can being kin be used as a kind of support for anxiety/stress/depression? Sorry if this is rude in any way, I’m really new to this ;;
You can use a character’s strength as a way to support you mentally, but this is not what being fictionkin is. I would call this perhaps ‘fiction hearted’, if you are pretending to be the character, or a form of tulpa/soulbonding, if you talk to the character in your mind and draw strength from their words and advice.
Being fictionkin is a sincere belief. Our identities are real, not a mask we put on to face the world. Fictionkin don’t pick and chose who they identify as, and for some people, being fictionkin is a source of emotional distress, more than it is something supportive.
man, i WISH this was the way it was, but unfortunately, it’s not true.
labels only mean what people use them for. people use the label “fictionkin” now to include coping kintypes. you can’t just exclude them or say they’re not really fictionkin, since fictionkin is honestly an arbitrary concept and the meaning has morphed.
i know that spiritualkin, psychologicalkin, and copingkin are three different things. mostly the latter is different from the two former. but that doesn’t mean the label “fictionkin” has not grown to encompass all three of them, and that it can’t be used interchangeably when referring all three as well.
also different does not always mean illegitimate, and honestly, a lot of kin who feel they are legitimately sincere (like you, even) might just be having a coping-type reaction to the world. there is no way for you to prove that you are or aren’t, and furthermore, many people who say their kintypes are coping mechanisms feel completely sincerely about them. they completely sincerely feel that they are that person from that canon.
do i think people should be more serious about this?? yes. do i think people should question themselves more and be more skeptical of their kintypes?? god yeah, that would be really nice.
but i mean, excluding people based on this fact at all is a falsity.
I’m sorry, but in my opinion ‘being fictionkin deliberately as a means of coping’ is never going to be ‘legitimately fictionkin’ to me. Other people have other opinions, and that’s fine. But this is mine. Coping is fine. But it doesn’t make you fictionkin. “Copingkin” is not a thing as far as I am concerned.
