#answered questions: lore

[kapandherscratchpad]

Just re your text fic - I am very moved that Creloise have a daughter! PJ! All good if you dont address it but Im curious how Eloise comes around to wanting to be a mother.

Baby PJ! (This will never come out in fic, so I'll answer it here)

I waffled back and forth on that for a long time. I knew a new kid would be introduced the next time I returned and it was between Creloise and Grucy.

I ultimately landed on Creloise because I liked the idea of them only having one kid in a sea of family members with at least two and being those parents who are very minimalistic condo coded and have one corner that is just full-on little kid zone.

I will note that in this universe, they were both reluctant for different reasons. Cress came around in the quiet moments with Andrew and Thomas. She found that she could be loving and tender and had the skills even though her parents gave her a terrible example.

El was stuck in her fear of what if something bad happened and Cress ended up alone with their kid. Fran and Ben had to sit her down and say, "What if something great happens?" and "Do you think we would let Cress be alone?" Once she worked through that grief left by her father, she realized, like having a wedding, this was something she wanted, not because of society, but because she loved Cress.

[cherryfennec]

Summer Times

Hi! I'm finally back from my two week abroad trip!

[rassicas]

splatoon fandom: please. someone please translate the marina acht story. please me: now hold on. wouldn't you guys rather read a boring newspaper article about the development of crableg capital. because i would

[just-ornstein]

[JK]  My first job was as an Assistant Producer for a video game company called Interplay in Irvine, CA. I had recently graduated from Boston University's School of Fine Arts with an MFA in Directing (I started out as a theatre nerd), but also had some limited coding experience and a passion for computers. It didn't look like I'd be able to make a living directing plays, so I decided to combine entertainment and technology (before it was cool!) and pitched myself to Brian Fargo, Interplay's CEO. He gave me my first break. I packed up and moved out west, and I've been producing games ever since.

[JK] I loved my time at EA. I was there for almost a full decade, and learned a tremendous amount about game-making, and met the most talented and driven people, who I remain in touch with today. EA gave me many opportunities, and never stopped betting on me. I worked on The Sims for nearly 5 years, and then afterwards, I worked on console action games as part of the Visceral studio. I was the Creative Director for the 2007 game "The Simpsons", and was the Executive Producer and Creative Director for the 2009 game "Dante's Inferno".

[JK] I haven't played in a long while, but I do recall that after the game shipped, my wife and I played the retail version for some time -- we created ourselves, and experimented with having a baby ahead of the actual birth of our son (in 2007). Even though I'd been part of the development team, and understood deeply how the simulation worked, I was still continually surprised at how "real" our Sims felt, and how accurate their responses were to having a baby in the house. It really felt like "us"!

Now for some of the development and lore related questions:

[JK] So I ended up in the incredibly fortunate position of creating the shipping neighborhoods for The Sims 2, and recruiting a few teammates to help me as we went along. 

Around the same time, we started using the Buy/Build tools to make houses we could save, and also bring them into each new build of the game (correcting for any bugs and incompatibilities). With the import tool, we could load Sims into these houses. In time, this "vanguard QA" process turned into a creative endeavor to define the "saved state" of the neighborhoods we would actually end up shipping with the game.

On playtesting & the leftover sims data on various lots:

Basically, we were in the late stages of development, and the Save Game functionality wasn't quite working. In order to test the game properly, you really needed to have a lot of assets, and a lot of Sims with histories (as if you'd been playing them for weeks) to test out everything the game had to offer. So I started defining a set of characters in a spreadsheet, with all their tuning variables, and worked with engineering to create an importer, so that with each new build, I could essentially "load" a kind of massive saved game, and quickly start playing and testing. 

It was fairly organic, and as the game's functionality improved, so did our starter houses and families. 

The thought process behind the creation of the iconic three neighborhoods:

I would not say it was particularly planned out ahead of time. We knew we needed a few saved houses to ship with the game; Sims 1, after all, had the Goth house, and Bob Newbie's house. But there wasn't necessarily a clear direction for what the neighborhood would be for Sims 2. We needed the game to be far enough along, so that the neighborhood could be a proper showcase for all the features in the game. With each new feature that turned alpha, I had a new tool in my toolbox, and I could expand the houses and families I was working on. Once we had the multi-neighborhood functionality, I decided we would not just have 1 starter neighborhood, but 3. With the Aging feature, Memories, a few wacky objects, plus a huge catalog of architectural and decorative content, I felt we had enough material for 3 truly distinct neighborhoods. And we added a couple of people to what became the "Neighborhood Team" around that time.

