With regard to this post a lot/most of our kintypes have very heavy exotrauma attached to them, and we spent years and years treating being fictionkin as something that was always serious business and mostly mired in pain and misery.

Engaging with our kintypes through fandom, and engaging with our relationships through the shipping community, over the past year or so has been very emotionally satisfying and healing for us.

It gives us a space to express our feelings and thoughts with a layer of remove. in some ways it makes it easier to see the joy and positive moments in lives that has a lot of negative and traumatic experiences. It makes it easier to share those negative experiences as well through a lens of fiction where their reception can be less judgemental.

Basically fandom and self shipping is a welcoming community that lets us engage with our kintypes in a positivity oriented way.