#long mode

One cannot just “stop” being kin, or stop being a kintype, anymore than they can stop being themselves

If someone is able to “drop” a kintype, [...] then it likely was not an actual kintype in the first place.

All three of these are rough quotes from a post from 2016 by fictionkin-official. Even so, these three bits of text are one of the most commonly agreed upon and supported comments in the community at large. Though the terms can change, drop to lost to get rid of. Often the main point is:

You cannot get rid of a kintype, if you did, it wasn’t actually a kintype. After all your kintype is your identity.

The whole point of this post to be clear, is to say the opposite. That it is possible to loose a kintype. It’s just not likely, and if it is lost, that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a kintype and that it might not still effect you in some way.

The short, no reading vague mentions of trauma below, sum up is: Identity is something that changes as people go throughout their lives and big events can make a major difference. If kintypes are identity, doesn’t that mean it can change just as much as identity can? And it’s doesn’t mean, necessarily, you were wrong in the past. It just means you’re a different person now.

Hello. My activity is very on and off these days. I do always try to check in at least once a month but last month was a mess. My friend usually is the one who goes 'hey there's stuff happening you might want to log in for' and I'll come around again.

For your question, the simple answer is; extremely weirded out and also extremely chill and excited.

It's really funny to say it like that.

Square was the one telling the company the stories, or as much as was comfortable to be shared, worked with them to create changes and helped advertise and sell the products. The media couldn't exist without Square telling them details about people's living lives.

So going from that instinct of Square, the person, is required for Square, the company, to produce media, and seeing all the media popping out of no where without Square, the person, just feels weird when thinking about how things feel and expect to come about.

But also it creates this realization of:

'oh hey they can make all this stuff about all these people and not have an prophet, oracle person invading their personal space telling them their life story and possible future outcomes of their lives? That's so awesome please do that instead! Let's do a lot less life invasion :"D'

Making it feel a lot more relaxed and chill of an experience than the way Square's world functions.

I find it's actually that bit why I can enjoy Square Enix media so calmly especially when Square is very heavily my mindset. It feels like I'm touching much less cruel media than the counter parts sold back there.

That post though, that fan art, really felt it brought together so many details of how things are for me that it’s hard not to react.

It has the "myth” mixed with being the “average guy” all in one, very similar for how things are. People’s stories and experiences were real, passed down to the people through media, but they also just lived lives around the people as well and would easily have come up to a statue of themselves.

And with how often Sephiroth and Square hanged out, and sometimes Cloud would get involved. Just going to a coffee shop, or to an arcade. .. I still haven’t said about the time they went to the arcade and Cloud made a fool of himself have I? Even though it is one of my favorite memories.

So with Starlight Coca⯀Cola in hand, let’s get started.

I had said it on here before but the main reason I was away for a while was to test how my identity would shift, change, if anything if I left it along for a good period of time. I’ve heard it quite often as a suggestion, though more often said to odder identities than more common ones.

So why not.

I took six months away from not only this blog and the site but I also took time away from anything Square Enix or it’s properties I could. Beyond a couple games I did still play because I just happen to own a lot of them and I can’t help wanting to play an RPG that just happens to been made by them. I at least picked one that wasn’t a common source cameo identity flickers.

So what did I learn having left Square to just sit?

It didn’t change anything. Possibly even made it stronger. I’m still Square even when I don’t dive myself into the identity. It still stood along side me as just an inherent bit of who I am all the same.

What I did learn is the identity is a lot more important to me than I ever realized and it feels almost silly to have only realized within the past month just how much so.

What dawned on me is that Square Enix is an identity that is a perfect analogy of my life back home, pre this world, mixed with the confusion and trauma and stressors I would later, from the perspective of when I realized the identity, gain from being here.

People and events from back home are sort of over laid just with people and characters from Square Enix products. The ‘they are real, but also have fictional versions’ are the feeling of confusion finding aspects of home in different pieces of fiction and people here that are close but not quite right or just random bits here and there.

It’s an identity I was given as a warning, I believe, and a guide to try to help me but I noticed too late to take full advantage but now that I do I’m trying so hard to use it to get better.