Later, when we created Strangetown, and eventually Veronaville, I believe we went back and changed Pleasantville to Pleasantview... because I liked the alliteration of "Verona-Ville", and there was no sense in having two "villes". (To this day, by the way, I still don't know whether to capitalize the "V" -- this was hotly debated at the time!)

Pleasantview:

Anyway, to answer your question, we of course started with Pleasantview. As I recall, we were not quite committed to multiple neighborhoods at first, and I think it was called Pleasantville initially, which was kind of a nod to Simsville... but without calling it Simsville, which was a little too on the nose. (There had also been an ill-fated game in development at Maxis at the time, called SimsVille, which was cancelled.) It's been suggested that Pleasantville referred to the movie, but I don't think I ever saw that movie, and we just felt that Pleasantville kind of captured the feeling of the game, and the relaxing, simple, idyllic world of the Sims.

Pleasantview started as a place to capture the aging feature, which was all new to The Sims 2. We knew we had toddlers, teens, and elders to play with, so we started making families that reflected the various stages of family life: the single mom with 3 young kids, the parents with two teens, the old rich guy with two young gold-diggers, etc. We also had a much greater variety of ethnicity to play with than Sims 1, and we had all new variables like sexual orientation and memories. All these things made for rich fodder for a great diversity of families. Then, once we had family trees, and tombstones that carried the actual data for the dead Sims, the doors really blew open. We started asking ourselves, "What if Bella and Mortimer Goth could be characters in Sims 2, but aged 25 years? And what if Cassandra is grown up? And what if Bella is actually missing, and that could be a fun mystery hanging over the whole game?" And then finally the "Big Life Moments" went into the game -- like weddings and birthdays -- and we could sort of tee these up in the Save Game, so that they would happen within the first few minutes of playing the families. This served both as a tutorial for the features, but also a great story-telling device.

Anyway, it all just flowed from there, as we started creating connections between families, relationships, histories, family trees, and stories that we could weave into the game, using only the simulation features that were available to us. It was a really fun and creative time, and we wrote all of the lore of Sims 2 within a couple of months, and then just brought it to life in the game.

Strangetown:

Strangetown was kind of a no-brainer. We needed an alternate neighborhood for all the paranormal stuff the Sims was known for: alien abduction, male pregnancy, science experiments, ghosts, etc. We had the desert terrain, which created a nice contrast to the lush Pleasantville, and gave it an obvious Area 51 vibe.

The fact that Veronaville is the oldest file probably reflects the fact that it was finished first, not that it was started first. That's my guess anyway. It was the simplest neighborhood, in many ways, and didn't have as much complexity in terms of features like staged big life moments, getting the abduction timing right, the alien DNA thing (which I think was somewhat buggy up until the end), etc.  So it's possible that we simply had Veronaville "in the can", while we put the last polish on Pleasantville (which was the first and most important neighborhood, in terms of making a good impression) and Strangeville (which was tricky technically).

Veronaville:

But my personal favorite was Veronaville. We had this cool Tudor style collection in the Build mode catalog, and I wanted to ship some houses that showed off those assets. We also had the teen thing going on in the aging game, plus a lot of romance features, as well as enemies. I have always been a Shakespeare buff since graduate school, so putting all that together, I got the idea that our third neighborhood should be a modern-day telling of the Romeo and Juliet story. It was Montys and Capps (instead of Montagues and Capulets), and it just kind of wrote itself. We had fun creating the past family trees, where everyone had died young because they kept killing each other off in the ongoing vendetta.

[JK] You know, I have never seen The Lone Gunmen, and I don't remember making any kind of direct references with the Strangetown Sims, other than the general Area 51 theme, as you point out. Charles London helped out a lot with naming Sims, and I'm pretty sure we owe "Vidcund" and "Lazlo" to him ... though many team members pitched in creatively. He may have had something in mind, but for me, I largely went off of very generic and stereotypical ideas when crafting these neighborhoods. I kind of wanted them to be almost "groaners" ... they were meant to be tropes in every sense of the word. And then we snuck in some easter eggs. But largely, we were trying to create a completely original lore.

[JK] Well, I think we kind of pushed it with The Sims 2, to be honest, and I remember getting a little blow-back about Bunny Broke, for example. Bunny Broke was the original name for Brandi Broke. Not everyone found that funny, as I recall, and I can understand that. It must have been changed before we shipped.

