The Dragonheart Collective’s Testimony on the KFF
Phenomenon
With input from the Otherconnect Discord
Intro:
Hi! We are The Dragonheart Collective, and we have been lurking in ‘kin spaces for over a
decade as of writing this. Important to this particular essay is that we have also been in
fandom spaces for a few years longer than that. We have watched Some Shit go down, both
live, and through trawling archives of events. This, somehow, makes us a primary source for
some of this community’s history.
We were there when and roughly where KFF started popping up and really becoming a thing,
now we know maybe a lot of the people reading this might not know what a KFF really is, why
they are a thing, and the history of the term and culture, so we have made this testimony so
people can cite it or whathaveyou.
We have done our best to find external sources for the timeline and the things we are stating,
but much has been lost to link rot and only exists in the memories of us older fictionkin who
saw it play out, so a fair amount of this is going to have to be us as the primary source- sorry!
We also want to thank the folks in the Otherconnect Discord for feedback and helping us
ensure relative accuracy with this document.
When citing us: Consider our system name 'The Dragonheart Collective' as a name and
titles for a singlet, and our casual system name, which may be written as 'Dragon' or
'Dragons' as a last name. When you would cite 'Sir John Doe' as 'Doe' in a work, cite us as
'Dragons'.
Setting The Stage:
Its around 2013-2014, and the website is Tumblr. Tumblr back then had the ‘tagged’ page for
searches as default- meaning only things tagged in the first few tags of a post made it into the
standard search for content. This allowed for fandom and fictionkin to stay very separate, and
so long as people minded their Tumblr tagging manners, fandom and fictionkin would not
meet.
However because of the way information spreads on the site and how all of one’s interests
end up in the feed of their followers, topics very far removed from one's social sphere could
easily end up on one's dash.
As this window into a particular topic is intended for an audience familiar with it, it may not
give an accurate look into the topic and give newcomers the wrong idea. Misinformation
spreads quickly, and because of the ‘No questions! Listen to minorities!’ social justice
atmosphere, anything that sounds ‘social justice-ey’ enough is often unthinkingly reblogged
without examination or fact checking.
Enter YandereBitchClub.
YandereBitchClub:
Around 2014-2015, YandereBitchClub (YBC) entered the the tumblr fictionkin scene.
In short; YBC was an infamous drama-causing kinblog that was revealed after a period of
time to be a few cis women racefaking and pretending to be trans women for social justice
clout- and it WAS confirmed they were faking, not just hearsay.
They may have also been faking DID, but that wasn't proven the way the other two were (by
photo evidence and outright admission) as far as we can tell by what is left of the callouts. A
lot of evidence on what they did got erased by link rot and archival efforts for the drama were
sparse.
YBC wanted to be the specialist most valid fictionkin, they wanted to narrow down competition
from others with their kintypes and all the Social Justice Clout that tumblr’s leftist scene ran
on. So then they decided to assert that you were racist if you had a kintype 'outside your
race'. Which sounds like it checks out until you realize that it implies animals have more in
common with you than people outside your race which is... Not The Greatest Implication.
People pushed back against this with 'wtf I didn't choose to be like this', to which YBC said
'yes you did, kintypes are a choice, if you try to argue then you are a racist or excusing
racists' because that was the only way to keep their argument.
Before around this point in time, it was generally very understood that kintypes were integral
to the self, and therefore were some level of Serious Business. ‘Choice’ wasn't in the eyeview
of the community, but it was a common narrative in the community that many were very much
not able to stop being ‘kin even if they wanted to- to the point that efforts to suppress it
caused genuine distress. They simply *were* their kintypes whether they wanted to be or not,
often for spiritual reasons (particularly fictionkin) but not always.
Because so many people new to the community through Tumblr weren’t getting proper FAQs
and resources, the definition, weight, and history of the term were not carried over as well.
This meant people often didn't really understand what ‘kin were before they started talking
about them.
