#i swear i could go on for ages lfkgjsdklf

[magniloquent-raven]

AHHHHHH TY!!! i adore soulmate aus lol. i tend to like making the rules a little fluid, it's just comforting to me as an aroace person dflgkj idk. cuz everyone experiences love differently

SO! some more thoughts:

oluwande "i don't even know your favourite colour" boodhari and jim "my favourite colour is teal" jimenez. that whole conversation. they soulmates.

and i can’t stop thinking about like. how they probably met while jim was in the middle of their revenge quest and suddenly they’re seeing colours and going like, oh fuck no i’m not dealing with this right now, i have shit to do. so olu is just kind of stuck tagging along (which he doesn’t mind) helping them track down the dude they’re supposed to kill (which he DOES mind, especially ‘cause he can tell jim has conflicting feelings about it and they refuse to tell him the full story).

and through it all they develop this friendship that they’re both extremely protective of, and going from that to anything else would just be. hard. but especially when there’s so much pressure on it because of the ~soulmate~ thing. and there’s this added element of jim not having figured their gender shit out yet, and in my experience that makes trying to deal with your sexuality in general that much more difficult.

but it’s kind of depressing as hell for olu. he never put much stock in all the flowery stories about love at first sight and meeting The One and all that shit, and like. he still doesn’t, not really. he’s practical like that. but this isn’t some fairy tale about hypothetical people who don’t even have goddamn names. it’s about one person. singular. tangible and real and right in front of him. someone he loves. so he tries. he respects jim’s boundaries but he has to press whenever he sees an opportunity, because it’s not really something that can just go unsaid forever, and when you live lives like theirs you never know how much time you have left.

-

i feel like izzy would be the only person on ed’s crew who knew for certain that he couldn’t see any colours. there are rumours, obviously, he’s blackbeard, people talk. about how he probably can’t even feel love, and of course he doesn’t see colours, he’s above frivolous shit like that, he’s not a person to these people and the idea of him ever doing something so human and vulnerable as fall in love is just. ridiculous.

and that shit gets under ed’s skin like nobody’s fucking business. the blackbeard persona has always chafed a little, it’s always been a performance, one of violence and ruthlessness, but it’s gone on so long that he’s not always sure what’s man and what’s myth. and when people make assertions about him like that. well. sometimes it’s hard not to believe them. and it fucking hurts.

new crew members learn real quick not to talk about the colours around the captain. izzy makes sure they know. he’s had too many new recruits lose fingers over this shit, and it’s really not great for overall productivity.

there’s also just. the fact that the entire blackbeard crew wear black and white. and his flag is black and white. and he wears exclusively black.

until stede. after he meets stede, after his entire world bursts into colour while he’s staring down at this strange, fascinating enigma of a pirate bleeding out on the deck of a spanish warship, he gets hit right in the fucking face with a resounding, yes, you can have these things. it’s not impossible.

it’s a revelation for him. he’s a changed person.

and i can’t get the image of him in that pink robe out of my head. how terrifying it is to be that vulnerable. broken-hearted and wrapping himself in reminders that he did love someone, he does love someone. but the second izzy lashes out at him, he crumbles and breaks, without his armour he doesn’t know how to deal with a blow like that.

and then there’s the flag. that last little scrap of colour he gets to keep. the heart people always claimed he didn’t have.

there’s just. a lot to unpack there.

-

and some little quickfire ideas, when pete falls for lucius the colour he starts seeing is red & therefore he is always telling lucius how much better his lil jacket looks now.

izzy can see exactly one colour, and it's because he's in deeply repressed love with his boss. he refuses to acknowledge that the colour means anything and is more than happy to ban soulmate talk on the ship for ed's sake because frankly he can't stand listening to it either.

the colour buttons sees most vividly is blue and if asked he'd say it's for his love of the sea. no one is really sure if that's true or not (it is).

once the crew of the revenge starts to accept that they're basically a family they all start to see a little more colour (it's subtle, mostly, a shade here and there, but the more bonds they have with their crewmates the more noticeable it is)

ofmd fandom how we feelin about soulmate aus cuz im thinking thoughts....about the version where you see in b&w til you make eye contact with your soulmate for the first time

like. maybe most people gain colours a little bit at a time. whenever they fall in love they get one. the deeper they fall in love the more vivid colours are. there's tales of pairs who click instantly but most people think it's made-up bullshit, stories for little girls who haven't grown up enough to know about duty.

but stede always believed. always yearned. for the romance of it, sure, for the beautiful adventure of it all. but also for something beyond his control, beyond reproach, to come along and give him permission to love someone. and to be told that, yes, they will love you as well. and he wears that hope on his sleeve. literally. he hires a valet who can see colours to help him coordinate his outfits, wearing bright pastels in a variety of shades, hoping one day to know what they really look like.

and ed...well, he tucks his little flicker of hope away right alongside the scrap of silk his mother gave him all those years ago. he's gotten old enough to feel foolish for keeping them at all, but still. every so often he'll check, running his fingers over stubbornly grey threads, savouring the feel of it but mourning the sight. and it always gets tucked right back where it was, hidden under the black leather he wears like armour.