#Fictionfolk

[dare-i-say-devil]

There’s actually people out there that think fictionkin “doesn’t count” as alterhuman??

What do you think alterhuman means? It doesn’t mean therian LITE

[helly-r-mdr]

I love Mark S, I truly do. I love the ship between us. That's also why it's important to me to acknowledge that Mark S and Mark Scout are NOT the same person. They have their own autonomy. People basically shitting on Gemma are missing the entire point of the finale.

Anyways Mark S x Me/Helly, Mark Scout x Gemma. There doesn't have to be a war about this.

the whole episode was spent establishing that mark s is his own person with his own life and that love does not, actually, transcend severance, and he knows that he’s gonna have to go upstairs eventually so he doesn’t have much time left and of course he’s going to want to spend it with the woman he loves, and people are still like “hehehe sorry gemma markhelly won” and I feel like I’m going insane. mark s/helly won. mark scout/gemma won. they just hammered it into us that innie and outie mark both have lives with the same value!!! this isn’t a ship war!!! Im gonna lose it!!! please go read frankenstein!!!

[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.

[a-miniature-constellation]

We don't talk about the feeling of "misrepresenting" our source enough, despite it being a decently common thing from what we've encountered. Especially within the factid community (and even more so within the "identifying as" part of the factid community), which is what this post is going to focus on, despite it by no means being an exclusive experience. We've just seen it tenfold there, likely due to a lot of discourse that comes from just having a factual identity.

The feeling of misrepresenting your source is something we've experienced a lot. That feeling of double guessing "am I doing this right?". Of "would my source feel this way?", "would my source say that?", "do I match up enough to count?". This goes double if part of your identity *doesn't* align. Maybe it's a different gender. Maybe it's a different partner/feelings about the partner you had in source. The guilt, the feelings of being invalid, of double guessing "is this even really an identity of mine?". They creep up out of nowhere. It's easy to get lost in it, especially when you're still new, but honestly it can come just as strong years in. And it takes over everything. It's one of those feelings that just engulfs your brain, making you double guess *everything*.

Like I said, it's something we're familiar with. Especially since we have such close interaction with so many of our sources. Hell we're friends with some of ours. It's easy to get caught up in that questioning of being similar enough. We find this is truest for our factives (not many folks with other factional types have fronted enough to confirm beyond factives) compared to our fictives, who seem to be able to handle the feeling a lot better. Something about just being a factive of another person makes us feel like we have to represent them correctly. We have to be a copy of them, and we can't have any deviations. Maybe it's because we're held to such higher standards by the alterhuman community. We either have to 100% source separate or be 100% the same. There's no room for anything else. Maybe it's because we're afraid they'll see we're different and get mad at us for, being us?

But that's the trick to all of this. You can't misrepresent someone by existing as yourself. A part of having a source (and identifying "as") is you're a version of them, not an exact copy. This doesn't make your identity any less real, but it does mean things will just naturally be different at times. And that's okay. It's okay to have a different typing style, a different gender, a different partner. Because in the end we're us. We can be our own person while still being/having our source, and that doesn't invalidate our identity at all. And of course it's easier said than done. Dealing with feelings, especially when there's so much outside influence, always is. But that bit has been a good base to fall back on when we need it honestly, so we're hoping it'll help someone else too.

[genericotherkinblog]

What I feel like I look like when I tell people that I'm fictionkin

[deadsea-dreadnaught]

the process of confirming a kin happens in two parts, ‘hey look at this little guy’ and ‘oh no’

[leviafin]

It's so easy, and fun!

[alterhuman-art]

[Image description: Bright green userbox that reads "This user is Fictionkin." beside a seven-pointed star. The second image is the same, but has an additional border around it. End description.]

This user is Fictionkin

Free to use, no credit needed.

[insectoidvoid]

if you're fictionkin, there is a very, very high chance you have a little metaphorical devil on your shoulder that constantly yells at you to downplay and minimize your identity for everyone else. and I am here to tell you that you must grab that little devil and dropkick it into an industrial shredder.

[fan-ii-fr]

feels so weird seeing all these fictives talking about "we arent our source!!" "we arent characters!!!" but like. im source connected. i was basically a character even in source. i honestly love being treated like a character sometimes because its how i felt in source. anyone else relate???

[2bitedust]

fictionkin/fictionfolk community, I want to do a little experiment!

Reblog this post with your highest kin or a picture of whoever is reading this right now (fictives included^^)

I want to see how diverse this reblog chain is!! I'll go first.

[2healing2]

Fictives and fictionkind deserve to be treated like normal people.

Fictives and fictionkind deserve understanding.

Fictives and fictionkind deserve to not just be reduced to their source if they don't want to.

Fictives and fictionkind deserve to have their feelings taken seriously.

[becomeundeath]

Those who have their nonhumanity stem from psychosis will always walk hand in hand with those who are nonhuman spiritually or otherwise. We may not all use the same labels, but we are all family.

Do not put down your siblings with psychosis to try and make yourself more palatable to others.

[a-dragons-journal]

I am once again fucking begging the community to stop writing everything other than identify-as identities out of the word alterhuman and now fictionfolk too

Alterhuman does not mean everyone who identifies as nonhuman on some level (oh and maybe otherhearted people too). Please for the love of all that is good and holy stop saying that. It means anyone whose identity falls outside of society’s idea of “normal human” - anyone with an identity alternative to humanity or that’s an alternative form of humanity. It includes nonhumanity, yes, but also otherheartedness, hearthomes, archetropy, plurality, daemonism, furry lifestylers, othervague folks, constelics, and so much more. Here’s the coiner’s words to prove it.

Fictionfolk does not mean anyone who identifies as a fictional character. It means anyone with an alterhuman connection to fiction of any kind. It includes fictionkin and fictives and such, yes, but also fictional hearthomes, fictionheartedness, soulbonders, fictional vaguetypes, fictional constelics, and much more. Here’s the coiner’s words to prove it.

To collapse these words down to basically be synonymous with otherkin and fictionkin is to utterly defeat their purpose. Please stop defining us out of our own communities. Please stop erasing the existence of everyone outside of “identifies as nonhuman and/or fictional”.

EDIT: boy I wish someone had told me I accidentally used the same link twice before this hit triple digit notes LMAO. Here’s the actual fictionfolk link

[fromfiction]

"I don't believe in fictionkin"

That's great. Being fictionkin is part of my identity and part of my life that affects me on a daily basis regardless of whether you believe in it or not.