ooh, yeah, that's interesting too - at some point one wouldn't need to establish timeloop credentials (at least to people you know well), because from their perspective you would be Suddenly Different enough that it'd be obvious you were in a loop
if you're posting like a steorotypical tumblr kiddo, you probably don't have timeloop credentials or, at least, other people with timeloop credentials won't believe you if you say you do :P
i've been using "timeloop credentials" as shorthand for "proof that i know the immediate future" or "proof that i'm in a loop"; both are more easily established with people you know. for instance, if you know that every iteration of the loop, the cat yowls to be let out at exactly 4:09 pm sharp, you can present this to your family beforehand as proof of timeloop, and it would be verified at 4:09. but this would be harder to do on the internet; you'd have to find an event happening later that day/week and then predict it ahead of time, but you'd have to be especially exact for people on the internet to believe you weren't faking. and if your timeloop is only 24 hrs, this gets even harder, especially if you want to establish sufficient credentials to change whether or not someone voted... it would actually be easiest to convince someone also in a timeloop that you were in a timeloop, because the things you did and said would change easily, whereas the static, non-looping world would only change behavior if interacted with by a looper.
ah! i was thinking more about the idea of people maturing emotionally and intellectually in a timeloop, like @winterykite mentioned, and how maturity or lack of it might be evident to people that don't know them well and people might have a notion of what the typical maturity of someone who has been through timeloops is and use that to establish credentials.
When the narrative randomly switches between using the character's first and last names. And sometimes throws in a codename to spice things up. It's disorienting and annoying.
Ugh, yes. Also when a character is usually referred to in canon by one name but the fic uses another one, even if the POV character wouldn't use that name (e.g., a Harry Potter fic where Harry calls Prof. McGonagall "Minerva" all the time for no reason. Which I just made up but probably exists).
Those sorts of switches I can be fine with but mostly they have to be purposeful so not random. Tori can be go from being called "Tori" or "Torisen" based on who the perspective character of the chapter is, for example. Alternatively, I've had the Dolorosa gone from being called The Woman in most cases save for certain key emotional moments in which case she is then referred to as Porrim in a fic. But these things are, again, purposeful. The former example is pretty fucking consistent in how its done and the latter example is a rare occurrence in the fic backed up by other bits in the mood of the piece. Both are backed up by character. It's a thing I really like! Switching names. But it has to have a reason behind it.
In one of my fics the two central characters both abruptly start being referred to by different names partway through, and I had somebody comment on the impact of the switch. That was fun.
ah, gotcha! maturity would start working as credentials to the people you know once you've looped enough, & it might also help with people you don't know but whom have gone through/are going through a loop themself. tho depending on the situation/how high the stakes are, you might well still need some traditional proof, when it's someone you don't know well who's not currently in a loop. also @swirlingflight mentioned that one avengers soulmate timeloop fic, which i seem to recall featuring nick fury having a special code word which he told tony during one loop, and then once tony said it to him on the next loop, he accepted tony's word that tony was in a timeloop. (unless that was a different avengers timeloop fic...) so that's another, simpler method of establishing credentials... wonder if a lot of people would set something like that up, or just people in positions of power?
agreed. there's one particular grievance i have: this one danganronpa fic, which is one of those that features a cast of OCs, which is actually quite well done - except that the narration uses last names for all the characters, but the dialogue (which is in script form, as many DR fics imitating the form of a visual novel do) uses first names. (or vice versa - i don't even fucking know which set of names are the first names and which are the last. i did eventually learn which names go with which - this is especially aggravating because it's a cast of OCs, so it's hard enough to learn one set of new names, let alone two. for fuck's sake.) i should probably actually comment about this in the fic at some point, but like. it's over 100k by now there's no chance that the authors will go back and change it. the fic is otherwise very good! i'm just super salty.
Yep, that was the fic! He never outright told Tony what the codeword meant to him, just that he'd being willing to hear out what Tony told him after the codeword.
