Holy Astral Planes, Batman! Otherkin and Soulbonders!

When I was six or so, I had this crazy obsession with fairies and the Disney version of Peter Pan. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, my inner child can now curl up in a corner with the knowledge that yes, Virginia, there are fairies out there who've been reincarnated as human folk, but they've lost all their magical fairy powers are sadly limited to bitching on Internet forums and shelling out $50 for plastic fairy wings and a ticket to the Pennsylvania Rennaissance Faire. Worse still is that there are people in their teens, twenties, or beyond who've taken role-playing to the point where they genuinely believe that they share the same soul as a character from a Japanese cartoon that was made in the mid-1990s.

This is the mad, mad world of otherkin.

If Internet communities were people, I'd imagine the otherkin community would be an energetic, overimaginative five-year-old who fingerpaints with great finesse while he proudly delcares that today he shall be a dragon. Or a tank engine. Or Sephiroth. I can understand believing in reincarnation, believing in Osiris or Apollo, or even believing that there may be a shred of truth in the idea of pantheistic solipsism, but it takes something special to believe that you share some kind of astral bond with a video game character just because you really, really like him.

There are Snape's Wives, who are sort of like the fangirls on Marry Your Favorite Character except they're dead serious. There's the infamous FFVII House, which had a scary, cult-like obsession with RPing characters from Final Fantasy VII, even though there's still some debate over how accurate the accounts on the site really are-- not that it isn't still fecking creepy.

Right now I've found my new favorite piece of wank thanks to sf_drama, in has kindly provided an account of an Otakukin and Otherkin butting heads and deciding which fictional characters are more acceptable to pretend to be. Overlord_mordax provides this lulzy explanation:

Quote :

1. I do not need to justify something that I experience subjectively. That said, since you seem intent on 'enlightening' me, let me enlighten you. As I have SAID BEFORE and will KEEP SAYING we are NOT reincarnations of cartoon characters, we are people reincarnated from distant universes that have a greater or lesser resemblance to fictions that were written in this world. These universes were not 'written into being' by an author in our world, they existed before that, and the authors here, COINCIDENTALLY AND WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE OTHER UNIVERSES wrote fictions that resembled them. Yes I know what the chances of this are, yes they are astronomical by in an INFINITE space, IE the MULTIVERSE everything must happen, and so the probablility of anything, spread out over that multiverse is 1:1, or, certain. I''m sorry if you cannot follow the maths necessary to understand this.

...and yet somehow, between her claims that she's the Digimon Kaizer and the assertion that all fictional universes are based on real ones by sheer coincidence, she still comes off as slightly more sane than the run-of-the-mill Otherkin she's arguing with.

Hahaha I wondered if you had seen that sf_drama post or not. I read all of that earlier today, and man was it great.

It's the same kind of stupidity you find in any subculture ('I R MOAR [whatever] TEHN U') but with two equally delusional people and ideas. Actually, the fact that that otherkin realised the belief was ridiculous and yet did nothing about it annoyed me. It's like, you know you're being stupid/childish/silly/crazy, but who cares 'cause it's so cool and makes you so special!

In any case, the whole otherkin/otakukin/soulbonding thing creeps me the hell out. Fantasy should not be taken so far as to excuse any kind of behaviour, especially behaviour that may harm someone else.

Mae Bedlam wrote:

Or a tank engine.

Please, please tell me there really is someone who believes themself to be a Thomas the Tank Engine character. That would just be way too amazing.

Ah yes, I remember Crazy Jen and Hojo. Now to read the story again and feel bad for laughing.

I can sort of understand where the otakukin are coming from with their "fiction is REAL" thing. If there's truely an infinite amount of alternate universes, then anything anyone can imagine has likely happened in some other universe.

But if anything anyone can imagine has happened in some other universe, and there is such a thing as reincarnation, and it happens across universes, what makes you think you're the reincarnation of Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and not Prince Zuko the insectoid pop singer who was marooned in the wilderness for two years and survived by eating his dead backup singers and three of ihs legs?

Violet wrote:

But if anything anyone can imagine has happened in some other universe, and there is such a thing as reincarnation, and it happens across universes, what makes you think you're the reincarnation of Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and not Prince Zuko the insectoid pop singer who was marooned in the wilderness for two years and survived by eating his dead backup singers and three of ihs legs?

Across an infinite number of universes, you are both and neither and all three (because there will exist a universe wherein that last option actually makes sense).

I know Delcat was a close friend with one of the girls involved in the whole Final Fantasy VII House debacle. According to her, the details of what happened are accurate.

