Warning: you are about witness an account of a niche internet phenomenon written by a "Tumbl-er user" proceed with caution"

Yes, I'm an adult with a full-time job, yes I have a kinlist, we exist. For those who don't know what kinning is: to keep a long story short it is an internet phenomenon that seemed to start in the early 2010s as "Otherkin". Otherkins generally are people who believe their soul is not necessarily human, but that of a concept, an animal, or mythological or fictional being. It's a vague and esoteric phenomenon so it differs depending on the person but that was the jist of it. There was a pretty extensive kinnie community on tumblr in the early-mid 2010s and as more people found out about it, and especially the concept of kinning fictional characters, it morphed into something a little different. Nowadays if you hear someone refer to "kinning" they are likely referring to the modern definition in which someone relates to a fictional character strongly enough to consider it a part of their identity. Putting up cool posters in the bedroom that is their Self, so to speak. It seems to stick a lot with some transgender and neurodivergent people, for example.

That is how I view kinning for the most part. I joined tumblr in 2017 and only learned about kinning sometime a few years later so I never really was part of any kinning communities on the site and only picked up on it from fellow users who had these "kinlists" on their blogs. I've always been especially noncommital about kinning in general, it just seems like a novel concept and it's fun discovering and collecting new characters that you really relate to, enough that you see a small part of yourself in them.. does that make sense? Whatever, look at my kinlist lest you be ambushed by beasts

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I never was really an avid Simpsons viewer, I owned the DVD for The Simpsons Movie as a kid and of course I watched that a bunch of times because that's what you do as a kid, but I never considered myself a fan, explicitly. I feel like I osmosed the show about as well as any other North American with a television set in the home but I dunno I guess this show kind of went past me. Until sometime around 2021, where I found the show while browsing my cousin's Disney+ account and gave it a watch since I was in a serious rut when it came to television then. I positively fell in love with the show and its witty writing and basically kept watching it until it "got bad" which to me was sometime around season 10 iirc.

That first watch is also where I found myself adoring Patty and Selma, two side characters on the show. They are the two most immediate relatives to the Simpsons family and thus had plenty of screentime for me to fall in love with them. They're very acerbic, melancholic, witty characters, they're usually considered very dull or draining by other characters and are delightfully cruel to Homer. They're absolute haters and are dual income, childless spinsters, which Patty in particular embraces (at least before her re-characterization as a lesbian who desires a romantic partnership like Selma does, just for the same sex instead. That's neither here nor there, though). What can I say they're just so cool...

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My og kin Alexandrite, baby!! Steven Universe was probably one of my favorite cartoons during my teen years, and Alexandrite and the class of character she belongs to always belonged in a special place in my heart. Steven Universe of course had a story and cast that captivated me but I always especially loved the fusion gems- fusions of multiple characters and the physical embodiment of their relationship, as you may guess. Alexandrite is one such fusion, she's made up of the three main gem characters and is a clumsy, unstable beast of a character. Alexandrite's personality in the first place is hard to determine- she consists of three (later revealed to be four) personalities that tend to clash with each other. She usually only appears in high stakes battles where all of her components are focused on a single goal because the amount of personalities that builds her means she's prone to defusing and falling apart at the smallest provocation.

However, her debut episode wasn't about Alexandrite being formed to take down a major threat or the antagonist of an arc, or anything. Steven is attending a dinner party to get to know one of his friend's parents, who are under the assumption he is in a nuclear family. Long story short, the gems who care for Steven fuse to form Alexandrite, to pose as his mother. She awkwardly stumbles through the dinner party and is thwarted by a piece of shrimp (you see, one of her components loves shrimp, while another is disgusted by any and all human food). Her debut episode is unique compared to that of other fusion gems, who usually form spontaneously during heated fight scenes. I discovered kinning while I was in high school, and in hindsight it only seems obvious that I would relate to a tall, shambling character who at times is a dissonent mixture of personalities barely held together by tape. I'm sure all high school students have felt like that at some point, kinning Alexandrite only makes sense

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It's true, I am a big Dorothy fan... Like a lot of other lgbt+ people I've had one or two watches of complete series of The Golden Girls, but I came out of it loving Dorothy the most, opposed to Blanche or Rose who seem to be particularly popular amongst watchers. I like her for a lot of the same reasons as Patty and Selma, although there are some differences between the two. Yes, Dorothy is a very sardonic character and is quite sarcastic, though she's generally a very sharp character and, unlike Patty and Selma, bitterly divorced. The Golden Girls is a sitcom and in such shows I think it's pretty common for people to watch one and find themselves relating heavily to one member of the cast, at least when watching the good ones. Dorothy just happened to be the character for me. She specializes in dry, witty humor and the very special episodes she leads in give her additional depth by showing her predesposition to suffer from bouts of chronic illness and ennui, even if such characterizations basically last one episode each.

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Idk they're just really cool. The Great Fairies are incredibly camp and they're overall pretty fun side characters in Breath of the Wild. However it wasn't until the musou side-game, Age of Calamity, where I really became enamoured with the Great Fairies. There they all have a playable role, effectively sharing one character slot and depending on which attacks you may use, a different fairy will pop out of their fountain for you to play as. They have incredibly expressive animations and dialogue in Age of Calamity and even though they have almost 0 presence in the story (being one of a few optional unlockable characters in the game) their big personality in-game was enough to enamour me and consider them for my kinlist.

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One of the earliest television characters I found myself really relating to, and it only grew stronger as I aged. Phineas and Ferb was one of the first tv shows I really fell in love with as a kid, and Candace as the twitchy eldest sibling always trying to "bust" her younger siblings, I naturally related to her. Then sometime when I was in high school I decided to rewatch the show (I think maybe Candace Across the Universe had just been revealed, or maybe I just picked it up again because I realized I never watched the finale) and now approximately Candace's age I really related to her. It wasn't until that rewatc in high school I realized just how neurotic and anxious Candace is all the time. She's very high strung and is as prone to cackling evilly when things to her way as she is crying in response to the most minor inconvenience. All that to say, very relateable.

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Is it possible to kin a character who never appears on-screen or says anything, thus arguably not fitting the definition of "character?" Maris is here so I guess it is. She is the wife of Niles Crane on the 90s sitcom Frasier, though by season 3 or 4 they divorce. She fits the trope of the "unseen" character in sitcoms. She is always just off-screen, and most of what she does or says is relayed to us by other characters after the fact. She "appears" on-screen twice, both as a shadowed silhouette and totally mute. Despite her non-presence in the show, we know a lot about her. She's very neurotic and waifish, and her marriage with Niles was described as incredibly frigid.
We know a few tantalizing bits of gossip about her- she has a sizeable family fortune she lives off of, she sleeps in and spends most of her time within a sensory deprivation tank, many aspects of the outside world and other humans disgust and terrify her. Most info about her is delivered in non-sequitors, and over the course of the series Niles, and the few other characters who have met Maris for themselves, paint an incredibly vivid portrait of what she is like as a person and I think she rules tbqh...