Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

wildehacked asked: DEFINITELY write the tragic soulmate AU. 1000%.

Okay but see it would be great terrible.

James McGraw grows up being told that he’s lucky, so lucky, he has three soulmates and it’s wonderful.  Everyone tells him that the world has so much love for him.  

Thomas and Miranda meet and she has his words on her skin and she doesn’t care that he has someone else’s because HE doesn’t care, and they’re so happy, and then they meet James McGraw, who has them both, and Miranda tells herself (and it’s truth, at the time) she can live with this, she can live with being James’ soulmate while James is Thomas’ soulmate.  Because James adores them both.  And God, she loves Thomas, and he loves James, and James loves her, so it’s all okay.  They lie in bed and giggle together like children, wondering about the third line of words on James’ skin.

Things go horribly awry.  Miranda is still one of James’ three soulmates, but he is not hers and she cannot quite stand to call him hers when her soulmate is gone and her soulmate’s soulmate is sinking into dark water.

James meets his third soulmate.  It is a strong contender for the worst thing that has ever happened to him.  It’s certainly in the top five.  James swears to himself that he will never, ever let on the truth.

John Silver meets his soulmate.  It is certainly the worst timing he has ever experienced.  Captain Flint, scourge of the seas, doesn’t bat a goddamn eye, and Silver decides that this match must be unrequited, because the universe hates him so goddamn much.  When Madi, proud Madi with her unmarked skin, touches the words and asks, an unusual tender moment, he tells her (and it’s the truth, at the time) that his soulmate bond is unrequited.

At some point the truth comes out.  There is angry sex.  I do not have the plot figured out past this.

Other miscellany: Anne Bonny is Jack Rackham’s soulmate and he is also in Something (no one is crazy enough to call it love) with Vane.  Anne is in love with Max, whose soulmate is Eleanor, much to Max’s profound distaste.  Eleanor and Max had the potential to be the only functional soulmate bond in this whole mess until Eleanor fucked it up, because Max is also Eleanor’s soulmate.  Anne’s soulmark leads her to a man who is actually a woman who has Anne’s words on her ribs, and Jack is only a little bitter that Anne is not bound to him as visibly as he is bound to her.  Anne has never shaved her head, and so they do not know that words are written, neat and small, at the base of her skull.

Thoughts on Soulmates in PotC

OKAY, so, I have an overwhelming need for soulmate AU’s of every-damn-thing and a love for Elizabeth Swann that burns like fucking Greek fire, so of course we were going to end up here eventually.  

• There are three people in the world who could be Elizabeth Swann’s soulmate.  Depending on your AU of choice, these are the three people who see color when they meet her or have her name or first words printed on their skin or what have you.  All of them are in love with her.
  
