hi

you guys remember when i would joke about this fic being discontinued

hahahaha. yeah, ummmm

i don't think it's a joke anymore (i would add an emoji but i'm actually using my computer to write on wattpad directly for the first time in, like, three years. so this is interesting.)

i'm sorry about this. I really truly am. I tried very hard to commit to this and make this work, but it's been five years. I haven't had a good time writing a chapter for this fic in over a year.

I'm trying to make this a bit more funny, especially because all my past A/Ns when I was happy with this were funny and an insight into me and my personality, and my recent ones have just been me super depressed. It's not fun, and I don't want this to end on a terrible note, you know?

I feel so bad about this. I've always said that I would finish this and tough it out. It just isn't working.

I started this fic when I was 11. I'm currently 16, and a lot has changed since then.

Like, in the very first edition of this fic, it was in first person and I would switch the POVs each chapter. Omg, let me see if I still have something from that era.

SFTU I DO, OMG THIS IS A FUCKING RELIC LOOK

CHAPTER 1

Tattoos and info

So, soulmate tattoos come when you turn 13. The symbol is meant to represent your soulmate. As you get to know your soulmate better, more tattoos are created. The first tattoo is always on your left wrist. If you don't get one on your thirteenth birthday, then you don't have a soulmate. Most people find their soulmate in high school.

Percy

My tattoo is an owl.

Maybe my soulmate is owl obsessed?

I just hope that she's nice.

Annabeth

A cookie.

And not just any cookie, it's a freaking BLUE cookie.

Well, at least he'll be easy to find.

Reyna 

My tattoo is a tree.

Wtf!?!?

I guess that she likes trees?

And yes, I said she if you are a homophobe, get out. (A/N do so, there will be a LOT of homo)

Thalia

Wtf does SPQR stand for?!?

That is my tattoo. (A/N Heck yeah! THEYNA 4 LIFE!!!)

Well, I'll meet her, yes I said her; eventually, I guess.

Piper

My tattoo is a lightning bolt.

Is he obsessed with Lightning McQueen or something?

Jason

I would like to know why my tattoo is a dagger.

I am praying to the gods that she isn't insane.

Hazel

My tattoo is a PANDA!!!!!!

I already know that I will love him!

Well, that's a given because he is my soulmate, but I will love him even more because he likes PANDAS!!!!

Frank

My tattoo is a sketchbook.

I guess that she is artsy, and for that reason, I'm taking art during high school!

I mean, that is when most people find their soulmates, right?

Nico

I hate my tattoo.

It is the sun.

I, Nico di Angelo, a kid that wears black and listens to Red Jumpsuit Apparatus all day long, is meant to fall in love with a guy that is all sunshine and rainbows.

Great. Just great.

Will

My tattoo is a skull.

I don't know how and why, but it's a skull.

I'm warm and sunshiny, and my soulmate is the exact opposite.

Fml.

Alex

My tattoo is a weird-looking F thing.

Who has a connection with an F thing????

Magnus

My tattoo is a snake thing, which is somewhat cool.

I mean, it looks cool, but for all I know, it could be a gang sign.

Hearth

My tattoo is a duck.

My soulmate is either a duck or obsessed with ducks.

I would honestly like the first one more.

Blitz

My soulmate's tattoo is a bag with some stones spilling out of it.

I honestly do not even know why is my soulmate hoarding stones or something?

Connor

My soulmate is obviously an artist, because my tattoo is a paintbrush.

Me and this girl are not going to do well together...

Rachel

My tattoo is a bag.

Just a simple bag

I don't really know how a bag relates to someone though...

Travis

My soulmate tattoo is a daisy.

Well, Styx.

This will not be the best relationship.

Katie

My tattoo is a winged keychain.

It's really cool looking, but if he touches my daisies...

Sadie

My soulmate tattoo is an amulet.

Why would a guy ever where a necklace?

Maybe it's an American thing.

Walt

My tattoo is the symbol of the goddess Isis.

