Okay, I’m genuinely confused. I get the idea of fickin and plantkin and such, but I don’t really understand how someone can be kin of something that was never alive, like a void or a machine or a color or an element on the periodic table. Can you help clear up how that works?
This isn’t something that any kin really… agree on, majority-wise. Some of us don’t think that’s possible at all. In extreme cases you’ll find therians (people who identify as earthly animals only) who don’t think fictionkin or otherkin are possible.
What you’re thinking of are unofficially called “conceptkin”, and as far as I can tell, how that’s received depends on a person’s comfort level and understanding of animism. To me, it makes sense that artificial intelligence or inanimate matter could have a form of spirit. I don’t consider myself omniscient enough to know for sure what all is and isn’t possible, so I try to take everything with a grain of salt, but not outright disbelief until given a reason.
The whole voidkin thing is inevitably tangled up with what we call tumblrkin, who are basically just folks who saw the kin label and decided to smack it on every single thing they like. For them it’s an aesthetic. “I’m a void uwu” is kind of a meme now. The only ones I’ve seen with any credibility explain it as being a creature that exists/existed in some in-between void space, probably beyond human understanding. Personally I don’t think calling that “voidkin” makes sense, but whatever.
Machines, specifically, I’ll refer you to one of my favorite movies – Doomsday Book. The 2nd short film in particular, “The Heavenly Creature”. Whether or not AI count as sentient beings is really up to a person’s interpretation of life in general, so I don’t think I could give you a totally satisfying answer. Again, for myself, I think they count. If you think about it, all of us are machines. Our brains, where all our identity is stored, are made of electrical impulses and organic wiring. Remove the brain, and all you have is a dead meatsuit, unless you keep it alive artificially. Remove a computer’s hard drive, and all you have is a paperweight, unless booted with an external source like a USB. The bodies of every living thing are all complex machines. A robot’s would just be made of precious metals and other inorganic material, instead of flesh.
I have 0 experience with anyone claiming to be kin of an element like gold or iron. The only elementals I know of are the typical water, fire, air, earth…etc, types of beings, and those vary a lot depending on the mythology they’re drawing from.