We also almost shipped the first outwardly gay Sims in those neighborhoods, which was bold for EA back in 2004. My recollection was that we had set up the Dreamers to be gay (Dirk and Darren), but I'm looking back now and see that's not the case. So I'm either remembering incorrectly (probably) or something changed during development.

In general we just did things that we found funny and clever, and we just pulled from all the tropes of American life.

[JK] The alien abduction started in Sims 1, with a telescope object that was introduced in the "Livin' Large" expansion pack. That's when some of the wackier ideas got introduced into the Sims lore. That pack shipped just before I joined Maxis in 2001; when I got there, the team had shipped "House Party" and was underway on "Hot Date". So I couldn't tell you how the original idea came about, but The Sims had this 50's Americana vibe from the beginning, and UFOs kind of played right into that. So the alien abduction telescope was a no-brainer to bring back in Sims 2. The male pregnancy was a new twist on the Sims 1 telescope thing. It must have been that the new version (Sims 2) gave us the tech and flexibility to have male Sims become pregnant, so while this was turned "off" for the core game, we decided to take advantage of this and make a storyline out of it. I think this really grew out of the fact that we had aliens, and alien DNA, and so it was not complicated to pre-bake a baby that would come out as an alien when born. The idea of a bunch of guys living together, and then one gets abducted, impregnated, and then gives birth to an alien baby ... I mean, I think we just all thought that was hilarious, in a sit-com kind of way. Not sure there was much more to it than that. Everything usually came from the designers discovering ways to tweak and play with the tech, to get to funny outcomes.

[JK] Possibly we were just testing the functionality of the Wants/Fears and Memories systems throughout development, and some stuff got left over.

[JK] I can't remember, but that sounds like something we would have done! I'm pretty sure we laid the groundwork for more stories that we ended up delivering :) But The Sims 2 was a great foundation for a lot of continued lore that followed.

--

I once again want to thank Jonathan Knight for granting me this opportunity and taking the time from his busy schedule to answer my questions.

[lokimobius]

LOKI S01E02 “The Variant”

[donelywell]

February 27- 28 2024

The first time Sonic went Super in Road Trip. His Judgement Session.

Yeah, going Super for the first time will always be a painful experience if I can write it.

The Cyan Chaos Emerald is friendly with Sonic and Tails because that was the Chaos Emerald they had powering the Tornado. They're sentient, but their awareness increases when the other emeralds are around.

Maybe I'll do a separate post explaining the individual chaos emeralds in this au- they're more than just stupid mcguffin rocks.

Part 2

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hi! Sorry to bother, but could you please tell me why you refer to Little Apple as her? When I looked up the wiki page, they used the it pronoun, and novel translations into my native tongue all use male pronoun. Is it audio-drama exclusive or something? P.S. I really love your art and appreciate you sharing it here! <3

Never ask a donkey her pronouns.

[waitineedaname]

for all that bingqiu and moshang are wrapped up in each other's business, I find it funny that shen qingqiu and mobei-jun have NO relationship. cumplane have their whole cosmically entwined nonsense, bingqiu and moshang are just differently flavored cumplane, and sqh and binghe have some kind of dynamic in the "author and his protagonist" sense, but sqq and mbj never once speak to each other. I just skimmed mobei-jun's appearances in the main three volumes and I think the only thing sqq says to him is "a demon?" when he first appears and mobei-jun just fucking ignores him. they exist in the same scene several times, but never interact. they've both got their attachments to binghe and weird obsession with sqh, but they have absolutely no relationship to each other. I think if you put just the two of them in a room together, they would sit there in silence until sqq contemplates whether killing himself would end the awkwardness

[cozymochi]

Does Emilio have his signature spell? If so, what does it do?

Of COURSE he does. AND SORRY ABOUT THE WALL OF TEXT.

Emilio’s signature spell/unique magic:

“This is True”

Allows him to truthfully answer almost any question asked of him about the person asking. He functions as something of an oracle.

While it grants Emilio a level of all-knowingness, it is limited in scope with many stipulations.

• “This is True” can only provide answers that relate to the person asking, not about anyone else nor matters outside of the person asking. So, he isn’t exactly useful in terms of trying to get dirt on others via his magic. He cannot do that. And he can’t ask the questions.

