what a chaotic, unromantic world that must be. probably with insufficient worldbuilding everyone must have to do so much compensating for all that noise
A world in which musicians are generally regarded as pests because they're adding even more to the cacophony, and the reason why projecting music during figure skating is so damn impressive is because you're having to do the psychic equivalent of operatic solos to be heard over the fucking crowd.
There was a mention of someone's music changing to "woodwinds and static" and we were both like "AGH NO."
and those failure states (and the mere possibility of them) are part of what makes it that compelling to me, funnily enough. not all of what makes it compelling 'cause i do often want a happy ending, but the tragedy of it is not an inherent downside, not the same way as the flaws of the other things you listed are for those aus.
for some reason, my mind first went to small spaces, like. it'd be a shitty time on every subway trip or carpool, if each individual person was the equivalent of a radio and forget managing in any situation that needed quiet. hunting? nope, animals would fuck off if you're making that much noise. school exams? better hope you remembered your ear plugs. concerts wouldn't exist
Though admittedly there's some interesting shit you could do with that horrible, horrible sensory overload of a world like: auditory processing disorders! Tinnitus! Deafness! Is the music felt in the soul or is it heard via the ears? If it is felt in the soul, how do you actually define music, especially if not everyone can hear? Sort of like how any of those "colorblind until you meet your soulmate" AUs fall apart when you consider, y'know, actual blindness and vision problems. Or being colorblind even after meeting your soulmate. Image how pissed you'd be if you went through the whole romantic nonsense and then found out that you actually can't see the difference between red and green anyways, but thankfully most fashion designers can't either!
Friend actually ran into one where they did the Obligatory Victuuri Pining via that method. Victor: SUDDENLY COLORS! Yuuri: Still colorblind, because he's just colorblind.
I think I pretty much only like soulmate stuff if it's not a one person with whom you have a romantic connection thing. Like, getting a mark when you meet someone and the color or size or whatever corresponds to their impact on your life.
There's a particular Avengers fic I like that features time travel soul mate stuff, but Spoiler It's Tony/Loki, and they both come to the conclusion that the time loop is to get the best two people of their worlds working together to decisively stop the invading alien force. Them, because respectively among the best theoretical + practical science/magic people of their worlds. The getting to know and care about each other is incidental to the time loop's thing. Eta them not then
I forget if I mentioned this before, but Friend also found a soulmate fic a while back where you couldn't hear music until you met your soulmate. We had a similar discussion of lack of worldbuilding consequences. (Can they hear birdsong? What about windchimes? Slogans chanted by crowds in unison? Playground rhymes? Shave-and-a-haircut? The rhythm the school bus with bad shock absorbers made on the highway when I was in 5th grade? There should be much less music because only a fraction of the population can even tell it's there. There wouldn't be radio playing in every store and restaurant you walk into. Would poetic oral traditions exist? etc., etc.)
It would be less sensory overload hell if you couldn't hear anyone's song except your soulmate's and yours, when you meet. It would make the "song projecting is an integral part of sports" bit make more sense too
...I read a Voltron fic a while ago--it wasn't really something I'd rec, the concept was great but they could've used a beta--where every variety of alien had a different kind of soulmate thing, and it was kind of great, because no one had any idea who anyone else's soulmate was, because all the systems were different. Really, I'd like to see a fic where there's a bunch of different soulmate-identifying phenomena that people can experience, and it's just completely random which one each person has. No logical geographic distribution or anything. You might not even have the same type as your soulmate. So you start hearing music for the first time when you see them and the first thing you say to them is written on their body somewhere. So what I'm saying is that I like the idea of chaos.
also it would lead to weird missed connections posts. "hi, im your soulmate here. we were on starbucks today at 10 and your song was playing but i was wearing headphones and thought it was just a weird uuh-hum hum-badum i'd never noticed on the naruto opening. hmu if you have an order for a venti pumpkin spice latte with four shots of espresso and 'the sweet embrace of death' written somewhere in your body, or something like that?
I love soulmate AUs in theory (that kind of romantic dramatic bullshit is my kind of bullshit), but they're almost always really frustrating in practice because of worldbuilding reasons. My favorite kind of soulmate AU is one in which soulmates are rare and not necessarily romantic. Most people don't have a soulmate, but if you do, it means that the two (or more) of you will be the most important thing in each other's lives by a mile - your fates are intertwined and your connection will be like a couple of comets crashing into each other. In pretty much every case, that effect extends to the world around you, too - whatever your relationship is, it's going to have a huge impact on the world. Basically, you're going to fuck each other up but good (either in a good way or a bad way) and in doing so you're also going to fuck up everything else. So, soulmate marks in this world would be seen as a sign that this is an Important Person and dramatic, possibly devastating change is on the way. ...there is no fic that uses this version of soulmates. At least not that I've been able to find. However, Church and Tex(/Allison) from Red vs. Blue are basically the perfect example. They are definitely soulmates, but not in a happy way.