I think that the hieroglyph is really cool, but it makes me wonder: Does my soulmate ven live in America?

Zia

My soulmate tattoo is an eye.

Okay, the eye of Horus, but it is still an eye.

Looks like we have an Egypt nerd.

Carter

My tattoo is the old symbol of Ra.

Just because of that I know that I will love her.

I love Egypt and if she knows who Ra is...

Calypso

My tattoo is a wrench.

I guess that he is a mechanic?

But he better not set foot in my garden, or my dining table!

Leo

My soulmate is probably a gardener because my tattoo is a ton of flowers.

Kinda cute.

I'll try my best to not destroy the garden...

Annabeth

I continuously honk my car horn to annoy Magnus and to tell him that I'm here.

"Why don't you just text me?" He asks when he finally gets in the car.

"Because I know for a fact that you wouldn't answer," I say.

It's the first day of school.

And a lot of people moved during the summer.

The schools changed and now basically half of the city is zoned for Goode High.

I've always been zoned here, and now the small school looks like The center of Manhattan in the middle of summer.

After we all get our schedules, I run to meet with my 4 friends, Piper, Thalia, and Sadie.

After comparing and complaining about our schedules, we come down with mythology, gym, and lunch together.

"Ugh," Thalia says. "I can't believe that so many people moved here this summer."

"I wonder why they did." Piper says.

"I moved over the summer, Thalia," Sadie says pretending to be offended.

It is true though.

We met Sadie at a park during July.

We talked for a bit and became pretty good friends.

I see Magnus in the corner talking to a blonde guy and I say goodbye to my friends and walk towards him.

"What's up?" I ask.

"The sky," Magnus answers.

I roll my eyes and the blonde guy waves.

"Hi," I say. "I'm Annabeth."

He points to his ear and shakes his head.

I get the message, but I took sign language with Magnus in middle school.

I repeat what I said in ASL.

He smiles and signs I'm H-E-A-R-T-H.

"Annabeth," I hear someone behind me sing.

"GROVER!" I yell.

"Hi."

"Where were you all summer?" I ask.

"At a camp," he says sarcastically.

I say bye to Magnus and Hearth and walk to language arts with Grover.

We compare schedules and we also have gym, lunch, and mythology together.

"Who do we have for language arts?" I ask. Grover basically knows every teacher in this school.

"Mr. Blofis. According to Percy, he's really nice," Grover answers.

"Who is Percy?"

"I met him at the camp, Mr. Blofis is his stepdad."

"Oh."

"So... how's soulmate hunting been?" He asks.

"Nothing. How about you?"

Grover's face lights up, "I met mine!"

My jaw drops.

"Holy Hera! What is her name?" I ask ecstatically.

"Juniper, I met her in Long Island, that's where the camp is, and she's beautiful. I got her number and she moved here!"

I am shocked.

But it's more like a happy shocked.

Maybe the first day of school will actually be a good day.

-

STOP I'M LITERALLY GOING TO SCREAM THAT WAS AMAZING.

WOW

anyway

Obviously, this fic doesn't look like that absolutely gorgeous literature. That's because around a year into it I remade the entire thing. That's how you know it today.

A few things that I did... I don't want to say wrong, but I can't really think of another word since "mistake" doesn't really cover it, but I digress:

I bit off a lot more than I could chew here. I think I realized that too when I first remade this, because I took out a solid half of the characters present in my literary masterpiece (that is how I will be referring to my first draft of this fic from now on, by the way). But even then, it was just a lot.

I don't even remember the last time Thalia and Reyna were mentioned. Or Will's siblings, because his dad is like a fucking teacher Nick Cannon in this fic because I thought it was funny. Actually, it is funny, but it's hard to write. Oh and Lavinia and Poison Oak were supposed to be main characters. Oh my god, do y'all remember Walt?

