Fiction in the System and Being the "Odd One Out"
By Gordon "Research" Freeman
Originally posted here on November 1, 2021.
This is going to be essentially a continuation/sequel to
a thread I put on the Nonhuman National Park forum, but you
do not need to read that thread to read this. Frankly, it's a poorly organized thread, and my thoughts on this have evolved since then, particularly with the addition of two new system members in that time. (Besides, you need an account to read it, if I recall correctly.)
This is basically an overview of my system and each of our connections to fictivity (is that a word?), and how I'm kind of the odd one out in that regard. Maybe there's something interesting in here, maybe there isn't, but it's just what I wanted to write about today.
First, a quick overview: there's Tanix (dragonkin and deathclawkin, the host), Research (me, fictionkin), Aegis (nonhuman), Null (nonhuman), Kyir (fictive, mostly human), Valence (fictive, nonhuman), Caspian (fictive, half-human), and Goratrix (fictive, ex-human). Most of us have fictional connections in one way or another, and I'll get into that.
Let's start with me. I'm Research. I'm human, basically, and my fictotype is Gordon Freeman from Half-Life--so, another human. As you'll see when I go through the rest of my systemmates, that's pretty weird. I'm the only person in the system that's fictionkin of a specific character, and I'm basically the only completely normal, full human with nothing supernatural going on.
The host, Tanix, is dragonkin, but more importantly to this talk, is deathclawkin. Deathclaws, for those unfamiliar, are a fictional species from the Fallout universe, so you can call him fictionkin. He reluctantly takes the label, but feels a little outside of the typical narrative since most fictionkin we know are of specific characters. As it is, despite his close ties with his kintype, he doesn't really feel tied particularly strongly to Fallout itself, and has thus largely bowed out of being in fictionkin spaces. (Shoutout to him for willingly dissociating multiple times a day to let Goratrix and I co-front to speak here; he's frontstuck and we can't actually fully switch out.) Additionally, he's questioning a hearthome in a fictional world, but isn't willing to talk about that publicly yet, so I won't go into that right now.
Aegis and Null have no fictional ties as far as I'm aware. They're both a little less "fleshed out" than the rest of us (those are terms they use, not ones I assigned to them! I go into the origins of the system and where Aegis and Null came from in my NNP post, linked above, but it's not relevant to this so I'm not going into it here) and, while they consider themselves nonhuman, don't actually have any kintypes or anything as far as they're aware. They're not fictives, they're not... really anything, other than nonhuman headmates. But they're not odd ones out--they have each other, and they have a special bond with Tanix, due to the three of them basically having origins in the "original system," which is a very complicated topic that, again, I went into elsewhere, and isn't really relevant right now.
Then we get to our four fictives. Kyir, Valence, and Caspian are all OC fictives--Kyir has been around as a character, starting as a Homestuck OC and slowly turning into a character dumped into most universes, since late 2012, but we don't actually know when she dropped into the system. (Kyir is pangender and I will use a LOT of pronouns for her in my stay here.) As a result, she doesn't feel like she has a defined "source" so much as she's an amalgam of all of the characterization given to Kyir over the years. Valence and Caspian are both D&D characters, originating in the same party, and therefore have clear and defined sources that they consider to be their own straightforward and full lives--they were in the party, and now they're here. The story is much the same with Goratrix as with Valence and Caspian, but he's not an OC, just a character from VTM. To be fair, VTM is a tabletop game, and he's a canon character, and when our host learned about him and started NPCing him for the players... well, he kind of moved right in. Oops.
So that leaves us with: two people with no fictional link, three OC fictives, one fictive with a canon different from his canon, a deathclaw who barely considers himself fictionkin, and... me, a human and fictionkin.
What the hell! I am very different from everyone else!
See, Tanix tends to bundle his dragon and deathclaw instincts together, since they're so similar, and doesn't really think obsessively about his life as a deathclaw much. Most of it is animalistic, behavioral, instinctive--he has very few memories and tends to engage with that kintype on a more base level. I don't have that option with Gordon--we're both human, and both scientifically-minded, so, great, I do that every day! Then you'd think I could connect to the fictives, but no--they see no "distance" between themselves and their fictional identities. There is no separation between Valence-my-headmate and Valence-the-character, to the point where he co-fronts with Tanix when we're playing that D&D game to help run the character.
But there is a strong and distinct separation between me and Gordon. Of course, I am him, just as most otherkin and fictionkin are their kintypes, but it's like I view that identity through a lens or across a gap, something that the fictives don't have to do. They have a more complete understanding of their canons and lives due to having lived them more "directly" or "recently" (although Kyir's a bit of a weird case) but I don't have that.
Isn't that weird? I feel a lot better about it than I did when I wrote my NNP post back in May, since I have a few experiences in common with Goratrix (eg., a canon that doesn't always align with our memories and a fandom that mischaracterizes us both constantly) and we've become fast scientific friends, but it still bothers me sometimes. I'm a more "traditional" fictionkin, as far as I can tell and as far as you can use that word, but ironically, I'm the odd one out.
(Here's hoping that Null or Aegis awaken as fictionkin along with me!)
Now, I think it's kind of interesting how important fiction is to our system. Six of eight of us have some kind of fictional connection--four fictives, one and a half (he won't let me say two) fictionkin. I could probably talk for ages about potential reasons for that, about projecting onto characters or needing to feel supported by them, or even just Tanix internalizing a character that he made a little too much, but I think this is long enough and I don't have anything concrete enough to say to really bother with yet.
I don't know, do any of you have any ideas as to why there's so many fictives and not a lot of fictionkin? Why am I some guy who's just 'kin with Gordon, while the brain seems to have absolutely zero compunction about just inserting characters right into the headspace as fictives? My origin in the system is a big question mark, too--while the fictives kind of formed from ideas and characters, and the other three have a shared origin, I'm described as just having crawled out of the vents one day, fully-formed and with knowledge of previous events. I kind of remember watching for awhile without saying anything, but... not well.
So, yeah! There we are. Thanks for reading!