#verbosebabbling

[verbosebabbler]

Guide's Alternate ZampanioSim Classpects

Aspects

Facets of Cosmos Star: The widening or giving of space Void: The contraction or taking of space Moon: The twisting or changing of space

Facets of Truth Word: The showcasing of knowledge Ink: The hiding of knowledge Twist: The misdirecting of knowledge

Facets of Life Bloom: The growing and proliferation of life Blight: The destruction or end of life Change: The changing or corrupting of life

Facets of Web Thread: The formation of connections Rip: The dissolution of connections Tangle: The alteration of connections

Facets of Self Flesh: The self as relates to the body Heart: The self as relates to the inner self Mind: the self as it relates to the externalized self

Facets of Light Flash: Bringing attention onto the self Shade: Lacking in attention Bounce: Promoting attention between people

Facets of Bonds Snow: The formation of bonds between people Steam: The separation of bonds between people Stream: The alteration of bonds between people

Facets of Passion Lightning: Passion dispersed at a singular goal Smoke: Passion dispersed nowhere Fire: Passion dispersed indiscriminately

Facets of Art Soul: creation perceived as original Flux: creation perceived as derivative Dream: creation perceived as outside

Facets of Time Wish: The past / future can be change Fate: The past / future is set Now: The past / future is irrelevant to the present

Classes

Hacker: to break reality Glitch: to inspire the breaking of reality Programmer: to restore reality Tester: to inspire the restoration of reality

Monarch: to control Divine: to inspire control Radical: to revolt Icon: to inspire revolution

Herald: to change Bard: to inspire change Defender: to stabilize Ward: to inspire stability

Paladin: to fight for Banner: to inspire fighting for Peacekeeper: to pacify Dove: to inspire pacifism

Healer: to heal Maid: to inspire healing Destroyer: to destroy Omen: to inspire destruction

Thief: to take Rogue: to inspire taking Donor: to give Grace: to inspire giving

Artisan: to create Muse: to inspire creation Censor: to erase Envoy: to inspire erasure

Thread: to connect Seamstress: to inspire connection Turncoat: to separate Ripper: to inspire separation

Hero: to lead Disciple: to inspire leading Puppet: to follow Shepherd: to inspire following

Mentor: to explain Pupil: to inspire explanation Charlatan: to misrepresent Imposter: to inspire misrepresentation

Ally: to befriend Advocate: to inspire friendship Stranger: to estrange Hermit: to inspire estrangement

Title: Descriptor Class to the Descriptor of Aspect Ex: Star Ripper to the Shade Turncoat to the Void of Steam

Ex Translations: Peewee: Puppet to the Twist of Fate (Puppet of Twisted Fate)

Wanda: Monarch to the Word of Cosmos (Lord of Known Space)

Closer: Shade Herald to the Thread of Passion (Lonesome Witch of Threaded Motivation)

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I've been working on this off and on for a while. I wanted to try and make a classpect system that could encompass the Homestuck Aspects and the Magnus Fears that ZampanioSim uses, and adding many new classes to try and cover the wide variety of classes given out.

I naturally do miss out on some nuances in the translation; like losing double meanings of the original titles, or consequences of separating Aspects or Fears like separating the meanings of awareness and knowledge from Light, or collating Aspects or Fears like collating Death and Destruction. But overall I'm happy enough with what I have to share it.

[verbosebabbler]

Ok, I've pretty much finished the Harvest Dreams collection of stories. Most of my main thoughts I already addressed earlier, Zampaniosim as a collection of story segments that are not to be put in order, but taken as a whole to make an approximation of the story and characters.

But on that note, I am limited in what I have. But it seems like my void of knowledge is centered around the mafia family and the Hunds, but not completely. I have names: Raja, Twig, Sam, Ajax, Detective Shiro White, Camellia, John, Boss. 8 characters at least.

I'm just a bit lost. Had been unsure if Twig and Sam were the same person because it looked like they had the same Lavinraca sprite. And their parallel stories of Twig is a bad dog, Sam is a good heir proves a connection, but I don't think it's the same character, probably brothers in the mafia family, though idk if Sam's older brother was Twig or Boss, or if Boss was the dad or even could be the boss of the rival family for all I know. I don't know where Hostage and Himbo fit in here, they could have been renamed or retitled, could be even Twig, Sam, or Boss. Names are inconsistent but they are also the only means I can follow the characters through their stories.

It's back to the hunt for more stories. I should probably relocate and reread Dog Gone Days or whatever that story was called as I think that was where Twig was made a Hund for Rava or something.

