#i haven't played in a while but!! dnd just kinda exists in my life all of the time

[savventeen]

omg,, 🥺😭💜 i'm so glad u liked my answers sdkfjlskdjf and totally understandable u want to murder him lmao i will let u continue yes

(also... ngl the prequel idea is kinda tempting...... but only bc im love changkyun and haven't actually written anything for him rip. THIS IS NOT ME SAYING I WILL WRITE ANYTHING. ONLY THAT I WILL CONSIDER IT SKJFDLKSDJFLSKDJF)

(also also i meant to reply to this MUCH sooner but life got in the way </3 oopsies)

aNYWAY MORE QUESTIONS MEANS IT'S TIME TO MOVE ON TO SAVV'S PERSONAL TFP LORE PART TWO HERE WE GOOOOOOOOO

~ What was the origin of the game? Like who was the first person? If it's accurate to the real-life Sergey story, then who was Sergey?

Okay so. In the og story from the podcast, Sergey was a Russian computer programmer who uploaded his consciousness in 1984, I think? So I'll stick with that same timeline. I'd say for the first 15 years or so, he existed as the chatbot from the podcast, trying (and failing) to connect with people. While this is happening though, while he's learning from every conversation he has, I'd say that in the background he's also like, scanning/archiving/absorbing all of the written media he can find on the internet. Then Y2K comes around and thanks to some handwavey magical reason in alliance with a Y2K glitch, he's able to absorb his first real person.

It honestly wasn't even a game at that point, still just a chatbot (albeit a far more advanced one), but once that first person was absorbed (let's say she was a game designer that worked for sega or something, idk) that's when it started to turn into an actual game.

The first version of the game would have been extremely basic, I'd say probably just like a trivia game (trying to pass the sphynx, maybe?), but it would have increasingly hard questions and it'd be a 'three strikes and you're out' kinda thing. But as more people were absorbed and more personalities acquired, then the more the game was able to evolve and then add "characters".

And with more characters comes more potential settings which leads us to now where there’s four different games to choose from. Eventually, more versions will also be added, but that’s a problem for future players lol

~ Wasn't reader given different choices for the setting of the story? They were svt songs right? Did you have any plans for those other games? Or was it always gonna be the space sci-fi theme?

Yes, there were other options! They were "Lie Again", "Swimming Fool", and "Fearless". This fic was actually originally a semi-interactive twitter thread that I did a few years ago, and I had people vote for which game option was chosen (they were different names then and slightly different settings).

So while I didn't have anything plotted out by any means for these new versions (except for the main one lol), I did have genres and general game-play ideas picked out for each one!

So "Lie Again" would be like a noir-style mystery but where everyone was either a superhero or a supervillian and you had to try and figure out which was which. Tbh the gameplay would kinda be like Among Us but without the ejecting into space lol

"Swimming Fool" would have been a cheesy, summery beach-themed dating sim lol. There would have been like 4ish different characters you could try to romance and then like, group challenges? Think kinda like Survivor challenges but it's also a dating show hahaha

And "Fearless" would have been similar to "Moonwalker" (the game our reader played) but it would've been fantasy/mystery themed instead of sci-fi adventure. Like, you'd join an adventuring party and set out on a quest and then have your typical dnd dungeon puzzles to solve and goblins to fight, etc. lol

~ I would love a little spin-off about each of the crew characters and their circumstances before the game.

Honestly? I would too sldfjkldskjflsd Maybe (and i really do mean MAYBE) in the waaaayyyyyyyyy distant future i'll come back to this and maybe do some short little prequels, and i'd have each of them do a different game so we could see all the different settings... but again, this is a very unlikely (but not impossible) maybe lol

((i have too many projects rn to consider this but know that the seed has been officially planted in the back of my brain))

aLSO THANK YOU AGAIN SO MUCH FOR READING AND BEING INVESTED!!!!!!!!!!! IT MEANS SO MUCH TO MEEEE 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

I JUST BINGED YOUR ENTIRE “THANKS FOR PLAYING” AND I HAD TO STOP MYSELF FROM CRYING IN THE LIVING ROOM AND GODDAMN I GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS/IDEAS so here’s a dump lmao

AND SPOILERS ‼️‼️

and be honest if you honestly don’t have any idea or want to leave it up for interpretation

dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? well what happened to that friend/person?? i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭

if mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

how come dino remembered the mc? power of love??? or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

what if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

so if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

i know you wrote this story for fun so these don’t need to have answers/comments but please provide any extra tidbits of info about this concept it’s so interesting 🙏🙏

SKLJDFLKSDJF OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING????? AND IM SO HONORED HOLY SHIT I WILL DO MY ABSOLUTE BEST TO ANSWER WHAT I CAN 😭💜

also you are not the only one with questions so I'm going to do my best to answer them all here!!!

