youredoingkinwrong:

bluedragonade:

afirebirdrising:

geostigmata:

intergalacticlibrary:

I’ve been fictionkin, though not always using that word, for a long ass time, but I tend to feel like I fail at the social rules of it. Of course that’s not surprising because I fail at the social rules of most things, but it’s still something I wanted to discuss.

It seems like the approved way to “be” fictionkin on Tumblr in 2015 is to reblog pictures of yourself and your canon, search for canonmates, and generally talk in a very specific way about your experiences–a way I often don’t relate to at all.

I’m hesistant to say it’s an age thing because I can’t magically tell the age of everyone on Tumblr, but the fact I’m over thirty does make me a bit of an outlier in fictionkin circles I’m sure.

And there are parts of it, parts of that way of being, that I sort of envy? Maybe it’s just that people seem so excited about it sometimes, maybe it’s because they have a social group of people who all sort of talk in similar ways and seem to understand themselves in similar ways. I don’t know.

I’m so glad to see someone else talking about this – not just the cliquish aspects of the Tumblr fictionkin “community”, but the envy of it as well, because it can be incredibly lonely being kin on this site if you don’t “do it right”. The social aspects of it are so far outside my realm of understanding.

I feel that a lot of it does have to do with age (mid-twenties here, IDing as fictionkin by reincarnation for eight years). This site is full of young and impressionable people who very easily latch onto trends without fully understanding them.

Personally, I’ve always been very uncomfortable talking about myself and my canon in the context you’re referring to. I have reblogged canon-specific things on a small handful of occasions if they were particularly relevant or linked to me by people who wanted me to see them, but I otherwise go out of my way to avoid the subject altogether. I even avoid specifically mentioning my canon and my identity as a rule.

Finding canonmates is something I want to do for closure. I hurt people deeply in the past and I want a chance to apologize, because I know many of them likely still live with the pain that I caused them. But I don’t actively seek them out or use those… networking blogs? where you send in your name and canon. I just hope to eventually run into them.

Apologies for the tangent, this post addressed lots of things I’ve been contemplating lately.

I’ve been extremely hesitant to talk about my experiences being fictionkin here as well. For several reasons, mainly because I’ve only known the word “fictionkin” for less than a year and I’m still accepting and marveling that there are people who feel the way I have felt for years (I’ve known I was different for years, I just thought I had an overactive imagination). I’ve also got the whole godspouse/owned/slave thing going on and that adds another whole layer of nervousness to the mix.

Plus…I was not a very nice being in even the broadest sense of the word. Neither was He, and it’s very much colored the reactions of the few people I have come across from my canon.

Is it an age thing? I don’t know. I just turned 49 and with the discovery that yes, there is a reason I feel this way, I take more of a sit back and quietly do a lot of research approach. I do understand the envy, because I’d like to feel that way, but I just…this is what I am, it’s what I’ve been. It’s like getting excited about having red hair (while yes, I do feel that’s something to be excited about 🙂 ), or being short. These are things that just are a part of me.

Unfortunately, nobody can be sure on here how many of these kids are indeed faking it for attention. Despite being somewhat open about my experiences (that’s really because I’ve been to other forums/chat sites in the past that hate fictionkin with a burning passion), I still hide some of the deeper, stranger, more disturbing aspects of my experiences or memories. 

Hell, I still tend to edge around mentioning my kinselves by name outside of canon related posts (which I’m usually NOT reblogging for fictionkin-related reasons, despite becoming a fan of the one of the series because of my identity). I’ll probably never find anyone who shares one of my timelines, simply because the source isn’t all that popular.

I don’t know how much of it is an age thing. I’m 20 and the only reason I feel “new” to this is because I had kept myself so deep in denial since 2012 that I didn’t have time to explore what effects that part of myself had. I don’t really care, though, since a lot of people on here treat fictionkin as a trend and an escape rather than an integral experience.

And honestly, I don’t WANT to participate in Tumblr’s fictionkin discussions half the time. You need to pussyfoot around every single word in the tags or someone will find a way to call you “fake” or “racist” or anything else. It’s not conducive to new fictionkin in the slightest and it kind of makes me sick that the subgroup that used to be the most accepting (within reason) has become policed by those who don’t even know what they’re doing.

I’ve been back and forth questioning myself for a while, and in the process of that I made a “typical fictionkin blog” to see how it worked/how it made me feel/how the fictionkin kids would respond to it. I got into a debate about a month after I made the blog about something stupid and I realized that the community is not a good place to discuss my experiences and feelings with other people. I now use that blog as a kind of journal documenting my various memories and feelings that relate, but I keep it private.
The tumblr fictionkin community seems to be really immature and I think that’s what really drives me away from it all.

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