Twincest was strong and cute here.

If only that magical event happens in this damn reality... XD

Realistically it'd mostly be creepy af. Some kind of... unfathomable supernatural mechanism just pairing people up in practical terms at random?

And I thought the concept of Santa keeping kids under 24/7 surveillance was disturbing...

Leaving that aside, I'm digging the whole interaction between the twins.

last edited at May 7, 2018 11:42AM

Always struck me as quite telling that a relationship where neither partner has to do anything beyond being "the fated one" is considered to be more romantic than one where the partners actually have to work for their love ...

Pyoro posted:

Always struck me as quite telling that a relationship where neither partner has to do anything beyond being "the fated one" is considered to be more romantic than one where the partners actually have to work for their love ...

I guess it fails into "true love", when they are "destined for you" for sure that love must be "true" or "perfect" or something like that.

last edited at May 7, 2018 1:07PM

I'm just trying to figure out how twins were born a day apart. They were born at midnight?

Always struck me as quite telling that a relationship where neither partner has to do anything beyond being "the fated one" is considered to be more romantic than one where the partners actually have to work for their love ...

I don't get the idea that is how it works in these scenarios. The other person being a soulmate or tied with the red thread etc just means that you were fated to meet, and maybe they are the perfect partner for you.

BUT- like any relationship, they still have to work at it - get to know each other, make the normal kinda compromises and sacrifices that come with a relationship. They might fall in love fast, but they still have to get to know each other and then fall in love with that person - they are not just in love by default the second they meet.

And

Realistically it'd mostly be creepy af. Some kind of... unfathomable supernatural mechanism just pairing people up in practical terms at random?

It would not be randomly pairing 2 people and then 'forcing' them to love each other via magic or whatever, but more simply, you could look at it as the red string ties you to the one person you are most perfectly matched with? All it is doing is removing the need to search for a suitable partner. You still need to build your love / relationship up with them.

Anyways I really liked this :) I love how normally it would be considered a taboo for twins to hook up but they are basically given the OK, and nobody can complain about it if it was literally fated lol.

I will hope for a follow on or 2!

last edited at May 7, 2018 1:32PM

I'm just trying to figure out how twins were born a day apart. They were born at midnight?

That explanation would certainly seem to require the fewest supporting assumptions...

I'm just trying to figure out how twins were born a day apart. They were born at midnight?

They don't need to be born at midnight - giving birth often takes many hours - and I don't know how it works with twins or more but I doubt popping one out means all the rest will automatically be born within a short time.. You could easily give birth to twins hours apart I guess?

So one was born one night, and the other early the next morning.

Realistically it'd mostly be creepy af. Some kind of... unfathomable supernatural mechanism just pairing people up in practical terms at random?

It would not be randomly pairing 2 people and then 'forcing' them to love each other via magic or whatever, but more simply, you could look at it as the red string ties you to the one person you are most perfectly matched with? All it is doing is removing the need to search for a suitable partner. You still need to build your love / relationship up with them.

From a mere mortal perspective it might - and in reality may - as well be completely random because you have no idea what it's working off of. There is even less input of the relevant people involved than if they were consulting their damn horoscopes (or tea leaves); moreover the general tone in-story is that this arbitrary supernatural matchmaking is very much treated as gospel.

One does wonder how minor complications like couples falling out or widowers or whatever get handled by the "system"... Moreover, given that it appears to be an universal default that the effect fires on your 18th birthday (which is an utterly arbitrary trigger condition in the first place; onset of sexual maturity would make far more sense) the obvious corollary is that everyone marries within their age-cohort, period. And I can only too well imagine the sociocultural norms and taboos that would swiftly grow around this phenomenom...

Put bluntly all of this sounds rather disturbingly homogenizing and stifling. Dunno 'bout you but I'm kind of a fan of individual mortal agency in this sort of thing...

I'm just trying to figure out how twins were born a day apart. They were born at midnight?

They don't need to be born at midnight - giving birth often takes many hours - and I don't know how it works with twins or more but I doubt popping one out means all the rest will automatically be born within a short time.. You could easily give birth to twins hours apart I guess?

So one was born one night, and the other early the next morning.

I looked around for some statistics, and Wikipedia references a German study (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin#Delivery_interval) finding that over 90% of twins are born within 30 minutes of each other, so they were probably at least born pretty close to midnight.