Soulmate AUs are often frustrating conceptually in general, but that's mostly because I personally hate the IRL concept of there being One Specific Person For You. I don't think I'd have as much of an issue with it in a fictional setting in theory, but they're so badly executed most of the time, which sucks because some of them could be fascinating.
WRT Groundhog Day Loop Soulmates: Meet as in meet-meet, or does being in the same class suffice? Can you just sorta look at each other from across the street while one is in the process of moving away? What about people who meet their soulmates when they're toddlers? Man, blog abouts that along the age/gender/romantic orientation/zodiac/homestuck title also have "Iteration 576 of that fucking loop". People artificially upping their loop amounts to garner sympathy. Soulmate cragislist like "Loop starts at place/time, who the fuck are you" Soulmate scammers. How do different loops interact with each other? Like asshole family member is in a loop, and figures out a family member's loop starts at that place at that time, and then prevent that person from going there. Generally, asshole family fucking with the loop as much as they can, because if you've gone through a loop enough you begin to change and mature, and the cut becomes more and more obvious Families looking into who the supposed soulmate is. For good and bad reasons. Psychics and priests who claim they're able to break a soulmate bond. Psychics who claim to be able to find your soulmate, for a fee. People who manage to get together without needing to loop, is there that nagging suspicion that their spouse is not their soulmate? Someone who finds their soulmate when they/the soulmate are already married. Maybe at the wedding. Are there civil weddings that can be annulled in favor of soulmate weddings? Or can only soulmates marry? What of people who have married someone they like, and then they find their soulmate and the loop forces them to break up with their spouse because of the soulmate mess?
My favorite is "first words tattooed on your body" where the logical conclusion is that if you've got 'fuck off, officer' you're pretty much guaranteed to go into police work or something (or 'tall white mocha with a shot of caramel' meaning that You're In Starbucks For Life, My Boy) because the whole soulmate nonsense ends up with a huge effect on the world too. Like, if someone's soulmate words are "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President" that means that you're going into the presidency, presumably with a spouse because I don't think we've had an unmarried one yet, knowing that at some point you might meet your soul mate and you can't... do anything about it. Because a soul mate isn't always going to be the person who matches your life the way you need them to. (Also, just, in general, soulmates being A Big Deal but also if you end up dating someone else or never meeting yours it's not a failure on your part.)
AU where there is only one time loop at any time (haha) and its because some ancient cosmic power is a massive shipper, playing the universe like Sims 3, trying to make the ones they "know" are good fits together. Powers don't extend to full rewind, just pausing and looking at everything, saving and reloading only to the last save.
ok but like, a world in which somewhere between "most people" and "everyone" get to experience a time loop at some point in their lives, and everyone knows it? would the lottery even exist in this universe? what about gambling establishments? basically what i'm getting at here is, i know if i entered a time loop, i would abuse it to like, kick back, relax, and read a lot of shit, as well as the standard "try things you're normally too anxious to do bc now there are no social consequences." but probably at least SOME people would try and abuse it to make money, if that was an available option (obv they'd have to time it right so that they make the money on their final loop); and since a small percentage of the world is in timeloops at any one time, would gambling establishments even exist or would they crumble? hmm, now that i think about it, with the "until you get your shit together" condition, it might be tedious to repeat the "make money" scam each loop, hoping it would be the final loop... would some people still do it? maybe gambling would still exist, but maybe not the lottery... oh, but think of how this could be applied to military strategy... "Hey General Dickhead, I'm on a one-week timeloop right now, which I can prove by saying that in an hour ___ will happen; you tried X strategy last time and it wasn't optimal, what should we try this time around?" ...if a small percentage of the world is in a soulmate loop at any one time - ie. more than just one pair - how... are the multiple loops resolved? does the world treat it all like a single loop, and once a soulmate pair is finished, they drop back into normal time? and then time doesn't advance normally til all the pairs in that particular loop are done? how often do two soulmates meet, anyways? because the answer to that question is "how often is the world unknowingly trapped in a time loop." also how long are these loops - 24 hrs only, or is it variable based on the couple? bc the longer it is, the more you could abuse it for say, military strategy things... but someone in a loop in the right moment in history could potentially change history, if the loop was long enough or the effect of the event was seen soon enough would the 2016 election suddenly have people popping up on the internet saying "IM IN A TIMELOOP AND IF YOU DONT VOTE, TRUMP GETS ELECTED, BUT IF YOU VOTE HILLARY INSTEAD OF THIRD PARTY OR NOT VOTING, HILLARY CAN WIN" but then it's probably difficult to establish your timeloop credentials on the internet... and probably there'd be people faking being in timeloops to try and get people to vote one way or the other tl; dr. this world would be really interesting, because of what happens if you apply timeloops to the entire human race. some people might not abuse em. but i'm sure some would.
