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I wanted to make a post somewhere about our experiences with this and thought Dreamwidth might be a better place to do this.
When it comes to our experiences with soulbonding and what we identify as soulbonds, we've realized it's a lot more complicated than we thought it was. When we were newer to soulbonding and the plural community we thought they had to be spiritual and had to be in our headspace. As we've done a lot more research to the point of me doing a panel for Othercon about soulbonding, we've realized that soulbonding is very broad we more or less have soulbonds all over the spectrum of what a soulbond is.
We have collective soulbonds which exist as presences we feel when fronting. They don't appear in our headspace and most often the resemble "telephone" soulbonds - they mostly do their own thing independent to us while occasionally checking in on us. They might favor certain fronters but for the most part they are a soulbond to the entire system instead of an individual. Even to the point of creating a soulbond-ception if existing soulbonds front.
Archie being a soulbond has been around for a chunk of our life. We just never identified him as a soulbond because for a long time we had no idea what he was exactly, since he just felt like a head presence and not an actual part of the system.
Alpha Sappire came out at a point in our life when we entered an abusive situation. During the time we got into that situation we discovered we were a system, and then shortly after we went through one of the most traumatic times of our life.
We clung to Team Aqua as a whole because of the abuse we went through. They felt like a positive and strongly-knit group, and Archie was the one we felt attached to the most because of the way he treats the player character. On top of that a part of the trauma we went through involved a hurricane, which was thematically appropriate.
The way we've always identified with the player character also added to that. Pokemon Emerald was our first video game ever, and generation III was when we got into the series that would become a lifelong special interest and something very important alterhuman-wise to our system. The player character of the Hoenn games is who we can easily envision as our "humansona". As a result of that, it's very easy for us to get immersed into the world of Hoenn. Team Aqua was also a group we were oddly attached to (one of our earliest sonas was a Team Aqua Vaporeon and playing Pokemon Emerald we'd just "hang out" in the Aqua base).
So as we went through very turbulent teenage years and young adulthood (sorry to anyone who knew us then - we were a mess), we felt a presence of Archie who was helping us get through it and cope with the extreme emotions and turmoil we felt. We both jokingly and seriously called him our dad a few times. Most of this presented through maladaptive daydreaming too where one of our biggest paracosm at the time involved a collective self insert.
This actually amplified after Ultra Sun/Moon came out and we decided to get the boss collection for Team Aqua (basically two Pikachu cosplaying as Archie and a Team Aqua grunt. Also a Kyogre). Having a physical representation of Archie helped and we'd find it easier to talk to him "through" the plush. Especially since we'd bring them for any future hurricanes we went though.
We didn't start to process Archie was a soulbond until recently. As I was working on the soulbond panel and reading through other experiences, my system began to discuss how common the experience of soulbonding might be. That was when we started to click that that's what Archie was. He's just a soulbond in the literal definition of a fictional character that exists in our mind and we're experiencing soulbonding similar to how a singlet might despite being a system. There was definitely a moment of "wait a fucking minute".
We've started to engage with him more openly and embrace that familial connection we feel to him. The headmate group who goes to play Pokemon has apparently called Archie "my dad' before. Either way, I'm glad he actually decided to keep humoring this mess of beings, and I think he's still a strong parental figure for us even as the abusive situation we were in has long passed.
The exact nature of it is something we're still figuring out. It likely involves the actual physical in nature identity we have of the Hoenn protagonist but that's going to be a lot for us to unpack even outside of the soulbonds it granted us.
When it comes to our experiences with soulbonding and what we identify as soulbonds, we've realized it's a lot more complicated than we thought it was. When we were newer to soulbonding and the plural community we thought they had to be spiritual and had to be in our headspace. As we've done a lot more research to the point of me doing a panel for Othercon about soulbonding, we've realized that soulbonding is very broad we more or less have soulbonds all over the spectrum of what a soulbond is.
We have collective soulbonds which exist as presences we feel when fronting. They don't appear in our headspace and most often the resemble "telephone" soulbonds - they mostly do their own thing independent to us while occasionally checking in on us. They might favor certain fronters but for the most part they are a soulbond to the entire system instead of an individual. Even to the point of creating a soulbond-ception if existing soulbonds front.
Archie being a soulbond has been around for a chunk of our life. We just never identified him as a soulbond because for a long time we had no idea what he was exactly, since he just felt like a head presence and not an actual part of the system.
Alpha Sappire came out at a point in our life when we entered an abusive situation. During the time we got into that situation we discovered we were a system, and then shortly after we went through one of the most traumatic times of our life.
We clung to Team Aqua as a whole because of the abuse we went through. They felt like a positive and strongly-knit group, and Archie was the one we felt attached to the most because of the way he treats the player character. On top of that a part of the trauma we went through involved a hurricane, which was thematically appropriate.
The way we've always identified with the player character also added to that. Pokemon Emerald was our first video game ever, and generation III was when we got into the series that would become a lifelong special interest and something very important alterhuman-wise to our system. The player character of the Hoenn games is who we can easily envision as our "humansona". As a result of that, it's very easy for us to get immersed into the world of Hoenn. Team Aqua was also a group we were oddly attached to (one of our earliest sonas was a Team Aqua Vaporeon and playing Pokemon Emerald we'd just "hang out" in the Aqua base).
So as we went through very turbulent teenage years and young adulthood (sorry to anyone who knew us then - we were a mess), we felt a presence of Archie who was helping us get through it and cope with the extreme emotions and turmoil we felt. We both jokingly and seriously called him our dad a few times. Most of this presented through maladaptive daydreaming too where one of our biggest paracosm at the time involved a collective self insert.
This actually amplified after Ultra Sun/Moon came out and we decided to get the boss collection for Team Aqua (basically two Pikachu cosplaying as Archie and a Team Aqua grunt. Also a Kyogre). Having a physical representation of Archie helped and we'd find it easier to talk to him "through" the plush. Especially since we'd bring them for any future hurricanes we went though.
We didn't start to process Archie was a soulbond until recently. As I was working on the soulbond panel and reading through other experiences, my system began to discuss how common the experience of soulbonding might be. That was when we started to click that that's what Archie was. He's just a soulbond in the literal definition of a fictional character that exists in our mind and we're experiencing soulbonding similar to how a singlet might despite being a system. There was definitely a moment of "wait a fucking minute".
We've started to engage with him more openly and embrace that familial connection we feel to him. The headmate group who goes to play Pokemon has apparently called Archie "my dad' before. Either way, I'm glad he actually decided to keep humoring this mess of beings, and I think he's still a strong parental figure for us even as the abusive situation we were in has long passed.
The exact nature of it is something we're still figuring out. It likely involves the actual physical in nature identity we have of the Hoenn protagonist but that's going to be a lot for us to unpack even outside of the soulbonds it granted us.
