*cough* slides over a bowl of soup any hunger au thoughts...? /nf
HELLO TEA ANON WELCOME BACK TO THE HUNGER AU SHOW
... i should probably make a masterlist of this au at some point. Anyway.
I've been thinking a lot about worldbuilding and how Players form, and just. Players in general?? Which, in an au thats specifically about a Watcher, that might seem a little silly. But i like to think about what the general baseline is seen as, to really dig deep into the differences between them!!
For Players, i think theres two general ways they come into being-- spawning in, or being born. Obviously the second one is a familiar concept so we dont need to talk about that, but spawning i think is actually more common for Players than being born. I imagine its a bit like new stars forming-- bits of code split off from the Greater Code and coalesce, forming all the components needed to make a Player. There's no infancy stage for spawned Players-- while some might spawn in younger than others, they generally tend to be young adults.
Im honestly thinking that, when Players first spawn, new servers do too. Singleplayer, of course; their first spawn and first spawnpoint, a protective cocoon from the harshness of the in between. This is where a spawned Player learns the difference between breathing and becoming, and where they acquaint themselves with the rules of the world around them. This is their casting off point-- eventually, most of them outgrow their first world and move onto newer ones, some multiplayer, some single, some hardcore, some modded. And most don't return, either, and the server is eventually recycled back into the Greater Code by one of its cosmic decomposers (eg: viruses).
The other thing im thinking about when it comes to Players is how they look when they spawn in. The thing about Player code is that there's layers. You have the type that's surface level, which dictates what your appearance looks like, and then the deeper code in charge of things like memories, personality, stats, etc. Because code is so scrambled in the beginning of a Player's spawn, the surface code is completely randomized!!! Players can look like anything at all, anyone at all, and can even have non-human traits from the outset. I also think this surface code can be fairly easily manipulated; learning to play with your own surface code is about the same level of difficulty as learning to code your own website, and occurs with a similar amount of regularity (which is to say, it's definitely not uncommon, but there are some people more adept at it than others, and a definite learning curve at the start). Playing with your surface code means you can make yourself look like anything, by give yourself new physical traits or just modify existing ones. It's usually recommended to do this with a spotter, though-- someone experienced with surface code who can look over your changes before you implement them to make sure there aren't any glaring mistakes, and step in if something glitches or you need help.
So yeah those are my current hunger au thoughts with regards to worldbuilding!! I'm also still picking at what Listeners are like, as well as their and Watchers' ecological niche in the universe-- I'm tempted to say both have a much more brittle, and less adaptable code structure, which makes their type of feeding an even more vital and necessary part of their survival. Gotta keep that code from deteriorating, after all!! Anyway thank u for asking, i am always happy to receive hunger au questions, and if anyone has specific questions they want to ask that is great and often gives me a good direction to jump off of when explaining stuff :]