Common misconceptions were ‘those bloggers who were really into some animal to extreme
furry degrees’ or ‘those bloggers with an anime name and avatar who base their identity
around that character they like’. Which is not quite what being ‘kin is.
People would talk about ‘kin while being a bit confused on what it is exactly, then their
followers would get a more misinformed version of the information like a game of telephone.
Because of the aforementioned kneejerk believing whatever people claim is racist as racist,
the lack of fact checking, and the lack of knowledge of otherkin and fictionkin and our history,
YBC convinced a lot of people that ‘kin were both always voluntary and that it was a social
justice statement before they deactivated. Not even their callout posts for being caught
racefaking could fix the damage.
Many people who did know about otherkin and fictionkin and their history properly were also
swayed by YBC because the kneejerk atmosphere of believing whatever was reblogged to
your dash. They had to reconcile their desire to look Unproblematic with their knowledge of
the community, and the Unproblematic won out. Honestly we can’t blame them much- getting
harassed on the internet is traumatizing and there was a very real threat of that.
This notion that your kintypes had to match you 1:1 for all identities was so bad at one point
that if you had a spiritual kintype and they were a nonhuman fictional character that people
liked to headcanon as 'POC coded' and you didn't have 'POC' in your bio you were risking
getting harassed. You'd even get mobbed for being bisexual if your kintype was
headcanoned as a lesbian, as they swiftly branched out from ‘kin outside your race’ to ‘kin
outside of ANY of your experiences’- the extent of which was decided at random.
Before this point the tags were vibrant- filled with people even! People posted a wide variety
of material too, not just graphics requests and the occasional ‘like this post if you are kin so I
can follow’ post. There were lots of essays, shitposts, fic and art from a ‘kin perspective that
they didn’t want in the fandom tag, exomemory dumps, and much more. It wasn't just a few
common posters either, there were a LOT of frequent posters.
The community was so vibrant certain sources had their own individual canon-centric
fictionkin tags that were ALSO highly active.
After YBC's ideas started to spread, activity started dropping off. People were too afraid to
post anymore. They were being intentionally pushed out of the community they had always
been in- the community they built FOR people like them.
Some stayed quiet out of fear of harassment and just stopped posting much, but many others
deleted their kin sideblogs and left due to that fear. The community dwindled rapidly.
This is incidentally why a lot of the people who remember being in ‘kin spaces back around
this time were or still are so against ‘choicekin’ (ie- the notion that someone has an element of
choice in their kintypes). The overt push of them was with the idea that this was ONLY a
choice, and they leaned hard in the other direction to compensate to try to fight the people
trying to kick them off the label. It doesn't excuse the elitism towards those for whom it was
some level of voluntary to become ‘kin, but it e xplains why some cling to it.
The community's trends, odd taboos, and hangups are shaped by the collective trauma
of those who lived through the harassment and fear of the community's history, and
this is very much one of them.
Nowadays, the fictionkin tags are incredibly sparse on tumblr, and worse everywhere else.
They are mostly filled with ‘stimboards’ and icon requests, some anon confession blog spam,
and then a handful of other people posting on occasion. Tumblr's fictionkin spares are starting
to bounce back from a few years ago, but its still desolate compared to what it was.
YBC’s rhetoric actively excluded people from the community that they built by design. It is this
rhetoric upon which the foundations for what a KFF is was born.
Copingkin
The trend of people saying they were 'kin to cope' also started happening around this time.
YBC's misinformation caused a lot of people to start saying they 'kinned to cope' to try to
reconcile their experiences with the 'kin outside your privilege' assertions in an effort to avoid
harassment. Many people who said they 'kinned to cope' would additionally claim otherkin
were ableist for correcting them on the definition of otherkin being identifying as something on
an integral level.
Many copingkin created a label called 'IDs', which were characters one identified strongly as
because they had a mistaken idea of what being fictionkind meant. 'ID' was the precursor to
'IRLs', and in fact even this early you would find people who would say they were 'not just kin
they were this character IRL' as to why they labeled that character as their 'ID'.