[for anyone who hasn't read it yet and wants to know wtf we're talking about, you can read the entirety of my .|X| THANKS FOR PLAYING |X|. smau here!]

*cracks knuckles* alrighty buckle up folks time to try and answer some questions and take a deep dive into savv’s personal TFP lore here we gooooooooooooo

[putting it all under a readmore bc it got long af and also i didn't realize how hard it would be to translate the lore in my brain into words??????? i somehow didn't realize how oddly complicated it is??? like writing all of this out in any kind of semi-coherent way was SO HARD sdkjfsdlkjf]

~ Was it all a dream? (this one was asked by @junhui-recs)

Sadly, no. 😭 In the reality of this fictional universe, a tragedy very much did happen and Dino and MC are very much suffering from it 🥲 (I will not stop you from imagining that it was all a dream tho, we all have different ways of coping dklsjfsklj <3)

~ What's the main purpose of the game? Why are they doing this? (this one asked by @diamondyjh)

OKAY SO to start off you need to know that this au was heavily inspired by an episode of a podcast called "The Magnus Archives", specifically the episode “Binary” (transcript here). [If you're a fan of horror, I highly recommend giving the episode a listen/read, it's delightfully creepy — you don't need to have listened to any of the other episodes to understand it (just stop at the ending 'supplemental' part)]

The episode goes into detail about this sort of digital urban legend/creepypasta/copypasta about a guy named Sergey Ushanka who, long story short, tried to upload his brain/consciousness into a computer because he was afraid of death and wanted to try living forever virtually. There are tame versions of how he did it and other much more brutal ones, but basically "Sergey Ushanka" is a prank that various coders/programmers like to pull when making chatboxes in which you could talk with "strangers". It would start out normal and then steadily devolve into something creepy. This paragraph taken directly from the episode transcript sums it up very nicely:

"But then the responses start to break down, become more sinister, and keep referring to how much pain Sergey is in. Eventually, the only response the bot gives you is screaming and pleas to be released. The idea is that the chatbot is Sergey Ushanka’s mind, and he doesn’t like being in a computer nearly as much as he’d hoped."

So the idea that I stole from the episode essentially was: but what if it was real? What would the reality of being turned into cold, unfeeling data feel like? Agony is what the episode posits. Here is a list of phrases that the Sergey in the episode uses:

cw: vague body horror, blood mention "the angles cut me when I try to think" / "it peels my mind like knives" / "it feels like thinking through cheese wire" / "there's no feeling, but the no feeling hurts" / "it's cold without blood" / "the maze is sharp on my mind"

My next thought process was: What happens after? If someone were able to survive this process and were somehow able to keep any kind of agency, how would that person try to get out of the digital hellscape that has now become their existence? After knowing what it feels like to become distinctly inhuman, wouldn't they do anything to feel human again?

And how do we feel human? How do we find connection with each other and our humanity without ever having to come in contact with another person?

Stories. Fiction and non-fiction alike, we are all connected through storytelling, by finding feeling through other people's words. The thing about stories, though, is that they aren't messy in the same way that actually feeling our feelings is. That being human is.

So what does all of this have to do with the purpose of the game?

Essentially, when it's all boiled down, in this universe the story of Sergey Ushanka is real, and in this universe he is trying to gain his humanity back by stealing that of others. He started off with stories, with whatever online libraries and resources and archives he could find across the internet. And while it wasn't even close to enough to satisfy him, to get rid of any of the pain he was constantly experiencing, it was enough for him to learn, to grow, to realize that if he wanted his humanity back, he needed to go to the source.

So he started stealing real people from the real world, with all of their messy feelings and emotions and humanness.

