the gods have given me far too much power

ah fUck shit sorry gimme a sec.... almost got it......

Saying “this is my kin” instead of kintype

Or saying they “kin this” or general kin as verb

“High kins” vs “low kins” or “irls” and “D/As”

“Not kin, I am this” (they probably are alterhuman in that case, but they’re still using KFF terminology)

“I don’t take kinning that seriously” or “this is just a joke because I thought having a kinlist would be funny”

“I started kinning this for fun, but it became real” (again, probably are alterhuman, but using KFF terms)

“Not a fictive, just a kinnie”

If you mean you identify as them on an integral level, then you’re more or less fine. A lot of otherkin don’t like hearing “kin” used as a verb - myself included; I feel rather strongly that it’s a big contributor to the misuse-of-language problem I’m about to explain - but you are actually fictionkin, so while I would encourage you to stop using it as a verb both for misinformation’s sake and because it will make a lot of other actual fictionkin avoid you because they’ll think you’re misusing it (again, more on that in a minute), if you really insist on using it as a verb, that’s your business at that point, I’m not gonna harass you about it.

If, however, you mean... pretty much anything else, most commonly one of the following:

You relate to them very strongly

You like projecting onto them (and may use it as a coping mechanism)

You stan them/really really like them

You like roleplaying as them/using them as faceclaims (and may use it as a coping mechanism)

It’s a form of role play (with a space) for you, as explained here

and you don’t actually consider yourself to be them on some level, then you are one of the people referred to in the OP as “KFF”, which is a shorthand for “kin-for-fun people”, and are, probably without realizing, misusing the word “kin” to mean something it’s not.

That’s probably not really your fault, and no shame if you didn’t know that up to this point - the “kinning is relating to something” misinformation has spread really far at this point, and for a lot of people it’s unfortunately their first exposure to the term “kin”. What happened, as far as I can tell, is essentially that people stumbled across light-hearted, jokey posts from otherkin and fictionkin and misinterpreted those posts as being representative of the whole experience, and thus misunderstood what otherkinity and fictionkinity are to begin with.

The problem is that they then started spreading the idea that that’s what “kin” means - that it’s a fun fandom thing that just means really relating to something, instead of an actual identity that is integral to how one understands oneself - and now we have a problem where not only is it incredibly difficult for fictionkin in particular to find actual other fictionkin, a lot of people who “kin for fun” outright bully actual otherkin and claim that we’re stealing and misusing the terms we originated over 30 years ago, that if you actually identify as your “kin” you must be “delusional”, etc. - which, we’ve had a problem with antikin for forever, but it... it hits different when it comes from someone who’s actively taking your terms and trying to shove you out of your own community, especially if you thought they were one of you and that you were in a space that was safe from that, y’feel?

(If you’re still lost on how this is harming the otherkin community, more on that here, here, and in my “kin for fun” tag, which has a whole bunch of posts both talking about the subject in general and anecdotes from various people recounting their experiences with how the phenomenon of KFF has harmed them personally.)

Hi there! I get that, and I'm sorry if you've had any bad encounters with the community! As intimidating as some people can be, most of the community is fairly friendly. This got kind of long so bear with me haha - Mod Grian

‘Kin is short for Otherkin (or in this case, Fictionkin) and is defined as "Someone who identifies as partially or entirely nonhuman, typically non-physically, typically involuntary or integral to one’s being". In the case of Fictionkin, it’s “Someone who identifies as partially or entirely a fictional creature or character”. This can be spiritual (which is what you probably see a lot) or psychological! Spiritual kin do often have memories of these lives, whether it be a past life, a parallel life, etc. Psychological kin can have these memories, or  "noemata" as well! Noemata are “Knowledge or information gleamed about one’s kintype, or the life of one’s kintype”, coined by Poppy. Their blog has some great resources along with @who-is-page. Poppy has a side of their desktop theme for recommended blogs as well, @a-dragons-journal is one that I see a lot of that sparks some good discussion in the community.

In the Glossary made by Page, a fairly old member of the community, it goes into more depth on all of the other words you may have seen thrown around over the years. What you describe however is a form of alterhumanity! I’m not quite sure which it would fall under, but I’d certainly say it does. Same with KFF (Kin for fun), it's still got a place in the community it's just a different experience. “Kin for fun” is instead of identifying as you identify heavily with your kintype. There's been some push lately to focus more on the "what" of your experience instead of the "why" as well which you may have seen. I'll link some good sources at the bottom of this post as well as my own blog I've set aside specifically for conversations like this!

