#sims lore fix

[hopefulstarfire]

I currently have about six households created for the Sims 4 Lore fix;

The Goths: Mortimer (YA), Bella (YA), Cassandra (Child) and Cerberus (Rottweiler). Mortimer is determined to explore every field in the arts while Bella suffers from paranoia after discovering her old favorite childhood book, Where's Bella, and seeing how in line it fell in with her life -- and it only grew worse when people in black suits showed up at her door, asking what she knew about the situation in Strangerville, where infected people repeat her name over and over again.

The Pleasants: Diane (Adult), Jeff (Adult), Daniel (teen), Jennifer (child). Diane is working in the culinary career and this time around Jeff will fulfill his wish of becoming an Astronaut. There's some tensions in the house and an interesting marriage between the parents.

Oldie: Coral (Adult), Herb (Adult), Mary-Sue (teen). Coral is a stay at home mom and Herb is in the business career. Mary-Sue works part time as Cassandra Goth's babysitter and the two have formed a bit of a friendship because of it. They're looking to adopt again.

Hart: Holly (Adult), Bebe (Adult), Brennen (Child), Hannah (child), Blythe (infant), Daisy Mae (Ragdoll). Holly broke away from her family's criminal lifestyle, essentially being disowned. Her parents have passed and left behind everything to her younger brother, who was raised by Nick's brother and she is hesitant to reach out but wants to. She's a painter. Bebe wants to help those in need and end stigmatism around different needs or illnesses, seeing how her parents were ostericized for being different and she's working as a doctor. Brennan is a Nerd who loves void critters and wants to give back to those in need. Hannah knows no fear and is always running around, and is also the kid trying to bring home all the strays. Blythe is a cautious baby.

McIrish-Bunch: Ethan (Adult), River (Adult), Aiden (teen), Junie (Toddler). Ethan is still an all around great guy and amazing father with dad energy since he was a teenager. With his parents gone, he feels it's fell on his shoulders to keep his siblings together and helps his youngest sister Darlene and her son where he can. River is a successful artist and came out as non-binary in college and recently began identifying as transmasc nonbinary (they/them pronouns). They still keep in close touch with Molly and Sandi French. Aiden is a cute but shy chess player that is a history fanatic and can give whole presentations on different areas. And Junie is my silly little goose.

Alvi: VJ (Adult), Lisa (Adult), Fouzia (Teen), Bunny (Lhasa Apso). VJ and Lisa ran off the night of their high school graduation as VJ wanted nothing to do with his father -- something he never regretted. Though it caused a strain on Lisa's relationship with her parents, they got by well enough and their daughter's birth helped smooth things out with the Bunchs. VJ has pursued a music career and has kicked ass at it. He's still more on the evil side but he's an incredible father. When things became more stable, Lisa started pursuing a style influencer career and is set to release her own fashion label and make everyone look hot -- just not as hot as her. Fouzia is the queen bee of Copperdale High and is living the social media influencer lifestyle. She's cheer captain, a good student and absolutely obsessed with her dog and always looks out for her cousin Aiden...she's just a little spoiled, as she's her dad's favorite and only daughter.

[rebouks]

Previous // Next

Ivan: If y'don't get that thing outta my face I'mma smash the fuck outta yours. Oscar: C'monnn you haven't eaten all day. Ivan: I ain't fuckin' hungry!

[fizzytoo]

some changes in the kameāloha household since we last saw them! amaya aged up into a child and the kameāloha's welcomed karlee to the family!

[auspexsims]

my favorite olds 💕

[landgraabbed]

sometimes you gotta take in the lil details

[deathbypufferfish]

question: why does Lunara keep coming to the family functions if she (apparently) hates everyone in her family? is it JUST to be stingy? 😫

Okay so a few things

1. She's always been an attention seeker since she was little and she does not care how she gets it.

2. Out of spite 💗 she likes to upset Miyu and if Miyu is ignoring her then it usually goes to Yusuf. Yusuf also has a bad relationship with Lunara but is conflict avoidant and doesn't fall for the bait. Miyu does!!!!

3. She actually doesn't hate everyone! She's always had a good relationship with her moms, especially Nina, up until recently where she's been fighting with Naz a lot. Mainly because Naz is the pushover parent. She also has an okay relationship with Hana and Faruk but that's mostly because of the age difference. Yusuf is just a year younger than the twins but Hana and Faruk are both over a decade younger. So Lunara did not have beef with the toddlers at least.

