#rani talks A LOT today now you know why this was delayed lmao

[a-dragons-journal]

any suggestions/advice for someone who has always been anti-fictionkin, but who is now questioning being fictionkind? it's confusing and stressful and i keep getting angry at myself for even considering being fictionkin.

Alright, this one's a doozy, sorry for the delay on it - I wanted to make sure I had the time and energy to sit down and give this the depth of response it deserves.

First off: You are most definitely not alone. You'd be shocked how many fictionkin - and otherkin, for that matter! - I know who went from being antikin or anti-fictionkin to realizing they were 'kin/fictionkin. I can almost guarantee some of them will reply to this post sooner or later (and I encourage them to).

Second: The best thing you can do for yourself overall, I think, is to take it slow and be gentle with yourself. You are allowed to set it aside when you start wrapping yourself up into too tight of an emotional ball. It's going to be stressful no matter how this goes, but you're allowed to take it in as small of chunks as you need to to minimize that stress while figuring this out. Questioning a strong belief you've held for a long time is hard and it is stressful - the brain doesn't like rewiring pathways like that, and it will likely get panicky and may try to confirmation-bias you out of it. Questioning your identity itself is also extremely hard and stressful for a lot of people. It is only natural to be freaked out by all this. Pause, take three deep breaths (count 'em), and take it one step at a time.

Third: Regarding specifically questioning whether your stance on something is actually correct or not, the best tool in your toolbox is the word "why". Apply it liberally. You've been anti-fictionkin for a long time: why is that? What are your reasons for thinking fictionkin is [fake/stupid/misguided/etc.]? Write them down, it'll probably make it easier to keep track of your thoughts. Then take each of those bullet points, those arguments, and ask again: Why do I think this? What's my logic? What's my evidence?

Eventually you will hit a point where the "why do I think this" question no longer makes sense - that's called a base assumption, and it's what your current logic is based on, and thus is what really needs to be evaluated to see if that logic is sound or flawed.

For example: Let's say one of your reasons for being anti-fictionkin is "It's not possible to be something that's a creation from someone else's brain."

Well, why do you think that?

Your answer might be, "It's not real, and didn't exist even in imagination until that person wrote about it, so you can't have been that thing until that person wrote about it."

Now, you could ask "why do I think that?" again, but at that point it seems kind of to not make much sense and I would call this a base assumption, so I would re-direct the questioning in a different way. There are two ways to challenge this base assumption that I see: First, is it true that you can't have been that thing until the person wrote about it?, and second, if we prove that that is true, does that make the identity less real once it's there?

Now you go reading and researching. As someone who runs an antikin response blog, chances are that whatever arguments you have against fictionkin, they have been stated and refuted a hundred times before - which is great for you, because it means if you can find those old archived conversations, they might answer your concerns adequately and you might not have to start a new one!

In this case, for the sake of our example exercise, I'll tell you the answers I would give to these two questions that, in my opinion, pretty solidly demonstrate that the base assumption is flawed:

The short answer to the first question is that no, it's not true, my evidence being that you can find essays and other evidence of people who had the experiences linked to their fictionkinity long before they came across their source media - and in some cases, long before their source media even existed. (Example evidence here, here, and here.) (The longer answer includes some philosophizing about how really, species and character labels are often just a way of getting across "this is similar enough to what I experience that it's a convenient label to convey it to others with," especially in the case of fictionkin, and thus it makes complete sense that in the vastness of several billion people who've lived on this earth one person's experiences and another person's imagination have an awful lot of coincidental similarities even if they probably don't line up perfectly, purely through Monkeys With Typewriters theory.)

The answer to the second question is a bit more philosophical, but my argument would be this: in my opinion, even if someone didn't have a fictotype before exposure to their source media, that doesn't change that their experiences are happening and having a significant impact on them. Kintypes coming about later in life, for various reasons both spiritual and psychological, have been accepted for a long time in the otherkin community. Whether someone is otherkin has little if anything to do with how their identity came about*, and the same should logically apply to fictionkin - someone's identity is based on their experiences, and the source of those experiences is (or at least should be) secondary.

*Arguable exception for identities that were consciously, intentionally formed, ie 'links; I'm not gonna get into that here, that's a whole other discussion.

Now, once you have those arguments presented to you, either via your own internal logic or by someone else through conversation, you get to evaluate them and decide whether they make sense and are internally consistent (ie, if their arguments contradict themselves, either you've misunderstood something, or their argument is badly flawed). And, if you decide the argument is flawed, to ask yourself why that is. What logic enables you to break down their argument and refute it? What parts of their argument make sense and are solid, if any?

If this seems a bit cyclical, it's because it is. The idea is to break every argument, for and against, down to its basic building blocks, and then look at those building blocks to make sure they're actually sound. If one of your base assumptions is false or flawed, the argument/opinion based on it is inherently flawed as well.

This whole process is hard and intimidating work, especially if you haven't practiced it before. But it's necessary, and to me at least it's rewarding when you get the hang of it. There's a reason I run an antikin response blog - I genuinely enjoy this process; I enjoy ripping debates apart to examine them piece by piece and see what makes sense and what doesn't. It's mental enrichment for me, and it can be for you too. It feels good to look at your stances on things and know that you have put effort into making sure they're as logically sound, factually correct, and morally correct as possible with the information you currently have. It's also a never-ending process - you should always be ready to re-examine your opinions on things in light of new information, should new information arise. (People also don't always like it when you tell them you're not gonna open your fat mouth until you've examined all the information thoroughly and have sorted out your opinion, because the internet wants your opinion now, but oh well. They usually (usually) appreciate it after the fact, when you've come back with a well-informed opinion instead of a half-baked and reactionary one.)

That's how things are supposed to work, anyway, but confirmation bias is a powerful force. I'm proud of you for standing up to it and trying to re-examine stuff in your own brain - that takes grit. We are allergic to admitting we're wrong in today's society, and it's genuinely a massive problem - we're getting more and more reactionary and polarized because of it, because we're so used to being shamed for admitting we were wrong that instead it's often easier to double down. Props to you for not going the easy way and just doubling down.

As one last thing, a list of resources for you regarding fictionkin and some of the common anti-fictionkin arguments I've seen and had a hand in refuting (not including the ones I linked up there):

A more in-depth explanation of fictionkinity from @/shadowfae

A more general guide on questioning a kintype, also from@/shadowfae

A thread of someone asking questions and fictionkin answering

“Isn’t being fictionkin disrespecting the creator?”, from @/anti-kin-cringe

On fictionkin and how there’s no real “line” between fantasy/mythological creatures like dragons (hi) and fictional characters/creatures, also from @/anti-kin-cringe

On the history of fictionkin, from@/liongoatsnake

houseofchimeras dot weebly dot com, which I can't link directly because Tumblr is stupid about external links, but I recommend their entire website and the websites linked in their Bookmarks page, though you'll have to do a bit of sifting to find stuff that's specifically relevant to you of course

Finally, my "fictionkin" tag on a-dragons-explanations (the aforementioned antikin response blog I run) for your perusal, which contains every discussion about fictionkin I've had on that blog.

...Phew. Hopefully that wasn't too much alphabet soup for ya ^^;

As a PS - if you want to chat with someone about all this, I'm more than happy to either simply provide answers to any questions you have, or to actively grill you and challenge your arguments for you (to your comfort level, of course) as someone who has a good deal of practice doing that. I'm available in DMs or on Discord (Discord would be preferable, since it's a bit more functional than Tumblr DMs) if you want either of those things - no judgement here.