On Awakening - November 4th, 2021

Note: This was written in response to a prompt on the Fictionkind Dreamwidth, to discuss one's awakening.

While I’ve awakened to different things a few times now, I thought it might be most relevant to discuss the first fictionkin awakening I had; the one that changed my view on what was possible and that introduced me to the fictionkin community.

For some background, in middle school, I saw myself as a domestic cat demon; a little purple cat with red eyes and black bat wings from my back, and eventually a black cat with amber eyes but still with bat wings. I experienced shifts almost always, just as I do now; most often ears and a tail, sometimes my wings as well.

As someone who is prone to fictionflickers and cameo shifts, having other supernumerary phantom limbs wasn’t immediately any cause for alarm; it was just my brain doing brain things. There are, however, differences between how I experience these different kinds of shifts. Fictionflickers are brief; I may very strongly feel them for anywhere from a day to a month, but they always petered out. If I had very strong shifts that affected my identity, I typically waited them out for this reason, to make sure they weren’t just flickers. Cameo shifts can be strong on the shift front, but I often found that they were based more on sensation than identity. They could sometimes feel “wrong” or strange, like the sensation of borrowing limbs that aren’t quite yours, or wearing a costume that doesn’t quite fit right. An elementary school ‘kin friend and I even played by intentionally inducing phantom limbs to more properly feel like the creatures we were roleplaying as.

These shifts weren’t the same way. They were persistent, for one, and lasted long enough that they made me think. They also felt more “solid”, for lack of a better word; there were times I wasn’t paying attention and would brush my ears back as if they would actually cover my eyes, or have a slight panic when I realized they were uncovered by my hood for people to “see”, forgetting that no one could actually see them. And while I often felt one furry tail, there were times I felt two, larger and fluffier and with more weight, taking up more space behind me.

It was enough to make me wonder if I was a nekomata, a type of bakeneko that has a tail that split into two. After all, I was already a demonic cat, so it wasn’t incredibly far-fetched to consider that I’d just mistaken what kind of otherworldly spirit I was.

I would say that awakenings, for me, are not a state of having experienced nothing and then suddenly being struck by something, as I’ve seen happen for some, where they’re left to cope with the sudden ‘kin experiences afterwards. For me, there’s always some prelude; something that doesn’t quite sit right in my current identity, something that doesn’t quite match up properly. What I consider my actual “awakening” to a ‘type is what happens after I become aware of those things that don’t make sense, after I start puzzling over what could be going on, and I start getting flashes of memories that make it impossible to deny what I’d already been suspecting. Typically, the more I try to deny that the awakening is taking place, the more strongly I experience shifts and said memory flashes; the best thing for me to do, if I want to function, is typically to accept it as part of myself and start finding out what kinds of coping mechanisms I’ll need for the information I’ve remembered.

I used to not believe in fictionkin. I had no idea how one could actually be something from fiction, something that didn’t exist; pretty ironic considering I saw myself as a demon, something that also has no scientific evidence for its existence. (And I’m still a demon, now; just a different type. I found I was conflating multiple separate experiences I was having into one creature. Being exposed to my canons as time went on made this more clear to me.) As such, until I was met with evidence I felt I couldn’t refute, I stuck to that I couldn’t be fictionkin. I was ashamed by it for a long time afterwards, and felt stupid that me being fictionkin meant that they really exist; that I’d been denying an experience that was possible, and that I was part of it despite not wanting to be. The community was so big on singular kintypes, poking suspiciously at those with more, and I was worried I’d be involved in that, especially when one of them was a fictotype. (Prominent community names with two theriotypes were one thing; this was an entirely different animal, so to speak.)

While when I joined the otherkin community initially I went by Rin, after awakening to being a Meowstic, I rebranded myself as Mirai for the anonymity; so no one would realize that I was the same person. Mirai (“future” in Japanese), because as a Meowstic, and a Psychic type, I had connection to the progression of time and what-was-to-be. I don’t go by it anymore, but I still tend to see Mirai as a kind of “name” for who I was as a Meowstic, despite never having an actual name given to me in that life, because I took this name on at a time in my life where it was a highly prominent experience.

Awakenings are interesting… they both do and don’t change everything. On one hand, I was experiencing so many of these things prior; the shifts that made me suspect something was up in the first place, being drawn to the Pokemon world in a deeply strong way that meant a lot to me (I’d probably call it a hearthome if not for, well, being from there), the moments of “feeling psychic”, or lacking abilities I should have... On the other hand, it changes everything. It gives a specific name and face to what I am, no longer some vague thing, and since awakenings tend to come with more concrete memories, it gives me something to grapple with afterwards. The details of siblings I would never see again after that trainer caught me and took me away, of the specific hilly waterfall system that we lived in that I can actually pinpoint in the region (by Couriway Town, beyond the boundary and where residents were warned away from), and the knowledge of being... well... a Pokemon. Not one I’d grown up with, not something I’d felt some lifelong connection to, but a Pokemon that came out when I was starting high school. It makes me a tad bitter, sometimes, being a newer Pokemon from a region I could care less about instead of one I felt at home in.

But, ultimately, I see being fictionkin as a form of accepting what you are, regardless of how you feel about it. And after that acceptance, it’s about how you deal with it, how much you can cope with what it brings and how to “be”; how to synthesize who-you-are and what-you-are across worlds, including this one. This is something I struggle with sometimes, feeling so little connection to my physical life and body in this world, sometimes having more vivid reactions to memories from other worlds than this one. Memories and shifts can strike at any moment; waterfalls still fill me with a sense of homeliness and nostalgia. It’s hard to stay in the moment, especially when practices on staying present and grounded tend to focus on one’s physical body... which increases dysphoria.