ratcreature | probably I'm bugged too much by such worldbuilding questions

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probably I'm bugged too much by such worldbuilding questions

I'm still not reliably back online, because the eye issues are still ongoing... but since I can do screen reading right now, and just came across another story with the trope "soulmates reveal their names to each other in body writing", I just have to ask: Are there any of these stories that actually have any explanation for how that is supposed to work?

I mean, I love soulmate tropes, and I can put aside the general, inherent practical problems of just two people being fated to match each other and be compatible, but -- It's one thing to handwave a premise of "humans recognize their soulmate when they see them by some magical or biological impulse" but in these particular universes how did the name thing even start? The stories never seem to say whether these name marks just started to show up (by some magical? means presumably) once a group already had developed writing (and if so, do not all humans have them, but only literate societies?), or whether humans in these universes developed writing based on the odd marks that showed on their skin (and if so, do all societies have the same writing?).

Also if the marks precede the writing, how did humans even find out these symbols referred to their soulmates' names? If every human was born (or developed) a mark rather than both soulmates showing the same symbol or something, you'd think the natural assumption would be that this was their own mark/symbol.

Are there any stories that offer any explanation for the mechanism?

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I don't think I've ever seen any that offered an explanation for the phenomenon, though I think it's a really fascinating question.

... I mean, if I were to handwave it myself, I guess I'd go with it being an outward manifestation of the cultural context the child has soaked up (think Temeraire and dragons in their shells). So it's something that started slowly with symbols and progressed to actual writing as the societies became literate. Maybe in the beginning it was only like a bruise. And gradually it became legible writing in whatever writing system was widespread in the child's culture (or the soulmate's -- it seems to be universal in MCU fandom that Bucky gets Russian writing if Natasha is his soulmate).

But this just raises SO MANY QUESTIONS TOO! Like, even today literacy isn't entirely universal, but it's only been even common for a couple hundred years. In the 1200s, did people get soulmarks? Were local priests constantly tasked with reading them to peasants? Honestly, considering that prior to the last few hundred years people didn't generally have free choice of life-mates anyway, how did anyone EVER figure out what it meant? Back in the 1000s or 1200s or 1400s, was it regarded as a mark of the devil? Like, was it the person who was going to tempt you to sin, when you yourself had been married from the age of 12 but didn't have anyone speak those words to you until you were 26? What if people are STILL misreading what it means, and whatever the hell it is just gets filtered through the cultural context? In 1200, it was taken as some kind of warning about the person who spoke those words to you; for the last 150 years or so, with the trend towards free choice of life-partners and idealization of romantic love, it's been taken as a soulmate mark; but that's not any more accurate -- it just means it's someone you're entangled with, in some way, positive or negative. In 100 years, they might have a whole different take on it.

... though I guess the idea that the actual invention of writing actually comes FROM SOULMARKS is also fascinating. (I mean, we don't know where people got the idea in the first place! Maybe it was this!)

It would be certainly more romantic as origin than accounting and trade records.

Yes, many interesting possibilities. I like the idea that the soulmate interpretation is more recent.

Now that I've thought of it, there's something awfully appealing about that, actually! I think the particular aspect of soulmate AUs that always bugged me (because, for some reason, the worldbuilding aspects you mentioned never did, even though it's a completely valid complaint) is the One True Love For Everybody thing, which is SUPER DEPRESSING when you really start to think through the implications of it. And so, I really like the idea that people are just guessing that "soulmate" is what the mark means, but it's actually a simplistic explanation for a phenomenon that is, in reality, much more complex and mysterious.

I've read one that did the name thing, but mentioned that only since the 19th century people married their soulmates more often as the notion of romantic love and marriage gained. Before that the nobility still married for alliances and poorer people for economic reasons, so loking for soulmates was thought irresponsible. I found that interesting but also puzzling how the author did consider worldbuilding changing marriage attitudes but not the more glaring troubles.

The other thing is in AUs where the soulmark isn't universal, like, only some lucky people have them, except, have they met people? If something is uncommon, we're pretty likely to decide it's deviant, and a hundred years ago, we'd probably think it was demonic. No one would be going "Oh, you're so lucky, you have a soul-mate!"

Yeah. I mean looking at how even something like left handedness fared, or red hair in some parts, having a soulmate mark when only some get them would not have been good.

The reason I don't tend to read these fics is because there's no explanation or world-building like this!

I think the only "soulmates" type fic I stuck with was Bound and Determined despite the D/S world (which doesn't really interest me) because it was all about the world-building! The characters didn't know why things were the way they were, but there were lots of theories, people researching from social, historical, political and scientific perspectives, personal opinions, good and bad outcomes for individuals, and a society that was plausible under the circumstances. I really liked that there was no single truth about why things worked out this way, just lots of conflicting theories, as there are about our societies in real life. It has a Charles/Erik focus, but a cast of thousands which really helps extend our view of their society, too. Definitely worth a read if you like this kind of world-building.

