#I'm currently working on filling in the spaces the game provided. which is a lot and why the game feels so flat.

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

Three chapter fanfic now ready for you to read. I'm sooooo happy to be writing again! You will need to log in to your AO3 account in order to read this. I have my account and fics set up this way to prevent AI from scraping my stories. Also, please leave a comment. Keyboard smash, "confetti of kudos", and even a row of emojis qualifies. That stuff is the best motivation to keep us writers going.

Thank you!

[loudn-mcyt]

It's time for part 2 of my sbk creators in superhero au (Part 1 with Viking and Ruby can be found here)! This time, Avid and Marma1ade are up.

Avid in this au is the Monkey Mechanist - rock star by day, mad scientist by night. I picked the colors from his OSSHA uniform - surely that's not important though :3

Avid here is a masterful inventor; he has the maximum technology bonus that's possible at this power level, and between his improvised tools, inventor, and skill mastery advantages, he can whip something up for just about any problem, and his headquarters at OSSHA labs gives him the space and materials to do it (bonus points for whoever can guess what OSSHA stands for in this au). Though he would probably prefer to avoid combat, he's not helpless. His command blocks, blocks of modular nanotechnology, allow him to create objects, restrain opponents, and shut down other technology. Without them, though, he's extremely vulnerable; his monkey traits don't do much for him in combat.

This is also the first one of these where I have to explain how arrays work. In mutants and masterminds 3e, you have a limited number of points with which to build your character. Arrays are a shortcut built into the system; using an array, you buy a single power at full cost and any number of other powers with the same or less cost as 1-point "alternate effects". This comes with a catch, though: you can only ever use one power within an array at a time. This makes it very good for combat skills, but defensive and utility abilities in an array can be a risk...

Also, most of the time when I build characters in this system, I start with the archetypes and templates within the game and tweak them to fit the character I'm working with. For example, Viking is mostly built off of the Speedster archetype, while Avid is based off of the Gadgeteer archetype. I only bring this up to mention that the ability spread I used from that archetype was called Adventurer :). Also, I didn't build off an archetype for Ruby - I had to build his character from the ground up, which is a little harder but has a lot more flexibility.

Marmalade's colors are from her dress and her eyes. Her current name is a placeholder - superhero names are hard and superhero names for mages that haven't been used before are practically nonexistent. (if you have ideas please tell me I've been trying to think of a good one since I thought of this au)

Void witch is a good description of her abilities though. Magic drawn from the Void makes her the heaviest hitter by far of the characters I've made, and the accurate attack and power attack advantages give her a lot of flexibility in fights. Most of her magic is in her array, which provides both her offensive options and a few other possibilities - noticeably her protective aura, which allows her to shield herself and others from certain effects, though she can't do much else while she has that active. She also has access to portals for movement both within and between dimensions, but she may not always have that one down; the unreliable modifier means that there's a chance for failure every time she uses it, like, for example, if she was trying to escape a limbo dimension. or something like that. On the defensive, she's very resilient, and her will defense is very good, letting her resist mental effects well.

You may also notice that each character has two complications: one that I filled out, and a blank motivation. Characters in m&m are required to have at least two complications, one of which must be a motivation (you can have more if you want). I decided to intentionally leave the motivation blank, both because I wasn't 100% sure on those and because I wanted to leave some room for speculation/development if I actually write this au.

I've written way more for this post than the last one...hopefully that doesn't become a trend these are already very long. Also I lied a little about how long these take I already had them built when I posted the other ones oops

[bg-sparrow]

Fanfic asks 1, 2, 3?

(I'm so sorry! I saw this and forgot until I did the most recent ask game and saw my inbox again! Thank you for the ask!!)

From Fanfic Writer Ask Game! Huzzah! :D

1. What is your most popular fic?

I will stick to my BttF fics for this as that's the majority of my writing. And I suppose the fic's popularity would depend on what stat you're looking at!

