btw all of my aus are in line w the bsi multiverse so if amelia meets ur muse in multiple aus yes her nose will bleed yes she will get weird memory flashbacks 💖💖💖

I’m finally getting back to the AO3 version of “Constants and Variables”, and I had completely forgotten that I’d taken so many screenshots of the game’s environments. I’d even taken screenshots of the list of staff, every page and every location, to make sure I was as accurate as possible when writing this fic.

The great thing about Prey is that there’s so much detail that you don’t need to create a lot of new info - you can take what’s there and still find ways to put a unique spin on it. Life before the incident, what most of the crew was like… it’s all there for the taking.

*cracks knuckles and gets back to work*

My roommate said if I didn't make this, they'd kick me out of the house.

Constants and Variables

“There’s always a lighthouse. 

There’s always a man. 

There’s always a city.”

Hmmmm....

Double Trouble, the same side of the coin. Made in Stream

Shit, shit, shit!

[BioShock Infinite ending spoilers]

I was so sure only the universes in which Booker became Comstock were erased after Booker is drowned during the baptism at the end of the game but I watched the ending again and I now think Booker dies during the baptism no matter what he chooses. He dies “before the choice is made”, as Elizabeth puts it, so he dies if he accepts, yes, but I’m afraid he also dies if he refuses. Booker says he’s both Comstock and Booker during the baptism, so he must be killed as both Booker and Comstock. This is the only way to be sure Comstock never exists.

That means there is no universe in which Booker lives happily ever after with Anna, unless some constants (like the baptism, whether Booker accepts or refuses it) become variables.

Shit, shit, shit!

And while I’m at it, I believe the post-credits scene happens in Booker’s mind as he dies so whether Anna is in the crib or not doesn’t matter at all. This scene doesn’t exist in any universe, it’s all in his head. It is not real, just a vision he has before he dies, just like every time he loses consciousness and/or almost dies during the events of the game. Every time he passes out, he’s back in this desaturated, dreamlike version of his office and I believe this is what happens in this scene.

Elizabeth: "A sky-hook?"

Booker: "Sky-hook? You mean the "Air-grabber"?"

Elizabeth: "Huh, constants and variables"

Me:

me: so it doesn’t make sense that eloise senses that desmond is fucking with the timeline in “flashes before your eyes” because there’s no way for dan to have known about it and put it in his diary so why is she even THERE and how does she KNOW because if fate is unchangeable then she shouldn’t have to worry if desmond goes off course because of course he’ll end up back there UNLESS she doesn’t think fate is fate but in which case why is she determined to send dan back to die if she thinks she can impact anything at all it makes no sense whatsoever and why was desmond special if his specialness was just to take out the island’s magical butt plug at the end of the show that’s not very special overall so --

my fiancée: 

offer #7.1

Tanja Jeremić, behance, ello, displate

elizabeth is both the time traveller offering a victorian child sprite and the victorian child being shown the krussy video 

In getting back to “Constants and Variables”, at least I know a few things.

1) There’s no way I’m not having Aislinn swoon over Morgan’s eyes again, and no way they’re not still ending up super creepy. Morgan is an amoral scientist with a superiority complex. He might be pretty, but all it does is make his true self harder to see at first glance.

2) Less melodrama means less repetition means better Aislinn, hopefully. I think so many months of not doing much writing, and experiencing certain things in the real world, has forced the melodrama out. I’m happy about that, because it was a serious weakness.

3) I’m going to enjoy the chaos this time.

Headcanon that Tenenbaum wears a star of David, not because she's religious but because it was the last thing her father gave her before they were separated.

Love! Thank you for answering me regarding twine! I've realized you're the go-to for all things code-related!

And this is more because I'm interested(which is only half a lie since I'm also in need of aid), but how do you code changes in relationships?

Snakeroot looks so complicated,,,, it's the prettiest setup I think I've ever seen!

no worries !! my code & process is a hot mess and i simply follow where the dopamine takes me but im glad it comes in helpful for other people bfdjkbs

as for how to code changes in relationships, i guess it depends on how you conceptualise the way they're going to branch ?? this article on designing branching narratives and variable-tracking is pretty interesting! i think i've used somewhat different approaches in all my projects so far -- wwm has the most minimal since it has the least amount of branching, so there isn't a relationship tracker so much as there is just a few briefly divergent branches dependent purely on a single choice.

snakeroot's main cast has a handful of stats that i set up in storyinit ('approval', which is set to 50; two relationship descriptor stats that are pretty much just for flavour text, e.g. "neutral"; and an 'intent' boolean for romantic intent later on) -- for recurring npcs that pop up occasionally, i'll introduce stats as and when they come along, likely to a lesser extent than the main team. personally, i like to leave the emphasis on player choices rather than statistics, so i use the hasVisited() function a lot to figure out if a player has made a certain choice and thus visited a certain passage before, etc. the same sort of thought process carries over into writing out the code changes in relationships: they're pretty much all just there for fluff and flavour, and just add some small variations into the main story. hollowsheart's relationship tracker is a sort of middle ground between the two since the whole story is a bit more game-ified than wwm and sr, with just a general 'approval' rating that affects / is affected by player choices.

i....am not sure if i actually answered that correctly or i just took it and started rambling LOL but tl;dr relationship coding is p much the same as overall story coding, which is to say lots of variable and history tracking, depending on how you want the story to flow!

Pairings where it’s a mutual “me! me! you matter to me!”