• Commodore James Norrington knew when he was a teenaged, freshly-minted Navy officer, meeting a nine-year-old girl with solemn eyes and a pretty, lilting voice, that he was going to love her.  When she was seventeen he was in love with the coiffed, well-heeled mask she wore, completely gone on her.  He was horror-stricken to find that he loved the steely, vicious creature of sea and storm underneath even more.  If he has a mark, it rings his wrists like cuffs, because for all that he might love her, James isn’t a pirate at heart, and being chained to one kills him as sure as a sword.
• Will Turner loves the flashes of gentleness through her fire-bright shell, the way she always sounds startled when she laughs, the way she holds his face in her hands–gentle, like he’s made of crystal, but hard and immovable as steel.  Will’s mark, if this is a universe with marks, lies like a necklace at his throat, close to the curve of his neck.  He thought of it as a necklace, before he met her, before he knew her well.  Now he thinks of it as a collar, a mark of ownership–he is Elizabeth’s, full stop, hers to keep, and he has come to love being kept by her.
• Captain Jack Sparrow loves the heart of her, as hungry and dangerous as a fire at sea, loves her for the glint of lust in her eye when she looks at a fine ship or a sharp sword or a gold ring, or Will or James or Jack–the glint of wanting, of greed, of that is mine and I shall have it.  When he looks back on it, remembering, he thinks that he fell in love with her when she burned the rum, and the flame in her eyes was brighter than the flame on the sand.  His mark, if such exists, stretches across his shoulders, like wings, like lash marks, like a weight that makes free.
• Elizabeth cares for them all, loves them all in a way, but none of them can be everything to her, the way a soulmate is supposed to be.  None of them is the world entire, none of them is the ocean from horizon to horizon, and nothing less will satisfy her.
• Elizabeth has no mark, if this is a world with marks.  Or perhaps she does–a skull and crossbones, a coiling ocean current, the brand of a pirate, the words ‘Gentlemen, hoist the colors’ in bold black letters across her fair skin.  
• If this is a world where your soulmate’s touch stains your skin with colors, the three men are splashed with cerulean, azure-emerald-silver, and Elizabeth’s skin is clear.  Until she faints over the edge of a cliff and plunges into the ocean below, and she is drawn out with her skin swirled with ocean-blue, coiling down her limbs and over her heart, arching over her cheeks and around her eyes.
• If this is a world where you see color when you meet your soulmate, she grows up with it, and the colors always flare brightest when she stands at the bow of a ship and looks toward the horizon, where the water and the sky kiss.
• (There is a fourth soulmate for Elizabeth Swann, a fourth body stamped with a simple name, no matter the universe.  This one, perhaps, is the truest soulmate.  Tia Dalma, Calypso, Oceana, the queen bound in her bones, wears the name on her mortal form, and whenever Elizabeth steps onto the deck of a ship, the woman-goddess smiles, slow and secret.)
  
• (Every queen must have a king, after all.  And Dalma-Calypso-Oceana is proud of her king, straight and proud and fierce as a sword of folded steel.  She loves her king like a hurricane loves a ship, like her king loves her lovers, hungry and desirous.  Her love is blessing and curse by turns–her king’s ship has sweet winds and raging storms, blazes into Navy flotillas and skates away by a finger’s length.  Her king stands in the winds and laughs and laughs, fierce and wild and free, and so, so in love.)

A Sociological Look at Soulmate Universes

reclusiveq:

transformativeworks:

upagainstabookcase:

I want to take some time to think about Soulmate AUs in broader social and historical context. (I’m sticking to the ‘first words written on your body’ version of those aus)

Thoughts on Society:

• In a soulmate universe there would be distinctly less homophobia because queerness would be both normalized and no one would be able to argue that it isn’t natural. (Not that there wouldn’t be any because people are assholes). 
  
• Religion would be structured differently - destiny would be seen as an incontrovertible subject. “Of course you have a destiny and a place in God’s plan, just look at those words on your arm.” What words were written on the arms of Messiahs and prophets?
  
• Scientists attempting to explain it through genetics and physics. 
• The culture of introductions would be essential. What you say to new people would be built into the culture of what is polite and it would change society by society. 
• Societies with strict verbal introduction rules that limit the finding of soul mates (because what would disrupt strict social stratification than princes discovering that their soul mate is a maid). 
• Societies where people craft personalized introductions and use the same line like a personal signature each time they meet someone new.  
• First day of school or college or a new job being almost all meeting rituals.  
• Special festivals that are dedicated to meeting new people and talking to them. Pilgrimages for young adults to go town by town to meet as many people as possible. 

Pop Culture

• Massive online databases full of those first words. 
• Books dedicated to the first words of famous people. 
• Analyses of your words (a la astrology: because you have the word ‘time’ in your words it means…)
• Matchmakers who promise they’ll find you Your Soulmate! 
• Imagine the shipping debates around TV shows: “Her words haven’t been revealed yet! So she could be his match!” or “They revealed his words in season 2 so we know his match isn’t Fred!” 

Interpersonal:

• Imagine the pressure to find your match 
• People who claim children raised outside of matches are more destructive and less well adjusted and at a disadvantage
• “If you have sex outside a Match you will catch chlamydia and you will DIE”
• Special marriages for matches. 
  