Currently, the fic with the most hits (2,956) and kudos (95) would be Where You Were (Time Circuits #3) -- AKA BttF: Part III in my MartyOC trilogy rewrite. It was completed one year ago this week! I'm very emotional about it. :)

The fic with the most bookmarks (24) is A Fracture in the Space-time Continuum, in which Biff breaks Marty's leg at the end of Part II and Marty has to spend another 6-8 weeks in 1955 with Doc while he heals up. Bookmarks, to me, are "I loved this so much I don't want to lose it/ I want to reread this", and that's a big, big honor. It carries a lot more weight if we're talking about how popular a fic is.

The fic with the most comments (191) would be the absolutely absurd The Doom of Marty McFly that I did for June of Doom 2023. It is a silly meta parody of me brainstorming story ideas at Marty, and I enjoy the escape it provides so much that I'm on my third installment right now! Lots of fun. The best kind of self-insert. High recommend you try it with your own blorbos!

2. What fanfic do you wish you got more response on?

I say this at the beginning and end of every fic, and it is that I welcome and appreciate any and all feedback I get! It truly helps me to better myself as a writer. Even a quick "Great job!" is a huge confidence boost, and I really need that sometimes.

As of right now, I'd say Once Upon a Time in the East (OUAT #2). This story felt like such a niche deviation from Back to the Future in general, but I also feel like it was one of my strongest works this year. It was unexpectedly built off a plot twist in Once Upon a Time in the West, it is filled with historical details I loved researching and implementing, and I really pushed myself out of my comfort zone by writing more mature content. I also feel like it's the rare sequel that surpasses the original, so I'm very proud of it. Which means I want all the feedback I can get on it!

3. What's a fic idea that you have but haven't written yet?

I'm about to break ground on it: Once Upon a Time in the North (OUAT #4). I wrote some scenes for it but then totally changed the direction of the fic last week, so my outline is in shambles. But! It's a stronger story already! In this fourth and final installment of the Once Upon a Time series, the year is 1906. Marty is a full-blown outlaw with Buford at this point when the law finally catches up to them -- along with their children.

In this story, I'm excited to get the opportunity to expand on Buford's son, who we saw for a hot second in a comic book in the 90s named "Mugsy" Tannen. That's it. That's all we get canon-wise for Buford's son/ Kid's father. Not so much as a first name! So I've made him a whole freaking backstory, including how he ends up working for Arnie Benedict's mob in Chicago, and I'm really itching to cement that lore in this story.

Thank you again for the ask!!

[softerseasons]

Hi! I came across your post where you talked about being an accountant, and got excited because I am currently studying to become an accountant so it was cool getting to hear about what you do! I'm focusing on taxes and currently working through the Enrolled Agent certification exams, but I love the bookkeeping side of things also. I don't know if this is the case for you but for me accounting just feels like doing logic/word puzzles, when I do it right it's satisfying to me the same way that doing sudoku feels satisfying.

Do you have any shortcuts or formulas in excel that you find exceptionally helpful? Personally I love autosum, it's one of my favorite shortcuts.

Also forensic accounting sounds fascinating, I'd love to hear more about it if you're willing to share!

Hi there! Sorry it took me so long to get to this- everything is happening all at once all the time, as it does. I'm so glad to hear that my post was of such interest to people- I really, truly didn't expect it to get as much attention as it ended up getting!

That is exactly the kind of sensation I get with doing accounting, especially the bookkeeping side of things. I love making things balance out, and it does tickle the same part of my brain that Sudoku and sorting games and other logic puzzle games do! It's great, because it's that except I get to do it and get paid for it!

(It's great most of the time. Sometimes there's this thing where I'm too efficient and I run out of things to do and I have to sit around for 3 hours waiting for someone to be free to train me on something new so I can fill my time back up. Like right now!)