• There must be physical contact with him and the person asking the question. Palm-to-palm is his go-to, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

• Emilio‘s magic will not allow him to hide the truth once he has received a proper answer to a question, whether he or the receiver likes the answer or not.

• A person can as ask as many questions about their past and present as they like (within reason, obviously not in a single round). It will always be true. He can tell you things about yourself that you may have forgotten about like a memory, or where you left your keys. Whatever one can think of so long as it’s about themselves.

• A person may ask about their future, but they only can ask one question and receive one answer. Once someone ask a question about their future in any capacity they cannot ask Emilio any question about their future ever again. Period. So don’t waste it, or don’t ask. The future is far too uncertain, but his answer will always be a true one out of many possibilities, if vague. Besides, he doesn’t like doing it!!

It is currently unknown how much his magic will evolve, if at all. The limited scope makes his magic accumulate little blot, though it can accumulate much faster if it’s about the future. Yay for caps.

Note: The spell name is Esteban’s catchphrase. Emilio’s magic inspiration is primarily derived from Esteban’s habit of warning people and predicting events that nobody around him heeds, and usually being right. In Elena of Avalor, that kinda sets off his weird betrayal flip-flopping villain arc he never commits to. Emilio’s magic also doubles as a reference to the Oracle in Aladdin and The King of Thieves which I only realized after the fact. Neat.

[kapandherscratchpad]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but after rereading a fic or two of yours today, I could’ve sworn that in your ‘brunch starts at ten’ series, there was scene in which everyone found out about Fran’s second pregnancy being twins. (Unless I misunderstood and Go and Hel aren’t twins, then this is really embarrassing) I know I remember them finding out she was pregnant at the end of ‘God’s favorite idiots’ but that was it (?)

All things aside, I absolutely ADORE all your fics and get so happy that so many updates & new publishing are being released!! Keep up the great work 💃✨

Hi Friend!

I'm so glad that you are loving the updates and the new stuff! I'm having a blast writing it, and the cherry on top is hearing that people are enjoying the stories as well.

Regarding Brunch Lore, everyone found out that Fran was pregnant twice. She was pregnant with Andrew during God's Strongest Soldiers and God's Favorite Idiots. She revealed her 2nd pregnancy in Measuring a Year during Christmas 2024 after the family flu epidemic that seemed horrific at the time but now is probably quaint with the small school of children in the family.

No one knew she was having twins at the time and I have only one line in my personal timeline about that says:

Ultrasound: Twins - Baby B was hiding. Michaela cheers about Stirling genes. Fran frowns.

Best,

Kap

[shalomniscient]

chasca and mavu the type of girlfriends to get called to pick you up when you get into an argument with someone and they just pick you up, toss you over their shoulder and walk away. you’ll still be yelling at that person and they’ll just pat your ass and grin as they stroll off

[sui-imi]

the Youtube Version

Reporter!Sans belongs to @/tatatale

Admin and other OCs are mine

[laserbobcat]

Hey! Love your lamb (and your leshycat), wanted to ask some of the lamb questions. 8 and 15, if I may.

8 is here

15. How does your lamb prefer to keep their wool? Short and shorn neat? Wild and untrimmed? Be honest are there branches in that bitch? They will ignore it until it gets extreme, then shave really badly until Thena insists that they need to look somewhat presentable and saves it. Rinse and repeat. They have the "girlfriend effect" happening when they get married, since Saleos then Irene also get on their case.

[baeshijima]

u know what would be a cool genshin fic idea? isekai/transmigrated reader, but instead of appearing within the general timeline, you come into the genshin world 500 years prior to the start of the storyline in khaenri'ah.

honestly it could be either a little before the cataclysm, giving enough time to delve into some relationship building + explore some world building with characters like dainsleif, traveller's sibling (which would probably be lumine bc i actually do like her as abyss sibling & aether as traveller), and npcs like halfdan (still crying over him to this day ;w;) and possibly the khaenri'ahn royal guards (assuming you either join them or have a good enough relationship with them), OR it could be you appear during the crisis, completely and utterly lost as to why you were brought amidst the chaos and bloodshed as you watch everything you barely knew about this nation crumble before your very eyes.

either route will still result in reader's existential crises and constant "why am i here? just to suffer?" monologues because really, who would be fine after going through that after coming from /our/ world? and not to mention you've had to endure the next 500 years wandering with no real set path because you don't know this world— this era of teyvat or of genshin. you're merely stuck, unable to die, and forced to live a life of uncertainty with no clear direction for you to go to.