Also idk if anyone remembers this but Lunara actually ghosted the entire family for a year or so after she moved out. And when she came back on harvest fest she was actually pretty mellow for a while. And then she started being a bitch again once Miyu got pregnant....

[yudidoodles]

Heyyyy its just straight up yansim ocs again- listen I can't even begin to explain the lore here I just really love Hazu is the moral of it all

Left girlie is a vampire squid (and a succubus hence the,,, look), right baby boi is a spider fish (deep sea fish from Australia) just trust me on my choices here it makes sense in my lore

[apricote]

anyway even though adelia is like level 10 in cooking & baking, sammy makes most of the family meals in the house because he's like "you cook & bake for work every day, pls let me do this for you, i love you" :")

[hopefulstarfire]

Why is it the thing that I actually feel accomplished about lately is that. I'm almost done with one neighborhood on my sims 4 save I'm making for myself. I've got one more family to finish for Willow Creek and then I can move onto the other worlds.

[sinsofsinister]

[ valentino drake • human • bomber alchemist ]

• grew up in the less well off part of the infinite city. very frugal as a result. is also very good at jury rigging repairs to almost anything.

• been with his current gang for a good handful of years. participates in the production and distribution of various drugs. has no real loyalty to the gang. he just really likes the money coming in and the freedom he gets to fuck around with his alchemical experiments.

• every scar he has is from some sort of alchemical incident.

• cannot hear out of his right ear. made a lil hearing aid thing for himself. he will fully turn it off if someone he doesn't like is trying to talk to him from that side.

• has only two fingers and a thumb on his left hand. lost his ring finger as a punishment during his teen years working for a different gang. lost his little finger after accidentally spilling an acidic concoction on it while working on little to no sleep.

• big 'dont put me in a situation im at my limit and im very tired' and 'contrary to popular belief violence actually solves a lot' kinda vibes.

[gerbits]

GERBITS TOWNIE OVERHAUL: A SAVE FILE

*waves*

This thing was due for a major update- and I've finally mustered up the inspiration to get it done 💪

What is this? This is a save file where all (yes, ALL) of the EA townies have been given makeovers- hair, faces, clothing...no eyeball rings here, folks. And the best part? They are all CC-FREE!

You won't find any updated builds or anything, because I'm not a builder. What you will find on top of makeovers, however, is that this save file is also mostly lore-friendly.

Neat! So, what changes have been made? Sims have been removed and/or added (goodbye Katrina Caliente, hello Kaylynn Langerak!), relationships have been fixed (depending on your definition of 'fixed', heh), and concept sims are now a part of the game! (ever wonder what happened to those awesome sages of magic? wonder no more!)

For an overview of the big changes, check out this doc!

Okay, but what if I only want a couple of these households? Fret not, because they are available on the gallery! And before you ask, no, I won't be uploading tray files. You can find them by searching for my username in the gallery (unsurprisingly, it is gerbits), and you will need to have "includes CC" ticked! While they are, indeed, CC-free, I made them with my defaults installed and apparently that isn't good enough for EA.

I changed my mind, I want the whole save! How do I install it? Place the file in your Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/saves folder. Easy peasy!

If you have read through all of that rambling, I commend you, and I present one (1) download link (OKAY it's two but it's the same thing so, really, you could consider it one):

DOWNLOAD (SFS) alternate (dropbox)

[anotherplumbob]

Uberhood 2024 Update By AnotherPlumbob (CC free)

The Uberhood is an ongoing PROJECT where I’m creating a Cc-free savefile, with all the worlds and lore from The Sims 2 ported to The Sims 4. 

NOTE: In this update I've revamped PLEASANTVIEW only - if you were interested in the other worlds or premades, please note they remain exactly as they were in the previous versions.

It currently includes

1.- Remade Worlds

Pleasantview (Newcrest+Willow Creek)

Strangetown (Strangerville+Oasis Springs)

Veronaville (Windenburg)

Bluewater Promenade (Magnolia Promenade)

Three Lakes (Granite Falls)

Bluewater Bay [only partially built] (Brindleton Bay)

All the career lots (detective, hospital and science lab).

BEWARE: the rest of the worlds are either empty, half built or a mess in general.

2.- Families

The save includes all the premade families as well as the iconic townies that lived in those worlds in The Sims 2 times. They all have jobs, relationships, sentiments, lifestyles, reputations, etc. For Pleasantview sims only I've also included more lore in the form of milestones, added traits, midlife crisis, etc.