I tend to steer clear of people like this, because they make me nervous. I think they suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome-which is cute (and to be expected) when you're four or five, but tends to be less cute when you're in your 40s and truly believe you're soul-bonded to a fictional character on the astral plane.

Quote :

I know Delcat was a close friend with one of the
girls involved in the whole Final Fantasy VII House debacle. According
to her, the details of what happened are accurate.

I think I've read of that Hojo dude, but never got the details. Can anyone give me the Cliff Notes version of the story?

Ceres wrote:

Quote :

I know Delcat was a close friend with one of the
girls involved in the whole Final Fantasy VII House debacle. According
to her, the details of what happened are accurate.

I think I've read of that Hojo dude, but never got the details. Can anyone give me the Cliff Notes version of the story?

Typical small time cult. A pyramidal hierarchy structure recruits easily preyable people, then slowly work their warped logic into them eventually enough to impose some sort of 'control' over the individual(s). Then abuse it for personal gain. Sometimes it's with a religious theme, in this case it's Final Fantasy VII themed.

The three on top were making other people work for them, bringing in money so they can do whatever the shit they want and complaining when it wasn't enough. Making the other people clean up after their shit, of which they made a lot of, etc. That kind of thing.

But under the guise of FF7 soulbonding.

Somewhere on the net there's a blog of one of the persons involved in the Hojo thing, detailing what happened to them in particular. I don't have it though, sadly.

I was there. That's not how it went down.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I've heard both "dude, that's not how it happened" and "dude, that's totally what happened," so... yeah.

Hoooooly crap, that's really creepy. I wasn't there for it, so the link Alana provided is sort of explanatory.

Also, "marrying Snape on the Astral Plane" gets a mention simply for being so batshit that it crosses over into awesome.

I love how they try to take the idea of a multiverse and use it to say that every work of fiction has a "real-life" analog, somewhere.

The basic principles of reality still remain constant, Dumb-asses. No "fruit" is going to convert your body into a purely elastic substance ala Luffy of One Piece, and waving sticks of wood with pony pubes inside while chanting pseudo-Latin gobbelygook will never result in anything more than looking ridiculous.

(& but love, I mean "it makes me want to strangle them with their own astral cords" [or intestines, which ever is more handy])

Rabid Badger wrote:

I know Delcat was a close friend with one of the girls involved in the whole Final Fantasy VII House debacle. According to her, the details of what happened are accurate.

Let me quantify that real quick to avoid confusion: I was not and am not a close friend of the site webmistress, although she's cool and I wouldn't mind being friends with her. I am friends with Zarla, who is and was close friends with the webmistress and was involved firsthand, albeit only briefly. However, I was not friends with her at the time of the incident. ...that sounds like something a gradeschooler would say about someone who pissed them off, let me quantify further: I was not friends with Zarla at the time of the incident, because I did not know she existed and not because she said I was a fatty behind my back OMG.

There. Now that the facts are down, I will reiterate: I have known Zarla a long time (although not that long, as aforementioned), and I have every reason to believe her account is accurate and every reason to take her word that the webmistress' is as well. Little things may well have been embellished, because that's how memory works, but I have no doubt in my mind that scary shit went down in that house and people were victimized.

Seriously, this fandom is nucking futs. Read the fics, then ask yourself in your heart of hearts: Do I really believe that FFVII fans can't be that crazy?


As a side note, I, too, am soul-bonded with a video game character.

Specifically, a Z-block from Tetris.

I just don't fit in :<

unskilled78 wrote:

The basic principles of reality still remain constant, Dumb-asses. No "fruit" is going to convert your body into a purely elastic substance ala Luffy of One Piece, and waving sticks of wood with pony pubes inside while chanting pseudo-Latin gobbelygook will never result in anything more than looking ridiculous.

No, Muffin, you don't understand. The basic laws of nature hold throughout our universe. That means no fruit will convert anyone into an elastic substance (wtf you talking about??) on any planet we could get to via ship or star gate. But we are talking about multiverses here, and there's no reason to believe that other universes will have the same laws of nature as ours.

Del- yeah, I asked Zarla about it once, and yeah, I'm inclined to believe her.

I, however, am soulbonded to the | block and am therefore Better Than You.

Also I'm totes soulbonded to Pyramidhead. And the mannequin he raped to death. At the same time.

Del: Sorry for the confusion. I didn't want to mention names, since I didn't know how Zarla would feel about people knowing about her involvement.