I also didn't plan ahead. At the time, I kind of went into writing mostly blind. I threw new elements into the world building at random times and just went with it, with no regard to consistency. And when I was younger, that worked just fine! But now I'm a perfectionist and I hate that. Especially when the world building literally makes no sense.

riptide2406 can attest to the fact that I am now so extremely anal about that shit. Like, my New Greece doc was so long, I separated it into different documents.

For reference, here is the outline for my SURFACE LEVEL government planning

I'm not even close to being done with that, by the way. I have so much left to do.

Anyway, I also had problems with establishing a clear tone that was consistent in the fic. The first chapter is very moody, but then it gets randomly bubbly. Which is fine for certain narratives, but for this one I feel like I needed to go one way or the other.

And in my opinion, with a soulmate AU, you need to go the softer route.

But I have a hard time doing that because, and here's the kicker

I HATE SOULMATES AS A FUCKING CONCEPT LIKE I CAN GET BEHIND THE WHOLE RED STRING OF FATE BECAUSE THAT ISN'T INHERENTLY ROMANTIC NOR ARE YOU REQUIRED TO STAY TOGETHER FOREVER BUT SOULMATES???

Listen, I wrote whole chapters based on shitting on soulmates as a concept. My hatred for this is immeasurable.

I won't get into the reasons why I hate the concept, we'd been here all night and it's currently 11:40 pm and I need to go to sleep at a reasonable hour because my mom is on my ass about it.

Probably won't happen, but still.

I literally stopped mentioning these soulmate tattoos, AND THEY WERE THE FOCUS AND PRIMARY CONCEPT OF THIS FIC

It just turned into a mortal Au, which is fine but not what I initially wanted when I started this.

I also totally fucked up some of these relationships too.

I'm gonna say this, and people are gonna get so emotional and I'm so sorry,

but I've learned to hate shelper in this

I KNOW I'M SORRY

I've written shelper a few times after this fic came out. 99% of it isn't published, but they exist in the dark corners of my drafts. And I am a proud contributor of the shelper fics on Ao3 while also being one of the, like, three people who acknowledge their existence on the god foresaken app. You may say that I'm a professional in writing this ship.

I don't like the way I crafted Shel. She's very self-inserty, and if I'm being super honest, she still is. But she's very idealized and she came from a place when I absolutely hated myself and you can tell, I think. I romanticized the parts of me that people complimented *cough* mom friend *cough* and didn't really give her humor or really anything going on with her other than Piper and mom friend and also trauma and a lot of these go hand and hand, but I digress.

I tried to make it work. You can see me speedrunning that sexy character development. But it's just a no.

Also, I hate Insta-Love. And what she and Piper have here is insta-love

but gabby, what about the shelper fic?

Well, in there I don't take myself seriously. I'm fully aware of my own absurdity in that fic. The first chapter literally has a fucking bar fight.

I feel like Soulmates is the telenovela while my newer fics are like Jane the Virgin

No one understood what that meant, but I felt that in my soul, so I'm keeping it.

For reference, Jane the Virgin is a satirical telenovela, that remains one of my favorite shows. It's so stupid and absurd but because it's satircal, it's fun! And wow, I can spell!

And telenovelas are enjoyable, the absurdity can be a bit much at times.

Maybe a better show analogy would be that my new fics are like season one of glee and this fic is like season 4-ish. I also haven't watched that show in forever, why is everyone dead or in their constant flop era (except for amber riley and whoever played kurt, they're vibing)

The point I'm trying to make is that I took myself very seriously in this fic, but my entire personality is built on self-deprication. Once again, I can, in fact, spell.

I think with shelper here, I was so focused on making the tension so high. Oh my god, Shel's so nervous around Piper and never knows what to say! Oh and Piper is feeling so conlficted! Whatever shall we do, and I can spell, I promise.

It was just a lot. And then they got together, and while they have a healthy relationship... BRO WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY DO IN THEIR FREE TIME

I SWEAR I FEEL LIKE THESE TWO ARE CONSTANTLY WALKING ON EGGSHELLS TOGETHER, IT'S LIKE I'M THE ONLY BLACK AND HISPANIC PERSON IN UTAH AGAIN

Sorry, my trip to Utah left me in such a state of shock, it affects me to this day. People were so polite there, I felt uncomfortable.

