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Remember: No matter how socially backwards you are, there is always someone worse than you.
The founder
http://members.fortunecity.com/akacloudstrife/celes/celes.htm
- Welcome to my SoulScape - or rather, my little corner of Riesz's SoulScape. Just in case you didn't come from her page, I think I should explain the situation. I'm a SoulBond. "What's a SoulBond?" you may well ask. "And what's with all this capitalization in the middle of words?" A SoulBond is exactly what it sounds like; it's a soul you bond with. Or, more specifically, a character you come across while playing a video game, or reading a book, who touches your heart and makes you feel like a part of their experiences. I'm not very good at explaining it; Riesz is a lot better at it, so go to her page if that wasn't very clear (which it wasn't, I know). The reason I find the concept hard to explain is that I don't do it, as such; I am it. You see, Riesz is a human being who once played Final Fantasy III, and unbeknownst to her, I sort of crept into her mind and became a permanent part of her personality. I don't know how I did it, or why; it wasn't a conscious effort on the part of either of us, it just kinda... happened. As I'm only really a voice in her head, and don't have a tangible form, she's typing this, but they're my words; we each have our own thoughts and opinions, just like all her other SoulBonds do.
- "Other SoulBonds?" Yes, there are others, though I'm ever-so-slightly proud to say that I was the first. If you want to know about them all, click here, but I feel I should explain before you do something very unique and special about SoulBonding. Because games like FFIII are so popular, many people SoulBond, or SB as it's commonly known, the same characters. However, they don't really SB the original character; rather, they SB their own interpretation of it, called a "reality-version". For example, in FFIII, the game character Celes doesn't transform into an Esper. But because Riesz interpreted the events in the game differently to its creators, she believed that I could, and so in her "reality-version" of things, I can. It's a bit like writing a fanfic; everyone has different ideas about who gets together with who in FFIII, whether magic really has been destroyed or not, who Gogo really is, and things like that. Similarly, some people accept Amano's renditions of the characters as gospel, whereas others think the in-game sprites reflect their true appearances (and if you're one of the latter, you can speak out for the super-deformed ones in my Chibi Campaign). Some people's SoulBonds even live in completely different worlds from the ones they inhabited in the story...
The cult
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2934835&userid=111846#post359556681
- Okay, so back in 01' I spend a little too much time trolling online for Final Fantasy related stuffs. I had borrowed a copy of FF8 and liked it enough to look up stuff online. So I get into a chat room, and lo and behold, I meet up with this girl named Jen, and she's from Oregon. She went by the name Jenova Sagan, and had this weird sort of obsession with FF7. At the time I was 16, and a college student going through the freshman depression spiral, and this company gave me some comfort. Not really going to lie about that.
- So as time progressed, it started out largely as chat room roleplaying, which was composed of us pretending to be characters from the game FF7(which I have never, and may never play through), acting through the roles for the fun of it. I found it pretty innocuous. She took a liking to me and I took a liking to her, and pledged that at some point we would do the meet and greet. As time went on, these conversations became more and more detailed, but nothing out of the norm. Through conversations with her and her mom I learned a little about where they came from.. I found out that she lived with her mom in a small town about halfway between Grants Pass and Medford Oregon, and that prior to living there Jen had attending one of those boot camp styled schools, but got sent home for some reason. She originally hailed from Southern California, and her parents were divorced. Her dad was the son of a guy who founded and ran a bunch of west coast five and dime stores, but the company had long since folded. She kept saying she was some sort of heiress, but her mom assured me she lost her share in it after she divorced her father. I got to know her mom pretty well too, who came from a history of abuse in her family and failed marriage. She told me Jen had been diagnosed with O.D.D. as a young child, Conduct disorder as she got older and so on. Basically meant she acted out and did it with no empathy. She did think I was a good influence so she thought things would be fine as long as I was around. She really was pretty nice and nothing like her daughter.
- Now toward the beginning of summer that year, she started to talk to this girl Renee from State College PA, who was in her last year of studies at Penn State. At this point our relationship began to sour. She started talking to Renee more over the phone, and started claiming that they were soulbonded from some other life, and that she was Jenova from FF7, and Renee was Hojo. Knowing a little bit of the story, I asked how that made any sense storywise, but she didn't care. I asked her if somehow this changed the nature of our friendship, and she said that she was beginning to think that Hojo was really her soulmate and that I was Vincent Valentine, and therefore jealous. Things continued to devolve.
- So finally we decided to meet up. Her, me and a friend of mine hung out for the day, and we spent a little time walking around. I got to meet her mom, who took me aside to say that if things were to somehow escalate, Jen was not always going to be normal, but she thought I was a good enough guy to keep her on the straight and narrow. We got a little time to ourselves and at this point she stated that things weren't going to work, largely because I thought soulbonding was not only lame, but grounds for institutionalization. She also thought that Hojo understood her better. She kept referring to Hojo as him, when really Renee is a girl. Whether she looked like a girl or not is debateable, but I made sure to let her know this sounded crazy. She I think could tell I wasn't going to be convinced this soulbonding garbage was real, and didn't want me around.
- Fast forward about a month, and her mom calls me to say that someone they were hosting as a paid roommate somehow convinced Jen that she needed to strike out on her own, and that her mom was holding her back. Jen had decided this meant to go be with her soulbonded partner Renee and had convinced her to pay for her bus ticket from Oregon to Pennsylvania. After she got there, she called me to let me know how much of an ass I was for not giving her money for the trip, and that she had to beg and tell fortunes to bus passengers for food money. I laughed a little inside imagining that.
- This pattern continued for the next few months, as she would call asking to pay for things she didn't need. Like ebay purchased FF7 merchandise and other goofy crap. I of course said no. Then I would get suicide calls from Renee saying that Jen was really depressed and wanted to kill herself. (probably because I wouldn't fork out the money for crap.) From here I just stopped answering her calls and she went away.
- I learned later they somehow acquired a house by parlaying Renee's folks for money, and started this odd soulbonding cult movement.