So it’s sorta a spiritual identity but not in the most common definitions of spiritual kintype. I also do consider it a trauma identity because if I wasn’t thrusted here and have to go through what I am; it would never have existed. It also explains to me why it never leaves. It’s always there and there’s no shifting.

It’s just ‘me’ but through a different lense. It’s my experiences but with characters, media, companies, as proxies. I don’t know what this means for me in the long run. Other than I now know this identity is here to stay as long as I’m here and I have a lot I can learn from it.

There’s so much more I need to dive into. So much more I need to research. If I find out more about Square and Konami, maybe I’ll find out more about me. Maybe if I talk and share more of my memories of the different people I interact with, maybe it’ll explain more about things that happened to me and those I know.

Either way it also is still something it’s hard not to want to research down. I mean, it might be a proxy of my experiences and a way to help me through trauma that at the time didn’t happen yet. It sure also is just an amazing experience to go through. Seeing through Square’s eyes and experiencing all these people. The fact I haven’t yet spoken about Sephiroth and DDR.

There’s so much still to speak on and explore that obviously isn’t a one to one, it’s it’s own thing that brings it it’s own life separate of my own. It is a kintype, it is me. But it’s also not me because I don’t live and never lived the life Square seems to.

Even if Square doesn’t exist, didn’t exist, will never exist, and all these experiences were created for me. It’s real to me in it’s own way it feels wrong not to talk them out, explore them, and put those words on a page.

To start, thank you for sending me a random message anonymous. I've tried to say I'm fine with this sort of stuff so I'm glad to see someone take advantage.

I do have some yes. They aren’t many yet, probably in part I haven’t done much to promote them happening since I’ve been focusing so much on Konami.

As per almost every franchise-based experience I get as Square the primary experience I have is based on this phantom clothing feeling I have. Each franchise seems to have its own clothing or set of items that I feel in relation to it. Dragon Quest most often than not includes wearing a dragon’s pelt. Think something like this bear belt coat but it’s made from one of the dragons you’d meet in Dragon Quest. The head turned into a hood and the rest of the pelt into a long flowing cape. I always have this feeling it’s a blue dragon, like the one on this cover.

Beyond that the clothing under it is the thing that often changes the most. From different armor types, to looser clothing. I have always assumed it’s changing to represent the different ‘classes’ of the people Hero meets throughout his journey and their outfits. Though usually it’s armor or what feels like leather cloth the most of anything.

Trying to think on it.. for as often as I do use Dragon Quest as a comparison point in contrast to Final Fantasy since they feel so different I don’t have as many experiences as I’d like to really talk on. I don’t touch Dragon Quest very often to even feel a kinship to it and rainbows don’t occur very often to trigger things either.

Oh, yeah, rainbows seem to trigger Dragon Quest ‘shifts’. I assume because of their long standing history as an important part of the end game but I have no idea. I really should try playing the switch game to see what it unlocks since I saw my friend has it.

That being said I at least do remember vaguely some of the conversations Square has had with a few of the different Hero of the franchise. Like, mostly I remember the reason that they are just called Hero was out of respect for them. Most of their lives were a lot more out there for people to see, and the pressures of heroics too much for some of them, and it was an argreement to simply use Hero as their name to be able to be more detailed in their story, share their deeper moments, but still give them a sense of privacy. The awkward nature of Square’s world all this being historic fiction.

Said post here 

This feels a lot more in line with what I experience with what I called cameos in my shift post.

Maybe I should be calling them for myself in connection to Square cameo identity flickers?

Sure they are often “fictional characters” but not always and it always felt wrong to call them fiction flickers especially when they are not necessarily a situation of touching media and getting a flicker of them showing up in my identity or whatever. It’s people or things that show up in Square’s life that I interact or dealt with a lot sometimes like taking over as an identity for a bit before backing off.

It at least feels similar to a pseudo polymorph more than how fiction flicking often feels and I have noticed the closer they are to Square or the more Square Enix has connection to them the more often or the longer the flickers can last.

