#my ocs Candi and Shiro are prime inspirations

[definitelynotshouting]

Hi!! So I’m pretty new to your content (and this fandom as a whole) and I was wondering if you could explain the origin of the hunger au? I’m super interested in the world building and I’d love to know how it came about!!

- binge reader

HEY ANON!!! :] ooooh okay like the origin of the idea??? Straight up it stemmed from a concept i started noodling on at random with a friend on discord. It was about the idea of watcher!grian pretending to be an avian and like, finding some aspects really accessible for him (like bedding and whatnot) vs some really viscerally uncomfortable (vocal calls). And then i, in true me fashion, went off on a tangent of "ooooh so what WOULD make that uncomfortable for him????" which i quickly settled on being "Watchers have really deep vocal registers so forcing his voice really really high all the time probably strains his throat"

And then it just sorta spiraled from there. I remember i was trying to establish WHAT watchers were as organisms just so i could really dig into the differences between what grian was vs what he was pretending to be, and in the process i decided they were mid-food chain predators, who were prey for something else, something that no longer existed-- and then i went "OMG. WHAT IF PARASITES" and started going crazy on researching parasitic wasps 😂😂😂😂😂

After i established what i wanted watchers to be, i naturally started thinking abt players, and then subsequently player culture, which led to thinking abt servers, and the mechanics of how they form and how they collapse, so on and so forth!!! I just sorta naturally tend to go "okay so if this is a thing then how does that impact everything else" and then start pursuing the rabbit hole wherever it ripples out to :]

I think ive posted the screenshots of my friend and i's convo leading into hunger au's first conception (which was in SEPTEMBER OF LAST YEAR!!! HOLY SHIT!!!! ONE WHOLE YEAR OF HUNGER AU AS AN IDEA, AND WE'RE ONLY FOUR MONTHS OUT FROM THE ONE YR ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIC BEING POSTED...... WILD 2 ME) but here it is again bc i never get tired of rereading that initial lightbulb moment