I think
"You need to let new people learn and grow and make as many mistakes as they do because they'll never actually find themselves or be comfortable with a community like ours if we don't lend a helping paw"
And
"older members of the community have a right to be angry at younger members when they shame, water down, or overall push out certain things and people of the community who/which are harmless"
Are ideas that coexist
I’m not aroace but this just dawned on me
i love this community so much
i finally feel like i belong and im apart of something
love u guys
no the hell they don't, tumblr
that one person that makes your tail go THUMP THUMP THUMP on the floor when you see them <3
i think gatekeeping is unfathomably cringe and i think the way people in this community treat linkers (funlinkers especially) and voluntary identities in general is gross, but i recently came across an exchange that was really irritating to be fair and made me kind of understand the defensiveness.
it was in a comment thread under a video where a streamer was talking about a twitter user who was being 'cancelled' and they must have listed their fictionkins on their strawpage because that's what the comment was about.
person 1: i thought kinning meant that you related to a character?
person 2: it does mean that, not that you actually think you're that character.
person 3: i'm kin and it means that you relate heavily to a character, ppl who identify as "fictionkins" and genuinely think they're fictional characters are just deluded and make us look bad.
like no, that's not what "kinning" means at all. as far as i'm aware, kinning has always meant that you identify as a character in some capacity until people who weren't a part of the kin community made out like it meant something completely unrelated while looking down on people who are actually fictionkin or "kinnies", which is probably where the defensive aspect to the community comes from.
you have co-opted a term that has always meant one thing, said it means something completely different, and then turned around and call the people who use the term in its traditional meaning 'delusional'. that is very disrespectful. for the record i think term discourse is dumb and you can use whatever labels you want, but i understand the frustration.
to more or less usurp the term 'kinning' or 'kinnie' or whatever and twist it to mean your own definition, then claim that the people who the term has always belonged to are 'delusional' is just awful and absurd. "kinning" has always meant that you identify as a character.
personally i am funlink and all of my identities are voluntary and for fun and i use the term kinning to describe that aspect of myself, but i would never look down on involuntary fictionkins or claim that their terms mean something else entirely when it doesn't.
UM???SO USUALLY WHENEVER I HAPPY STIM I GET LIKE. PHANTOM TAIL. LIKE ITS JUST AUTOMATIC. BUT I JUST GOT PHANTOM WINGS..HUH
i would give up everything if i could be a raccoon
living on the outskirts of society, in a hollowed out tree with a few others
scavenging for food and finding wild berries on the ground
simply making noises to communicate such as chattering, purring, hissing, barking
occasionally finding a nice human friend and being a nuisance to humans who are jerks