also this one is more of a personal nitpick than a genuine gripe but if a guy doesn't generate any body heat I don't think more blankets will make him warmer. because there's no heat. to trap under them.
and you miss out on the golden opportunity for the character to instinctively wrap themself in blankets that won't help because they still feel the urge for that comfort even if they know it's useless (or if they're too out of it to realize it's useless). OR, if there is another character involved, the classic huddling for warmth trope
Just finished Finally listening to the Magnus Archives finale after I originally dropped off a couple dozen episodes from the end in 2021. The end itself was of course incredible but I've discovered that as far as I can tell, there is approximately zero fic dealing with the aftermath of the apocalypse in the TMA universe. There's a ton of stuff about Jon and Martin in whatever other place they end up, and a billion time travel fix-its, but no one has written about the recovery of the TMA universe after the apocalypse was reversed, at least not that I can find. Not even an AU where the precious main characters managed to stick around there. Zilch. I'm sure there must be something out there, but I can't find it.
why even bother having a time travel "fix-it" au if you're not going to meaningfully change any canon events.
Instead of being increasingly desperate, terrified, and overwhelmed as the story goes on, the main character (Jon, it's a tma fic) now starts out mysteriously knowledgeable and world-weary and stays that way the whole time, or at least until I stopped reading, which was about a third of the way through. He does get to drop a lot of ominous hints and vague warnings while completely failing to pass on any useful information which is very enriching for him I'm sure. edit: to be fair it looks like the author does eventually get around to changing events somewhat. But I'm pretty sure they do so by mangling the hell out of the worldbuilding, so it's not exactly an improvement.
"Time travel do it mostly the same" can work, if the character has motivation to try that and it's a short enough span of time they could plausibly memorize things, but the longer the span with the more obviously changed attitude really should cause others to perceive them differently and thus think and act differently too... to say nothing of, what is the smug one's motive for keeping it the same, anyway? Does the story even give an explanation?
My understanding is that they are allegedly not trying to keep everything the same, they're just... being smug and languishing in their foreknowledge instead of doing anything that might be helpful.
Yeah. And when the other characters catch on that something is definitely weird after a couple chapters of mysterious knowingness, he does collect everybody for a worldbuilding infodump... and still absolutely no specific knowledge about upcoming events. He doesn't even mention one EXTREMELY IMPORTANT bit of worldbuilding knowledge that would save multiple lives because I'm pretty sure the author forgot it. And the other characters don't ever press him for information, they just tiptoe around being impressed by his time traveler mystery. As though there are not multiple of them who would threaten him with a baseball bat if he didn't spill.
the author I just found, who wrote all this fanfiction I like, has made a very sudden and abrupt turn into a fandom I have negative interest in and I'm over here like "Mister Frodo, don't you go where I can't follow!"
Oh my god, an old-school character bashing fic untagged, featuring The Ship I Like? What is this, 2007?
Intriguing concept, unfortunately the characters spend the whole time playing idiot ball hackey-sack. They aren't even smart in the ways that would let the author show off the cool concept which they are clearly very enthusiastic about. And also not only are there phonetic accents but they also change depending on the POV character, to highlight the differences in their individual perceptions, which could be cool but unfortunately is just really god damn annoying to read instead
this is less a gripe, more a musing. but I feel like when people introduce an element of choice into soulmate AUs, or make the definition of a soulmate too broad, or etc, it kind of misses the point? a part of the appeal of a soulmate au is that edge of horror that's always there. I mean, on the one hand, the appeal is the fantasy of knowing there's someone out there for you and you will find them, no matter what, you are guaranteed to find the person that you'll make that kind of deep connection with. the reassurance that true love is both attainable and inevitable and you just have to wait for it to come to you. but the flipside is that you can't avoid it if you want to. the two of you are going to meet, and you're going to fall in love or become an inextricable part of each other's lives and souls, and there's nothing you can do about it. you're both guaranteed to catch feelings, and if you didn't want that, then your only options are to make both of you miserable by denying the feelings that happened to you, or to give in and give up your agency. it's the horror of fate, basically, and the question of whether feelings and desires ordained by destiny can be said to be real or whether it doesn't make a difference. and I get why people aren't into that but when an AU has people being able to choose their soulmate, or soulmarks disappearing when someone falls out of love, or a setting where people have some kind of soulmark from practically everyone they're friends with... why not just write a regular romance at that point, you know? it's missing the zest of a real soulmate AU.
Related, but I feel this way about every soulmate AU that tries to be non-amatonormative by introducing platonic bonds as a normalised part of the society and completely missing how the isolation of monogamy and romance-first society is horrifying and oppressive on its own. You can't really *remove* the intense binarism of "your partner" vs "not your partner" from the story that is all about everyone potentially having that destined person who is supposed to be of superior importance.
yeah exactly!!! soulmate AUs are basically a sci-fi concept, and like all good sci-fi concepts it takes something from real life and blows it up to a larger-than-life scale so you can examine it in detail. when you take the concept, blow it up, and then cut it in half, it just ends up being kind of nothing.
i disagree. i have seen some very interesting and engaging takes on soulmate aus that do not go the "one-and-only" rout. sometimes that can water it down, yes, but that doesn't mean it has to. and maybe there should be a different word for it when the mechanics are different, but "soulmate" is what we've got. also this strikes me as similar to the different ways people look at a/b/o; some people want to bend the trope and shake it around and some people want to go full-ham on the horrifying bits and some people don't see anything really wrong with the concept. "it's not that deep", etc, except that it can be if you want it to be. personally for me both soulmates and a/b/o are boring played straight. even emphasizing the horror aspect, when i'm in the mood for it, only spices it up a little. whether it's fate or biology controlling you, whether you want it or fight it, it needs more variety than "and this is inescapable and they might not even realize why they should be worried about that". Yes, there are tons of great fic that explore that in many different ways. i'm not denying that. i just don't find them exciting. maybe that is because i'm aroace, but i am also a giant shipper so i'm not so sure about that. i'm not trying to say that you're objectively wrong or anything; this is just my view on it.
see, I think I like it the way I do because I'm arospec. romantic love, and social ideals of romantic love, are inherently a bit unnerving to me because of the lack of... self-containment, I guess? because it feels like you're not meant to function as fully individual anymore. and the idea of being so attached to someone that you're literally incomplete without them is just that turned up to max. that's true, though, that different takes on it can also be good. I've certainly enjoyed a lot of variations. I guess it really depends on the execution - whether it feels like the author is just trying to sidestep the "icky" stuff, or if they have another specific thing they're going for. and I do like AUs with multiple soulmates, too, just not when the author seems compelled to slap a soulmate category on every positive relationship.
"Soulmates" as "currently 100% compatibility" is a different vibe than "soulmates as destined (inevitably, bound) for each other," and I picked the word compatibility because I was gonna make a Pacific Rim joke, but I'm not sure that's quite it either
