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.”
Hey there anon! Thanks for the good vibes :D right back atcha.
As someone with at least one immortal kintype I’ve examined this question a lot personally.
Here are the possibilities I personally ascribe to reincarnation theory with immortals: (the ‘you’ here is a nonspecific you referring to any immortal in question)
*something at some point was stronger than you and killed you, or you somehow for some reason ended your own life.
*you existed to the very end of that universe, and when that universe ended you stepped into this one, or another.
*The universe is still extant, and you are still alive and you are projecting your consciousness in some way across universes into this existence (and may return to your previous immortal existence at some later date).
The third one is the one I think was ascribed to most back in The Day by various immortal kin, but I have only anecdotal evidence to back that up.
On tumblr the idea of fictionkin got spread around a lot, and a lot of people have misunderstood it, to the point where some people think that their mistaken understanding is the correct one, and the “old” definitions are wrong. Obviously reincarnation isn’t the only way to experience being kin, but its certainly a common and ‘valid’ one, and no amount of mistaken people claiming it isn’t will change that.
I do think about how I affect others, anon, unlike perhaps you.
When I think about how I affect others, I think about all of those people who suffer from feelings they don’t understand, feelings of homesickness, nostalgia, phantom limbs, memories they should have– I think about those people, and I think about the fact that without people like me spreading information about being kin, those people would be lost and have no idea what they were experiencing and no words to express themselves.
I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that being kin somehow damages anything, let alone ‘reincarnation, science, or “transgendered individuals”’, but you’re completely wrong.
Yes, some people know, or suspect what order their lives occured in. I have a strong feeling that for me it was Vriska > Ken > me now. Still trying to figure out where Pearl fits into that.
I remember a lot of guns and war and fear (I’m really against everything about military and these memories make me pretty sick tbh) and I remember hope, significance in the American flag, and a lot of ice. And most peculiar to me, my boyfriend of six years, I remember having my first kiss with him, twice.(❄️2/2)
Sounds intense, anon. I get a lot of unasked for memories as well, triggered by environmental stimuli, so you’re not alone. I hope you’ll be able to put together the significance of your memories at some point!
My best friend doesn’t generally identify as kin. He doesn’t keep a kin blog, and he doesn’t, generally, write about his experience of being outside the norm.
But when he does write about his experiences, he writes about them in such a way that I think it is impossible not to be moved. His writing, his experience of being OTHER is so powerful, and his words so intense that I feel them in my bones.
Here is some writing that my best friend asked me to share with you.
- Felix
***
There is something romanticized and melancholy about the night time. Something comforting about full dark. Something safe about being blanketed. Feeling small, as though the great eye of the world might pass me over.
I had meant to write something else.
I had meant to start somewhere different.
But here I am, as always, lost somewhere between memories and musing. Someplace I live but never really understand.
I talk a lot about knobby fingers. I reminisce about someone’s hands I’ve never seen. The way they feel in mine. The way they gripped me. The way his joints ground my joints and it was uncomfortable and I didn’t let go.
Let me talk about something else, tonight.
You don’t know me.
I could tell you anything and you could believe or not believe me, but you couldn’t prove I wasn’t really what I said. Tonight, then, if you’re still here– if you’re still with me, reading, please. Tonight, give me the benefit of your uncertainty. Suspend your disbelief. Come with me, for a little while.
I do not have words for the broken nature of my heart. I have only feelings, so strong they function like beliefs, intense and overwhelming and often indescribable. Not alone because I don’t have the means, but because I wonder if they exist– a language all of guttural growls and vivid emotions. Bright and detailed uncertainties that I am helpless to really or accurately articulate.
They come in waves.
Sometimes humming a wordless tune to pass the time that inexplicably results in tears. Sometimes having to pause a TV show to stop and take a heavy breath. An anecdote, a rainy day, a documentary about the ocean, or a long, unbroken stare into a starry sky. Sometimes bolting upright to grasp for dreams that have fled into the dead of night.
I wonder if there is a scientific formula for what moves us– truly moves us– as human beings. Is there a chemical equation to explain why certain video games can reduce a full grown man to heaving sobs, alone in his own living room? God forbid with others present.
