How does one explain being fictionkin? How does that rationally work? How can you claim identity as something created in the mind of a person? I’m just struggling to see how that works and can be taken seriously.
When I was younger I used to try to justify my beliefs with science. I’d call in quantum theory and make arguments about schrodingers cat and such. This was foolish. I don’t try to justify things that way any more. My belief is just that, a belief.
How does one explain being fictionkin? Many explain it differently. There are as many explanations are there are kin to answer you.
My personal belief is that everything happens somewhere. I won’t lie to you— this belief is in itself influence by fiction. By Marvel Comics and by Terry Pratchett and Stephen King and other writers who say the same things. I believe that anything that can be imagined happens in another universe— in a thousand other universes— in infinite variation. I believe in every possible variation of this universe that we live in, and every possible variation of any universe its possible to dream of. And universes that our minds can’t even grasp.
And that belief means that anything you can imagine, anything you can write down, has already happened in another universe. Is happening in another universe right now. Will happen thousands of years from now in another universe. And a billion trillion other universes with changes big or small.
Some people say this belief negates creativity. I disagree. I don’t think writers peer into another world and steal the lives of people there. I think they imagine them, and write them down, and just by coincidence somewhere else they happen to exist. Like a blind man painting a sunset he’ll never see.
How do I explain being fictionkin? I believe that sometimes, under certain circumstances, like when a soul is between bodies, that these universes can touch. That a spirit from one world can be reborn into another.
I believe in another universe a man named Ken Ichijouji, aged 43, who had at one point been called a ‘chosen child’ or a ‘digidestined’ died, and his soul slipped through the cracks of the universe, and was reborn here. As me.
That’s how I believe.
[snip]
[snap]Fictionkin can identify the way they do psychologically, which negates any need for a particularly intricate explanation of how more than one can identify as the same character. Those who believe in other worlds generally just believe there are more worlds out there. The same way there are generally going to be a lot of comic book character versions because damn do comic books tend to do reboots and AUs and stuff like that.
Fictionkin also do not always identify as specific characters, by the way. They can and do sometimes identify as a species.
Thanks for the explanation! That helps a lot. I left out the psychological aspect of it in my post since that theory does neatly explain all loose ends and is really complete in itself (kind of the same with Otherkin). For those who are Fictionkin in the spiritual sense, the idea of AUs and parallel universes makes sense. I can see that.
For species, how does that part work? Is it that they identify as a species from a particular work—say, a Torchic from Pokemon, or a Khajit from The Elder Scrolls? I guess I never thought about what that would be called. Sorry, I admittedly don’t have much knowledge of Fictionkin. I was stuck specifically in the therian community for many years.
That’s pretty much it. It’s called fictionkin as well, and it’s when someone identifies as a species from fiction of which Torchic and Khaijit are perfect examples. It doesn’t really work any differently to the average therian or otherkin. In the same way that some people realise their kintype is mythological rather than real, some discover it’s more literally fictional.
There’s little I can add to this aside from to thank bitches-have-birthdays for their concise and well put answer to the question.
As for myself, I’ve always been of the mind that yes, there are many (infinite) versions of every different character out there, so I’ve never seen the difficulty with people who associate as the same character.
What I do find interesting is that many of the characters that you see popping up again and again as kin and headmates/fictives is that they tend to be those characters that had ‘more’ of them canonically, or who had canonical universe travel.