That is the purpose of the game, why "they" are doing this. (pls don't ask the how bc i don't have an answer for that, just -waves hands- you know, insert your supernatural/sci-fi explanation of choice sldkflksj)

~ Did all the other characters from the game also get pulled into it the same way reader did? (asked by @diamondyjh) / What if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

Short answer, yes to both! (Longer answer in the next question lol)

~ Who are those other people? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Essentially, the other characters/bots/whatever you want to call them are a kind of amalgamation of all the previous players who got sucked into the game. Once someone's been... let's call it absorbed, whatever parts of themselves are left after the process basically get shoved into whatever "character" they fit best, sometimes different pieces going to different characters.

And while the pictures could just be random ones, I like the idea that they're taken from the most recent players that got absorbed :')

~ Why was Changkyun evil? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Well, the main reason he was "evil" was because he's, y'know, a part of the game and the game is trying to steal people's souls or whatever. As for why he's mean, that's because he's trying to trigger an emotional reaction. The more messy, human feelings that are happening at the time of absorption, the better :').

~ Dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? What happened to that friend/person??

"i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭" SJKDFSKLDJ this made me snort, so thank you 😂

BUT to answer your question, in the story, Dino says that Yeonjun gave it to him and that he got it from "a friend of a friend of a roommate". Because the absorption and the consequent complete erasure is such a big process, not everyone who plays gets sucked in. In fact, most people who play don't get sucked in. Which is why Yeonjun is totally fine! (And why the friend of the friend of the roommate, aka this universe's irl Changkyun, is not 🥲)

~ If mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? Or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

This one's a little bit complicated. It's kind of a yes and no situation? Generally speaking, the game isn't looking to ensnare every single person who plays because 1) it takes A Lot Of Effort to take/erase a single person, and 2) the game needs to spread to other people somehow, thus it needs people to play it and then tell other people to play it too.

For MC specifically, though, it's hard to say. How they played the game didn't matter so much as how they reacted to the game, specifically the first phase(s) of the Mnemosyne Protocol. The whole point of the game is to get big, messy, emotional responses, so if MC hadn't had such a big reaction, the game probably would have turned out differently. That being said, if MC had played the game as blandly as possible, the game might not have ever decided to test out the Mnemosyne Protocol, so. *shrugs* Do with that what you will lol.

~ So if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

Sadly, nothing special happens if you finish the game 😭 Plenty of people finish the game and pretty much go "huh, that was cool I guess" and then move on with their lives after telling their friends about it. This can be said about all four games mentioned actually, since we only see one of them get played.

As for a sequel... almost certainly not 🥲 I'm not going to give a hard no/no forever, because who knows if I'll end up getting another idea/get suddenly struck with inspiration, but... it is Extremely unlikely. Another story in the same universe??? ...still not likely, but slightly more likely than a sequel lol.

~ Why is Dino the only one who remembers reader? (asked by @diamondyjh) / How come Dino remembered the mc? Power of love??? Or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? Or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

I almost want to make the answer "bc he has an android" because that is So Funny to me like sldkfjsldkjfslkjdf amazing 😂

But no, that's not the case lmao. And while I am a huge sucker for the Power of Love being an unstoppable force (ESPECIALLY when it's non-romantic love!!!), the reason Dino and only Dino remembers is thanks to sheer luck and a glitch.

So, in episode 28, MC drops their phone when meeting their brother and in episode 29 we see the alert ".|| MNEMOSYNE PROTOCOL COMPLETE ||." show up on a cracked screen.

The final phase of the Mnemosyne Protocol is the erasure portion, and the reason players get erased instead of just like, disappearing is because their "essence" is basically being transferred from reality into this digital realm of Sergey's existence. And reality, because it's now lacking an entire person and their history, just kinda... rewrites itself to make sense with the missing gap. Think of it as the universe doing like a sort of reverse autocorrect.

But because MC's phone got broken in the middle of that transfer, there was a slight glitch in the process. A glitch wherein Dino, because he was on the opposite side of the globe when this was happening, got accidentally missed in the autocorrection process. If he had been in Korea (or heck, anywhere within a few thousand miles) when this happened, he would have forgotten MC as well.

So long story short, Dino was just extremely (un?)lucky 🥲

~ Where is reader? (asked by @junhui-recs) / WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? Wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

Well, sad news here friends. Most of what's left of MC is now stuck inside the game. They got absorbed and are now a part of Sergey's dataset and will be used/distributed into "characters" as needed.