I love that series for its worldbuilding as well. Though I do like both D/s and soulmates, it still always trips me up if I can't even make the premise work with some internally consistent fantasy handwaving. I just keep thinking "but how would that work?" over and over again despite my kink buttons being pushed.

Yeah, the part that never really makes sense is that if people were born with their soulmate's name on them, the entire system of baby naming would be different, wouldn't it? If being connected to your soulmate actually offers concrete benefits, wouldn't people have started to name their children things like "John-March-6-1970-San-Francisco-Smith" so that their soulmate would know their birthday & place of birth? Only incredibly cruel parents would ever name their children just "John Smith".

Plus what if you had parents who tried to game the system? Suppose people find out that baby Prince Bucky's soulmate name is Natasha, and all the parents want their child to be his soulmate, right? So literally 80% of all babies born for the next 15 years get named Natasha (including boys!), and it screws up an entire generation's love life because anyone with Natasha on their wrist can't tell their soulmate Natashas from all the other Natashas.

But then you get into the weirdness of the fact that soulmates are often different ages... like, out of all those Natashas born AFTER Prince Bucky, some large amount of them must have soulmates several years older than they are, right? So even before Prince Bucky is born, there are dozens and hundreds of babies being born with 'Natasha' on their wrist and no one knows why that name is suddenly so popular. So there's these weird temporal implications too.

The other thing is that sexuality & romantic attraction & marriage & relationships in general would be conceptualized completely differently-- not just a world where basically everything is the same and follows the usual heterocentric assumptions about relationships & families, except randomly there's no homophobia.

Edited 2015-03-07 11:55 (UTC)

WRT gaming the system, most seem to include a convention to hide the mark, and often it only appears at puberty. But yeah, you'd think unique names would be a lot more the norm. I mean I think the system of last names at least would have developed differently, so that duplicates would be less common, and people found more easily. Like even just a typical last name not being say "Baker" (because some ancestor was a baker) but "Baker of village such and such" would help a lot for people to track down their soulmate's family.

It's probably those questions that are the reason this is one of the few tropes I actually tend to skip over these days.

Yeah. I love the kink, but that written mark variation for identification just makes even less sense as workable in any way, and it always bugs me when I read that kind of AU. I can go along more easily with himans feeling some psychic pull toward their soulmate, or even some matching symbol. Though oddly enough you see that much less often, no matter that it seems much more straightforward. Like both soulmates show the same star constellation pattern in the same spot as birth mark or something. There is an infinite number of dot arrangements for possibility and you could match those without knowing writing.

I think it's a fun trope... but I also think it's only fun if you don't think about it too much. :D I have seen a few where some vague handwavery attempt at worldbuilding is involved (for instance, there was a fic which included a mention that having a soulmate outside one's geographic area was increasingly common, as travel times dropped/connectedness increased due to modern technology; I thought that was a nice little worldbuilding detail).

Aside from names or first words (and as others have said: HOW MANY people's first words to their soulmate would be something like "Hi" or "Welcome to McDonalds, can I take your order?"! Not at all helpful, and prone to lots and lots of false hopes being raised only to be broken.) I think the thing I've seen most is hand- or fingerprints, which does make more sense -- in the context of "literacy is not universal" -- than words do. And I've seen at least one fic which used symbols (somebody's characteristic weapon, e.g.) rather than words/names, too.

Oh, and there *is* at least one fic out there with the soulmate's-name variant wherein some thought was applied; there's a registry where you can file your Name and your basic details (birth date/time, etc.) and they attempt to find your soulmate, or notify you when the soulmate registers! A thoroughly rational approach that takes into account human curiosity and present-day levels of technology.

Mostly, though, it's one of those tropes that you Just Accept The Premise And Go From There; I mean, there's no scientific explanation on Earth for it, given that, y'know. Souls. If you believe in a soulmate, you have to believe in souls, and it follows that souls can Just Do Stuff that mere matter and energy can't. In fact, the one soulmate-fic I can recall giving a clear explanation was essentially that: the handprint that appears on you is created when your soulmate's soul reached out and touched you. Why that would leave a mark, or why that mark would later change colour in response to a physical touch when proximity wasn't required the first time? Still not explained. *shrug* I can usually muster the suspension of disbelief required, and when I can't I spend my time like you do, poking at the holes. :D

(Honestly, though, it's the A/B/O trope I think fails most at worldbuilding; unlike soulmates, it pretends to be biological -- blah blah pheromones this blah blah hormonal patterns that -- and yet it virtually never addresses the most basic worldbuilding details. Pheromones are so amazing that no one in the course of history has thought to apply basic chemistry to the problems they cause; nobody finds the legal implications of heat to be at all problematic or to affect the precedents of other cases; no one ever even seems to explain what alphas/omegas do in terms of the rest of human biology - I mean, why have men who can reproduce only with each other? You've designed humans with four sexes, and in some cases a "species" where half of it can't breed with the other half; how does that even work in terms of population limits? Or for that matter in terms of the scientific definition of a species? Nope. My suspension of disbelief is strong enough to handle souls touching each other, but not a sapient mammal species that doesn't want to alter their own biology for fun or profit.)

