Holy Astral Planes, Batman! Otherkin and Soulbonders!

Today someone posted on the Digimon community on LiveJournal, asking why people like Ken Ichijouji from Digimon Adventure 02 so much.

People immediately caught on that she was just fishing for compliments, since she's an otakukin who truly believes she's the reincarnation of Ken. Mocking ensued. It was glorious.

Snake Bandage wrote:

Today someone posted on the Digimon community on LiveJournal, asking why people like Ken Ichijouji from Digimon Adventure 02 so much.

People immediately caught on that she was just fishing for compliments, since she's an otakukin who truly believes she's the reincarnation of Ken. Mocking ensued. It was glorious.

Links/Screenshots or it didn't happen.

Verandering wrote:

Snake Bandage wrote:

Today someone posted on the Digimon community on LiveJournal, asking why people like Ken Ichijouji from Digimon Adventure 02 so much.

People immediately caught on that she was just fishing for compliments, since she's an otakukin who truly believes she's the reincarnation of Ken. Mocking ensued. It was glorious.

Links/Screenshots or it didn't happen.

See, Ver? It totally happened. Is happening now, in fact.

I totally knew it would be overlord_mordax, I just new it.

This is my new favorite lolcow.

Oh, it's the same one from the first post! Huh, I didn't even notice that! This makes it like a thousand times better.

Thanks for the link. Here's my evening entertainment.

Edit:

Quote :

lalachoy:
...

Wow. I didn't expect all this.


overloard_mordax:
I should have. Something gave me the mistaken impression that this fandom was full of nice people.


Anonymous:
Oh well. One more thing to be delusional about!

ROFLMFAO oh ouch XDDD

Someone obviously missed the Digimon Shipping Wars of 2001. Or was too busy convincing herself she was the Digimon Kaiser to notice.

Quote :

-How come, if there can be infinite different versions of Ken as you said, you just happen to be the reincarnation of one that pretty much follows the anime, except for a few tiny details? Wouldn't it be much probable, considering the odds, that you'd be stuck with one that only had one or two minor resemblances to the anime Ken?


(overlord_mordax)
-If I hadn't been close to it, watching the show wouldn't have triggered me.


-But how come you were close? Are you THAT special of a snowflake that, among all the billions of possible Kens, you happened to be the reincarnation of the one that was almost the same as the one from the anime?


-No.


-But you're saying you were.


-No.


-You don't know how to answer, so you'll just say nothing?


-No.


-I love how this is the least dumb exchange I've had with you in this entire post.

Delcat wrote:

Alana wrote:

... I knew Zar had fallen outta FFVII fandom due to crazies, but I didn't know she was related to that, even tangentally. :O

Those are the crazies in question, yes. Long story short, she went over to spend a weekend with Soshi (the webmistress/Zarla's friend) while they were living together and the otakukin bullied her into being their "Vincent" and pulled some other creepy and really unforgivable shit on her. She's since said in a journal entry that while she still loves FFVII, they really ruined Vincent for her. Utter bastards. Oh, and they did their thing of asking for a lot of little things so the person buying them wouldn't notice how much they were spending, and Zarla is so nice that she ended up sinking all kinds of money on them. Bitches.

... fuuuuuuuuck *will have to give Zar extra hugs next time they talk*

I read the full report on the FFVII House a long time ago. My god, those people scared the ever loving Hell out of me.

This idea that if someone imagines it, it must exist, is scary. Wouldn't that mean that all the badfic is real?

Lady Anne wrote:

This idea that if someone imagines it, it must exist, is scary. Wouldn't that mean that all the badfic is real?

The Imaginationland episodes of South Park explore this notion beautifully. It's made all the more terrifying by the thought that in some universe Legolas exists and is pregnant with his abusive dad's assbaby.

ZoZo wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

This idea that if someone imagines it, it must exist, is scary. Wouldn't that mean that all the badfic is real?

The Imaginationland episodes of South Park explore this notion beautifully. It's made all the more terrifying by the thought that in some universe Legolas exists and is pregnant with his abusive dad's assbaby.

...we have to do something!!!

grmblfjx wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

This idea that if someone imagines it, it must exist, is scary. Wouldn't that mean that all the badfic is real?

The Imaginationland episodes of South Park explore this notion beautifully. It's made all the more terrifying by the thought that in some universe Legolas exists and is pregnant with his abusive dad's assbaby.

...we have to do something!!!

Call the Mirkwood Social Services?

...I actually considered writing a Foster's Home for Imaginary
Friends fic where the home had to take in traumatized canon
characters, hide them from their Sue ficwriters/owners, and nurse them
back to health--after all, what are rewritten characters but imaginary
friends of a professional sort? I don't remember all the gags I had
planned, but I do remember Hermione being obsessed with clothes and
make-up and Frankie having to squirt the Weasley twins with a water
bottle every five minutes because they kept trying to jump each other's
bones.

