The Ghost of the Navigator

deidara was trying to blow it up cuz they didn’t play the kmfdm song he requested and hidan got kicked out because he kept trying to recruit people into his death cult and then got pissy when people called him weird for it

idk where I was going with this hold up

I'd call it a B. It's not quite as 'see tag, read fic' as amnesia or bodyswap, but any fandom I'm in, the soulmate tag is getting trawled. Out of my 211 Ao3 bookmarks, only 12 are soulmates - but half of those are massive collections that I have definitely read many times.

It's a very versatile tag/trope/genre too - there are a lot of options in there - and it's a very useful tool for moving two characters who might not otherwise meet or look twice at each other together. That said, like any writing tool, it needs to be used with a degree of skill. Using soulmate mechanics to slam two characters together is no better than just slamming them together without the mechanics.

Some good examples:

'Marked' by @navigatorsghost A single soulmate mechanic for several pairings, including some novel/rarepairs [Danzou/Itachi ffs]. It's a soulmark universe with thought given to how the soulmarks work, what happens when they're messed with, and the social effects of having that going on. A lot of less-good soulmate fics don't think through the effects of the soulmate mechanic. 'You can't see colour until you meet your soulmate' - this should have massive effects on art, signage, on use of colour in language, etc etc. 'Only your soulmate can kill you' - good grief, the effects *that* one should have on so, so many things - war, law enforcement and justice, etc etc.

'Glowing Paws' by @kalira A lighter, more fun fic where the soulmate mechanic [seeing your soulmate's footprints by moonlight] is both explored and also used as a norm from which Iruka's soulmate deviates, to his and his parents' concern.

So, I've been wondering if we could start this trend? I always see people talk about how they feel weird reblogging their own stuff, and I've been guilty of this, too.

But the thing is, it's so easy to miss cool art, fic, gif sets, screenshots, headcanons, and other creations. The dashboard moves fast. A lot of people don't always have time to go through everything that was posted in the last 24 hours or maybe they're not on tumblr every day. Maybe they saved a fic in their tab and forgot. Maybe somebody followed literally yesterday and hasn't seen 98% of what's already been posted. Any reason is a good reason.

I think we should get more comfortable with reblogging our own stuff. It doesn't matter what kind of post it is or if it's from the last week or 10 years ago. It doesn't matter if you've already reblogged it 3 times in the past. It doesn't matter if it has 5 notes or 500.

I've thought that if we had a dedicated day for it and more of us made it a habit, it'd feel less weird? Plus, people who have missed those posts would have the opportunity to catch up.

We put a lot of love and effort into our works. Why not show them again?

Of course, that doesn't mean I want to contain self-reblogs to Sunday only. I've just thought that especially those that feel awkward about reblogging their own stuff could use it as an opportunity to do that. Like, if more people are doing it and all that.