Thread by @lamniforma, I've been staving off a long Twitter rant. I've had some thoughts [...]

I've been staving off a long Twitter rant. I've had some thoughts about fiction lately that I want to get out. Expect a lot of tweets in response to this

I've fairly recently looked more into Maladaptive Daydreaming because it describes my experience well. I don't exhibit pacing and whatnot while daydreaming anymore, but I used to do that A LOT as a child. Back then I used to be a lot more lost in my own world, but I still am.

I'll spare the details. In looking into Maladaptive Daydreaming (MADD) I was hoping to find some advice, but - and I don't think this is just because I looked on Tumblr - on first and second glance I only found people who egg each other on, support each other's behavior.

I did find some advice eventually and it was so freeing to see other people work against their instincts when they realize that it's negatively effecting their enjoyment of reality like me.
This isn't to say that I never daydream anymore (it's especially hard not to do when I'm-

-doing repetitive tasks at work while alone), but I've cut down on it.
Smth about the time spent daydreaming I've noticed is that I never remember what I was daydreaming about in that moment. I have a foggy memory of what I was doing because I was more focused on daydreaming-

-, but I have no memory of the daydream at all. It's such an empty experience.

Going off of this I started thinking more about how fiction influences how we go through our lives. Because the daydreams I'm talking about aren't realistic, they're fantasy, things that can never happen. Daydreaming about irl things you want to do too much isn't good either,

but always having your head stuck in things that can never be takes it a step further. It's SUCH an escape from reality. Reality can be shit sometimes, I get it, but I find myself escaping even when things are good, because my head is essentially trained to do so.

Ahem, so, fiction. Example. When looking for Tumblr posts about MADD I saw someone wonder how people who don't daydream listen to music without starting to daydream. Well... why the heck does music make us so prone to daydream? I can only think of movies.

Movies, TV shows, even music videos. It's become such a mainstay in our lives that music is accompanied by scenes and plot that I could see that being the cause of why we start developing plot to accompany it in our head when we listen to music without plot coming along already.

The internet is very much a place where we can define our identity in a more fictional manner than in reality. There's artistic self-representation like fursonas... which I love. It's great personal self-expression. What I dislike is when the stories we spin around our fictional-

selves becomes something we get too invested in. The same goes for characters that aren't us. Take shipping for example. Some people get VERY invested. Wouldn't that be weird when it's a real couple? ... Hold on, there's people who do that and it is weird.

Shipping is just an example. The same goes for fictional friendships. It's possible to get very strong feeling about these things that either aren't real, or are not involved with you at all (see shipping of real life celebrities or smth).

I've only recently stopped identifying as fictionkin, exactly because of this MADD stuff. Otherkinity has its merits. Sometimes you can't help but identify with something, be it an animal, fictional creature, or fictional character. What I take issue with is when-

-you let yourself sink into that identity too much. As someone who believed their fictionkin identity to have psychological origins, I got some decent introspection out of it, but there's only so much introspection I could do before it dissolved into daydreams.

Being fictionkin is a wild topic, especially when looking in from the outside, so I'll try to explain the things I'm talking about for the case someone who isn't familiar can understand.

"Memories" are an often talked about thing. I had 'kin "memories", and as I said I believed all of it to based in my psychology. That's to say I think my brain made it all up. I accepted the made-up memories under the guise of introspection. Works for a while.

After that while just gets daydreamy tho.
Then there's believing into your otherkinity for spiritual reasons. Most often this means believing in reincarnation and the multiverse (in case of fictionkin, not therians, who believe they are/were a real animal).

And I don't mean offense to spiritual fictionkin, but why FICTION? How has it come to a situation where people believe they used to be someone who closely allignes with a character portrayed in a fantasy story in a past life, when there is no base in reality of it?

I can't help but feel that we've been so spoon-fed with fiction that we can't help but believe in the existance of the stories somewhere. There's no proof of a multiverse, and yet we engage with the thought as if it holds any relevancy to our lives.

Being fictionkin, spiritual moreso than psychological, is the peak of daydreaming, if you ask me. It ascribes the highest amount of importance to fiction. You ARE the character.
When really you're just a regular human, and isn't that good?

It's wish-fulfillment. Engaging with fiction kind of inevitably leads to wanting to be a part of that fictional world. Lost of fiction is cool. Would be awesome if it was real. Daydreaming about it being real makes sense. Making it real in thought gets the closest to real it can.

That's that with that branch of thought.

Closing off, I'm an artist who almost exclusively draws fantasy. I engage with fiction near-daily because of it. How do I reconsile with that and my desire to avoid daydreaming too much? I don't know yet. I'm working on it.

That's it for my thoughts. ... for now? I might add onto this thread in the future.
Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts about these topics, I'd love to hear.

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