The pre-copinglinkers (those that assume a voluntary identity as something to cope) were
part of this group too, and would later end up splitting off into their own community following
Who-is-page's coining post for the word in 2015. There were also a few confused
psychological otherkin who didn't have the full context for the discourse that identified this
way when they were fully covered under the actual definition.
Copingkin are also part of why there are so many older fictionkin who are aggressively
spiritual elitist- they swung hard in the opposite direction of the 'kin to cope' crowd as a
defense. Again, it doesn't excuse the elitism towards those with psychological origin, but it
explains it.
Fandom vs Fictionkind
Tumblr had a nice but fragile equilibrium. Then everything changed when ‘search’ became the
default tag search and not ‘tagged’. Search caught every post that had a word mentioned in it,
tagged didn’t.
Fictionkin would have eventually come to the attention of the wider fandom spaces of tumblr
regardless- but it would likely have been less explosive had this change not occurred.
Search launched all the kinposting right into the eye of fandom. People who did not
understand would see it, get the wrong idea, and become upset. Fictionkin venting about
finding a ship triggery and the shippers of it uncomfortable because they are being shipped
with their in-canon abuser suddenly were now in that ship’s ‘space’ and coming off like a bad
etiquette roleplayer or someone trying to police fandom with personal attacks.
It took quite a bit for people to adjust to censoring the words of things you don't want to show
up in search (the true origin of censoring like th//!s) and in that adjustment period a LOT of
drama was born.
To add to this- remember how fictionkind were not getting proper community history and
information about how to behave responsibly with their kintype?
Fictionkin (and fictives) in 2016 had a big habit of sending invasive, aggressive, no-
boundaries messages to fandom creators about their kintypes, often without specifying what
they actually were for the layman. As a community, we still have this problem, but it was
ESPECIALLY BAD then.
Fandom hated fictionkind for this. There is a reason so much fanart had ‘dont tag as
me/ID/kin’ in the description. There were just so many no-boundaries fictionfolk giving the
community a bad name in people's inboxes and on their posts. It was very much not without
reason that fictionfolk were disliked.
People opinions are formed by what they have seen, and what they had seen was terrible
entitled behavior from weird children who in their eyes, can't seem to tell the play pretend
fictional characters they are roleplaying as from their personal reality.
That's not what fictionkin is, but that doesn't matter when so many fandom folks either have
gotten wacked out entitled messages in their inbox or constant backhanded compliments on
their art like ‘I didn't look like this but they drew me so cool’ or were following someone who
had. Its what it looks like when that is your only exposure to the subculture.
Because of this distaste, snappy posts deriding kin became staple fandom jokes in places. As
what ‘kin’ meant was further distorted, some fandommers got the bright idea to ‘reclaim it’
from us freaks to mean liking and relating to a character.
This, taken with YBCs popular rhetoric that being fictionkind was always a choice and a social
justice praxis of identification being popular at the time, ended up with fandom trying to push
fictionkin off the word ‘kin’ because it was snappy and they wanted it to describe characters
they projected on.
They had ‘stan’ (which also doesn't mean what much of modern fandom thinks it means- it
means ‘stalker fan’ and is a bad thing actually), but stan didn't have the same connotations of
relation and projection- only adoration.
The exact origins of the word 'kinnie' are a bit murky and there are multiple different claimed
origins. The most likely one is that a group of otherkin friends used it as a joke for themselves
and said it while trolling an antikin discord server and it caught on in antikin spaces from
there. However, a 4chan psyop to 'make up a slur' for their parody-troll blogs to be mad about
and an anon ask to an antikin blog are also claimed origins.
Due to link rot, its difficult to prove exactly where it came from beyond self-reporting, and we
don't remember personally very much, just that we suddenly started seeing antikin using it a
lot one day.
Whatever the origin, its an anti-otherkin term that was used mostly by anti-otherkin to
infantilize otherkin before KFF 'reclaimed' the insult. 'Kinnie' is not actually reclaimed by the
otherkin community- KFF simply chose an insult towards our community to call themselves
while stealing our words.
