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.
I don’t agree with this, whats wrong with just having one term? Isn’t fictionkin just basically someone identifying as a fictional character? I feel like your afraid to share a space with these people.
No, that isn’t what fictionkin is. fromfiction clearly outlined the definition of fictionkin vs. fiction-hearted in the OP.
This argument just highlights the fact that a lot of people who claim to be fictionkin are far more interested in clinging to a specific title than they are in real self-discovery. It’s more important to change the definition of fictionkin to fit experiences it was never meant to fit, than to use a different term specifically tailored to their experience.