My personal favorite thing in Excel is VLookup- it's so useful for creating new tables out of old tables of data. I also make excel spreadsheets for people I know for their non-accounting work and VLookup is undeniably the formula I use the most, though neat trick I also use just as often is adding the contents of two cells together via &" "& or &"-"& depending on whether you want a space or a dash between the two. Also, don't forget when you're trying to copy a formula to a lot of cells (such as by highlighting a cell with a formula in it and dragging the little box on the bottom right of the cell), you can put $ in front of the letter or number or both to keep it from automatically changing- this is helpful for VLookup formulas especially, where you're trying to make sure all of your formulas reference the same cell, but when you copy the formula it auto-changes the cell you're referencing!

I'm happy to talk about forensic accounting, but I do have to add the caveat that these things are what I've heard- I've never had a forensic accounting job, and I don't want to pretend that I know things that maybe might be different once you get into the job, you know?

The bulk of it is investigating white collar crimes that center around businesses- fraud, embezzlement, misappropriation of assets, false insurance claims, straight up money laundering, tax fraud, etc etc. The bigger the business you're auditing, the more complex this is. If the evidence and analyses you provided are used to take the case to court, you may have to testify, or you may have to present your findings to a whole group of people and explain them in a way that non-accountants can understand, which is the part I would have the hardest time with, tbh. But ohhh the satisfaction of finding the numbers and making them all line up so that you know exactly how the situation you're looking into occurred...

[lrgcarter]

Opinion 8: The world of Warhammer 40k is now overwritten.

This is perhaps my most subjective opinion yet. It's based entirely on taste. Oh well.

So, the original writer of 40k has described his version of the setting as 'a sandpit'. The galaxy is a big place, filled with loads of isolated patches of activity. Travel between these patches takes for ever, so you could theoretically have a star system where one plot is happening, right next to another star system where something else is happening, and neither would know about the other because that's how big space is.

Everything was written pretty loosely. My previous description about how there was a civil war between the space marines? That wasn't all that much shorter than the lore provided in second edition rule books and the like. Those areas of the game that were a bit more fleshed out were those where other games had focused on some small aspect of the setting. So, the battle for Armageddon was detailed because there had been a Battle for Armageddon boxed game. But these were all localised on a galactic scale. You could happily ignore anything you wanted to and find your own corner of the sand pit to play in.

This encouraged players to create their own lore. The best tangible example of this is the use of so-called Special Characters. These were named historical figures from the setting that were created by the games designers to show how the setting worked. So, the previously mentioned Armageddon war had two stand out Special Characters; Commissar Yarrick, the leader of humanity's forces, and Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, the leader of their ork enemies. Both were written to be foundational examples of the factions in this setting. They had their own specific story and a few special rules to make them all heroic and unique.

They were also generally not allowed to be used in games. They weren't allowed in tournaments, and friendly games only allowed them with both player's prior agreement. Because they were heroes in specific times and places. They were meant to be used in specific scenarios.

Why would the writers limit the characters in this way? Because they wanted you to be inspired to create you own, unique characters. Which would then in turn allow you to create your own unique armies. Your own unique corner of the sandpit. The rules were flexible and encouraged you to do this.

Now, I'm sure this is still possible today. I know lots of people still enjoy the creative world building of making their own chapter of space marines etc.

At the same time…

A lot of things only hinted at before have now been deeply explained. A massive series of books has been written about the space marine civil war. Characters from that war, which took place ten thousand years before the 'current' setting of the game, are slowly being resurrected for players to use in their games. Starter sets for armies now often come with one of that army's special characters. The special characters have gone from something mostly used by beginners to a 'must have' around which the basic rules of the army are written.

Some people used to complain that the 'plot' of 40k never moved forward. That humanity was always, and only ever, just on the edge of being overwhelmed. That the latest new big war had been written in such a way that it should have big consequences, but in fact everything else was just continuing as normal.

These people wanted to know what happened next! And who can blame them? Unfortunately, they missed the point that 'what happened next' was meant to be written by you, the players. And again, this isn't their fault so much. Because Games Workshop realised that 'progressing the plot' became a way to sell new models. So, as I say, characters started officially coming back from the dead. Events happened to change the shape of the galaxy. The course of history started to hinge on the decisions of a small few corporate approved central characters.