I think that there's a difference between being a very chill and mellow person and just not knowing how to interact with someone.

When I think of a relatiionship (I can spell, that was just a typo and I won't fix it because funie) that I want to read about or would want to be in, I want them to actually be friends. I want them to joke around and just be silly with each other. That's why Fierrochase is the real MVP of this fic.

Now in my shelper fic (i'm thinking of you in my sleepless solitude tonight, by imwastingmylifehere on Ao3, if you want to read it. the name is a song lyric because demographic change and because mariah carey)they had tension, but they're friends. They joke around all the fucking time.

Reasoning aside, I don't want to leave you hanging. This is how it would have ended

Piper was going to meet up with her mom, have a heart to heart and start to mend their relationship, and she starts to help Drew heal from her trauma.

Shel would have finsihed the arc she's currently on when she sees that by taking on less, the depresso goes awayo (sorry, i just wanted to say depresso and i needed it to rhyme) Also she starts to sing less depressing songs. It's not relevant, but it's on my outline. You start to smile more and Octavian gets expelled.

Sadie is themself.

Jaz. Out of every arc her's and Alex's are my favs. She never comes out to her parents, but does start to talk through her emotions with Sadie and realizes that she truly does have a community in support of her and starts saving up money to move out when she gets older.

I love her arc because it's a bit fantastical, yes, but also realistic in the sense that it isn't all good in the end. She will never forgive her parents, I knew that from the moment I started writing her. And I'm glad I stuck to it.

Percy and Annabeth have the same arc, they learn healthy coping mechanisms and better communication skills and start to work through their respective traumas together.

Leo I don't think was ever going to have a massive arc. Mainly just slightly less self-deprication.

Jason wasn't even going to be a big part of this fic until, like, five chapters ago. So.

I don't remember ever getting a Frank POV (sinful on my part, really)

Hazel's arc already finished.

Nico and Will start to grow into talking about their stuff a bit more and it doesn't really jumpstart the healing process, because what they each have isn't necessarily "curable". But I did plan on making these two the most doting couple. I wanted them to compliment each other all the time (yes each couple should be doing that but will and nico both have the words of affirmation love language) and I think that if I were to look into the future, they would have both healed quite a bit.

Carter and Zia were not going to be a big part of this, but people were really wanting them to fuck. So, I guess they can do that. I'm sure they had a great time.

Magnus' arc never even started lmao.

Alex. Oh my god, I know I always call Shel my baby, but in reality you were.

Out of every character, I put the most love into you, and I'm so sad to see you go.

You would have healed. It's dramatic, I know. But I was healing when I started to write your arc, and I wanted to help you too. You would have started to see the ways that Magnus looks at you and the ways that Shel is always there to support you and how Samirah was there to joke around with you and even though they pulled you back before, you realize just how much not only you mean to them. But how much they mean to you. You would have seen that by losing yourself, you lose them too, and you start to live in the moment more and you call a therapist and I remember that the last scene of this fic was going to be you.

It was going to be you and Magnus sitting alone on a roof and y'all are in silence, but that was enough and you were going to be happy.

I don't think I ever realized just how much of myself I put into you until recently, and I hope you know that I love you.

Ignoring the fact that I just spoke to a fictional character like I was confessing my love to her in the rain, I am so sad to see this fic go.

I couldn't care less about the actual content, but you.

My readers.

Y'all are my world and you guys have saved me from the fucking brink so many times, you don't even know. I owe you guys so much and I don't think i could ever repay you.

I hope this fic brought you joy and I hope that you know that I will always have space for you in my heart.

I'm not going to stop writing, you can find me on Ao3, I currently have two fics up there and I'm throwing darts at a few more new ideas.

And so, for the last time

Love y'all.