Kin and Coping. Its Simple.
If you are fictionkin and you are mentally ill, it is natural to fall back on your kin identity as a method of coping with your depression/anxiety/etc.
However
Being mentally ill and taking on the identity of a fictional character purely as a method of coping with your illness does not then make you fictionkin.
Its a totally okay and fine and valid thing to do to help yourself. But it does not make you fictionkin. The word for that would be fiction-hearted.
Being fictionkin is something that you either are or you are not. It is not an identity that you can choose or deliberately cultivate for any reason. It is something that was always in you that you discover about yourself.
Being fictionkin is not a choice.
Mentally ill fictionkin can rely on their kin identities for support, but you can not ‘become’ fictionkin to cope with mental illness.
lmao this is bullshit so youre telling me even if someone 100% believes they are a character, just because they use it as a coping mechanism, theyre automatically not fictionkin? fuck offff
No, that’s not at all what I’m saying.
I’m saying its perfectly fine to use the fact that you are fictionkin to cope with your difficulties.
You just can’t *decide* to be fictionkin *as a way to cope with your difficulties*.
Do you see what I’m saying? One is relying on a sincere belief in a time of crisis, the other is making things up to feel better about yourself.
I feel personally that if you believe your identity is caused primarily by mental illness, another label other than fictionkin probably suits you better.
nah if you believe youre a character youre fictionkin and tbh even if you dont entirely believe you are currently actually that character youre still fictionkin if you feel okay with the label. stop struggling to keep things like this neat and tidy when theres no point. let people do what they want because its not hurting you and its probably making them happy.
The thing is though that when people who involuntarily identify as a character go looking for others who share their experiences under the label that was created for them, if there are people who do not fit the definition of fictionkin because they either chose their identity or because they do not identify *as* that character, then the experiences will be VASTLY different and the person who is actually fictionkin will have a hard time finding people to relate to. The term fiction-hearted was created out of an old term that used to go around the community “animal-hearted.” It was agreed upon many times on separate occasions that being therian/otherkin was not a chosen identity, and so this one was brought back for those who are otherkin as a chosen coping mechanism, as well as those who the word was originally meant for, who identified strongly *with* something, usually to where they were almost kin but not quite.