Maybe they haven’t found it, yet.
If they have, will someone please share the link?
I don’t know if I believe in “kin.” Other or fiction of otherwise. I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation, exactly. If I believe a soul has a natural one-to-one from one life to the next. I don’t know if I believe in gods or demons.
What I do believe in, is endlessness. There was always something, and that’s what there will always be: something. Even if that something is emptiness, for a while. Even if that something is a whole lot of nothing by most standards.
There is so much out there to know. So much left to try and understand, we’ve barely even started. To me, that’s the most beautiful thing about existing, at all. And one of the most terrifying, too.
I don’t know what my dreams mean. I don’t know the reasons for my intense and particular longing melancholy. I don’t know if my detailed memories of things I’ve never done and places I’ve never been are a trick of the mind, a coping mechanism, a vestige of someone that I used to be. But I know that they are persistent. I know they have been with me ever since I was just a child. I know there are other people like me out there.
They feel things that aren’t theirs, know things they’ve not done, miss what they’ve never had. With sincerity.
At least a few of them.
The lonesomeness of any individual, in a great ocean of distant stars, is not a solitary lonesomeness. It is always one shared by some, that much I also believe.
I am a grown ass man. I have a house, I’ve got a job. I have a cat and a spouse and a lawn that I’m only minorly obsessed with. I pay my bills, I go grocery shopping. I cook, I clean house, I go to concerts and visit friends, and go to bed in loving arms.
This weirdness does not define me. It does not control my every thought. It does not come from the searching of some sad teenager who feels at a loss, crying alone in his darkened room.
Although that was me, once. For a brief few years.
And before that I was a happy kid building castles on the beach, asking my mum when friends she’d never met were coming back.
I believe that whatever my experiences “really” are, whatever they really mean, they are my experiences– and that means something. And if you are curious, if you are a voyeur of the strange, if you are here to find some kinship, or to make fun of a full grown man for the way you believe he plays pretend, then I will tell them to you, if you stay for just a little longer.
Its totally normal to fear things from your past life that caused you fear, pain, upset, etc. Its normal and okay for these traumatic events to influence you in this life. Goodness knows they effect me.
To avoid ‘coming off as if you’ve experienced physically abusive stuff that hasnt “actually happened"” what you should do is when not discussing it in the kin community and in context of being kin, call it a phobia. Its perfectly acceptable to have unexplained phobias of abuse, and then you don’t need to get into explaining to people your past lives, and nobody will complain that you are misusing any medical/psychological terminology.
Those are both good ideas! Looking at art, or making it yourself. Writing ‘fanfiction’ or reflections on your source material, or reading about it. Listening to music from it, or that evokes the mood from it really does it for me.
People debate the ‘right’ way to be kin, and if there is such a thing. I don’t know the answer to that any more than anyone else does. People do claim all different ways to be kin. Here are the ones that I have heard most often.
Reincarnation/Successive: You WERE your kintype in the past, and somehow you stopped being them, and got jammed into a human body. For some people this means dying and being reincarnated. For some it means leaking through a hole in their universe. For some it means something else.
Simultaneous Incarnation: You ARE your kintype, right now in another universe. You are living one life here as a human, and another life at the same time as another person in another universe.
Psychological: You have the same brain/thoughts/mind as your kintype. The character doesn’t necessarily exist anywhere outside of you, but for some reason you are so similar that there’s no difference.
Those are the main ones. If anyone would like to share any others they know, please do.
What is Fictionkin? An exploratory definition
What is Fictionkin?
It’s difficult to find a short definition for fictionkin that everyone who uses the label can agree on. You can probably find more definitions of the word than there are people to ascribe to it.
The best short definition that I can come up with is.
Fictionkin; (noun): A person who discovers that they have in some way inherited the soul/spirit/complete mentality of a fictional character and the identity of that character is in some way mixed with their current human/earthly identity.
Being fictionkin is like having a past life. In fact, for many fictionkin this is exactly what it is. Many fictionkin believe that they are the reincarnation of a particular fictional character, or member of a fictional species.