One does wonder how minor complications like couples falling out or widowers or whatever get handled by the "system"... Moreover, given that it appears to be an universal default that the effect fires on your 18th birthday (which is an utterly arbitrary trigger condition in the first place; onset of sexual maturity would make far more sense) the obvious corollary is that everyone marries within their age-cohort, period. And I can only too well imagine the sociocultural norms and taboos that would swiftly grow around this phenomenom...

Not necessarily - we know that a couple's strings don't appear at the exact same time, so if your destined partner is ten years younger than you, you'll just find that your string connects to an 8-year-old and they'll have to wait ten years for their own string to show up. That's... not really better, though. Actually, I sorta wish I didn't think of it.

last edited at May 7, 2018 2:34PM

Not necessarily - we know that a couple's strings don't appear at the exact same time, so if your destined partner is ten years younger than you, you'll just find that your string connects to an 8-year-old and they'll have to wait ten years for their own string to show up. That's... not really better, though. Actually, I sorta wish I didn't think of it.

And some people, like the comedian Jeff Dunham, have an 18 year age gap with his current wife. Could you imagine having to wait a couple months for the string to appear, leading to a new born?

Not necessarily - we know that a couple's strings don't appear at the exact same time, so if your destined partner is ten years younger than you, you'll just find that your string connects to an 8-year-old and they'll have to wait ten years for their own string to show up. That's... not really better, though. Actually, I sorta wish I didn't think of it.

As usual these fairytale gimmicks do not stand up to much scrutiny. I'm also tolerably certain the mechanism doesn't, and can't, account for problems of distance and only too likely lack of means of dealing with those on part of the people involved...
ʅ ( • ε • ) ʃ

Actually, I speculated on what a system like this might look like / operate with some friends.

The one I came up with was, someone made the system (hence why 18), and they set it to use time loop logic (see wikipedia) to find the partner with which marriage will happen in the future if the string is displayed. This obviously leads to more than one possible solution and the system picks the one with the longest marriage.

Certain observations:

1. Longest marriage does not mean happiest marriage.

2. If the system cannot find a solution, you don't get a string. This doesn't mean you can't married, it means that if the system showed you the string to that partner, you wouldn't get married (and same for the other possible partners).

3. This does not necessarily mean that society views the string as "fluffy romance story". Marriages could end up requiring you to have a string.
   
   3b. If society views the presence of the string as "you are expected to marry", then the number of possible strings explodes.
   
   3c. Another possible consequence is that all romance when you're under 18 (unless approached by partner) gets regarded as pointless and liable to result in disappointment; and everyone can't be bothered to go search because the system will do it for them.

4. As technology improves, people can travel further. So a red string system in medieval era might only display strings for 50% of the population as the rest die before they can get married or can't travel far enough or there simply isn't enough options. Villages would have less strings than towns and cities.
   
   4b. But when something like railway gets constructed, the number of strings explodes since most people can go on a "follow the string" quest.
   
   4c. Rich people can travel further than poor people and are more likely to get string quests than poor people.

5. The criteria shown does not prevent one person from having two strings. (although the system might be programmed to avoid it) Perhaps the first pair gets married, then one of them dies or gets divorced.

EDIT: Also, you can imagine the epic cultural clashes that will occur when something like the European trade ships contacting China. When the system is worldwide, and the societies view the significance of the string differently, the resulting problems when strings start appearing across borders will be =/

last edited at May 8, 2018 5:00AM

Liiies, all lies!!!... Reina and Kumiko were linked by the red thread too in the first season of Hibike Euphonium and in the second season they were not together anymore!! (TT o TT)

If only that magical event happens in this damn reality... XD

Realistically it'd mostly be creepy af. Some kind of... unfathomable supernatural mechanism just pairing people up in practical terms at random?

And I thought the concept of Santa keeping kids under 24/7 surveillance was disturbing...

Leaving that aside, I'm digging the whole interaction between the twins.

nah, it ain't that weird since santa is a pedo after all. I mean, it's natural for a pedo to love children u know. just like yuri ppl, it's natural for em to love another girls.

Liiies, all lies!!!... Reina and Kumiko were linked by the red thread too in the first season of Hibike Euphonium and in the second season they were not together anymore!! (TT o TT)

reina n kumiko ain't a thing, the author n the producer of anime literally said, there's nthn between em. it's just purely friendship to the bone, no less no more.

Liiies, all lies!!!... Reina and Kumiko were linked by the red thread too in the first season of Hibike Euphonium and in the second season they were not together anymore!! (TT o TT)

reina n kumiko ain't a thing, the author n the producer of anime literally said, there's nthn between em. it's just purely friendship to the bone, no less no more.

