One thing my partner and I often talk about is how this lifetime likely isn’t any different than the lifetimes of our kintypes - which is to say, this lifetime is probably *also* represented as a piece of media in other worlds.
Lately we have been half-joking that it’s a web comic or a light novel with the isekai gimmick “reincarnated in the human world with 30 souls!” or something like that.
You can’t fake something unintentionally or unconsciously.
Faking an experience is done with full knowledge and conscious intent on your part of what you are doing.
If something is happening to you unintentionally, if you are doing something and unconsciously, you are having a legitimate experience of some kind.
If you’re faking something, you’re doing it deliberately. Faking something isn’t something that just happens to you. An experience is something that just happens to you.
is it normal to be uncomfortable with selfshipping with my kintype? im not really sure what it is about it, but it makes me feel kind of gross, if that makes sense. like i dont really mind the people doing it, but i tend to filter out the tag just because it makes me feel weird. just was curious if thats a more common experience, or if thats just a me thing.
It’s absolutely common and normal to be uncomfortable with it, and it’s totally okay to block and filter the tags, and to block specific people who make you uncomfortable.
When it becomes a problem is if your discomfort makes you say unkind things to people, tell other people what to do, shame them, or try to dissuade them from self-shipping.
But it’s always okay to take steps to protect yourself mentally and emotionally from what other people are doing.
Something that makes me worry about the multiverse theory - wouldn't that mean it is cruel for us to create fictional stories/worlds with trauma and subject that onto these newly created alternate universes?
I ask this as someone who generally believes in the multiverse but this is something that comes up in my brain
Absolutely not something to worry about.
The multiverse already exists. Worlds don’t come into existence when we make up stories about them. The things that we write about have simply coincidentally already happened, because every possibility is accounted for by the multiverse.
If you make up a story where a man named Fred is murdered, you haven’t created a universe where Fred is murdered. There was already a universe where that happened, and you coincidentally happened to write a story that matched the details of what happened in that universe.
You refraining from writing a story where Fred is murdered won’t stop Fred from being murdered. There are already infinite universes where he is murdered, and infinite universes where he is not murdered.
This is the nature of an infinite multiverse.
Question about the multiverse theory. What do you think the connection between the universe where something is real and the author in our universe who writes a similar story? Are they inspired by the alternate universe or does their writing bring it into existence or is it a complete coincidence or something else? I assume theres a lot of differing thoughts about this so just your personal thoughts and/or the most common in the community if there is one
Have a great day :]
Oh this is always such a great question to answer.
I think it depends on the author.
I think in many cases, since the multiverse is so infinitely vast and contains literally every possible universe and every possible story that can be told, MOST authors are simply inventing a story and writing down something the coincidentally resembles the events in another universe.
However, in some cases I definitely think authors are inspired by memories of lives in previous universe they’ve lived through without knowing it, or being inspired by characters visiting them through soulbonds or other forms of attachment.
Hello! I have a few questions I was hoping you could answer, but sorry if they've been asked before.
First, how exactly would a past life as a fictionkin happen? I personally believe I had past lives as my kintypes on the astral plane (or maybe something else, still trying to figure it out), but I'm also interested in learning about the multiverse or other past life explanations.
Second, is it possible to have multiple kintypes from the same canon/timeline?
Thank you, and sorry again if these have been asked before.
These questions HAVE been asked before, but I’m always happy to answer them for someone who hasn’t seen it discussed! Thank you so much for the ask
- How would a past life as a fictionkin happen?
My personal belief, dating back to the time I entered the fictionkin community in 2006, is in the multiverse theory. I believe that there are an infinite number of coexisting realities, and that souls/spirits can move between them and be reborn from one into another. I believe that my soul (and the other souls in my ‘soul cluster’ that I’m connected to) have been reborn repeatedly in various universes at different times, and now have been reborn into this one.
- is it possible to have multiple kintypes from the same timeline?
Frankly, there’s nothing that’s impossible. I used to think that multiple kintypes from one timeline was unlikely, but lately it seems more and more commonplace.
Multiple kintypes from the same timeline is very possible, the question you always have to ask is *why* would it happen?
One thing with this is to always make sure you’re looking at more than one kintype, vs more than one person sharing a body each of whom can have their own kintypes.
For instance if you’re a plural system, you might have several system members who each have a kintype from the same timeline, but each individual system member only has one kintype from that timeline. The *system* has multiple kintypes, but each individual has their own.
OR an individual might legitimately have more than one kintype from the same timeline. The question to ask yourself is “how did these people who were two people in that timeline come to be one person in this timeline?”
