One thing that is inevitable with all of these systems is that you’ll realize something that changes your perception of a certain system. This has happened to me several times with Kibbe: when I realized that face was more important than I previously thought, when I realized that I could be a Flamboyant Gamine even if I’m not shaped like Twiggy, etc.

Since I wrote my last post, I’ve been thinking about the issue of what Natural or blunt/soft yang really is. I think I may have figured it out.

Some people view the different Kibbe base types as essences, and you’re either the yin or yang version of this essence. I don’t think this is really the proper way to look at Kibbe. Perhaps the confusion comes from systems like Kitchener, who views people as being composed of percentages of essences.

In Kibbe, however, your essence is your type. The base types are more benchmarks for certain ways that yin and yang can fit together. After looking at the book some more, I realized that Natural is a representation of mostly yang with yin added to soften the edges a bit.

This chart is from the book. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Natural is 75% yang/25% yin. This means that natural features, like broad shoulders, can be seen as having this much yang and yin. The yin widens the features. So a wide natural nose is a like a Dramatic nose with the width that comes from yin. If we look at its opposite, Moderate Yin (D on the Kibbe quiz), which for some reason Kibbe didn’t give its own base type, it’s as if Romantic yin has been stretched out a bit and made sleeker.

So I have been wrong in the past when I have said that N blunt yang is another ingredient in Kibbe’s system. There are still just two influences: yin and yang. When we say that a Flamboyant Gamine can have blunt N yang, it means that they can have features that show this 75% yang/25% yin balance. While the pure yin influence shows in size, and the mix of D and R can be seen in their Gamine facial features, this N influence can also cause Flamboyant Gamines to be stockier, for instance, than our Dramatic counterparts.

I’m still not entirely sure why he got rid of the pure Natural type, though. I suppose that you’ll still have a more yang or a more yin impression of someone, and you’re just as unlikely to have everything about you be a perfect 75/25 mix as you are a perfect 50/50 mix.