[verbosebabbler]

I'm halfway through the Harvest dreams collection of stories now, and some stories there have helped me reconceptualize the nature of Zampaniosim as a nonlinear story. It's not a linear story told out of order, it is fundamentally to its core without an order. A set of vignettes set across the many branches in the Echidna. A quote: "It takes the story that it has and it reflects it again and again and again against itself. It cannot bring its Lord back to the past. It can not tell a new story. All it can do is give everyone the tools they need to tell the story again and again and again in new ways."

So how do we interact with Zampaniosim if there is not a continuous storyline. It's through the characters. "I have half understood dream-memories that other me's sent to me about other YOU's and thats a pretty good first order approximation". This explanation of the Witness's knowledge of Doc Slaughter is the same as our knowledge of the characters; segments that don't fit together into one thing, but gives an approximation of the character the more segments we get.

Now, the new thing that is troubling when I have the story segments is not putting them into one continuous sequence, but placing them along some vague progression of the characters. This is hard to explain, but imagine I get a story segment for Ria, it's important to understand where it is on her individual timeline, like whether it is before a major event that changes the character. Is it pre or post Leehunter? Pre or Post breaking Peewee through Arm1. While the story has no linearity, the character's have their own arcs and thus some sense of linear progression for them.

Except the Arms system comes in and fucks up my understanding of progression even more. Because at the end of Arm1, it's not that the characters go back to the start of the loop in 1972, only their memories do. The characters are still progressing on to the next Arm. This causes a splintering effect that there's the character as is approximated through the loops of Arm1, and then every individual instance of that character that continues to exist afterwards. This is most clearly explained with Peewee. One instance of Peewee that we know of has breached through Arm1. But, there's still a version of him stuck in Arm1, the memories being sent back to the Peewee at the start in 1972. So there's different versions of the characters potentially going through their own individual arcs.

That's just some of the stuff I've been thinking about while going through the stories. Zampaniosim is not a single linear story, it is a hodgepodge of different vignettes that come together to give approximations of the characters and their arcs. And what is explored is based on what interests the audience and authors. "Relevancy Is The Closest Thing To Authority In Zampanio (...) What draws you in further? (...) The employees of Eyedol Games and the Training Team and Peewee's whole thing compete to see who entertains you the most. Who entertains ME (JR) the most. Who entertains IC the most. How much time do we all spend thinking about them. They need it to live." Zampaniosim is created around what would keep interest, keep it relevant in the minds of the readers.

[verbosebabbler]

So, how I start is at what I call the homepage. http://www.farragofiction.com/ZampanioSim/ . The first thing new I noticed was the question marks by the doors. But that's not my first instinct to look. The first instinct is to open up the page source. Now, I do everything on mobile mostly, so how I do this is adding view-source: to the beginning of any url. Like view-source:http://www.farragofiction.com/ZampanioSim/ . Now I don't know how to code, so most of this seems like gibberish to me, but I'm able to navigate enough to figure out how the links work. If you see something like /ZampanioSimNorth/ or /GhoulishThing/ you add that segment to the end of farragofiction.com, like http://www.farragofiction.com/GhoulishThing/ .

Now, the first thing I did was took a detour into what I think is a work in progress area so I won't post that here. I didn't learn much, except the names of characters I barely recognize: Twig, Ambrose, River, and Rava, and one I don't recognize at all: Sam. And I learn the classpect for Twig and Sam. But since this is a WIP area, I don't know if those are canon yet.

Going back to the homepage code though, I find a paragraph of links I'm completely unfamiliar with /TheHarvestDreamsOfZampanio/ . It's the jackpot for someone like me trying to get back into the series. It opens to a digital library of stories involving the characters. But, I don't want to go through every book individually. So, I open the page source and find out where the stories are coming in from. http://www.farragofiction.com/TheHarvestDreamsOfZampanio/stories.js . While I won't get to see things like the associated images, this format is easier for me to read everything at once on mobile.

And this is where I lead off this post. I'm going to read through the writings, take notes, and get back to posting on it later.

[verbosebabbler]

Some evil obsessive part of me wants to translate the gopher hole into a text adventure and that part needs to die because it will kill me to attempt it. I'm just going to be grateful to the cartographers and when I regain my sanity walk their steps. but for now I'm listening to someone play lobotomy corps as it's a hint for context given to me by the Illusionist. If I like it, I will buy it while it's on sale

[verbosebabbler]

Referring to FAQ found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B6Z6wt0LweTInxXsV5cLkCeMJBdVrZRrq_okzGaHDdA/edit?usp=sharing

There’s many thoughts I have about the FAQ, but I do not feel like writing them all up right now. So I am writing them up as discussion questions or proposals and leaving it up for either me to come back to later or anyone else to write something up on. 