Now, plenty of people enjoy this. And who am I to say they are wrong. But for me, this has the effect of making the setting feel smaller. If every aspect of history is codified, there is less room for you to take a small plot seed and grow it into a plant of your own. Because there are no plot seeds left. Only fully grown plot oaks, already chopped down and cut up into ready-to-assemble flat packed stories.

Again, this is the most subjective of my opinions. I don't mean to shit all over the creativity of the writers and artists that have fleshed out the world of 40k. I'm more criticising the corporate ethos that means White Dwarf doesn't want to encourage you to make your own new vehicle out of a deodorant bottle. Because then you wouldn't need to buy their new vehicle specially designed to be replaced a few years down the line once new lore and rules come in.

Hi, I am an obnoxious player of Warhammer 40k 2nd edition.

I have no qualifications in game design or anything, yet I have Opinions about the franchise. Unfortunately, for my own sense of enrichment, I don't want to ramble on if nobody cares.

So, I invite anyone and everyone to ask me questions or simply ask for a completely random Opinion.

[transcendentcacophony]

Thoughts on Worldbuilding: Storytelling with Geography: Lunar Lakes

So I've been thinking about worldbuilding for awhile, and one of the things that I like about certain worlds is that they tell a story with their geography. I think Lunar Lakes is one of these worlds.

Image: An overview of Lunar Lakes from Sims 3

All Lunar Lake images will be from here

This is going to draw from James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed and the concept of Zomia

So one of the central concepts behind Zomia and The Art is the idea that not everybody wants to be a part of centralized governments or nation-states.

Traditionally, most academic fields have held that as societies centralize around agricultural centers that evolve into urban centers, they draw everybody to them through some kind of unexplained magnetism as they gradually expand. It's usually held that this is because the centralizing power of agriculture allows for population booms not supported by hunting-and-gathering. At least one philosopher <cough> Daniel Quinn <cough>1 this is a result of these populations controlling access to food. Not just surpluses of food, but access to food at all, forcing those within their borders to join the system or die.

This idea that agricultural societies are somehow fundamentally better. We see this reflected in different cultural evolution models (all of which are horribly racist but still manage to hang on in weird places, particularly developmental models). As such, the shift from hunting-and-gathering to sedentary agriculture tends to be heralded as a good thing in most history text books and is pretty much always seen as a step towards "modernization.2" But what if you don't want that? What if you have zero interest in joining the agricultural community and implied state control?3 What options do you have then?

You, then, may be interested in Zomia or one of the other extra-territorial spaces that function similarly.

Image: A village in the mountains

So what is Zomia? Zomia encompasses a large territory that ranges across Southeast Asia up into Tibet. Its primary defining feature is its rugged terrain and various populations that have no interest in different state-sponsored "civilizing" projects. While different agricultural centers expand outward to fill the lowland regions seeking to bully those they encounter along the way into joining, various people along the way say "f*ck it" and go up into the mountains. Why? Because the rugged terrain makes it harder for their valley-based neighbors to control them while providing plenty of hiding places push back against their expansion.

Image: A map of the Zomia area highlighting the Southeast Asian and Himalayan Massifs, areas encompassing the geography of Zomia itself.

Agriculture tends to lock people into place and makes them easier to control, therefore nation-states interested in keeping track of large populations have a vested interest in convincing people to farm. Buggering off into the mountains offsets this. Agriculture isn't necessarily harder in these mountainous areas4, but you do have different crops as a result of altitudinal zonation and a fair amount of people choose to engage in animal husbandry instead because the high altitudes impact calorie consumption as your body spends more energy keeping you warm.

This impacts cultures in these regions as well. People may choose to define themselves in opposition to the lowland culture they are avoiding. They may hybridize with cultures already in the mountains, create new languages, or define themselves by the fact they are there for political or semi-political reasons and expressly avoiding the control of an outside party, even if that outside party is the nation-state they are legally considered a part of. There is also a tendency of these cultures to discard literacy for orality, in part because orality is easier to carry around and in part because it marks them as Other compared to their lowland counterparts. It also gives you a since of control over your culture itself, as orality can't be shared unless you want it to whereas almost anyone can learn a writing system and open a book.

