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lb_lee"A Robust Connection to Fiction" --from the community's subheading (2009, January 1).
The primary LJ comm for soulbonders; it was created on January 2, 2002 (soulbonding, 2009 January 1), and deleted between January 18, 2018 (soulbonding, 2019 January 18), and June 20, 2018 (Lee, 2018). Its archive appears to have no back-ups, except for a few stray archives in the Wayback Machine; it is lost.
Quick Details
Created by: ???
Time Active: 2002-2018
Location: Livejournal
Lockdown
Originally, the soulbonding comm was somewhat public. However, the comm was locked down in December 2007 after a college student under the name of myprotagonist stated that they had created " a term paper which focuses on soulbonding, otakukin, and the relationship of these two subcultures to Japanese popular culture and capitalism" (soulbonding, 2013 May 9). The comments are lost, but apparently things got heated enough that within the day, myprotagonist returned to post (after numerous edits) "I’ve looked into the legal and ethical issues surrounding the matter, and I see no reason to do anything more than remove usernames, so that is what I’ll do. Hopefully this will alleviate anyone's concerns" (ibid). This post is deleted sometime between 2009 (August 17) and 2013 (May 9).
A couple months after the fight, the community's profile page reads, "If you plan on using material discussed in this community for purposes of writing a research or school paper, we would ask you to introduce yourself and state that you are writing a paper, since not everybody is all right with having their words quoted to a wider forum than that of this community. It should go without saying that, should you use specific quotes, you should ask for permission from those you quote," (2008, February 5) seemingly in reference to this event. No public posts were ever made on the community after that.
This part obviously isn't going into the Wiki, but we actually happen to have the original IM conversation we had with myprotagonist when they approached us about their term paper! They were pretty straightforward:
Conversation with wondershocked at 2007-12-12 21:41:25 on (aim)
(21:41:25) Wondershocked: Hello
(21:41:32) LB: Hi there.
(21:41:32) Wondershocked logged in.
(21:41:49) LB: Who is this? The screen name's unfamiliar...
(21:42:31) Wondershocked: I got your screenname from LJ, I believe. from the soulbonding comm
(21:43:06) LB: Oh, okay! Which group are you? We haven't visited the SB comm in a while, I'm surprised you got it.
(21:43:44) Wondershocked: I'm not really in a group; there are only two of us - me (I'm Kira) and Tag.
(21:43:51) Wondershocked: I'm writing a... term paper...
(21:43:56) Wondershocked: ...on soulbonding
(21:44:09) LB: Oh, really? Interesting. What class, English?
(21:44:24) Wondershocked: Nope; Japanese Popular Culture.
(21:44:35) Wondershocked: Well, half of it is on soulbonding. The other half is on otakukin
(21:45:39) LB: Ohhh, okay. Kickass. I'll confess to you right off the bat, we're more a multiple system, only one soulbond in residence right now.
(21:45:59) LB: If that works for you, then we're all yours.
(21:46:45) Wondershocked: It's cool; we're not really 'bonds, ourselves.
(21:47:06) Wondershocked: I'm planning on putting the paper online after I'm done, and I'm wondering how it'll be received
(21:47:15) LB: Well, what's your thesis?
(21:47:19) Wondershocked: You see, I'm not writing it from the perspective of a soulbonder/multiple.
(21:47:51) Wondershocked: My thesis is that soulbonders/otakukin are particularly drawn to Japanese fiction because of the way Japan thinks about commodities
(21:48:27) LB: Huh. Well, I'll admit, that's a cool idea, and I like it. We actually studied Japanese ourself; we're in our sixth year.
(21:48:46) Wondershocked: I don't speak/study Japanese. I just happen to be taking this particular class...
(21:48:53) Wondershocked: Pleased to meet y'all, btw.
(21:49:27) LB: Nice to meet you too. We're the Loony-Brain, currently populated by four alters and the dead guy sleeping on our couch. I'm Rogan.
(21:50:02) Wondershocked: cool. We go by Silent Duet
I guess we weren't very helpful to prove that thesis! (And it DEFINITELY wasn't what the paper ended up being about.) And they didn't really ask us any questions about that; they just asked us some general questions about our system. I remember that we DID get quoted in the final write-up, but it wasn't anything we talked about in the chat; they quoted other things we said elsewhere on the comm. The part about us is here: "Another member, says that her soulbonds often “front” during her classes, and that one of them handles most of her academic writing, whereas another takes care of her Japanese classes. It is, naturally, up for debate whether or not this constitutes a violation of academic integrity." That's it; that's the only part about us.
I remember Rogan got pretty mad about this, especially since we said immediately in our IM conversation that Mac was the only bond here (and he totally didn't cover any of our coursework at the time). I remember he was also mad because he thought Wondershocked /myprotagonist was being snide. It's probably just as well that they didn't use a citation for us. <_< (Our IM chat happened in December; the only citation is a "personal interview" in November, with who-knows-who. I think this might've been what got us on Encyclopedia Dramatica, originally...
They portrayed themselves very differently in individual IM than they did on their website here. I'm pretty sure that "Kira" who we spoke to was supposed to be from Death Note; I don't know if they were closeted or just using the name, or what. Mysterious! It is super-strange to see the parts of the IM where they talk about Kira and Tag's in-system communications and fronting and then the site where they're all like "we're not like THOSE people, gosh!" I know Rogan was mad back then, but we're not now. It's been a long time! I still think they were kind of a jerk though. >:[ We were happy to talk to them, but we didn't like being made fun of, especially since they were portraying themselves as plural themselves!
As a weird part, though, we don't seem to have the record anymore, but I could've sworn Wondershocked/myprotagonist contacted us again long after all this happened! They were um. Pretty drunk. And they said they were sorry for everything. At the time, we didn't know what they were talking about, but now I think it might've been them apologizing for this paper. Digging through my records doesn't turn anything up, though! Maybe it was someone else, or just a random stranger; I know we didn't recognize the name exactly.
Citations
Lee, LB [lb_lee]. (2018, June 20). LJ-soulbonding has been deleted [Dreamwidth post]. Retrieved 2019/03/15 from https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/947592.html
soulbonding. (2008, February 5). Profile [Livejournal page]. http://community.livejournal.com/soulbonding/profile Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/03/15 from https://web.archive.org/web/20080205210724/http://community.livejournal.com:80/soulbonding/profile
soulbonding. (2009, January 1). Profile [Livejournal Page]. http://community.livejournal.com/soulbonding/profile Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/03/15 from https://web.archive.org/web/20090101072848/http://community.livejournal.com:80/soulbonding/profile
soulbonding. (2009, August 17). A Bonding of Souls. https://soulbonding.livejournal.com/ Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/18 from https://web.archive.org/web/20090817093541/http://community.livejournal.com/soulbonding
soulbonding. (2013, May 9). A Bonding of Souls. https://soulbonding.livejournal.com/ Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/18 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130509070728/https://soulbonding.livejournal.com/
soulbonding. (2019, January 18). Deleted Journal [Livejournal Page]. Internet Archive. https://soulbonding.livejournal.com/ Retrieved 2019/03/15 from https://web.archive.org/web/20190118081527/https://soulbonding.livejournal.com/
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Date: 2019-04-19 05:07 am (UTC)Though we never talked to them personally, so we had no idea about the "there's two of us" thing and... wow. (Also, we've talked to so many multiples who divide schoolwork among the system, we've started to think it's the norm rather than the exception.)
-Yushyu
no subject
Date: 2019-04-19 03:01 pm (UTC)In hindsight, it was a really weird interaction! Like, they told us all sorts of intimate things that I'm sure they would not have wanted public, within a pretty short space; if we had been much meaner people, we could've hurt them pretty badly, just by posting the IM conversation in total, publicly! It was really weird to see their very different public academic persona.
I wonder what became of them, what their story was. They said they weren't a fictionkin or soulbonder, but unless they were lying, they sure seemed plural! So weird; seeing how they categorized us as a soulbonder, not a multiple, and didn't use any of the chat conversation they did have with us, I wonder if they'd already written the paper and we're trying to get our permission retroactively.
... I also think they were not sober when they talked to us. I admit, I looked this up originally because I thought we were too harsh on Wondershocked, but now that I've seen the hard data...no. Something weird was up there!
--Sneak
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Date: 2019-04-19 04:03 pm (UTC)We've met a couple other people like that over the years. I mean, not people who wrote papers about it, but people who were anything from condescending to hostile towards soulbonders or fictives and then at some point went "well, actually, I am one, that's why being around them bothered me so much!" The reason the soulbonding section on Pavilion is longer than any other section except the media reviews was because of the Blackbirds doing this. They resented soulbonders for having characters in their heads and making jokes about them, except oh wait, some of them actually had fictive origins? And instead of just being open about it, they were weirdly obsessed with following and befriending soulbonders, even though they seemed to resent them, to the point of deciding it should be a major part of Pavilion to have "soulbonder outreach." Apparently they had a track record in some of the RPs they were in of befriending people with soulbonds/muses/etc and then convincing them they were multiple, so it seemed to be something they were actively pursuing.
-Yushyu
no subject
Date: 2019-04-23 02:57 am (UTC)And it's like, buddy, do you want to be able to research us or not? You wouldn't have HAD a paper if it was all locked up, and you just insured people after you will have a much harder time at it.
I dunno, she didn't seem to know much about multiplicity, or thought it was something very similar to soulbonding, which was something we saw people thinking for a couple years before Tumblr.
It us. :B We totally needed some explanation in the early days on the difference! (Though to be fair, the friend group we were in at the time was a bunch of folks who were SBers at various points on the plural spectrum. I feel like we had reason to be confused.)
The reason the soulbonding section on Pavilion is longer than any other section except the media reviews was because of the Blackbirds doing this. They resented soulbonders for having characters in their heads and making jokes about them, except oh wait, some of them actually had fictive origins?
Mori: I seriously think there's nothing like self-hate projected outward. The number of times I've run into folks who pull a, "I hate you because YOU'RE ME" is too many. A lot of in-fighting I see in plural circles seem to basically be people secretly ashamed of themselves wigging out because they see another plural NOT be ashamed, and some visceral part of them seems to react with, "HOW DARE YOU NOT BE MISERABLE. I'LL SHOW YOU!" It happened with X and her elfin headspace boyfriend, it happened with us when we started coming out, and it happened SO MANY TIMES on Fandom Wank.
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Date: 2019-04-19 02:34 pm (UTC)experience elements (I know I thought that for a very long time... Though our core system IS still basically predominantly soulbonds and other soul relationships. Though being involved in metaphysical groups with channelers, oracles and godphones is what made us consider "maybe multiple fits better" oddly enough when we finally found the multiplicity group on LJ)
So glad that attitude is/has been changing albeit maybe a little slowly for some. Some people still hold that divide but eh it's getting some traction that soulbonders can be a plural subtype.
- Emmy
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Date: 2019-04-19 03:12 pm (UTC)Yeah, off the top of my head, I remember seeing writing about soulbonding as a plural experience starting in 2001, 2002. And there was a lot of overlap between the soulbonding and multiplicity communities on LJ! The soulbonding mods that I can remember were mostly multiple or median as well! (And a lot of folks changed camps over the years, especially once fictivity became a more accepted part of multi experience, due to overlap in the LJ communities, as far as I can tell. People who think fictivity is okay in multiplicity owe a debt to that overlap, even if they think "endogenics" are ruining the community!)
--Sneak
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Date: 2020-10-09 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-22 07:01 am (UTC)