#and to hear about. it makes me sad but also happy. bc the lax system might be less dramatic but u know what it facilitates??? 😏

[ziracona]

also i believe the realm rules were quite different for this one? seemed like legion wasnt one person, and quentin was somehow really unafraid of napping.. also the way entering other people's realms worked, and man jesus poor quentin with that default wound..oh! right, the way healing works also seemed different? like it didn't feel like in ILM their healing processes kept being reset, i think it was also said they're slightly accelerated even :o (2/2)

Yeah! You’re very correct.

So, for most of the things I write for myself (or as gift or commission if unspecified), I use the world building I did for ILM (IE: trial realms only exist while the trial is going on, and killers all have their own little base areas, survivors the campfire [although more than one campfire exist because the default is not for all survivors to come/stay together], and all the areas connect to the Entity’s core somewhere, and they are shifted in location regularly, like an atom with its nuclear, or a solar system model [kind of]. In practice it’s kinda a shell game, because the randomization of locations makes it harder to organize or work or even /feel/ centered. It’s meant to discourage working against the Entity, finding answers, and being organized in general).

This one used a totally different layout system (traverse by walking through the fog, which metaphorically is like a hopping into a whirlpool with many islands stationary inside it [realms], and your determination/focus is what allows you to ‘swim’ to them, your familiarity with the location let’s you find them faster), because I wrote that fic as an art trade with @speckeltail , and about an event referenced in his ask blog @badham-bedhead — So, for the fic, I used his world building for the realm/realm rules and characterizations etc. We have very different Entities (or Birttanys, thanks the world’s best dyslexia moment for me yet 🤣) and since the Entity kind of morphs how the whole world would be made, they’re p different in some ways! It was really fun to explore some of the possibilities. I think the biggest overal difference between the world building systems is how death works and how rules work (ILM Entity is very particular in how it expends energy and doesn’t like to constantly insure everyone bc it’s a waste of fuel almost never actually necessary, so you die for real if you die outside a trial unless it is paying attention and intercedes in time, it works hard to keep people separated and isolated and is /very/ harsh towards interactions between killer and survivor if caught, accelerated healing outside of trials partially bc it doesn’t totally understand real world happenings, and partially because it likes people to be healthy enough to have a fighting chance in trials (if they have no shot bc they break their leg, for instance, they’ll lose hope /really/ fast and become useless to it). Speck’s Brittany is more casual/relaxed and does things for enjoyment more, so it’s rules are less meticulous and strict (survivors can easily go to killers’ home realms to scavenge and killers aren’t supposed to kill them, will be punished if they do—doesn’t care if they talk so long as it gets fed, will sometimes let people get away with stuff for amusement. Insured everyone always so there just /is/ no permanent death period, for killer or survivor. Pays less attention in general, and thus survivors can end up with permanent injuries between trials like Quentin has, because Entity is just like ‘oh how do you look again? Open chest wound? Got it’).

It’s a very different system, and I loved getting to explore how that would feel to exist in—death is a huge and fearsome stake, and losing it period loses some tension, but it also presents this fascinating reality of what does that mean? How do you assign meaning to death and suffering if there just /is/ no long term cost, no higher stakes fear? It’s just pain, and permanent stacking cognitive damage. And the dichotomy between people who would be like “it doesn’t matter then” (especially killers not wanting to feel guilt) and survivors struggling to carve out meaning by treating it like it does even if it feels like it doesn’t because it’s all they have, is such a cool idea, and I’m glad I got to play w it a little. If you’re interested, I’d totally ask Speck about his world building, because I got a few dive from him before writing that fic to make sure I did it right, and it was super fascinating! He’s even got a chart made for how the realms are laid out geographically.