You might have multiple kintypes from one timeline if all of those characters fused into one person at some later date.
You might have multiple kintypes from one timeline if your soul was repeatedly reborn into the same timeline but as different people.
You might have multiple kintypes from one timeline if your soul split into multiple bodies for that lifetime, and then re-fused into this.
The important part when questioning something as a kintype isn’t to ask “is this possible” (anything is possible), the important question to ask is “do I have an intuitive answer for why this would have happened.”
April 5th will be the 20th anniversary of From Fiction
Believe it or not, the original website still exists at the linked URL! (and has a link to the fictionkin.org website now. ^^)
In systems, can certain alters have kins while the rest don't? Adding on to that question, can those kins be shared? (I hope that makes sense)
Hey pal, great question!
Being a member of a plural system who is also fictionkin is definitely a thing that happens. (It’s an experience I’m personally familiar with.)
It is very much possible for some members of a system to be fictionkin, and some to not be.
Individual system members can have multiple kintypes like everyone else.
As to whether or not several members of a plural system can share one kintype, that depends on your personal metaphysical or psychological experience as to why that would be the case.
For example, two system members might share the same kintype if they were sharing a body/if they were system members during that kintype’s lifetime.
Or two system members might share the same kintype if they were different incarnations of the same character, who have now ended up sharing one body together.
Or two system members might share the same kintype if they were one person as that character, and due to some other circumstance have split into two separate people.
It’s definitely possible in some systems but how and why it would happen is down to your individual system’s experiences.
Being from an ongoing manga is a hell I would not wish on anybody.
https://www.tumblr.com/fromfiction/794973161024258048?source=share
Y'all we uh, remember when we got accused of "stealing people's work" for being FICTIVES, from someone who is/was ostensibly a fucking trandationalist sysmed (someone who believes all systems are traumagenic and system menbers all inherently have "reasons" and "roles" to forming) lmao the fictionfolk hate is SO STRONG at least one person on this earth has made it come back full circle
Because
We also made shitty edits of a t-shirt with the sunset fictive flag on it going "copyright violation" and "even Disney can't take these fuckers down" at some point iwrc
Time truly is a flat circle as they say.
The people who level the “you’re stealing” accusation at fictionfolk really don’t understand what they’re talking about on a single level.
These arguments come up again and again, simply because people are stupid in the same ways over and over.
Thinking today about the way I confirmed as Crocodile (One Piece) last year.
I had been passingly familiar with One Piece in that I knew that it existed since it was airing as a 4kids dub.
And I had been avoiding it for 20+ years. I had been avoiding looking at it.
Even though I love pirate media. Something about it pushed me far away, made me not want to look at it. Not want to acknowledge its existence. This, in hindsight, has been the case with a lot of kintypes I was avoiding.
Last year one of my partners pushed the issue. Every time we’d walk past a piece of One Piece merch or a manga (which was everywhere) she’d say “its us!”
It started as a joke.
Months later it was not a joke, and we were having actual arguments about whether to look at it and question it or not.
I was very firmly on the side of “not”.
We had just walked out of the mall on a day in May of 2024, where the “it’s us!” tease had come up again, pointing to the manga.
We talked about it on the drive home.
The shayfer James song “Prologue” from the Ninth Hour came on the playlist.
I just kind of went quiet and stared out the window for a minute as i was overtaken by a vision of a fleet of ships surrounding an island with a tall building where a battle was about to happen.
Something about it shook me. I agreed to question One Piece.
Later, I’d find out that my vision matched Marineford.
Later, when we were piecing things together, I had a dream.
I had a dream about Crocodile - a character I barely knew of and hadn’t met yet in our reading, but my partner kept insisting had to be me - i had a dream about Crocodile laying on a stone floor, staring up at the sky and telling someone who had come for him to leave him to die.
I didn’t even know that happened in the canon. It was quite the shock to find out it did.
So that… made continuing to deny things very hard, and eventually I had to confirm.
How to distinguish between fictionkin and plurality or plurality adjacent experiences
Your kintype is YOU - another part of yourself. Just like the person you were when you were 5 years old is another part of your self.
If a character exists internally with you and alongside you but is NOT you, that’s some form of plurality or soulbonding (some people consider soulbonding a form of plurality, some do not.)
Here’s an even more important distinction.
Plural system members can be fictionkin and have their own kintypes! For instance you can have a system member named Fred who is also fictionkin and has kintypes as both Goku from Dragon Ball, and Clark Kent from Superman (as an example.)