...ok i have more thoughts about the timeloop soulmate thing but not about loop abuse this time more just like. depending on how much looping is required for two (defaulting to two here, tho i also quite like poly soulmates) ppl to "get their shit together"... well, from an outside perspective, it could range from "oh hey, Alice has met their soulmate, but otherwise they're mostly the same" to "holy shit yesterday Bob was a jackass, today they're... still kind of a jackass but they seem to respect boundaries better now and they're smitten with this Charlie person" to "Dave is basically unrecognizable from their previous self now, how long were they looping?!" like this has the potential to be an extremely life-changing experience that no one gets to see except for the two(+) people in the loop itself (and maybe other soulmate pairs who are also looping, if they're in the same area/social circles) you go through life knowing that at any time your sibling or your best friend or you could find their soulmate, loop a bunch, and come out somewhere between slightly and drastically changed (and with a brand new relationship too - brand new from an outside perspective, anyways) and if you open it up to poly soulmates, you could even end up going through this multiple times so there's already the potential for a large disconnect between the pre-loop and post-loop selves due to the requirements of the loop - and on top of that, anyone who loops for long enough may find that to be a uniquely terrible experience (esp. if it's a short loop, like 24 hrs, where you don't have as much time to branch out and try doing/seeing/going someplace new) oh, and if poly soulmates are a thing, imagine someone completing a long loop and being like "well at least it's fucking done" only for the two of them to meet a third and have to loop again... also how much more scientific research goes into time travel in this universe, given that everyone knows the loops are a thing?
Thought: could a soulmate timeloop be disrupted and elongated by a different soulmate timeloop occurring too close by? I mean, if AB are timelooping from March 3rd to March 13th, and YZ are timelooping from March 7th to April 2nd, anything AB or YZ do in that stretch of time from March 7th to March 13th could theoretically disrupt the loop of the other pair. So... are there message boards that are adrift in time for loopers to bitch on? And, more importantly, how many of those message boards have threads with a variant on "HEY, TO THE JACKASS WHO KEEPS TRYING TO END THE WORLD IN HIS LOOP, YOU'RE MAKING IT REALLY GODDAMN HARD TO FIND ETERNAL LOVE HERE"?
Oooh, and imagine the scandal if it was ever revealed that that's what their soulmate words were! And in a world like that, finding out any celebrity's soulmate words is probably a HUGE paparazzi-type thing, where everyone wants to know (extra tangent: finding out a pop stars soul words and OOPS guess we just found out what every fan who ever meets them ever is going to say when they come face to face with them). So if the president's soulmate words ever leak like that, they're going to be SO vulnerable to future scandal. Because they were happily married before they got to office and they're clearly going to meet their soulmate in office, sooooo... AFFAIR! Is the president having an affair this week? What about this week! The president has been in photographs with this person plenty of times, is there something suspicious happening here??? God, that would be... a miserable presidency. And presumably their actual spouse would know the words too. So potentially a very tense marriage, especially when they announce they want to aim for the presidency. Oh, so you're gearing up to meet your soulmate NOW are you, I see how it is, I SEE WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME. Even if they're the chill and/or calculating kind of political spouse, that's.... hooooo, that's gotta be rough. Never even mind how much rougher it would be if it was "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. President" Wow.... Just thinking about the rough time they'd have if anyone found out, that's just crazy. I want this story now. I want to see how crazy these situations can get. I want mutual dawning horror when the president's soulmate turns out to be the also-happily-married leader of another country and both of them are like oh god no. This has so many ways to go badly, and I'm fascinated.
Now here's a bit of fuckery: imagine having "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President" as your soulmate lines and just telling yourself that you're not going to run for presidency-- but you're good at politics and it's what your family has always done so you do that anyways. But as long as you're not running for presidency, it's fine! And then, somehow, you end up either in the line of succession or the designated survivor and shit goes horribly wrong and now you're the President! Which means not only are you dealing with that political fallout, but the looming potential failure of your interpersonal relationships too. What I'm saying is I want a Designated Survivor tv show but with the soulmate aspect thrown in.
what if it turns out the person with those words on them actually never goes into politics and instead hears those words from their soulmate in a play or movie or playing a game with them or something? and they've been so tense, for so long, and it turns out that they never really had to worry after all, 'cause the words weren't meant as straightforwardly as they'd expect them to be.
