i'll admit, my favorite version of soulmates is the choose-your-own adventure kind of soulmating, where it's not something you're born with, it's something you have to put work into building a connection with
I have never read a soulmate AU fic before and I feel like... I dunno, like my fic education won't be complete until I do This thread always makes me aware of just how much fic I don't read, because there's talk of trends and such that go way over my head and I realize I pretty much just read stuff written by people here (s/o to the gang here who writes awesome fic!)
one time (oh man looking at the file history this was..... almost 3 years ago lol) i kind of brainstormed a soulmate AU that would feel less icky than a lot of the ones i've read and it went kind of like Spoiler: length A soulmate AU where people are born with permanent marks on their bodies that match other people’s. Most people have several marks of unique placement, colouration, shape, and size. Having matching marks simply means that your souls are in some way strongly compatible, and you could be the closest friends, the most passionate lovers, the most intense rivals, beloved mentor and mentee, mortal enemies, or anything in between. It is up to the two (or three, or four, or...) people involved to determine what their relationship will become, if they choose to pursue one at all. Most people never find anyone whose marks match theirs (though everyone has a friend of a friend who swears they met one of their soulmates) and although society places a high value on ‘fated’ relationships, for the most part, people’s everyday lives are not affected by them.
i once wanted to write one like the ones where you have your soulmates name is on your body, except it's just a splotch until you realise you love them, at which point it clears up into a name - leaving it open for the possibility that loving them is what makes them your soulmate. (never developed this part the original idea which means it still ha tons of potential "wait NO"s to stumble across, but it interacted nicely w one of my favourite bookseries and i still kinda wish id gone through and written something with it.) anyways i Hate hanahaki disease (when you fall in love you'll get sick and start coughing up flower petals - aesthetic as fuck - and if your love is unrequited you die). theres a version of it where you can save your life through surgery w the common side effect of operating your ability to FEEL that kind of love away and i hate that slightly less bc then at least theres an INTERESTING fucked up-ness to it, but wrt the basic concept (which is what i see most often) it's still... eughhh
The least "eughhh" friendzone disease variant I've ever heard of is one YOIBF found where it's only dangerous if it lasts for at least five years. So practically everyone gets it in high school, but nobody's particularly worried or inclined to attempt surgery about it unless it sticks around for a long time. (I believe the same fic had a kid with a horrible mom getting it, which falls under "interesting kind of awful.")
I have never heard of hanahaki disease and I used to read shoujo manga all the time, but...that was a while ago. Is this new, like, in the last 10 years? It's so horrible. It's like every obnoxious entitlement guilt trip ever from people who can't understand that you don't feel That Way about them.
It was started from one specific shoujo manga, though I forget when it was published. Fandom just kind of picked it up and ran with it, because it's the sort of thing fandom loves to pick up and run with. Like daemons and Hogwarts houses.
It popped up.... relatively recently? Like within the last two or three years. I dunno if it's from some kind of manga or light novel or if it's simply a fandom trope that started sprouting (HAH) with relative popularity or whatever but it's kinda boomed in certain corners, mostly anime fandoms afaik
triple posting at the speed of sound fanlore claims the source of its popularity is the 2009 shoujou manga Hanahaki Otome/The Girl Who Spits Flowers but the general concept of regurgitating flowers due to unrequitted love existed before that manga in japanese and korean fancircles and the actual originator of the trope is currently unknown. (edited word order slightly bc i fucked a causality line up)
I like the idea of it being a disease that everyone gets when they’re young but is much more serious if you have it when you’re older, like chicken pox. And the creepy aesthetic of coughing up petals is very good. But most Hanahaki fic sounds terrible.
YOI Badfic Friend once found one where Viktor had it and was ~concealing~ it and was somehow stealthily taking gasps from an oxygen tank when Yuuri wasn't looking. We could only assume the author had never actually seen an oxygen tank.
Did... did they think an oxygen tank was the size of an inhaler? Do they think inhalers have oxygen in them?
my grandma's portable oxygen makes this horrible shrieking noise whenever it's at the wrong angle and imagining trying to conceal that is cracking me the fuck up
I appreciate badfic friend's sacrifice in digging up so many gems. I also hope they get to read some goodfic in the middle of all that mess.
im a total sucker for hanahaki, if only because i love the terribleness of having symbolic flowers just bursting out of you Alien style. a fucked up obsessive character starting to spit out cactus flowers and needles? yes. gimmie. most fanfic tho? eeehhhhhh i only ever read one good one and that involved magic
I'm a huge sucker for self-destructive obsession. Especially when the character gets everything they wanted but it's awful. Not in a monkey's paw way but in a way that highlights exactly how much they're mistaken about what happiness is in a way that reflects and tears into their worst insecurities. Almost nobody reliably writes that in a way that really speaks to me, other than like Joss Whedon.
Hanahaki disease always seems like a neat if dumb concept. Like imagine hoe unpleasant it must be to vomit up flowers? Regular vomit already sucks to say nothing of anime flower petals.
