#fernthoughts

I've often found myself getting worried over kintypes when I haven't had much activity from them in long stretches of time. Give it a couple months and I end up wondering, was I faking it? Was that actually just a really long fictionflicker? What if I'm not ACTUALLY kin?

But it's okay for things to be stagnant sometimes. Maybe even a long time. There's no need to constantly prove to yourself that your identity is real through memories or shifts. It's good to self-reflect once in awhile, but don't invalidate your entire line of thinking just because you haven't shifted for a few weeks.

In my case, I hadn't felt anything from Joker in a couple months, but then I played Persona again and got positively slammed with shifts, so it just goes to show that your kintype didnt magically go away after a little while of radio silence.

It's specifically an effect I've noticed primarily in psychological kintypes, though I have documented that stressors from real life can cause mental / phantom shifts for my past life kintypes as well. More on that in a bit.

Though the experience for all psychological kin is probably vastly different, I've noticed that for the most part my psychological kintypes tend to reflect my own life, somewhat similar to parallel lives. They can definitely differ, seeing as how for example my Fern kintype has died twice and come back to life, but well, I'm clearly not dead yet in this life so obviously some things get translated a little differently.

In essence, sometimes a particularly stressing or important event in real life can affect a psychological kintype, resulting in an event in that "life". Though I don't really want to go into what happened in said events, those things didn't happen in my psychological kintype's life until it happened in my own.

Hence why I say it's similar to a parallel life, but it's not quite the same in that, for me at least, the kintype isn't actively living their lives alongside me like a parallel life would.

In regards to stress affecting my past life kintypes, the shifts I have are almost like a stress response, as if I'll be able to better handle the situation if I'm shifted as one of my kintypes, like Bill or Joker.

I suppose the reason for that could be that whatever was stressing me out at the time could be reminiscent of something that happened in those lifetimes, or just that I can think better and more "mature" in those mindsets. It's not really clear cut on why they happen, but to be fair shifts in general are a pretty confusing part of otherkinity.

I mulled over it for awhile and thought maybe it could be a paratype, but paratypes are usually “kin by association”, last I heard anyway. That would still be like identifying as the thing yourself, not so much feeling like you’re the parent/caretaker/etc. of the thing.

I considered hearttype too, and while hearttypes do have that familial connection I’ve heard it described more as if you’re part of a broader group rather than feeling like, well y’know, a parent, I guess. I’ve also heard it described as “feeling like you should be kin with it but you’re not” (which I totally get, I’m robothearted myself but don’t have a single robotic kintype hgjdfk)

I like aspects of both of these to describe what I’m feeling, cause it’s true I’m only really having these feelings due to an association with one of my kintypes, like a paratype, and I do feel associated with a group like with a hearttype, but the problem is I don’t personally identify as the thing.

It feels more like I look at the object in question and go “That’s my child, I’m supposed to take care of that. That belongs to me.” 

One of Gingerbrave’s most prized possessions (I mean not that he had a lot since he was always on the move but that’s besides the point) was a music box that Timekeeper gave to him as a token of friendship. My Timekeeper always followed Gingerbrave around whether actually by his side or in time rifts, so they became fast friends after the events of Operation:Timeguard.