I guess our opinion of soulbounds is that they aren't the actual fictional character, but possibly a system member who has been shaped or shaped themselves into the image/personality of a fictional character to varying degrees (at least in the case of soulbounders who have other peoples' characters in their system). We're not really comfortable with the alternate universe theory since I think a lot of authors just make up their characters, or at least we do when we make characters for stories or RPs. There's a whole editting and planning/shaping process - one that we definitely couldn't mistake for "having a connetion to a (similar) person in an alternate reality). Our charaters are just fiction, and I'd laugh if anyone showed up with them as a soulbond (not that anyone knows of any of our characters since it's not like we're some famous author or anything) since they would really have no idea of the history behind not only the character but the creation process of the character. Hmm, make any sense?

As for soulbonders who bond to characters they created themselves, we see that as more of the creation of a type of system member. Just like some systems can split for various reasons or create people to have purposes in the system or whatnot, I think creativity can create and develop full people in systems whether they're acknowledged as a person, a soulbond, or just a character. Some may be more along the lines of I guess a median or midcontinum if those are the right terms I'm thinking of, but anyway hopefully that makes sense too.