each other and 'click’ well, even if we didn’t meet on the subject of canonmate hunting. While I’ve talked to others as potential canonmates, generally we tend to drift and move on in our lives, and I usually take that and any lack of memory matchup as a sign we aren’t. Probably my biggest 'intuition’ giveaway though, is that I shift with them, and sometimes vice versa. My Karkat will often cause me to shift into Kanaya at a moment’s notice, even before we realized we were canonmates I would fall into shift with them a lot. And it’s not even about memories- they would start quirking and suddenly there I was quirking right along with them.
As for a general intuitive sense, a gut feeling… while it’s possible, there is a potential problem of intuition mixing with you hopes and what you want. I run into that a lot, which is why I look for other tipoffs instead. It is entirely possible though that you have a sense for these things! For now, I’d say relax and see what happens with your potential canonmate(s) - if they’re the real deal, you’ll find out in good time, and probably will be around them long enough to confirm it with them. I hope they’re who you were looking for, and I wish you luck in canonmate hunting!