You might have also seen the -kind or recently -folk suffix going around, these were mainly made to try distancing from KFF. As much as I have some wonderful friends who are KFF the community has had some heavy impacts on the community. This is mainly seen from my experience on the Tiktok side. Here's a good post from Strawberrybabydog discussing some of the rhetoric found on there though! there's also this post from a KFFer discussing the issue of the conflating language. Most KFF you’ll find don’t mean any harm!

My blog

otherkin 101 carrd

 Otherkin Criteria 

Types of Alterhumanity chart (personally a favorite!)

Kin origin theories

Exotrauma 

Otherkin timeline (this is a lengthy read, if you decide to go through this it will likely take awhile!)

Paper done on Otherkin

FAQ from Fromfiction

Transcript for Poppy's Othercon panel about Choice vs. Involuntary

Can I call myself alterhuman?

Also my timeline's kinda all over the place? Ghostbur/Blue is still here and Wilbur was revived very late. But I'm about 19/20 years old at that point? Ranboo never died, instead he's traveling between the End and the server for a reason I never really found out about.

Snowchester is a really nice country and Techno never tried to get rid of it. I was with Phil and Techno for a long time..and then somewhere else near a river but I don't remember where.

Dream also didn't break out! Maybe he did later since everything's kinda delayed in my timeline. (And as I'm writing this I faintly remember standing absolutely terrified infront of the prison, let's see where that memory will lead..)

Also I took care of Michael a lot for the whatever reason. That's a damn highlight, I loved babysitting Michael and I'd do it again at any time. We saw each other a lot but every time I picked him up he had super wide eyes and a big smile and greeted me with Uncle Tommy and I swear it's the sweetest thing. He's a sweet child overall, let's face it.

Basically a lot of unexplained stuff but I've got some points to hold onto.

it's a really complicated topic but i'll try to summarize for you!

delusional attachment is a term that was coined in november 2020 by a twitter user (they've deactivated since and i cant remember their name) for individual use, to describe "a delusion of grandiose where you believe you are a character."

KFF twitter picks this up - they like it because it describes an experience they dont have a word for (or rather, have bastardized a word for,) which is identifying-as a character

the problem in lies that this is a poorly coined word for MANY reasons. the experience isn't necessarily a delusion of grandiose (and in most cases it actually isn't at all,) it's not an attachment (it's an identify-as identity, a literal delusional attachment would describe an erotomanic delusion) and identities are inherently not delusions. the person who coined it (albeit for personal use) didn't do their research into delusions before coining it. if this stayed as an individually used term, this wouldn't be such a huge issue

because it's the only words KFF have for identify-as, this has encouraged a LOT of non-psychotic people to use this word. and because many of them are young people, they don't do their research into delusions at all. they're known for spreading very severe misinformation on delusions and psychosis, typically based off their own experiences with psychosis (which again, they more often don't have! either way, basing education on anything off your own experience exclusively is incredibly dangerous and very unethical)

obviously, this hurts actually-psychotic people in many ways. it also hurts Real Otherkin, who get bullied a lot by these people. one of the worst misinformations to come out of this is that all identities are delusions, because of the basic definition of delusions which is that they're unshakeable beliefs. however, there are a lot more "rules" to defining delusions - if they consider otherkin to be delusions based solely off the summarized definition, they also include trans people and religious people as being delusional by the exact same definition (which is very obviously not the case, and the reason why there are rules.) they're somehow the same group that seems to bully other groups about being delusional the most - they have a trend of calling non-delusional people delusional or saying "get help" in an extremely malicious way. makes no sense, i know lol

because delusional attachments are made up of a good chunk of non-delusional people, they're VERY uncomfortable when a person displays real symptoms of psychosis (or any other symptom which isn't palatable or cute to them,) where they'll spout bullying and of course your tone-deaf sanism classic: "get help"

other discourse begins! "are delusional attachments real?" <- what they actually mean is "are delusional attachments medically recognized, and therefore a valid way to identify?" the answer to the former is no, of course they're not medically recognized. they're a very poorly named internet identity that's less than 2 years old. beyond that, they sort of are? but it's complicated. if a person who identifies with delusional attachment got diagnosed with a delusion, it would be "bizarre/non-specified" which basically means "miscellaneous" and is a catch-all for any bizarre delusion which doesn't fit into pre-determined categories. this diagnosis is obviously not exclusive to "delusional attachments." beyond that it's possible it would be considered a delusional misidentification, but that's not a diagnosis it's just a category/umbrella term. some could possibly be diagnosed with delusions of grandiose, although from what i've seen none of them actually display grandiose behavior at all. whether or not it's a "valid" identity is for nobody to decide though.

