Mordax et al

Giving up my attachment to the ‘fictionkin’ label has freed me from limits and healed me of wounds that I didn’t realize that I had. In this spirit, I want to apologize.

I don’t have to apologize, but I want to apologize. I want to acknowledge with regret that I have done wrong; that I was not living up to my personal code of honor. I had been holding on to unexamined hypocrisy. I had been poisoned by bitterness.

I apologize to anyone and everyone who through my words and actions I may have made to feel like their emotional and/or spiritual connection to fiction, whatever its form, was in some way not real enough or not good enough.

I apologize to the people who call themselves kinnies.

I apologize to the people who other people call kinnies.

Not all of the people who call themselves kinnies, or are called kinnies by others, have the same kind of relationship with ‘fictional’ people and universes that I do. That’s a fact. But they do have a relationship and a connection, and I can see now that the territorial way in which I defended and attacked terminology and spaces was detrimental. Detrimental to them and detrimental to me.

I was afraid. I was afraid, and it made me angry.

I was afraid that if people with different feelings and opinions from mine interacted in the same spaces with the same terminology as me, that it would make it harder for me to find and form connections with the people who do have those same feelings and opinions.

But trying to police and gatekeep spaces and terminology didn’t do anything to help facilitate connections with people. Which is something that when you say it, sounds like it should be fucking obvious. But it took me this long to frame it in a way that I could understand it.

Community gatekeeping never brought me closer to anyone, except in shared anger. Over the last few years, I’ve lost more connections than I’ve made.

The truth is that trying to find people who share my exact beliefs is vanishingly impossible. It’s vanishingly impossible, and yet I’ve already done it. I’ve met people who share my beliefs and experiences, and it was never through the ‘community’.

I am a pro-shipper. I am I self-shipper. I am a soulbonder. Each one of these experiences and identifications will stigmatize me in the eyes of many who hold the other labels or run in the other circles. I am a contradiction. And I am okay.

And you are okay.

Whatever your connection to fiction is. 

If  you believe that your literal metaphysical soul is that of a literal, actual fictional character, you’re okay.

If you’re someone who holds on to or attaches to the identity of a fictional character because it makes you feel powerful or good about yourself, or because it’s relatable or helps you understand your experiences, you’re okay.

If you’re someone who holds on to or attaches to the idea of a fictional character as an emotional or romantic companion, because you relate to them, or you want to rescue them, or you want them to rescue you, or you’re attracted to them, or any other reason, you’re okay.

If you’re someone who believes that the spirit of a fictional character has an emotional or romantic metaphysical bond with you that you experience internally, you’re okay.

If you’re someone who wants to use the ideas or identities of fictional characters to roleplay or write any kind of scenario you’re interested in, for any reason, you’re okay.

I do not want to police or gatekeep anyone’s relationship to fiction, no matter what it is. In fact, I refuse to do so any longer.

Fictional people and worlds are real to me, but they are not real in this physical universe and present time, and there is no way that anyone here can harm them their by having the ‘wrong’ interaction with or connection to them. Nor can they harm my own connections to them.

I might lose friends over this. I don’t care. I’m tired of hanging on to bitterness, and anger, and worst of all hypocrisy. 

I’ll have more to say later, but this is my apology. 

Kinnies, we’re good. Sorry I’ve been a douche.