YOU can be fictionkin, and also be plural, and your plural system members might or might not also additionally be fictionkin.
“Problematic” Kintypes
How you behaved, and what you believed, and the feelings you acted on in a previous life or as another version of your self does not necessarily correlate what you believe, how you behave, and the feelings you act on now, in this life.
In the last couple of years I have gotten a lot of deeply personal, hand-wringing and guilty feeling asks about fictionkin or people questioning kin about “problematic kintypes”.
“If I am this person, if this is my kintype, that means I-”
- “that means I was in love with my brother.”
- “That means I committed genocide”
- “That means I was in an inappropriate relationship with someone older/younger than me.”
Yeah. Maybe it does mean that.
But the thing is that a kintype isn’t a thing you can decide to have or not have based on whether or not a character is “problematic” or “pure”. If you can ‘decide’ whether something is a kintype or not, then it’s not a kintype, it’s something else.
A kintype is an innate, immutable fact about yourself that is impossible to extract yourself from.
And sometimes - most of the time! - kintypes come with some kind of emotional baggage.
A lot of us were not good people in our other lives, fuck knows I wasn’t! I’ve killed lots and lots of people, some of which I didn’t regret then and don’t regret now, some of which I didn’t regret then and DO regret now. And that’s just scratching the surface of my complicated feelings and problematic actions.
But what you did as your kintype, and what you believed was okay then, doesn’t dictate what you believe is okay, and what you do now. All of us took actions in our other lives that we regret or that we would do differently in this life. Or maybe we WOULDN’T! There are also things, dark parts of ourselves, that we accept and cherish, even if we don’t tell other people about those parts.
Everybody has kintype feelings that they struggle with. That’s part of being fictionkin. Some of those things are going to be heavier, or lighter, easier or more difficult to deal with.
But if you can base your decision on whether or not you’re kin based on whether or not a character is “too problematic” then that’s not a kintype.
And if you do have a kintype that makes you feel uncomfortable, and is problematic and you struggle with feelings about -
Welcome to what it means to be fictionkin. We’re here to support each other.
Hey there, if this doesn't come up as anon then please don't post it as I'm not "out" as fictionkin under this name.
I just wanted to say that I've aware of being fictionkin since around 2007 and your blog "From Fiction" was the first resource I remember finding. It was such an informative and eye-opening read back in the day! I was struggling so much with my kin identities then and you really helped me come to terms with it. I remember being in the "otakin" community on LJ way back, I've kind of been quiet online about kin things over the past years, except with close friends and my partner.
I've been doing a rematch of digimon and just started 02. I remembered you because of Ken, and then remembered your blog. I'm really delighted that you're still online talking about and spreading info about kin! I don't recall if I ever spoke to you personally (and I've gone through a lot of usernames over the years), but I just wanted to say thank you for your influence.
I'm thinking about making my own fictionkin blog, but I kind of felt confused by the "kin" community as of late. It feels like what I think of kin, others do not. I say tour blog post here about what different people mean, and i think most people I've met lately mean it as a comfort character or face-claim. It made me wonder if I'm messed up or something as to me, my kin lives are ME, whether it's a past life, parallel universe, or whatever. So that helps clear things up for me too.
Anyways I apologise for the long message, but I was just very happy to find one of the OGs (if you will) still around!
- Viktor
I’m so happy to have gotten your message! <3 It’s deeply gratifying to be so fondly remembered and thought of. The “old days” of the fictionkin community seem so far away but like only yesterday at the same time.
You’re not alone in feeling confused about the kin community lately. Around 2015 (a decade ago now, can you believe it!!) there was a huge tumblr ‘fad’ for being fictionkin, and that alongside a LOT of trolling led to a lot of confusion from people about what fictionkin is.
A lot of people who weren’t here in the old days now do seem to use the term “kin” to refer to comfort characters and face claims (as I talk about in my pinned post). It’s an unfortunate blurring of terminology that comes from kin posts being spread on tumblr without context.
Nowdays the fad has quieted down, and we’re seeing at least a LITTLE bit of a return to more serious fictionkin who genuinely believe that they are their kintypes. And those of us who were here to begin with still haven’t gone anywhere ;)
Honestly I think it would be great if you did start a kin blog. It’s always nice to have more posts flowing and more camaraderie from people who really 'get it’.
Wildest fictionkin experience as a writer for me, is when, after I’ve spent a long time writing fic about my kintypes, I go to work on something for a fandom unrelated to me, and remember that… I actually have to do the work to make stuff up instead of just remembering events and feelings.