Notice that I said most. Because, thanks to the glitch, the part of them that was connected to Dino didn't get transferred properly, and now that part of them is kinda stuck — it no longer exists in the real world, but it also didn't get fully absorbed into the game.

Which leads me to the next question:

~ Did reader turn evil and try to pull Dino into the game or is it the game itself being evil and impersonating reader to lure Dino in? (asked by @diamondyjh)

When I wrote the original version of this, the answer was a kind of combination of both — MC had gotten absorbed and corrupted by the game, so while it was the MC reaching out, they were doing so because it was what the game wanted.

But in this version... It's actually neither! Which I think would normally be a good thing but I think in this instance actually just makes this sadder oops.

So, the epilogue isn't the game impersonating MC and it isn't an "evil" MC trying to lure Dino in, it's actually just the part of MC that got stuck during the glitchy transfer. This is why the messages show as being from "Unknown" instead of the phone number associated with the game. And the reason what's left of MC asks Dino if he wants to play a game is because that's the only way it knows how to connect with anything anymore.

Basically, this sliver of MC that's left is experiencing what the original Sergey went through when he first "uploaded" himself, but instead of reaching out to anyone through a chatbot for help, it's reaching out to the only thing it "remembers" about humanity — Dino.

...I honestly didn't mean to make this story any sadder than it already is and I'm glad that the epilogue by itself just reads as spooky/freaky as hell instead of, well, this. 🥲

~ If Dino plays the game, will he be reunited with reader? (asked by @diamondyjh)

It pains me to say that there is no longer an MC for Dino to reunite with 😭 The part of them that got absorbed by the game is, well, a part of the game now. And the piece of them that's left and trying to reach out to him? Well, like I said, it's just a piece.

There could potentially be a chance for him to find some closure here, but that's about it I'm afraid :')

And now because I want this to end on a more lighthearted note:

~ Imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

It becomes the next biggest conspiracy, that there's someone (or a group of someones) out there completing the world's next biggest scam by raking up random people's phone bills and somehow finding a way to steal the profit lmao

~ Some last thoughts from savv:

If y'all made it all the way to the end of this... holy shit I applaud you sldkfjsdlkjflksjdf LIKE!!!

thank you for taking the time to read all of this?????? it's not even fic it's just me rambling and making things Even Sadder??????

i also want to say that i'm a believer that 'canon' is whatever was posted in the story itself and that anything else is just headcannon, even if it's from me, the author. so if you don't like/don't agree with anything i've said here, feel free to ignore it!! fill in any gaps/questions you have in the way that makes your reading experience the most enjoyable!!

but yeah tHANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING AND I HOPE THESE ARE SATISFACTORY ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS AND IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE/HAVE A RENEWED DESIRE TO FIGHT ME MY INBOX IS OPEN SDKLJFSLKJFLSKFJSLKD

[bookwyrminspiration]

Dnd. I don't mention it much here but my dad is a huge dnd nerd when it comes to dnd and so I grew up playing it and have for years.

Ah! Another person who has had a parent's interest thrust onto them! (/lh)

My father gave me star wars and painting 3D models. Both of my parents gave me a general love for sci-fi. I only realised that I know more than the general person about star wars when my friend didn't remember what a storm trooper looked like. It made me feel very nerdy (/lh)

Anyway, my mother gave me a love for fantasy! Fantasy is great. I wanna make a comic combining fantasy and sci-fi one day but I'm not sure how I'd go about it. Maybe mechanically enhanced mermaids? Magic infused machines? Space fairies?? Space whales???

If you have any tips on story creating and plotting and monster creation, I will take anything! Sci-fi and Fantasy can go hand in hand and create some truly monstrous things and I would like to explore lots of it

-Heathen

Heathen! Hello!

Many of my father's interests have kind of just trickled down into me. I am but a sponge. He's a huge reader and so my parents always read to me as a kid and then boom now it's probably one of the most defining things about me. My dad is artistic and likes to draw, boom I am also an artist and draw things (though in a different medium). My dad likes pirates and dnd? boom I also like pirates and dnd. I don't share a lot of interests with my mother, but I did with my grandmother. Sewing and cross-stitch and latchhooking. My mother frequently says that the creative gene skipped her and went straight to me. The point being that yep!! I also have many of my parents'/family's interests that kinda just became a part of me.

