#your friends are the offbrand players omg

[saltymongoose]

oohhh do you think that, since nexus has multiplayer in the general game, there can be a 2nd player using the same copy reader has, like imagine if sanford and deimos both suddenly feel warmth at the same time,,, or or when the main player gets sucked in the 2nd player does too but later in the story,,, theres just so much potential and creative prompts from your au and i love it so much! the self aware tropes may have been done before but the way you interpreted and wrote it is just, amazing! keep up the good work and hope you have a nice day!

Ahh thank you so much! This was very sweet of you, I'm so happy you like the au, Anon! ❤ 😊 As for your idea, I have gotten an ask for some multiplayer content before, which is sitting comfortably within my drafts lol. I have so many ideas to go through there with how the boys would deal with a Player who isn't you. We even touched on this briefly in the second set of Jeb hcs, where he felt your friend controlling you instead of him.

You've got me thinking about it again, so to expand a bit more on that, the difference between your warmth and that of any other player's is extremely noticeable to them. It's a lot fainter in comparison, and their presence doesn't provide that same energizing feeling that yours does, nor is it able to take away a lot of pain. The strings are also more transparent and generally wispier if that makes sense, making them a lot more difficult to see and/or notice. While they still can control the characters as well as yours can, it isn't comparable to the experience of having you as a Player.

My reasoning for this is that the Employers kind of tailored the connection between the game and the Player to you specifically. The only reason that the boys and every other vessel are aware of the other players controlling them is that their connection with you made them self-aware. Otherwise the experience would be perfectly normal, like with the other copies of M:PN. They wouldn't question why they did certain things or move a certain way, they'd just do it. Hence why Jebus thought he was just imagining things when your friend controlled him in one of the flashback sequences. He knew it wasn't you so, in his mind, there couldn't have been anyone acting as a Player; the very notion of it didn't make sense to him.

(Shoving a cut here because my response got super long 😅)

Although, if your friend does happen to get sucked into the game along with you, then a lot of different things could happen. For one, they could be used by the Employers as a bargaining chip to get you back in their clutches. They aren't above blackmail if it means you're back where you belong with them. Or we could go the more angsty route and have them be accused of impersonating "The Player", leading to a lot of undue persecution and stuff from the characters considering how high they regard you. This would be especially bad if your friend didn't know anything about madcom and was just being attacked by random people for really no logical reason. It's not like they asked to be dragged here. The Employers might even see fit to try and get rid of them for good, since they could attempt to return you both to your world. They could leave for all they cared, but taking you was unacceptable. Your friend's only real hope is to try and reconnect with you before something worse happens to them, because you'd definitely protect them.

Either way, I feel bad for the other player, cause they are not going to have a fun time if they get pulled to Nevada with you. This could also lead to more conflicts with you, since you'd obviously be pissed off about how they characters are treating your friend. Like wtf, it's not even that big of a deal?? So what if they have some of your abilities, it makes no difference to anything?? It just becomes this: