Celine: Can confirm that highly targeted subcultures in the Encyclopedia Dramatica and Portal of Evil days had ways of using resources like said sites to devour their own. No one has both the inside dirt on a high-profile furry and the motive to spill it quite like other furries who tried to commission them once and got burned, exes in the fandom who had a falling out, or the like. I am absolutely not surprised to hear that other picked-on groups were doing the same thing.

The gatekeeping re: soulbonding perplexes me, because there's kind of a fuzzy line between making contact with a headmate who isn't a character at all, and soulbonding one of your own characters. Like, okay, I can see having a system member from an established canon being a little different, I guess, but if your OC starts talking to you, do they have to make their overall debut for even existing at the same time as their first words to you, or if you've ever so much as drawn a picture or roleplayed as them or whatever even once before speaking to them then they're automatically no longer valid, or...?

We weren't directly connected to Otherkin plural communities back in the day, but as an old-guard furry I had my share of run-ins with Otherkin in general (who were a distinctly different thing and the two camps even had somewhat of a rivalry at the time.) These days, if you're looking for the intersection of Otherkin and plurality, a great place to start is in the Postfurry movement/community. For back in the day... well. I spent a lot of time in alt.fan.dragons back in the Usenet days, and I have a few stories I could share.