So what's this got to do with Lunar Lakes? Let's look at LL more closely, shall we?

Image: The downtown region from Lunar Lakes

The most densely developed part of Lunar Lakes is easily this "downtown" district in the lowlands region. This area contains most of the community lots for the world, and, most tellingly, City Hall and the Perigee, which we're told in the original blurb brought the (human) sims to Lunar Lakes to begin with.

Image: The Rim

There is a little bleed over of rabbitholes from the city center onto the Rim, a slightly elevated area just above it, but these are no where near as "mountainous" as the craters we'll get to in a minute.

Image: The Canals

Another defining feature of the lowland central area are these canals. As these canals do not extend to a beach or other waterway, they can't be for trade, thereby lending themselves to the idea that they are intended for agricultural uses. They could, of course, predate the colony, but that doesn't change the intent.

Image: The Crystal Mine, the Outpost, and the Depot

On the backside of the craters, we have the Crystal Mine, the Outpost, and the Depot. We're told in the original backstory blurb for the world on the Store page that the residents had to harness the crystals to to make their colony sustainable, but it feels abandoned now. Given the importance of the mine in the early days of the colony, it makes sense they'd have a transport depot here for the workers and an outpost, possibly for the military, to protect it, especially if the world was inhabited and the indigenous people wanted nothing to do with them or actively apposed them.

Image: The Craters from Lunar Lakes

Which brings us finally to the craters themselves. Here's where Zomia comes in. If Lunar Lakes was inhabited and if the native population had no interest in joining the colonists or being exploited by them, where would they go? The craters, of course! This would also hold true for anyone who didn't want to fall in line with the colonial leadership among the human sims themselves. We know the Louie family, for example, had to move to the craters after they were exiled by Patricia Cross, the current colonial leader. It therefore stands to reason that, even if the people who live here are colonists, this is where they are expected to go if they are exiled or want to get away from the political milieu of the central powers in the downtown district.

Image: Suburban Subspace lot from Lunar Lakes

And, of course, architecturally, this is where we got those distinctive mushroom houses, which again, suggests an alternative development of this region compared to the lowlands even if the people here are exiled colonists, deviants, etc.

Regardless, we end up with a setting that is rife for internal worldbuilding and storytelling based on its geography. If you add an alien population seeking to escape SimEarth colonization by fleeing to the craters, it establishes a political backdrop for stories, making the world feel more lived in and providing a ready-made backstory. This is one of the things I think is drastically missing in the Sims 4 with their itty-bitty neighborhoods and lack of connecting spaces.

Anyways, these are the things I think about when worldbuilding myself. What story does my world tell geographically? Does it have a built in backstory represented by its geography? Are the different regions/neighborhoods connected in a way that makes cohesive sense? Are their other worlds you think do a good job of storytelling with their designs?

If you build worlds, do you take into account the storytelling potential of your geography? Why or why not? If you play in worlds like Lunar Lakes, does the geography inform your storytelling? Does it help build a metadiscourse around your game? Are there other worlds that inspire your gameplay with their layouts?

Edited in response to @nornities excellent feedback.

1) This is not meant as an endorsement of all of Quinn's arguments; he's got a weird overpopulation theory built into his writing that's a little too close to Malthusian for my liking, but I'm not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.

2) Ever notice how "modernization" and "development" are always fundamentally anchored in how Europe moved from feudalism to imperialism to democracy etc.? Yeah, that's the remnants of that "cultural evolution" model I'm talking about. "You're not successful until you look like us!" "Take these developmental loans from the World Bank or the IMF! We promise the strings attached are for your benefit too!" "What do you mean you want to skip industrialization and natural resource extraction and invest in your environment, happiness, and long-term sustainability? You'll never be like us that way! You're a failed state! Ignore the coup in the background we swear we had nothing to do with!"