Oh, I know riight?... So, why bother to put the 'red thread of fate' linked to them in the ending of the episodes in S1? Just another yuri bait... That's just effing mean! ¬_¬

@A5PECT
On the bright side, if the system doesn't care about gender, then society is likely not to either. (given it is time loop logic, ALL couples with the red string will eventually marry since it won't display the string if you wouldn't)

Going by the convo in-story at least this society is apparently fine with basically any match-up if the string says so, so there's that.

Mind you... far as we're told the string between any given pair is only visible to themselves so others will basically just have to take them at their word anyway.

EDIT: Also, you can imagine the epic cultural clashes that will occur when something like the European trade ships contacting China. When the system is worldwide, and the societies view the significance of the string differently, the resulting problems when strings start appearing across borders will be =/

IRL state borders in the modern sense didn't really even exist until about the 1800s to begin with, and only in exceptional cases do they form an insurmountable barrier to human movements. Practical economic concerns and the like are normally a rather bigger one (hence the earlier about problems of distance and the means to deal with them).
Hell.
Last I heard marrying a native is generally one of the easier ways to get naturalized.

In premodern context a far more relevant worry would be if the couple's respective relevant social units (families, clans, tribes, whatever) have some kinds of hostilities going... and I don't want to even think about what kind of sand this will throw into the gears of upper-class dynastic calculations. Probably just results in a widespread practice of adopting heirs if necessary, many IRL societies have run with that for a long time anyway.

last edited at May 8, 2018 12:24PM

Once upon a time
More like Once upon a Fuwa Fuwa Time

Pls give me more recs to series/one-shots like this.

IRL state borders in the modern sense didn't really even exist until about the 1800s to begin with, and only in exceptional cases do they form an insurmountable barrier to human movements. Practical economic concerns and the like are normally a rather bigger one (hence the earlier about problems of distance and the means to deal with them).
Hell.
Last I heard marrying a native is generally one of the easier ways to get naturalized.

In premodern context a far more relevant worry would be if the couple's respective relevant social units (families, clans, tribes, whatever) have some kinds of hostilities going... and I don't want to even think about what kind of sand this will throw into the gears of upper-class dynastic calculations. Probably just results in a widespread practice of adopting heirs if necessary, many IRL societies have run with that for a long time anyway.

Well, I was thinking more of what happens if eg.

Culture X views the string as Fate and thinks red stringed couples are romantic. It doesn't particularly care about marriage but red stringed couples are (socially) expected to have fluffy romantic times. If you're stringed with someone and aren't having diabetes-inducing sweet times, there must be something wrong with you.

Culture Y views the string as the Blessing of God, red stringed couples are required by law to marry, and you cannot marry anyone except the one you have a string with. It doesn't matter what age, gender or relations you have, if you are stringed to someone, you are getting married. Now. (this means people can get married to babies, their sister, their parent -eg. son to single mother, they don't care. If you have string, you are getting married)

Now, this wasn't a problem when X and Y were on opposite sides of an ocean. But then someone invented the steam ship and now travel between X and Y is possible. Red strings appear pointing to the other side of the ocean...

I am assuming here of course that strings don't appear between people who have no chance of meeting each other.

last edited at May 8, 2018 10:21PM

It's worth reminding everyone that a person can only see their own string, starting on their 18th birthday. Even the person on the other end can't see it if they haven't come of age yet. So, what's to stop people from lying? And then when the person they lied about being connected to comes of age and realizes they aren't connected to the liar, the liar accuses them of lying in order to escape the relationship, and the fact is that only the people directly concerned know the truth of the matter.
Never assume there aren't people who will take advantage of something. They'll always be there.

last edited at May 8, 2018 10:55PM

It's worth reminding everyone that a person can only see their own string, starting on their 18th birthday. Even the person on the other end can't see it if they haven't come of age yet. So, what's to stop people from lying? And then when the person they lied about being connected to comes of age and realizes they aren't connected to the liar, the liar accuses them of lying in order to escape the relationship, and the fact is that only the people directly concerned know the truth of the matter.
Never assume there aren't people who will take advantage of something. They'll always be there.

Obviously the local Goddess of Love and Red Strings will come to home and smite with a lighting or something the liar.
They seems to have put a lot of work in the Red String system to let things like that happen.

Anyways, this was SUPER CUTE! Adorable!!

I disagree. Rhino is your modern day unicorn.