Like Sephiroth! Oh Sephiroth. I haven’t spoken in detail about him in a time. That should be my next post on my web site now that I think about it. But I know I have a lot of cameos of him in my identity because of how much Final Fantasy loves to use him as a face and bring him up but also I realized more recently that it might be because he spends a decent amount of his off time hanging out with Square and Konami. I have remembered some detailed memories of him and the two of us, some also including Cloud.

But in general I worked with him a lot to help with the Final Fantasy games production in the first place being such a major character so of course he’d be a common cameo. He’s Square’s friend and a very common repeat co-worker. He would show up a lot!

And on that end that is part of why I feel so awkward with fiction flicker too, because that feels off to what the experience is.

Just like those who feel uncomfortable using fiction kin because the kintype and experiences are obviously not fictional to them and use other words to erase the ‘fictional’ from it, these cameos are not fictional to Square. These are real people who’s stories and experience are being made into historical fiction video games, animations, movies, comics, and merchdise and they are real people who walk the streets same as the fans. Square is just an oracle translating their experiences to the company’s workers to use as a base for those medias.

So it’s weird to call them fiction so I like that identity flicker is just a nice way to not force certain words or concepts and really does bridge the gap of other and fiction.

Seeing all this information and text on shifting and thinking about it all, even when a friend asked me questions about it I have realized I can firmly state.

I do not experience shifts -- for Square.

I am always Square at all times; if I experience shifts those shifts are felt through Square.

No wonder my identity is so weird and fragmented. I got one kintype that basically wears all the others with how it feels. This is the one that all the others filter through. -- Except for one because it affects me differently but this blog isn’t for that. This is for Square so I am not saying any details on it.

Square is never an identity I don’t fully feel and nothing ever feels different or moments more Square or less Square it’s always Square + some mix of things.

Expect nonsensical text as I try to explain a specific type of sub shift I get a lot.

I even experience something I consider cameo shifts through Square, I don’t use the term is meant to mean by the community at large but specifically the definition of cameo: “a small character part in a play or movie, played by a distinguished actor or a celebrity” because it’s shifts of different “celebrities” from Square’s world that just for a while I sort of shift? Identify as/ with (It seems to depend which per shift)? for a bit? It’s a very odd experience and I do wonder if it some what has to do with promoting a game like Square often has to do, but most often it’s Sephiroth, to the point he’s pretty much a fictionhearted identity. I feel like I should be him with how often he makes cameos with Square but I’m not him. I’m Square. Square just often gets Sephiroth as a huge symbol and thus ‘becomes’ him a bit temporarily. Cloud Strife sometimes showed up before Sephiroth got a lot more common. Sometimes I get Hero [that is their names technically] cameos which can be odd trying to figure out which Hero it is. 

There’s also been a few JC Denton cameos and no thank you I never like them they feel so wrong please no. I literally never want to play those games just because of those cameos. Though on the opposite side Kain cameos are so rare but every time they show up it just makes me really hyped and excitable and wanting to show off so bad. Kain cameos please come more often they are the best experiences.

This is such a small and incomplete list but there are so many cameos and it’s sometimes hard for me to figure out what they might be but when I do it makes so much more sense and it’s easier to vibe with them. Except Denton please no. 

Just to stress these cameos are like being Square who is now ... shape shifted into them but also more like wearing a costume of them? That’s why I’m so sure it’s not any identities of mine because it feels so worn but I got to be the part? I have no control so either way I got to go for the ride and I might as well enjoy them when I can. Except--

So uh, what I was trying to actually get a point across was I don’t know how it is to be Square because I don’t really experience a time not as Square and almost everything I experience is through Square.

How do I know I’m Square? I just.. do? I just experience myself through it.

At base is me, then directly over that is Square, and then everything else. Like I don’t like ranking kintypes as some do, but it’s impossible to not think of Square as the ‘highest’ kintype because it never is affected by others but instead it affects everything else.

兩年前我們曾經試駕過一台很有記憶點的跨界休旅，當時的它，不論外型、操控都令人印象深刻，不過這間車廠有個大明星老大哥Honda CR-V，前陣子才擊落連霸17年銷售冠軍的Altis，好像風頭都在CR-V身上。但是我們就覺得Honda HR-V是一款非常適合新生代玩家的座駕，所以我們二刷試駕了Honda HR-V S車型！ (more…)