New Series Preview: Mod World (Patreon)

So here it is, the intro to a story I've been planning for a long, long while now. First, a forewarning, there is minimal steam in this - it's largely a concept/character introduction.  Still, I think it's kind of fun, just as reading goes, and as things move forward and do pick up steam, the background will be helpful for folks who like to follow Plot. The sci-fi inspiration for it will probably be pretty clear, but I'll be making it my own.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

The basic gist for those who'd rather not read is that people have discovered the world is fake, a "simulacrum" run by machines. In the aftermath of a war to liberate mankind from their control, a hacker discovers the database containing all the machines' files - i.e. the file for Mount Everest, for gravity, for your cat, for the color blue, and so on. Our intrepid protagonist will begin studying the code and finding ways to mod the world (as the title rather overtly suggests - I may rename it yet.)

The idea came to me while I was playing Fallout 4 and browsing mods for it. There's bajillions of them - currency mods, gear mods, physics mods, graphics mods... and of course, the sexy stuff. So I thought... how cool would it be if we could just mod our own world, ya know? Make things they way they ought to be.

I have some idea of overall plot, though I'm giving myself a lot of wiggle room on this to just play around and have fun. Zane, the protagonist, will be learning as he goes, so he'll begin with many limitations on what he's able to do and over time, will hone his skills. I think the presence of limitations are often the essence of good story-telling - if he could just type a few lines and boom, every woman in the world becomes a gorgeous nymphomaniac, there's not really a story to tell. Pan's series on the EMCSA, Limits, is an amazing example of this - pushing the envelope little by painstaking little, always feeling like you got something, always feeling like you want more. (If you haven't read it, then you should. It is fun, and fun is good.)

For those who didn't care for the sometimes grim tone in Tolerance/The Tolerant, worry not - here, I just want to play around and have fun. Not to say there won't be antagonists and plot and all - I'm too literary not to want to tell a story - but this should be much more light-hearted and fun.

Anyway, this is probably going to be a big project for a while - my plan is to keep updates early here for y'all and try to do an installment every 1-2 weeks, while still leaving myself time to do commissions and have a real life (such as it is).