I think my problem with the name thing is that I can't imagine how it would work even if I accept "because magic/comicbook science" as explanation for why. And there is no real payoff for that particular detail so I don't get why that way. I mean the stories wouldn't need to change at all if soulmates either just recognized each other psychically, or had matching puzzle pieces as marks or whatever.

With A/B/O the nonsensical aspects at least are directly producing extra payoff forthe kink, because even if it may not make any sense for reproduction at least it enhances things like breeding kinks or the non-con aspects or such. I can usually put the whole actual reproductive reasoning down to comic book science in my mind, like supervillain gadgets or such.

With A/B/O the nonsensical aspects at least are directly producing extra payoff forthe kink

I suspect this is why I can't suspend disbelief: the primary kinks involved are not quite my kinks, they're just adjacent to some of them. If my own kinks aren't getting any of the payoff, I'm not distracted enough to summmon up the right nonsense-filtering goggles. Every now and then I do find an A/B/O fic that veers off into the stuff that's more my territory... but a lot of that is actually tied to the worldbuilding issues (I groove hard on people making choices that run counter to their biology!) so if they're not addressed at all I just can't muster the enthusiasm. :D

The names thing has so much potential for the kinds of things I like (worldbuilding in general, but also a huge heaping load of identity issues/names & naming theory/opportunity for misuse or repurposing), but rarely lives up to its potential. When I want soulmates fic, I tend to go for the non-word versions, or at least the "first words spoken" version, rather than names, because I want something different from that! There's less depth to those, so I don't have to get annoyed by the depth being ignored. :D (Where's my soulmates-with-names fic that explores modern notions of naming? Who got their soulmate's AOL username, or hacker name, or silly nickname bestowed by their BFF at age nine? Which trans person worries for years that their birth name will be on their soulmate's skin... or that it won't, and thus they'll never be found? Where's all the female characters being weirded out by how, as soon as they marry their soulmate, their soulmate's mark will change to show his last name... and does that NOT happen to some, in the modern age? Where is that one person whose Name has changed like twenty-five times in eighteen years, and their struggle to work out why?)

I don't think I've seen the name change due to marriage. I suspect the Spanish kind of patrilineal last name system or something like that would be adopted quite a bit more in a world like this, both because you have two parts so more identification points and because people's names stay.

But if names adjust to their current state and there was a family name system that opens interesting possibilities, like say a couple has their first kid out of wedlock, so first it gets the mother's maiden name, and if their soulmate is born and shows it they get that. But then the couple marries and the kid gets a different family name...

Also the depressing scenario when your soulmate's name changes to a religious name because they became a monk or a nun. Though maybe they wouldn't do celibacy in that kind of universe. Actually I don't think I've ever seen a soulmate fic address that, i.e. whether in that universe say the Catholic church demands its priests to be with their soulmate only platonically.

Also, do you have a link to the fic with the registry?

I do not have a link, but I remember that it was an MCU fic - Tony Stark/Steve Rogers was the pairing, I'm almost certain.

I think I love your mind for pointing out the lack of thought behind the 'soulmates first words or names' thing. I tend to find the whole idea of soulmates depressing if not horrifying really. I ran across one recently though, in the Teen Wolf fandom that is quite well thought out in the whys and hows and consequences. The story posits matching birthmarks, not words, names or even symbols, and does a decent job of world building. It kind of runs with the meta of lots of people think soulmates would be so wonderful and then figures out what happens when they engineer that into the species, only they didn't think it through enough and it doesn't turn out at all rainbows and flowers.

Keywords: dysfunctional, depressing, and dystopian.

The link, in case you're at all curious about it: Playing God

Thanks! I like the trope but I can definitely see the depressing and dystopian potential. I'll check that story, sounds interesting.

I see so much A/B/O and soulmates fic in Teen Wolf and wince a lot, but neither is intrinsically bad.

Oh, I should mention, the story I linked is pretty long. And managed to hit my embarrassment squick hard once.

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probably I'm bugged too much by such worldbuilding questions

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