What is exotrauma?
Exotrauma is trauma that affects someone despite not having occurred to the physical body in the present world. For metaphysical fictionkin this generally means trauma that occurred in past lives and continues to affect them in this one.
What is canon? What is a source?
‘Canon’ is the events of a source specifically as they are depicted in fiction in this world.
A ‘source’ is the world from which someone’s kintype originates. When someone talks about their source, they may be talking about the world’s canon, or about their personal history as it occurred to them.
What is the origin of the term ‘kinnie’ mean? Who uses it?
The term ‘kinnie’ started as a slur against fictionkin. It was originally used starting sometime around 2015 by trolls on tumblr who were mocking fictionkin. The term was spread both by undercover trolls pretending to be fictionkin on fake accounts who called themselves ‘kinnies’, by some fictionkin who embraced and reclaimed the slur, and by people outside the fictionkin community who had never heard the term fictionkin, and thought that ‘kinnie’ meant someone who identified heavily with a fictional character.
Currently the term ‘kinnie’ is mostly used by people who identify heavily with a fictional character, without necessarily believing that their identity as that character is involuntary and immutable, and without having kin memories, or kin shifts, etc. While some people who genuinely consider themselves to be fictionkin do jokingly describe themselves as kinnies, many people who self-describe as kinnies are not aware of the deeper meaning of fictionkin, or of the existence of metaphysical fictionkin.
Most metaphysical fictionkin do not use the term ‘kinnie’ for themselves, and tend to avoid people who self-describe as ‘kinnies’, feeling that they have very little in common in terms of experience.
What is a kin shift?
A shift is an altered state, either mental, emotional, or spiritual, that one experiences where they take on the traits of their kintype more heavily than they generally experience them. For metaphysical fictionkin one experiences a state where one regresses more fully into the ‘self’ state of one of their previous kintype incarnations, often changing in physical mannerisms, style of speech, preferences, awareness etc.
Are kintypes the same as fictives or fictional introjects?
No.
Fictives and fictional introjects are types of headmates within a plural system that originate from a fictional source. As headmates in a plural system they have independent agency and autonomy from other system members. They are individuals.
A kintype is an aspect of a fictionkin person’s identity in the same way ‘the person I was when I was 12’ is an aspect of their identity. A kintype is not an individual and does not have agency or autonomy outside of a fictionkin’s self because it is that self. Being fictionkin does not automatically make someone plural, though some people who are plural are also fictionkin.