despite it all, you've at least been able to see dain during this course. while your meetings pass far too quickly for your lonesome, and his solemn demeanour is something you're yet to be accustomed to after having been with him before the fall of khaenri'ah (assuming it's the route where you appear before the cataclysm), you're glad to see a familiar face every now and then. after the messy departure with the lumine who left for the abyss order, you've come to appreciate his quiet presence more and more each time.

and then you decide it might be time to settle. you soon realise it's difficult to do so when your lifespan has become far more than that of a human's — of a mortal's — and so you find yourself becoming used to staying in one place for a few years before setting off for the next. rinse and repeat. over and over. it's come to a point where you've witnessed the nations undergo various changes each time you visit. you know change is inevitable, and yet your heart stings each time you witness it; a testament to how the world is ever-changing, yet you're stuck in place as a bystander.

one thing you're grateful for, however, are the bonds you've established amid your back-and-forth over the centuries. from archons like zhongli and venti to long-life beings such as neuvillette and the adepti to regular mortals who have showed you kindness as if one of their own... you've grown to cherish those memories, often reminiscing them when the nights get too long and surroundings too quiet. it was difficult at first, and still is, but you've become used to the inevitable change and the passing of those you once knew.

and after 500 years, you find yourself face-to-face with one you haven't seen since before you appeared in this world; the protagonist of this world, and the one you eventually join in hopes of finally finding a means to an end, aether.

little side notes/extras:

from /our/ world, you would probably know the storyline from up to around current (5.0) or maybe a little after the fontaine aq conclusion. it gives a lot to work with, but you definitely won't remember a lot of the lore after so long other than some main events, especially since most of your knowledge is pretty irrelevant for the next 500 years,,,

i think it would be cool if you had an inteyvat on your person as a little homage of khaenri'ah, which may or may not invoke some opinions from certain characters (*cough* aether immediately being reminded of lumine and having an existential crisis *cough*)

post-cataclysm you would go through a, uhm, long phase of helplessness, wondering why you were even brought to this world so far back if you couldn't even make any contributions. it does eventually morph into a resolution to do what you can to help those you come across if it's within your capabilities, but the nightmares and helplessness come back every now and then as a reminder for what you can't do :D yippee :D

honestly i'm on the fence whether you would have a vision or some other type of abilities (think on the similar lines of aether/lumine's and dain's), but i think having some type of purification mechanic would be a must in your arsenal !! would definitely lead to some moments between you and characters like dain or zhongli who suffer from the erosion as you give them a slight reprieve from what rages within and corrodes them

a little self indulgent, but i'd like to think your first /proper/ meeting with zhongli happens during a lantern rite festival, wherein you're admiring the lanterns in the sky after making a wish of your own and he comes up from behind with "they're beautiful, wouldn't you say so?" and !!

also as for love interests, as much as i would love for human/mortal characters, a part of me feels like this story would be better suited for the immortal/long-life characters as love interests?? idk i feel like considering that 500 years is, well, a long time, the bonds you would have with them compared to characters like, say, alhaitham or diluc would be way too different ?? though i would definitely still add them as love interest bc i am a sucker for so many of the human characters ;w; it would also add to the angst and hurt/comfort ahahha...

anyway thank you for reading this massive brain dump of a fic bc i absolutely would put this as a long term project, and if u made it this far then i would like to say that dain solos—

[donelywell]

sonic, has tails ever done this??

May 20 2024

Doodle Request #32!

A little out of order (okay a lot out of order) but I really wanted to do this one because it was funny!

Small fluffball really packs a good pair of lungs to scream that loud. IT FINALLY SENT!!!

[charmac]

An age-old Sunnyblr question has always been: How many bathrooms do Mac and Dennis have in their apartment? We’ve only ever seen Dennis', and it's clear based on the layout of the apartment that it's impossible for the door in Mac's bedroom to lead to a bathroom.

Well, what does Glenn think?

(Transcript below the cut)

Me: How many bathrooms do Mac and Dennis have in their apartment?

Glenn: Uhhhh... (Unintelligible) That's a good que—We only established one.

Me: Yeah, you've only established one.

Glenn: Mac doesn't have one in his bedroom and—

Me: No!

Glenn: So I think it's just my bedroom?

Me: Just one. So he has to use Dennis' room every time he has to—

Glenn: Yeah. Every time he poops