Discuss corroborantClockwork’s character progression over time, how the constant resetting ends up desensitizing him from the violence he has seen and done to his friends throughout the playthroughs, and how that desensitization leads to the kinds of people that become gods as described by PS. 

What is the game actually being talked about here? Most things, actually pretty much all things, lead me to believe it to be SBURB, “Even if it’s a [[sim]]ulator of [[censored]].” But one paragraph’s mention of RS speaking Italian somehow got JR to link it to Zampanio. I might not have the full context, but like, italians are real and aren’t all related to Zampanio. 

There is some discussions available about the chapters, what the ones Jimmy discovered but were garbled mean, the ciphered text of the chapter titles. There’s speculation on the chapters listed in the table of contents writ up by Jimmy that were never actually included in this FAQ (Jimmy needing to have some version of them to know their chapter names and placement that never was given to us). 

There are word choices that seem unique enough to be game mechanics or something but were not censored, like “Veilborn” that was used a little in text, and “Steel Curtain” being one of the only words in the ending dictionary section despite not appearing anywhere else in text and not actually being given a definition. [[and yeah, Veilborn did stick out to me because of the coincidence of me recently changing my name to the initials VB (and luckily I didn’t accidentally pick the initials of one of the other characters because that would make things confusing for newcomers)]]

There is speculation to be made on the weird font portion of the FAQ, who is Dutton? How does it relate to Sburb? Why did this weird font section not get censored? Find me the font, I can’t find it online. 

Discuss the gods mentioned, the lore from them pre-session versus in session, and just elaborate, examining, or speculating on them. Prophetic Gods versus Periodic Gods, versus Metaplayers, Patrons, Godmodders. Something something, cataclysms are cool themed apocalypses idk. 

There’s discussion to be made on The Lines and what they are. Why do people keep getting zombied?

And even more miscellaneous questions from this already miscellaneous assortment: Why was there a random section about Mario’s sprite being the size of a nipple? Why did we get a discussion of sndbrdkind (soundboard)? Why did the Smith class bug out the FAQ when Waste and Grace were relatively normal? Why did the Denis Waitley quote repeat? What does vagabounced and all variants of vagabond as a verb mean?

Those are all the topics I can think about exploring right now. End post.

[verbosebabbler]

Ok, finished putting all the text in the Twine Gopher hole.

I have to do some beta test playthroughs and maybe some formatting stuff to make it look slightly nicer, but not today

Things to note, I found a single room missing. Didn't look that hard, so there might be more, but there is a branch from the room labelled murder on the v4 version of the map that leads east to an apology.

Sorry for the gigglesnort on this. It's plot stuff, and the spoilers is the twine game, not my commentary on it.

Other than that, maybe I found a direction that wasn't mapped as looped back to another room or something. I did not have it in me to check every direction labelled as a loop back. I really relied on the v4 map for this.

The only original writing of mine was brief stuff in the starting areas. And some editing of like typos. Fixing up weird txt file shit with punctuation using context clues. Changing other punctuation formatting because it correlated to some function in twine like [brackets] or //double slashes//. Basic stuff.

I may also make a room to claim for myself in the maze because, well, I deserve it. Probably will claim it under my currently designated title Guide of Observers and reference my role as recreator of this gopher maze.

Anyway, lastly, some previews:

[the map]

[the room]

Yeah, I picked this example room on purpose. And it does correlate to the highlighted square on the map.

Anyway, end post.

[verbosebabbler]

Progress being made on gopher hole twine

[yeah, I can't fit in the names and have it all shown at the same time, lol]

Note: this is just the basic structure as told by the map png. None of the main text is in it, just the connections between empty rooms labeled as shown on the map png.

While for now I'm leaving in the cardinal directions, I'm thinking of making an easier version which, instead of the cardinal direction, gives you just the name of the room based on what writing is in it.

I'm conflicted with this, which is why it would be a separate version. I want to maintain the elements of the cardinal directions as that is an important recurring element. But I also want it to not be overwhelming for the audience, as I know that directions in just a constant stream of North / East / East / South / North... just overwhelms me (which is why I initially shortened it to like r.neesn.)

But that's a later me problem. For now I need to finish the structure and then get to filling in the text.