theres other discourse, like you mentioned "are they or are they not normal otherkin using sanism as a way to be "more valid" than otherkin?" self dx discourse, and general sanism discourse around them as well. most of it isn't very important in the face of "these people spread very severe anti-psychotic sanism" though

it's not terrible to identify as a delusional attachment (or having a delusional attachment? i dont know) but its generally a very big red flag for actually-psychotic people. it tells actually-psychotic people that you're either fine with or contribute to severe misinformation and anti-psychotic-sanism, and that you're generally ignorant and don't truly care about us. this often means ostracization for actually-psychotic communities

identify however you want, but be aware that this label comes with consequences

2. J. R. R. Tolkien is drafted. He survives the war but returns home with a lot of trauma.

3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is lent a strong degree of emotional realism because Tolkien is able to write from his own experiences. As a result, LotR becomes a cult hit, especially with the youth.

4. As the LotR trilogy reaches ever-higher peaks of popularity, certain people become so deeply enamored with the world of hobbits and elves and orcs that they have a sort of awakening - they begin recognizing themselves as elves (and other nonhuman creatures).

5. In the early 1970s, the Elf Queen's Daughters is formed. This is the earliest known nonhuman group (which does not mean it's the foundation of the nonhuman community - several groups later appear independently of the EQD, including AHWw, Alfandra, and Always Believe).

6. As the EQD grows, offshoots and overlapping groups are formed, one of which is the Silver Elves. After talking to the Silver Elves, a person named R'ykandar Korra'ti starts a mailing list in 1990 called the Elfinkind Digest.

7. The Elfinkind Digest attracts nonhumans of all kinds. Soon it becomes hard to talk about the community as a whole, and, instead of saying "elvenkind, orckind, dragonkind, etc.," a person named Elezar begins using the word "otherkind."

8. For unknown reasons - perhaps a typo, perhaps for ease of pronunciation, perhaps due to a misunderstanding -, some people begin using the variant spelling 'otherkin' and by 1998 it has overtaken the original spelling. Years go by and misconceptions appear. Rather than understanding the word as "a kind other than humankind" people begin to understand it as "kin as in family."

9. The nonhuman communities remain small and spread out during the era of forums and personal websites, but with the rise of popular social media, and your posts being broadcast to hundreds or thousands or millions of other users, the communities see a sudden and rapid growth.

10. With this rapid growth, there's no way to teach every newcomer the history of the community. A lot of people are completely unaware that the community even has history. Soon, discussions show up about how "you can't have kintypes outside your race/ability/sexuality/gender" and "kin just means relating. You know, like family."

11. At the same time, SJWs and anti-SJWs are waging a war. A subset of anti-SJWs decide to target otherkind and use every tactic to harass, mock, and belittle us. One of these tactics was "making up a slur," vaguely inspired by the t-slur, according to some. And thus the word 'kinnie' was born.

For sure! Have a bunch of links I keep on-hand for this very question:

This guide to questioning (and definitions of basic terms) by @/shadowfae

A list of places to interact with other nonhumans

While I don’t have a list onhand yet, websites are going to be a good place to find writings people have published about their experiences, especially if the tag for your kintype on Tumblr is underwhelming - I’ll recommend houseofchimeras dot weebly dot com (you know how Tumblr is with external links, sorry) and their Bookmarks page for a place to get started finding those. (Generally speaking, whenever you find a good alterhuman website, they’ll likely have a Bookmarks, References, Further Reading, etc. page full of links to other websites. Find that page and go through it to find other good websites, and then rinse and repeat.)

My “questioning” tag, which has both posts talking about general advice and posts answering specific questions (and posts with people talking about their own questioning processes)

A list of typical experiences for various alterhuman identities (note typical, not required or universal)

My general “kin resources” tag has A Lot in it, a lot of which is not going to be relevant to you specifically, but it’s there if you want to peruse it