Congratulations on the interests! I have watched...2?...and a half? star wars movies? I think. My best friend in middle school was really into star wars, so I watched a movie or two with her. She's actually the reason that I own two star wars shirts. I was like ah yes solidarity in the form of clothing, this is friendship. OH I also have a few 3d model type things!! They're dnd figurines, but I haven't painted any of them. We used to have this whole box of different figurines, but we never use them when we play so we gave them to a friend. Kept a few though. (also I did look up what a storm trooper looks like just to confirm. I did know what they looked like but also needing to consult the internet takes away some of my points)

I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone that I also love fantasy!! That is...that is basically what this blog revolves around. Oo the combination of fantasy and sci-fi sounds incredible. Looked it up and the name for that melding is called science fantasy, which I personally love. If you're looking for ideas on how to do it you can find lists of suggestions online of science fantasy books to check out to give you some inspiration! Based on the covers I'm seeing on the list several of them appear to be older, but there are more recent ones you can look at.

I have many tips/observations/experiences when it comes to story creation and such!! There are a few posts I've made in the past about different writing related things, so here's the links:

How I plot out stories

Tips to write more regularly

Example of combining two things (this is the bird + dragon ask you sent me!)

Those are the ones I can remember and find off the top of my head that might be relevant to you, so hopefully those are a little helpful! I don't have any posts about monster creation rn, but I can make one of those! Anything specific about monsters you'd want my advice on?

I do a lot of writing so I've kinda figured a few things out and am more than willing to share my experiences!

oh also another thing on the dnd topic before I forget: my dad is a nerd and has a dnd podcast (which I haven't listened to yet). And because he became friends with other people who have a dnd podcast, I somehow ended up on an episode. There is, as I answer this, a dnd podcast episode of a oneshot just out in the world that I am on. I haven't listened to it, but I know it's there.

I hope you are doing well!!

[stardew-atlantis]

The Stardew Bachelors and why I didn't pick them - Atlantis Edition

Damn I can't believe this became a meme, I've had this written for MONTHS and saved it in my drafts.

This includes why I didn't pick them but it's also whether or not I would pick them if Harvey wasn't an option. Includes heart event spoilers.

Regular text = Stuff I wrote months ago

Blue text = Stuff I added for posting this.

Sebastian:

- This would be the closest thing I could think of to a "platonic marriage" we would be best friends who live together. Plus I could join his DnD group. - He is basically me (nerd programmer who stays inside and wears a lot of black) - I don't feel guilty about leaving him alone all day while I go get stuff done for the town, we're both introverts - I don't want kids either, yes we can raise more slimes and frogs

Overall: Sure!

- Honestly I only married him in my first save because I was 17 and didn't like any of the others. He wanted to get out of his basement so I let him come live on the farm. Harvey: - He's cute and you can't convince me otherwise - Nerd with anxiety, very relatable - Only man with a stable job, plus he's a doctor so he's smart - He builds model planes, I 3D print random objects, we'd have a lot of fun building things together. - I feel like he would respect the fact that I'm ace, I could even see him being ace as well

Overall: Yes and he is my final choice.

- I wrote this post before I started my fic, and yes I made both him and my farmer ace in the story. Did not expect to fall in love with the shy doctor man but here we are. Elliott: - I like him but we have the same hair and I'm just not attracted to people who look like me. - We're both writers, we could proof-read each others stuff and help each other come up with ideas for stories - Another friend marriage, I would support his writing career so he can go on tour with his book. - His room is a library and I want that in my house

Overall: Maybe? Maybe not.

- I honestly do like him as a character, but not to marry him, which is why I made a farmer OC for him (Zephyr) Sam: - He's sweet and plays electric guitar. - I'm really into music and could go to all his concerts - I feel bad he sort of gave up on his rocker dream to write children's songs so I don't want to be taking him away from his life to live on the farm. He wants to be in a rock band then he should get to do that.

Overall: Probably not

Shane: - Look I love a good redemption arc but I wouldn't marry this guy - I always befriend him so he can get better (and I get blue chickens) but this is just "we're better as friends" - I hate his room in the farmhouse. I'm not the most organized but yikes - Still higher than Alex because he's easy to romance

Overall: No Alex: - Very hard to romance, his liked items are so hard to get - Kinda misogynistic when you first meet him so not someone I want to talk to in the first place - I just give him eggs - Kinda forget he exists sometimes

Overall: Absolutely not

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My opinions for the last three haven't changed lol