I read through the soulmate AU discussion with my brother. He helpfully chimes in with "AU where your soulmate has the same song stuck in their head as you".
I've read a few where you don't recognize your soulmate until you hear them singing. Those ones tend to be on the better side because they have just enough soft-focus fairytale vibes that the lack of hard worldbuilding is okay. On the other hand, some of them do try to do the worldbuilding thing, and it almost always clashes horribly.
unrelated to above discussion but i was reminded this was a thing Spoiler: capslock spam TERRIBLE SECOND LANGUAGE SHIT WHERE CHARACTERS SLIP INTO THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE AT WEIRD TIMES ALSO THE VOLTRON FANDOM AT LARGE DECIDED LANCE WAS LATINO WHICH IS LIKE, SURE, BUT THEN THEY ALSO DECIDED THAT HE SHOULD SLIP INTO SPANISH CONSTANTLY AT WEIRD TIMES AND IT'S WEIRD Spoiler: 18+/nsfw LIKE DURING SEX "AY, DIOS MIO! DAMELO!" GUYS NO THAT'S NOT A THING PEOPLE DO I MEAN MAYBE IF HE WAS FUCKING WITH WHOEVER ELSE FOR SHIGGLES. BUT IT'S ALWAYS PLAYED STRAIGHT
I can actually occasionally slip up into English when speaking one of my native languages. But I also have pathologically fucked up speech patterns.
Speaking of soulmates, I just remembered the webcomic Dreamless by Bobby Crosby (text) and Sarah Ellerton (art) It's not a general soulmates thing, but rather a thing that, from what we see, runs in one family and connects to a random person across the globe. When you sleep, you perceive what your soulmate perceives, and naturally also pick up their native language. The woman (girl in the beginning) is considered mad growing up, same as her mother who had the same thing going on, only with a German man. The soulmates in question are an American woman and a Japanese man, during WWII. Yeah.
Hah, I remember that comic (though iirc it was the protag's dad who had the same sort of connection with a (presumably female) German.) Found the romance to be a bit BLUH but that's the majority of all fictional romance for me :'3
... probably on the dad, it's been ages since i read it, and agree with you on the romance. the world needs more spades and diamonds and clubs.
Make up ocs to handle shit that canon characters wouldn't fucking touch. A space general of a space fleet in a space ship crewed by thousands of people would not fucking handle torturing a guy, for fuck's sake. They don't gotta be a real character, but they gotta be, like, yunno, the kinda guy who would be doing the thing you want to be done to move the story forward. Also!! Like fuck spacefuture torture involves physically beating a dude with your bare hands, come the fuck on.
oh man I missed an entire conversation about soulmate AUs? damn. to drag the topic back up for a bit, I really wish more fics explored what could happen if you have multiple soulmates. are you destined to meet all of them? are you only expected to meet a few? are some of them non-romantic? are poly relationships more accepted in society if it's more common for people to have more than one soulmate? I like the idea of soulmates in theory but have trouble accepting the "you only have one person in the world who's right for you" thing, and there are some potentially really fun ways to work around it but so few fics ever do that. there are no rules, let's get some more variation in here!
There's a Les Mis fic where when you touch someone, a patch of color appears where the touch happened that matches how good of a match you are or how important you will be to each other. I think a couple other fandoms have similar fics too. I almost don't count that as part of the soulmate genre, though, it's so different from most soulmate conventions. I prefer when a person's soulmate isn't who's "right" for them, but who they'll have the strongest and most intense connection with. Who will change their life the most. I think a lot of soulmate fics fail because the authors don't understand that the most intense connection isn't always romantic.
The les mis fic was one of the ones I was referring to a few pages back - there's also a quite good girl genius minific with that setup and a naruto one.
I was going to add an addendum that specified "unless, of course, that's what gets his rocks off", but I did assume that went without saying. Sorry, that was irresponsible on my part.
I'm not sure this is even a gripe, I just had no idea that this kind of innocence was left in the world
... It sounds a bit like they're RPing Enoby, actually. I'm calling Poe, but kinda hoping I'm wrong, cause that's cute.
...Honestly, either way, I think I'm just glad they're having fun. Like, they just seem so straightforwardly cheerful about it? I can't even be mad.
Here's a gripe I don't think I've mentioned yet: unfounded jealousy. I mean, I don't like jealousy at the best of times, it tends to put me off, but I especially don't like it when it seems to be based on nothing. Example from a fic I was following until yesterday: Like. This hair trigger jealousy thing really gets my goat. I had to stop reading here because i was too busy going "wait wtf," and after I came back I decided to unsubscribe. A paragraph or two later, we have: ...Annoying gaydar joke at the end aside, so much of this just rubs me the wrong way. I mean sure, soon after Character A admits he's insecure and they hug and blah blah blah but it's. just. so. grating >:|
A fandom gripe rather than a fanfic gripe; I do not comprehend how anyone could read most kids' fantasy where the plucky heroes fight the evil warlord and think Trump would be anything but a villain in those stories. Hell, in the series in question at least one of the prominent villains was forcing other people to build stupid structures for him, the main difference being he actually had the competence and attention span to follow through on doing same!
mghh. i just saw a post in a character tag that's so wildly ooc for everyone involved that I don't even know how someone came up with it. it's not even like they're doing one of those incorrect-fandom-quotes blogs, they came up with this exchange Spoiler A: Don't worry, B, you'll find someone eventually. B: God I hope not. A: Don't you want a great romance? It's what all women want. B: Not really, no. A: Are you broken? C: No, she's aromantic. A: Aro-...??? B: Careful, C. You need to speak in small words for his primitive brain to understand. A: That is discrimination against time travelers and I am offended. B: Good, I'm offending you. like. ok. first. every one of these characters is like 12. secondly. where the hell did A get that idea, at all. A was raised in an apocalyptic suicide demon cult, then died, then got resurrected 500 years later. where exactly did he get the idea that every woman wants a great romance, and that being otherwise is a sign of being broken. also, why is he saying that thing about time travelers or being offended or whatever. that's. none of these are concepts that this character would HAVE in his brain to begin with! then the other two are just. B has a thicker skin than this, for one thing, and the first thought of both these characters would probably be 'oh yeah, A's entire experience of the world until a few months ago was from being in a 16th-century apocalypse demon cult. probably he is not up to date on terminology for how people like or do not like other people.' also how did that conversation even get started. A has never shown any sign of caring about that kind of thing. why would he think this was even something that should be said. i just. the rest of this blog's posts are mostly humorous but I don't even get where this one CAME from. it is baffling on every level.