They then proceeded to assert that kin was ONLY for fun, was ONLY for identifying
with/relating to, and ONLY a choice. It was a silly little badge for them to say they liked a
character and related to them, like a personality quiz result but with a snappy name. They
hated us enough they didn't care it was taking our words, they wanted the shiny word and
who cares what the crazy freaks thought, in their eyes.
Enter the phrase ‘kin for fun’.
The birth of the term ‘KFF’
KFF, or ‘Kin for fun’ is a term for those who claim that ‘kin is only for fun and a choice and
means identify with/relate to instead of ‘identify AS’ and the culture the people who said this
built on their stolen word.
Ie- The group of people above and the ensuing culture they created built on top of
misinformation, a stolen word, and the harassment of fictionfolk.
The term is one that the KFF chose for themselves after a fashion, as they claimed they
‘kinned for fun’ rather than like all us ‘serious otherkin freaks’.
It was not the otherkind community who came up with the term in the first place, we just
started abbreviating it because it was clunky to type otherwise.
KFF is a word for people who are being revisionist about our history and our words, who are
trying to push those who have always been in the community out, and in the face of evidence
will often double down and attack those who use fictionkin by its actual definition- usually in
ableist, anti-spiritual, or saneist ways.
The word ‘delusional attachment’ was in recent years aggressively pushed on actual otherkin
and fictionkin to further their attempts at stealing our word- doing damage to both psychosis
communities(as it spreads misinformation about what a delusion is) and ‘kin communities
alike.
People started using the phrase/term KFF because they needed to talk about the people who
suddenly came in and started asserting a definition contrary to years and years of history,
who started trying to push out the people who built the community to make a pale mockery of
the community in its place.
They needed a word and well, the KFF chose the label themselves after a fashion.
Its a word that people who are not fictionkin and who were there back then often do not
understand the full gravity of- what these people did to our spaces and the aggressive
bullying and trolling people who claimed they ‘kinned for fun’ meted out to us.
People who weren't there often don't quite comprehend the damage they did to our spaces
and the damage they continue to do. The aggressive gatekeeping and bullying they do to us
freaks because they want to continue to steal and ‘normie-fy’ our word.
KFF reached critical mass and breached Tumblr containment to wider fandom culture, and
now many people who count as KFF (as they think kin means the above and has always
done so) are simply not aware of the history of the term and that it originally had a different
meaning.
KFF is NOT:
• A term for people who had an element of choice in the formation of their genuine
identity.
• A term for people who have fun with their identities but still genuinely identify as the
thing.
• A term for people who don't match the general definition perfectly but label their
personal experience as ‘kin anyway without forcing their personal understanding on
the community at large.
People sometimes use it in those ways, but that is not how its meant to be used.
Still don't understand why older fictionkin in particular don’t like these people?
Lets put it this way (and we are transgender so we may say this);
KFF are like if people started claiming that being transgender was ONLY dressing up like a
different gender and anyone who actually identified as a gender not of their birth were crazy
freaks who deserved harassment and that wasn’t what being transgender was.
Drag is clearly still a valid subculture, and we don't call drag and being transgender the same
thing for a reason. Yes obviously there is overlap and one can be in both groups, but they are
not the same thing and it does both a very grave disservice to call one experience by
the name of another. It causes harm to BOTH communities to call them the same.
The act of relating to and projecting on a character heavily for fun is not the problem at all.
The problem comes with the revisionism, harassment, and word stealing involved with the
culture of people who do this calling it kin.
Its not being ‘kin medicalists’ or ‘kin exclusionists’ as some distinctly poorly informed
individuals have claimed; that is a poor analogy to the situation. The KFF are the
gatekeepers here, not the other way around.
Words have meanings and the KFF are self-admittedly not part of the 'kin community and
self admittedly not identifying as the thing for anything other than as a temporary joke if they
do at all. Ergo- they are only stealing our word for their own purposes.
