do you know anything about a term called ‘fictionflickering’?
“
a sort of nebulous experience of shifting identity through various fictional characters, of briefly (or extendedly) “becoming” fictional people and the shift in identity and perception this may involve, with or without the experience of memories or past-life leanings (or any belief that such a phenomenon is necessarily spiritual or otherworldly in nature). If you’ve ever felt yourself “imprinted on” by a fictional identity, if you’ve ever spent a day or a week feeling like a character, if you’ve ever momentarily expected to see a different, yet familiar, face in the mirror – if you’ve ever felt flickers of fiction in your identity – this may be a helpful”
Fictionflickering seems to be a sort of identity characterized by constant cameo shifting? Basically rapidly gaining and losing identities as a fictional character.
Basically, I guess? At the time it was a community made for a lot of those nebulous experiences that didn’t really fall into what the other labels were offering, that were generally transient although “transient” is relative as they can last quite a while, and that were often pretty powerful experiences for people but not often spoken about because they were transient and not lumped under other terms.
Like, I see people saying “I want to call this a kintype to see if it fits”, for example, or saying “I saw a show and now I have a new kintype welp”. Fictionflickers was a place where those kinds of things weren’t judged because that was literally how it was supposed to work. You’re supposed to watch a movie and come out wearing the character’s accent and mannerisms for hours, or days. You’re supposed to “flicker” a character for a few weeks. And if one of your fictionflickers turns out to be a kintype after all then ok cool.
It’s very much the opposite of the very set layout that things like fictionkin and multiple systems were and frequently still are expected to follow. Instead of taking your experience and seeing if you measure up, it’s more malleable and non-judgemental. The focus is on exploring the feeling of being fictional* and talking to others about it, not on whether “you must flicker this long to join”.
Also, while it is generally a temporary identity, the focus on the experience over judgement means that’s very much up to the person to decide what that means for them. If someone thinks that after 4 months it’s still a flicker then ok. Odd experiences like not being able to tell if it’s a kintype or a fictive might also fit in with this, although if they’re long term they might prefer to look into median systems.
*it’s not going to surprise anyone if I say this was Eclective’s idea, right?
I was hoping you’d have some more info about this. Thank you!