3) This is the section that was edited after @nornities pointed out that it could be read to imply that non-agricultural societies don't have taxes, class warfare, epidemics, subjugation, slavery, conscription, etc. That was not the intention, although it is clearly stated in Scott's original work that he considers these and other negative societal effects to be the direct result of such "civilizing projects." It was not my intent to perpetuate that idea as these things do happen in non-agricultural societies, so I have changed the original wording. Thank you, @nornities

4) I also forgot to mention the clear exception to this: the Incan Empire. Unlike most empire models, the Inca engaged in a top-down society (literally) that was based in the mountains and expanded downward and outward over time. They were predated by two earlier Andean civilizations.

[synthbutts]

Hey, sorry about anon, I'm deadly shy. Wanted to ask about Ark, since you're THE expert here. Do you think someone like me could play and enjoy it? I don't do any group content, ever. I always do everything solo in MMOs and if I can't, I just skip. So would I be able to enjoy all those cool wyverns and all if I only play solo? Thank you for your time.

Hey anon!

Short Answer: Yes Ark is totally playable and enjoyable as a singleplayer game and has a singleplayer mode (called ‘Local game’) on both PC and console! I’ve been playing solo for two years now, never done anything other than singleplayer and playing alone (sometimes with a friend) on my own server.

Long Answer: (I did cover a bit of this in a previous ask) Singleplayer and ultimately PVE Ark is what you make of it. Since you’re a solo MMO player then I’d imagine you’d have no problem creating your own goals and doing your own thing, but I don’t know you personally so I’m not able to 100% guarantee that it will be your sort of game.

Read more because it got too long

When you play singleplayer, you can adjust a load of settings to suit you, like your XP gain and health regen, or give yourself the ability to kill anything with one punch if you want (If you do end up playing and want some recommended singleplayer rates, I can provide these). While you can change all these settings, an important thing to remember is that Ark is meant to be a challenging game, meaning that you have to work your way up to achieving things (like wyverns or tek gear) but it’s all completely possible on your own! (In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s the EASIEST way to get things in Ark, since official servers have gather rates and XP rates super low, and this and other reasons is why I tell people to stay away from official servers)

Also playing singleplayer means mods and cheats. You don’t feel like going up a mountain to get metal today? just spawn some in. You want to be able to knock out any dino with one dart? There’s a mod for that. This goes back to the ‘Ark is what you make of it’ point - it’s a completely customisable game that you can tweak to your liking (with restrictions to Xbox and PS4 versions however, since you can’t get mods on these platforms yet. Pretty sure you can still use spawn codes though)

Some points about Ark in general though:

- Make sure you have a decent PC before buying the PC version. I have a GTX 970 and my PC is starting to struggle with Ark and I certainly can’t have the highest settings. If you’re ok with low-medium graphics settings though, this isn’t an issue. Optimisations are coming in the next few months which will hopefully fix a lot of issues.

- Xbox and PS4 versions are not something I know much about but they’re pretty up to date these days and do more or less the same things the PC version does. I think they’re like... a week or two behind updates though? Nothing major however.

- Don’t expect a flawless experience. It’s early access, there are bugs and glitches, but that’s why mods and cheats are so great in singleplayer.

- Ark is currently on sale on steam, not sure about consoles but if you really do want to play, I would suggest getting it now and not at full release (8th August) because the price shoots up to $40-$50 soon.

- Ark is not a primitive dinosaur game set in the jurassic period lmao contrary to what the toxic fandom screams about on a daily basis. It’s a sci-fi game about an alien space station harbouring a synthetic ecosystem filled with a variety of prehistoric and fantasy creatures, where humans must adapt and evolve to use the creatures and tools around them to reach end game. There’s plenty of story content through the explorer notes and the lore of the ark (what we know so far) is really interesting.

I’M SO SORRY FOR WAFFLING I hope that clear is up at least. I know you said you’re shy but feel free to message me if you have any other questions about stuff :D