3. Required packs and How to Install (PLEASE READ)

THE SAVE IS CC-FREE BUT ALL EXPANSION, GAME PACKS,STUFF PACKS AND KITS RELEASED UP UNTIL MARCH 2024. 

If you don’t have all packs, sims may be half naked, and/or bald and stuff may be missing. Install at your own risk. 

In order to install:

BACK UP YOUR SAVES.

Download the the SAVE file.

Put the save in your SAVES folder.  Documents > Electronic Arts > Sims 4 > Saves. I changed the name of the file so that it will hopefully not overwrite any of your saves (including the previous v1). If your system prompts you to overwrite a save, do not click yes. Just change the name of the save (keep it 8 numbers but change the numbers) and try again.

Optional: Put the .package file (StrangetownTexts.package) in your mods folder. This file is used to change the Strangerville mystery a bit, and turn it into the Strangetown mystery (with custom texts, references to the Bella mystery, etc.). Please install it if you want to have some clues on what happened to Bella!! 

4. Play Order

There’s really no set play order but note that:

1.- Brandi Broke is pregnant and will give birth in 3 days regardless of who you play and regardless of whether aging is on or off, so play with her first if you want to be there for the birth.

2.- Same thing applies to Pascal Curious, who’s also pregnant at the start of the save.

5. Disclaimer and TOU

I’m just one person and there may be some bugs here or there, or naked sims or whatever. Feel free to report any bugs you find but I will only fix them if I consider them super relevant or game breaking, otherwise the save is provided as is and you install it at your own risk.

Also please don't waste your breath asking me to do X world, or add lore to Veronaville or Strangetown or whatever, because I will only do it if and when I'm inspired to do it - and the requests quite honestly stress me out.

THE TERMS OF USE ARE: Be nice and don’s steal others creations! 

Download: Sim File Share - Filehosting for Simmers

[phas3d]

Slytherin boys as gamer bfs and what games they would play with their significant other?

Gamers >:) | Slytherin Boys

type :: fluff

tw/cw :: cock fighting, animal cruelty, gambling, threats (these are all for fucking tom bc ofc it is...) - suicide joke (mattheo)

contains :: draco, tom. mattheo, theodore, lorenzo

notes :: im ngl idk half of these games in depth - i just heard and seen the sterotypes of these games - fps = first person shooter, dbh = detroit become human, abg = asian baby girl, bow = breathe of the wild ||

DRACO MALFOY sims 4 / roblox

This man sucks ass at gaming, he literally can't do it

His aim is shit, he screams when he's in a fight, and he rage quits the second he loses

So he has to stick to girly games

He has so many mods and cc for sims that it's insane

His pc runs like it's on life support because of this, pls save that poor computer

And he likes playing roblox too sometimes

But he doesn't even play the normal games

Bro plays Dress To Impress and Maple Hospital...

Like what the fuck are you doing there??? Go on BloxFruits or smth man

What's even worse is he eats EVERYONEEE up in Dress to Impress, he literally always top 3

And when he isn't top 3, he curses and swears but it doesn't go through cause tags

He literally cannot do obbys either oh my fucking god

You know that one meme of Sadness from Inside Out dropping her popcorn and someone quote-tweets it saying, "Damn she can't do anything"

That's exactly who Draco is when it comes to gaming

TOM RIDDLE dark web gambling / elden ring

Oh my fucking God this guy can't have a normal hobby ever

He doesn't game at all,,, literally just gambling bruh

He hosts illegal gambling rings online and even host some in the school basement

One time he even hosted an illegal cock ring fight...

Yes,,, he stole the chickens from Hagrid and made them fight....

He even used magic to give them powers like pokemon....

He made a fucking WATER chicken and FIRE chicken fight

Thank god he didn't actually let them kill each other, he just did it until one was near death

But back to gambling - he also manipulates people in so many ways

He casts a spell that silently chants "go all in, go all in" so it subconsciously makes people bet more

Bro even gets some students in DEBT!?!?! Like how tf did you do that and WHYYY would you do that

If someone doesn't come down to the basement in a while to gamble,,, then Tom will fix that

Besides illegal gamlbing...

He plays Elden Ring, which is pretty normal

Besides the fact that he BEAT THAT SHIT IN LIKE 2 DAYS?!!??!!?

Normally streamers, pro gamers, they all take weeks and sometimes even months just to make progress

But Tom is just,,, just better ig?