Spoiler:

For me, the worst part of the whole Otherkin bullshit is that they make people with legitimate spiritual beliefs that involve animals or totems sound crazy. People's beliefs are incredibly various, and yes, there are totally people with totem animals or strong spiritual connections to a particular animal, but these people do not claim to be that animal. It's much more complicated and often has to do with indigenous religions of some variety. And the Otherkin people give the people who have legitimate beliefs about totem animals such a bad name.

To qualify what I've just said, I myself don't have a totem animal or anything like that, but I've got some friends who do, a friend whose dad is a shaman, etc etc.

I actually have a MiSTing kicking around of a Sue who had actual totem animals. Good ol' JoAnn Montgomery, biggest friggin' Sue of the ReBoot world. I don't recall how badly she fucked them up...I really need to read those MiSTings again.

Delcat wrote:

ReBoot

Dang, I remember that show.

/empty nostalgiaing

Okay, I'm not quite sure if this is a troll, but holy shit.

A Flapjack otherkin. Muthafuckin' FLAPJACK.

Choice quote:

Quote :

Dragons and fairies are pigments of the human mind

Mae Bedlam wrote:

Okay, I'm not quite sure if this is a troll, but holy shit.

A Flapjack otherkin. Muthafuckin' FLAPJACK.

Choice quote:

Quote :

Dragons and fairies are pigments of the human mind

Actually, that's a lovely insight. I like it.

Mae Bedlam wrote:

Okay, I'm not quite sure if this is a troll, but holy shit.

A Flapjack otherkin. Muthafuckin' FLAPJACK.

Choice quote:

Quote :

Dragons and fairies are pigments of the human mind

I totally thought that you meant an actual flapjack

Like, the food made out of syrup and oats

I R DISAPPOINT

In middle school, I had a friend who thought she was Malik Ishtar from Yu-Gi-Oh. She wore cosplay everyday and introduced herself as Malik. She once sent me a Christmas card from a Yu-Gi-Oh yaoi art site. Her entire family played Yu-Gi-Oh, just like Malik's family on the show, so... uh... crazy breeds crazy.

Honestly, I sort of looked up to her, because even though she lived in her own little fantasy world, it seemed like a fun place to be. Also, she was an incredibly attractive girl who crossdressed every day, which... yeah.

Mae Bedlam wrote:

Okay, I'm not quite sure if this is a troll, but holy shit.

A Flapjack otherkin. Muthafuckin' FLAPJACK.

Choice quote:

Quote :

Dragons and fairies are pigments of the human mind

Quote :

I am SICK of this. How can someone WHO BELIEVES THEY ARE HUMAN be crazier than people who believe they are DRAGONS, KITTENS and PUPPIES??! I respect your beliefs, you respect mine.

Haha, awesome.

I actually got into a somewhat serious discussion about other/otakukin, and soulbonders on Gaia (LOLGAIA) a few years back, and myself and a few others had a pretty good idea of what's probably behind it.

If you do a quick glance over most communities dealing with it, you'll notice the predominate age group involved are those who are in their teens, to early-mid 20s. We guessed most everyone involved in claiming they are 'kin of some sort probably have social difficulties, whether they come from just being socially awkward or a condition of some sort.

'kin groups give them somewhere to belong, where they aren't viewed as overly weird, and gives them the feeling of being special and/or better than the people they can't get along with in everyday life.

Doesn't make it any less weird/silly, but for a lot of people in the groups, I'm willing to bet that it's a coping mechanism and/or 'explanation' for why they can't function in the rest of society.

Otherkin/otakukin beliefs can be an excellent coping mechanism, yes. What worries me is that it's being reinforced by other people on the Internet; once complete strangers start confirming their ideas, it stops helping them cope and becomes the problem in its own right.

Personal digression: when I was in eighth grade, I was FUCKED UP. Thanks to my best friend, I'd recently discovered Final Fantasy, and really latched on to the character of Fujin from FFVIII; my friend had similarly latched on to Aeris, and so we began roleplaying as these characters. We had a backstory: Aeris's soul had been moved to our world and incarnated in a human body to protect her from the reborn Jenova, and Fujin had been placed there as her bodyguard.

Some part of me believed it because I wanted to believe it, and because it made me special. If I was Fujin, then I wasn't just some screwed-up kid from Illinois, I was a motherfuckin' wind elemental and a complete badass to boot. And that made me feel better, and it gave me the confidence to face the world every day. Maybe I'll change today, I thought. Maybe today, the wind will actually respond to my commands, and I'll transform into who I really am.

With just the two of us playing, though, the illusion petered out. When our lives improved of their own accord, we didn't need to be Fujin and Aeris any more. I still call my friend Aeris, and she still calls me Fu-chan, but they're nicknames rather than expressions of OMG IM REALLY MAGICAL.

I hate to think what would have happened if I'd discovered the otherkin/otakukin community around that time. Fantasy helps you cope, but when dozens of people are joining in and reinforcing each others' fantasies, it becomes harder and harder to detach from it. I might be still thinking I was Fujin to this day, making drama instead of snarking at it.