Also, does anyone know where the whole soulbonding thing started? I'd like to blame it on HP fandom, but something tells me it existed before that, probably as an offshoot of the 'soul mates' concept teenagers seem so fond of (because we all know that you can only love one person in your lifetime)

... I knew Zar had fallen outta FFVII fandom due to crazies, but I didn't know she was related to that, even tangentally. :O

Rabid Badger wrote:

Also, does anyone know where the whole soulbonding thing started? I'd like to blame it on HP fandom, but something tells me it existed before that, probably as an offshoot of the 'soul mates' concept teenagers seem so fond of (because we all know that you can only love one person in your lifetime)

Let's take a look shall we?

Well, here is the first thing I found, which attributes it to a more passive definition in which fictional character just seem to talk in your head from someone's website way back in 2001. According to it, it spirals out of control as other people on the internets get more inventive with it.

Verandering wrote:

Rabid Badger wrote:

Also, does anyone know where the whole soulbonding thing started? I'd like to blame it on HP fandom, but something tells me it existed before that, probably as an offshoot of the 'soul mates' concept teenagers seem so fond of (because we all know that you can only love one person in your lifetime)

Let's take a look shall we?

Well, here is the first thing I found, which attributes it to a more passive definition in which fictional character just seem to talk in your head from someone's website way back in 2001. According to it, it spirals out of control as other people on the internets get more inventive with it.

So the original idea wasn't so much communicating with an actual person from another dimension as how I've always described my writing: There are characters in my head telling me stories. Which I never considered odd, possibly because I started writing at a pretty young age (12), and likely because it was years before I got online and discovered other writers who felt the same. I always just assumed it was something peculiar to me. Like slash, which I wrote for years, but didn't discover had an actual name till I was close to 30.

And I actually remember Mooncalf. She was a writer in the first fandom I got into online once I got access to the internet.

Rabid Badger wrote:

Del: Sorry for the confusion. I didn't want to mention names, since I didn't know how Zarla would feel about people knowing about her involvement.

Frankly, I'm amazed you remember it at all, so no worries XD Yeah, Zar's open about it. She still makes crazy lesbian otherkin jokes sometimes.

SirDixonDongs wrote:

Also I'm totes soulbonded to Pyramidhead. And the mannequin he raped to death. At the same time.

:pyramid: <---NYEEAH THIS IS YOU

Speaking of which, I love it when otherkin claim to be the reincarnations of not only more than one person, but more than one person that was canonically alive at the same time. One of the journal entires scraped up from Jenny-nova had her claiming to be Alucard AND Integral AND Maxwell from Hellsing. How the hell does that even work? Do the souls just kind of trickle down over the years until they pool into one big soul? Wait, does Alucard even HAVE a soul? He's a fucking vampire!

Alana wrote:

... I knew Zar had fallen outta FFVII fandom due to crazies, but I didn't know she was related to that, even tangentally. :O

Those are the crazies in question, yes. Long story short, she went over to spend a weekend with Soshi (the webmistress/Zarla's friend) while they were living together and the otakukin bullied her into being their "Vincent" and pulled some other creepy and really unforgivable shit on her. She's since said in a journal entry that while she still loves FFVII, they really ruined Vincent for her. Utter bastards. Oh, and they did their thing of asking for a lot of little things so the person buying them wouldn't notice how much they were spending, and Zarla is so nice that she ended up sinking all kinds of money on them. Bitches.

So, yeah. A lot of crazy goin' down there. Always reminds me of Nekobe the Lion (the one at the very bottom is the best example). The Internet is really just one biiiiig insanity distiller, isn't it?

Oh jesus, I read all of the bottom one on Nekobe. Ugh, just ugh.

Verandering wrote:

Oh jesus, I read all of the bottom one on Nekobe. Ugh, just ugh.

Yeah, just a weeee bit crazy. O.O

grmblfjx wrote:

But we are talking about multiverses here, and there's no reason to believe that other universes will have the same laws of nature as ours.

Well, yes and no. The most common multiverse theory is the multiple-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and in _that_ setup, all the other universes are required to have the same fundamental laws of physics as ours (though you get messiness when early-universe cosmology gets involved).

On the other hand, there are plenty of other multiverse hypotheses[1] which don't require that, but there's even less empirical and mathematical support for them than there is for the multiple-worlds interpretation. Which is saying something. There is _no_ scientific support for the idea that "any universe which can be imagined must exist", except maybe in the fevered imaginings of Deepak Chopra.

[1] I use "hypotheses" because I can't think of a suitably weak word. "Vague ideas", maybe?