• Support groups for those who find their Matches late in life. 
• Imagine the family pressure in some families to never meet anyone unapproved by the family. “Your father speaks to everyone first!” 
  
• Different marriage systems 
• Flexible ones where every non-match marriage is considered voidable if a soulmate match is found. Imagine being the person left behind by someone you love and trust because of words on their skin. 
• Or a system of different marriages where people have different partners for different contexts: This is my household wife June and my Match wife Alice her household husband Larry and we all make it work. 
• Or systems where you can’t legally marry unless you can both show your words and prove you are a match. 
• People who lie about it to avoid the social pressure inherent in finding your match. “Of course my husband and I are a match!” Or teens who lie to their parents that someone is their match because their parents disapprove of their new date. 
• Parents who worry like hell about their kid’s words. 
• People who fall in love with the “wrong person” because this social system means that there is literally a wrong person. But they truly fall in love. Who try and scratch off their soulmate words from their skin because FUCK destiny, we’re making our own. 
• Imagine how broken you would feel if you were asexual/aromantic and you didn’t have words. 
  
• Imagine having words that you hated. Imagine having words on your skin that were a slur or an insult or a threat and knowing that someday you will meet someone who will say that to you and they are someone you are supposed to love.
  

It fascinates me because the idea is so much bigger than just meet-cute scenarios and fluff fics. It would change society from the ground up. 

I want to write the one in bold a little bit. 

I would love to read in-depth discussion about each of these ideas. Sadly, there’s not much available. What does exist, though, is discussion about fannish tattoos, which are voluntary physical marks of things we value. Transformative Works and Cultures has a couple of interesting articles on this topic by Bethan Jones, which you can read here and here.

Growing up believing that the words have to be spoken out loud, in person, to you, but discovering it was that person you met online that one time.

(via bronzedragon)

lathori asked: ExR for the ship And the AU is from a post you previously reblogged: "Everybody in the world has a superpower that compliments their soulmates superpower. When together, both their powers increase in strength exponentially. You have the most useless power ever, when one day……" Go forth and write me more ExR

Everyone look at how awesome my platonic soul mate is, she sends me fun prompts when I’m bored.  My concept of ‘complementary’ powers might be a little weird but whatever!  We’re going with it.  To the shock of no one, this got out of hand.

• Grantaire has the most useless power ever.  Ever. He’s confirmed this with everyone he knows.  
  
• It’s not nifty as hell, like Eponine’s talent for making tiny storms between her palms—if she ever meets her soulmate, that’s going to be awesome.  It’s not even one of those powers that seems useless or trivial in the moment but will obviously turn into something amazing when the person meets their soulmate. Like Joly, for example.  The ability to cure headaches and hangovers? Not very impressive, although eminently useful.  Flash forward, enter Bousset and Musichetta and one skin-to-skin touch, and boom, one fully-fledged healer, on a silver platter.  
  
• And then there’s Grantaire.  Who can make pictures move.  As long as he’s the one holding the pen.  What the hell is that?
  

Keep reading

amusewithaview:

princess-tuna:

let-gavin-free:

Soulmate au where when you write something on your skin with pen/marker/whatever the hell you want, it will show up on your soul mates skin as well. 

Imagine having a super artistic soulmate who draws flowers and designs and really beautiful patterns all over their arms and person 2 just sits there and watches the little lines appear on their arms and they can’t stop smiling and it’s their favorite part of the day

Imagine person 1 being super forgetful so they scribble down all the places their appointments are and person 2 tries to decipher them and figure out where they’re at and they meet and they see their writing on their hand from across the waiting room/ coffee shop/ etc. and they scramble to find a pen and write ‘found you’ on the back of their hand and person 1 sees it and they lock eyes and

Wow I like this au

WELL FUCK ME SIDEWAYS, THIS MAY NEED TO BE A THING I VISIT.

(via amusewithaview)