What is being medicalized here?
If anything certain strongly anti-KFF people are spiritualizing it instead of medicalizing it but
we digress.
They self-admittedly don't want to be part of the community, they just want to steal our word
for jokes and saying they relate to a character in a cute way.
Fictionkin are the first and foremost worst hurt party, and fictionkin needed to speak of how
their spaces were destroyed by these people, to have language to describe those who did this
and who are still (sometimes unknowingly) destroying it.
They are allowed to be upset at these people and not want them in their spaces for what they
have wrought. So in lieu of anything better to use, KFF became a thing.
It is not a perfect term, it is not terribly intuitive, it sounds like a different thing from what it
really is, and its truly too close to ‘fluffy’ for comfort, especially because people use it for
things that it is not sometimes. But it is the only term that is for this phenomenon of, for lack
of a better way to put it ‘kin appropriators’.
Which is… A term that could cause some controversy there.
While we would say that its easily arguable that the behavior of KFF counts as cultural
appropriation (a cultural group that is having their language misattributed and misused and
causes material harm to the group as a result- as subcultures are cultures), that term is
generally reserved for a flavor of racism instead and using it is harsh enough that it may
cause more problems then it solves.
Many people who fall under KFF nowadays don't even know the original source of the word
they are using. They are not to blame for this travesty, but they still contribute to it.
If you try to explain the history and actual definitions you get at best laughed at and told to
stop being so serious, at worst harassed with ableist, saneist, and anti-spiritual rhetoric in
most cases. They make it clear that as a group they don't want to listen.
The whole alterhuman community bears the scars of what they did (in the choice vs not a
choice kin discourse, the lean hard into spiritual, the increased standoffishness, etc), but for
fictionkin, its personal and why so many fictionkind are so snarly about KFF. It was our
spaces they destroyed first and foremost.
Arguably few groups have shaped otherkin and fictionkin spaces like KFF have. They
have done massive, possibly irreversible damage to the community, and especially the
fictionkind community and it cannot be denied, it should not be denied, and fictionkin are
allowed to be salty about it.
This is also why so many 'kin elitists believe the things they do. The hard overcorrections into
'its NEVER even slightly a choice and ALWAYS spiritual' are directly in response to these
events shredding the community to the point that people shut off all discussion remotely near
the topic in response.
Alternatives to ‘Kinnie’
There are several alternatives posed, they all have pros and cons, and unfortunately its the
KFF who have to choose to change. There is nothing we can truly do to make them stop
spreading misinformation.
If you are a KFF, please make that choice.
We know its hard to give up a fun snappy word, but please be aware of the history of that
word and the communities that it was taken from. Be aware of what was done to the
community, and is still being done to the community- the derision, the trolling, the bullying,
and the ableist, saneist, and anti-spiritual behavior.
If you don't want to, you still think its ok to use the word or support those who do, fine.
We can’t stop you, but be aware of what you are saying by making that choice, too.
Be aware that you are aligning yourself with a profoundly and often proudly saneist, ableist,
anti-spiritual, and cruel group that refuses to be respectful to the people they got their fun little
idea from. Be aware that what you are saying to fictionkind is that our history, our identity, and
our subculture does not matter in the face of your enjoyment of a snappy word.
Some proposed alternative terms:
• Stanning - In modern fandom use, it means the act of being very 'into' a character to a
strong degree.
◦ Pros: Its already in use and was popular once before for a similar concept to KFF
as well as being quite snappy.
◦ Cons: It doesn't mean what people think it means either. It means ‘stalker fan’ and
is a derisive term for use for aggressive boundary-crossing fans.
• Clicking - A click is a entity(such as a character or animal) that someone strongly
relates to. Carrd here: https://whatisclicking.carrd.co/
◦ Pros: Its not a misused term and is quite snappy and sounds similar.
◦ Cons: Its not already in popular use so it has a long way to go to replace 'kinnie'.
