[ SECRET POST #5918 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5918 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 36 secrets from Secret Submission Post #847.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not really embarrassed by people who do this, but I do worry that some need help they're not getting and that fandom can't provide because it's a hobby, not therapy overseen by trained professionals.

I always end up hoping it's just a coping mechanism they can leave behind when their situation improves and not, idk, something they really believe.

[(Anonymous)]

*shrugs* From what I've seen, it seems more functional than joining a religion, and less likely to get vulnerable people sexually abused. And IMO, it's thoroughly in the category of "believe what you like about the afterlife."

I have no actual idea where people get their creativity from, let alone where they are when they're not alive. For all I know, the locus for both of these things might overlap.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT--Idk, there's at least a couple examples of this turning into cult shit and I think a couple murders as a result? Iirc there was at least one involving Final Fantasy and one involving Harry Potter.

I was raised areligious and ended up an atheist, and from outside, religion looks like it can provide community support for people but sometimes end up facilitating abuse, just like fandom and rl. A lot of my childhood was weird and cult adjacent and abusive without ever involving religion at all, and I had friends and family whose abuse was definitely enabled by religion.

The only stuff I've heard about communities of otherkin is that they tend to go down the abusive shitter real fast, and of the individual otherkin I've known enough to speak to, a higher than average number of otherkin compared to the general population or even people in fandom are abuse survivors, currently living with abuse, and/or have psych issues they need help with.

For myself, while I wish I could believe in an afterlife or that creativity had a source outside the adaptability of our own brains, I don't think there's any gods or spiritual force, or past lives, fictional, in alternate universes, or otherwise, involved.

And if past life stuff was real I'd guess most people spend way more lives as bugs, bacteria, groundhogs, elephants, trees, random non famous people, etc, than as Elizabeth 1 (or John Wick or Sophie Hatter or Wonder Woman, if we throw fictional characters in.)

And that's before the considering the headache of fictionalized real people, like the main characters of OFMD or whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT - as someone who has been abused in a way that originally stemmed from kin-type groups, and whose friends have been drawn into cults based in similar ideas, thank you for this. It can definitely, easily, turn into cult-shit, because it begins from a place of altered thinking/disconnect from others and reality.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I listen to vague allegations like "cult shit" and "murders" from megafandoms about as skeptically as I would treat any other claim about fandom being responsible for deaths. With no offense meant, but I've been in fandom long enough to run into many spurious claims of that sort.

Also, I've interacted with a lot of people who are older and younger than me via fandom, and been dismayed at how many of them have abuse histories. But my impression is that most of the people I meet in other contexts are guarding their secrets more closely: not that they're less likely to have been abused.

I can well believe what you're saying about otherkin communities, because they are still a particular variety of small and easily manipulated that repels most of the people who would otherwise be interested in joining them. That is, most of the otherkin I know who aren't dying for community look at what's available and don't engage. So far, I've met roleplayers, fic writers, cosplayers, theater people, musicians, editors, and longtime members of Tumblr, LJ, and Dreamwidth who make their social connections outside of the otherkin scene simply because the scene has nothing to offer them. But this is a pattern I've encountered in many marginal communities.

Diane Vera had this to say in relation to satanism in 2005, and I think she summed up the point well:

"Other subcultures, including the gay community and the Pagan community, have gone through an underground sleaze phase too. Back in the 1950's, the gay community consisted of a bunch of sleazy Mafia-run bars. In the 1960's and early 1970's, the Pagan community was a thoroughly unpleasant scene, dominated by obnoxious, endlessly-bickering, ego-driven leaders and their ass-kissing followers […] There were also quite a few predatory leaders who, for example, expected their followers to have sex with them as part of initiation or what not.

The underground sleaze phase is probably characteristic of all or most small but notorious, popularly-hated subcultures below a certain critical size. As long as the subculture is small and hard to find, seekers will be desperate for information and contacts. And, wherever there are desperate people, there will be folks happy to take advantage of their desperation.

To outgrow the underground sleaze phase, the main thing a subculture needs is simply to grow. Once there are enough easily-found groups around that people have a real choice, [… that] will raise the standards for the behavior and qualifications of leaders."

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Split this into two posts, with general fictionkin stuff above and personal stuff here. I'm a third-generation atheist, and my impressions of what can exist have changed over time. I've never had any reason to take the monotheistic notion of god seriously, but personal experiences with close relatives have led me to question the premise that being dead is synonymous with being gone. This was somewhat disconcerting for me because I was at peace with the premise that they and I would disappear. But I don't ignore evidence just because I have a coherent worldview that it contradicts. (At the same time, I don't expect anyone else to believe this is or isn't a thing based on events I know I didn't make up, but I have no way of proving actually happened.) This has put me in the position of having exactly the same reputation I always had, in relation to Christians (who are about as uncomfortable with people believing their continued existence doesn't depend on a god as they are with people believing there is nothing to dread or look forward to after death), but less in common with the sorts of atheists that assert anything science hasn't already explained can't possibly exist.

What 'kin are asserting, if you take the premise seriously, is that intelligent life circulates between a space where we can imagine things that we know don't exist (right now), and being embodied. And given that I'm more inclined to see the body as a conduit more than a pure generator, that doesn't seem especially kooky to me. It's not relevant to what I think about myself, but I don't laugh at the possibility. Your mileage will vary, of course.