Of those kin who do not believe they are reincarnated, some of them believe that they are simultaneously incarnated- that is, living one life here, while at the same time living the life of a fictional character in another universe.
Others believe that their spirit somehow crossed a barrier and was incarnated in this world.
And some people who call themselves fictionkin believe that they are psychologically identical to a character, rather than spiritually.
A lot of people when they hear about fictionkin immediately think that it sounds like an extreme, or ‘crazy’ belief. This is understandable, from the point of view of someone who has never felt or experienced the things that fictionkin have. Fictionkin do not come to these beliefs lightly, but rather after long periods of soul searching. For those of us who have experienced these phenomena, being fictionkin is the only comprehensible explanation
A character being dead canonically shouldn’t affect whether or not you’re kin of them.
As a reincarnated kin myself, I tend to believe them being dead in canon might make it more likely for there to be kin of them out there.
When you’re kin of someone, you’re kin of the whole person, not just of them as they currently are or at one moment of their life. Their whole life and experiences are yours. You are them. They have become you. That is what I believe.
As someone with a death in their canon, you should watch out for particularly strong memories of your death hitting you, as they can be triggered by watching/reading it happening.
As I have stated many times before, being fictionkin is not ‘relating’ to a character. It is not feeling like you are similar. It is not admiring a character, or liking them a lot. It is not feeling like you’re ‘the same’.
I, and a great many kin, both otherkin, and fictionkin, believe that being kin is a deep spiritual experience. Some of us believe that in another time and another place, we were our kintypes. We are them, reincarnated on this earth. Some kin believe that they exist as their kintype now, concurrently with their human self, some magic connecting one soul over two lifetimes. Some have other beliefs. But all of us believe we really are ourselves.
I know, all kin know, that we are human beings, inhabiting this shared earth. But we are other people as well, in the past-simultaneously. Our souls have been in other bodies. Our hearts have beat in other places. Our eyes have seen other worlds.
We believe that dragons and fairies elves and pokemon and munckins and hobbits and all the other ‘fictional’ creatures and things exist in other worlds. We are from those other worlds, and here we dwell now.
I believe that while we may not understand the purpose of our incarnation while we live it, that there is a purpose, small or large. Maybe we’re here as a result of something in our last life, or maybe we’re here to learn a particular lesson. Maybe we’re here because its a quiet corner of the multiverse and its meant to be a ‘vacation’ of some sort.
I believe that we remember these lives because they were important and beautiful, and painful. I believe that like ghosts, fictionkin and otherkin simply can not let go of some aspect of the lives we lived before, and so it comes back to haunt us.
I believe that we will all be together with the people we miss one day, because the multiverse is too infinite for that not to be so. Some people we will meet again and again, in every life, while some people may be more distant, in strange orbits with us.
I doubt people will hate you for having strong connections to people no longer near you. Do people hate you for missing the friends you had when you were little? It is always okay to miss people, and mourn for those no longer in your life.
However, its also important to remember that the people in this world are important too. That even if you don’t know them now, there are people out there who you can make connections with that will be as important to you as the ones from your past. You may meet people today or tomorrow that you’ll be desperate to hang on to in your next life.
Whenever anyone is questioning two kintypes from the same universe, who knew one another, I would urge them to consider their feelings very, *very* carefully. Its easy to get mixed signals, especially if two characters were related, or had very strong feelings for one another. If one character was very protective of the other, it might result in referred kinfeels from the actual kinself.
If your kinself admired another character, or wanted to be like them, that could also produce a false positive of kinfeels.
If the characters don’t have much in common, or don’t have strong feelings for one another, examine closely why you feel both are ‘you’. Make lists if you need to. Try to remember events and see what perspective you recall them from.
Another possibility that you may be kin of one of the characters, and unknowingly soulbonded to the other.
It is however also possible, especially in some canons, to legitimately have two kinselves from the same time and place.
Situations that could cause two kinselves from the same universe and time:
- both characters somehow ended up sharing a body in canon, and were incarnated on this earth without being able to split up
- two characters were so attached to one another their souls refused to let go, and incarnated in the same body to stay together
- space/time glitches/shenanigans caused both characters to end up incarnated in one body
- etc