im sorry if you answered a similar question before, but does age factor in at all? i’ve been debating on this one for a while and whether or not i should distance myself from it. im 21 and i think the character is 13? it’s never directly stated, but implied that they’re a kid. i identified with them as a kid before knowing what kin was and now im not sure if i can do that anymore since im older. if it helps any, i’m also autistic and usually feel younger than i am?
while age is a point of debate, every single person i’ve seen discussing it has agreed that if you were first exposed to the canon at the same age as the character, or younger, then you’re fine
as far as my personal opinion goes, i don’t see any problem with iding as a character younger than yourself (especially if you are neurodivergent in a way that causes people to infantalize you, or if you have ptsd or delusions) unless you’re using it to excuse the sexualization of minors or similar
Age is not ‘a point of debate’.
I’m sorry but when you are kin of someone, barring edge cases, you are not kin of them just at one moment in time. You are sharing the personhood/existence/memories of someone who presumably had a whole life beyond what was depicted in their canon- and if you’re not experiencing something deeper than merely what was shown in canon then frankly you should re-examine whether you are actually kin of that person.
There is no possible way that being kin with someone who was depicted as a child is offensive or problematic any more than saying ‘yes, at one point I was ten years old” is offensive or problematic.
Someone who is kin of a character who happens to be 14 during the time their canon depicts them is not saying that they are 14, or that they identify as being a 14 year old.
Seriously, this one baffles me.
I didn’t realize my identity as Goten until I was well beyond 7 years old. That was still me, even when I was 7 in canon. But I also was a baby, and a toddler, and after a child I was a teenager and an adult. All my other fictotypes were kids too, whether it was shown in canon or not.
I think this is still a case of not knowing what being fictionkin really is, and it’s getting old. op seems to think you just pick what you are by finding characters that share the most similar traits as you in the present, and that’s just not how it is.
I don’t understand this groundswell of people who think being kin has something to do with who you are on his earth and the body you have here and now. Being kin is all about the mismatch between what you feel/know/remember being, and what you are here.
I completely agree. If you spiritually believe you are kin, then that means you are going to be much different then and now. If people were only kin with people exactly like themselves, that would take away the point of being kin in general.
-Mod Alex
Exactly. And I would imagine a lot of psychological kin feel the same way as well, experiencing a mental mismatch.
