I haven’t seen one of these posts lately, so I’m hoping it’s not as much of a thing these days as it was for a while, but I was and remain completely confused by the whole “it’s unbelievably rare to find even ONE person who shares even ONE canon or timeline with you, so beware of anyone who suggests that you share multiple ones!” thing.
Theories and beliefs have existed forever regarding souls that get reincarnated at the same time, even within the same family in later generations. It only makes sense to many of us that souls which were once deeply connected in one life would be placed together again intentionally, or else simply find one another again due to that preexisting connection. Only in the recent history of the fictionkin community have people begun to act as if sharing multiple lifetimes with someone is an indication of wishful thinking and lack of critical analysis; or, more commonly, an indication of manipulation and spiritual abuse / gaslighting.
I feel like in the interest of making the entire concept of fictionkin less absurd to disapproving outsiders and less confusing for new kin, the community as a whole has abandoned a lot of ideas that were previously entirely normal and acceptable in the case of more “traditional” reincarnation. If we remove or criticize to death any belief or idea that makes our existence seem even MORE like the plot of a fantasy novel, we’ll look more legitimate, gain more acceptance, and get bonus legitimacy points for being 100% on top of this spiritual abuse thing, right? No deeper connections, no soulmates, no potential agreements in the afterlife to meet again; only a completely random shuffling of lifetimes until you end up god only knows where, surrounded by nothing but strangers while praying that you weren’t a well-known or popular character. Limit one (1) canonmate per incarnation.
For fuck’s sake.
Stop painting the community as inherently abusive. Stop trying so hard to appear “alert” and “informed” that you find a way to make almost every aspect of being kin look like a potential red flag.
Stop spreading the idea that if someone doesn’t fit into the narrow range of “unpopular kintype/s with no canonmates (maybe eventually one after you’ve been around an acceptable amount of time)”, then they must probably be toxic, misinformed, dangerous, or fake, and people should be wary of them.
Stop taking things away from us in the name of making a safer and more self-aware community instead of teaching community members to spot real abusive behavior when it happens. Paranoia is no replacement for applicable, contextual information, and it’s absolutely shameful that we’ve let it become our default form of “education”.