• Cirring - 'Character I relate (to)' abbreviated. Coining post here: https://incoherent-
introspection.tumblr.com/post/673296246269722624/the-kin-for-fun-post-from-a-kffer-
v2
◦ Pros: This term is from within the kff community, so its not people coining 'over' the
community. It may also be conjugated in similar ways.
◦ Cons: Its not already in popular use so it has a long way to go.
• Blorbo - In fandom use this is a character one is very obsessed with, and often
projects on (but not always).
◦ Pros: Its not a misused term and is already quite popular for a similar concept.
◦ Cons: It doesn't fit all the snappy ways some of the alternatives do in terms of
conjugation and has a wider berth of definition than kinnie has.
• Lith - A person who takes a large interest in or relates to an entity. Its not a super
serious term and may be done for coping or fun. Coining post here: https://rede-
legoshis-lynx.tumblr.com/post/679759506928959488/lith
◦ Pros: Its not a misused term, and has the same snappy monosyllable pattern and
conjugation abilities.
◦ Cons: Its not already in popular use so it has a long way to go.
• Constellic - A person who adopts an identity around an entity. The identity is not
always permanent, and may be adopted for fun or coping. Carrd here:
https://constelic.carrd.co/
◦ Pros: Its not a misused tern, and has the same monosylable pattern and
conjugation abilities.
◦ Cons: Its not already in popular use so it has a long way to go.
If something is an integral part of your identity and you identify with it but not as it, -hearted,
or sympath are available alterhuman terms.
Otherlinking is a thing too- wherein one intentionally crafts an identity AS something, often
‘to cope’ so the identity may also be called a copinglink of one desires.
Whatever the choice, we urge you to use an alternate term that more accurately describes
your situation and does not carry the baggage that using 'kin' in the KFF way does.
TL;DR:
KFF (‘Kin for fun’) is a term for those who claim that ‘kin is only for fun and a choice and
means identify with/relate to instead of ‘identify AS’ and the culture these people built on their
stolen word.
It is not meant to refer to those who genuinely identify as a nonhuman or fictional entity, and
its a misconception that this is the case. It is referring to a very specific community and
culture.
KFF beliefs originated from a combination of places, starting with a gatekeeping group of
people trying to redefine 'kin for their own ends, and moving to wildly aggressive ableist,
saneist, and anti-spiritual fandom folks who chose to steal our word because it sounded cool
while trying to shove us off of it. They started as a gatekeeping group, they were not being
gatekept.
The early KFF intentionally destroyed fictionkind spaces in particular and the effects of early
KFF rhetoric have deeply negatively effected how the alterhuman community engages with
things to this day. The entire community is built on that foundation of term stealing and
harassment, regardless of if individual KFF participate in the harassment.
This is why many older 'kin who were around then -particularly fictionkin- dislike KFF and
want them to stop calling their thing by our words.
To this day many KFF are often ableist, history revisionist, and hate actual 'kin. They do not
want to be apart of our community, they wants us out of theirs. Many KFF are not aware of
the real history of the word and their community or are not actively anti-kin, but that does not
mean that they are not contributing to the damage.
There are many alternate words that are available to use for them that sound similar and
suit their needs better without harming our community and we implore people to switch over
to another term if they use kin improperly.
External Sources:
YBC:
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DramaArchives/comments/6rid6e/yanderebitchclub_the_story
_of_a_bunch_of_bored/
• https://archive.ph/MYpVu
• https://archive.ph/0YZOU
'Kin outside your race' issue being a widespread thing:
• https://fictionkinfessions.tumblr.com/tagged/race%20ethnicity%20issue
Alternatives to 'Kinning':
• https://rentry.co/alternatestokinning
Copinglink coining post:
• https://who-is-page.tumblr.com/post/139871297049/clinkers-and-copinglink
One possible origin of KFF (there are several conflicting stories, this is one of
them):
• https://wirsindkrieg.tumblr.com/post/657170364381724672/kinnie-wasnt-based-on-a-
slur
The original home of this document is at https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/projects.html.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
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