#IM SORRY I FORGOT ABOUT THID FOR SO LONG ALSO. AGHHH.

[human-souls-buy-dopamine]

whats a fictionkin?

hey so. uh. it has been MONTHS since you sent this and I keep forgetting, remembering and saying "Oh I'll finish it in a minute", and then not doing that .... .I'm not good at explaining so have some resources and a poor attempt at elaborating

This whole post is pretty useful, but there's a lot of information. All that I'm focusing on is fictionkin and synpath/fictionhearted!

This carrd is also nice, there's a lot of extra stuff to it as well, but pretty much just look in the "kin overview" section and the "synpaths and coping-links" section. Specifically the words you'll find relevant are fictionkin and synpath.

In case you don't wanna look through all those, let me highlight what I'm talking about for sake of convenience. It's gonna be a tad long just due to explaining in general so lemme put this under a cut.

ALSO ALSO I got kiiinda off topic here, so. I'm gonna put all the very important/relevant info following this in bold text, that way it's easier to distinguish my.. mess of rambles...

From the carrd

[Image ID 1: Black text on a white background. The text defines the word fictionkin, saying, "Fictionkin is when a person is kin with a fictional character. This person may for whatever reason believe they are this character or used to be this character at some point. Fictionkin identify as characters." End ID.]

[Image ID 2: A paragraph of black text on a white background. The text defines the word synpath, saying, "A synpath is a character (or creature) you identify with but not as. You may feel you have a strong connection to this character and feel they are a part of you, but you do not see them as yourself. Synpaths are usually characters or animals that you strongly relate to but do not identify as." End ID.]

From this post; alt text in original post

Fictionkin can be like.. spiritual or psychological and im gonna be honest I have NO fucking clue what I would categorize mine as. To me, it's like. I know that in this life, PHYSICALLY I am not [x kintype here], but there's a feeling that I was at one point and that it's still part of me in a way?? Idk man, I really don't have a solid answer as to what I really believe, I just go with whatever feels right as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.

For me, I don't really have kinshifts as much as just. "Yep that's me alright" sorta feeling. And tbh the intensity of my kintypes as well as opinion of them can vary from type to type.

For example, my most intense kintype is specifically dreamswap Nightmare, and I feel a MUCH lower level of separation between "myself" and "him," it even feels weird not to just say "me" instead.

Meanwhile, there's also the fact that one of my kintypes is fuckinnn. FELIX WOLFE. Despite the fact that we never finished IBVS and haven't read it in probably over a year... I feel a higher degree of separation between that one and myself, but at the same time I begrudgingly have to admit that I get that "Hey that used to be me" feeling from him whether I like it or not.

Sometimes I wonder if this might just be like.. a delusion or something, but it wouldn't make sense for it to be— the closest we come to having delusions at all outside of that is when our paranoia flares up unreasonably sometimes, but even then, we can very easily tell between what's real and use coping skills accordingly. We don't have any symptoms of psychosis or anything as far as I know, so to me it just doesn't make sense that we would have ONE alter with ONE (or.. multiple, depending on how you look at it?) Very specific delusion and never have any other delusions about any other things.

Ultimately, I think that how each person experiences being kin, or being a synpath or any other number of things is gonna vary from person to person. I have zero fuckin clue on any serious spiritual beliefs I may have, I'm just rolling with it and seeing where it takes me. Doesn't make sense to some people and that's okay! Just as long as we all try and be respectful I think it'll work out.