So yeah... He sticks to gambling cause every other game is just too easy for him

MATTHEO RIDDLE gta V / fortnite / rocket league / nba 2k24

God this guy is the worst sterotypical middle school boy ever

He even had the ugly ass big blue headset with the shit mic on it

Plays GTA V every now and then, only when he's angry

That's when he goes around town and just beats the shit out of everyone

Likes playing Fortnite for hours on end with his friends, mostly Theo and Lorenzo cause they can actually keep up with him (Draco is ass at FPS and

Plays rocket league and NBA 2k24 because of fucking course he does - look at him....

He's just a boy....

A really toxic one.....

Definitely screams "KILL YOURSELFFFFF!!!!!!" if he loses and honestly he's kinda real for that

THEODORE NOTT god of war / detroit become human

Loves games that have a long story

It's a good mix of story and fighting, he can't really get into pure FPS games

Have done most routes in DBH and even found easter eggs and hacks

Tries to get you into the lore as well but sometimes it goes so deep you get confused

"NO!!! Connor in route 8 is actually a pretty neutral guy and he's-"

Like bro what??? Why do you know everything about this "Connor" guy??? smh

He dabbles in some FPS sometimes, like playing Fortnite with Matt and Enzo

And he actually REALLY good

Has great aim and precision

But he just can't get into it for some reason, it's not his type

LORENZO BERKSHIRE valorant / zelda breath of the wild

I feel like Enzo playing Valorant makes so so sooo much sense

He's not AS toxic as the other guys, but he's still weird and fuck-boy-ish in his own way

Definitely plays with e-girls and tries to bag an ABG

But he gets catfished....

He's pretty good at Valorant, surprisingly

His mic stays on for every single game... Even if no one else is talking

This man will talk to a fucking wall and still be yapping

"Okay guys way I need to pee" ...

There's only bots in his server.........

He also loves RPG games and stuff like that

So BOW is perfect for him to shut off his mind and just roam and do useless tasks

[skipppppy]

I’ve had a lot of people asking about potentially continuing English Willy with FNAF 6 and I really wanna. I really fucking wanna but I’ve written myself into a hole and I can’t get out unless I address 3 main problems:

1). Helloscully’s escapades were only funny because of dramatic irony. The comedy hinges on how absurd FNAF lore is from an outsider’s perspective. And even if they did get the full story from Mike, no tumblr user with morals would air out their irl friend’s dirty laundry ESPECIALLY if he was the son of a serial child murderer. So translating the story into autobiographical tumblr posts wouldn’t work as well

2). Mike dies at the end of Pizza sim and that’s just kind of a bummer. No way around it. Helloscully, Travis and Madison care about him now and there isn’t much comedic value in watching your friend be burned alive. I feel like this could be maybe worked around with the Blacklisted/Mediocrity/Bankrupcy endings

3) I specifically said I didn’t wanna sell out like the franchise did. This can easily be fixed if I abandon my principles but like. at what cost

[existentialterror]

ARG notes: ZampanioSim, part 2

Hey guys. catfishAnabasis (Light) here, continuing my… uh, ZampanioSim Let’s Play? That’s dumb. My investigation into the Homestuck/Magnus Archives/House of Leaves-inspired alternate reality game ZampanioSim. Read Part 1 first.

Now we have the bare minimum on Zampanio Sim’s format. Actually, we don’t know much and it’s constantly changing, but we at least have an idea of what we’re in for. Cool.

What is the story unfolding within Zampanio Sim?

So we know from the Classpect Menu game, the one that “is” ZampanioSim, that this was an effort to simulate a now-deleted game from the 1970s called Zampanio, based on a now-lost* FAQ on how to play it. At some point, possibly just search engines, I have learned that Eyedol Games is the company that makes Zampanio. Let’s take that going in.

*dubious

A lot of the “routes” off the house at the start of ZampanioSim – see the diagram – are procedurally generated places to explore or are otherwise collections of content. But other have a more directly obvious narrative to them. I have marked these places here.

Let’s go. We'll start... Uh...

…

(Okay, so there’s a recurring meme in ZampanioSim about whether personality-typing you based on whether you traverse labyrinths clockwise or counterclockwise.

But I’m confused about which one that means – like if I’m looking at a drawing of a labyrinth top-down, and I go from the entrance to the right passage, I guess I’m going counterclockwise. But if I were standing in a physical maze, the clockways framing wouldn’t occur to me – I mean, they’re both chiral processes, but like, the hand of a clock moves to the right, so which reference am I taking?

Maybe I’m not cut out for labyrinths. When I’m caving in minecraft I go to the right, so if I’m coming back into the house through the north door, then... I guess:)

We’ll start with the non-existent West Route (accessible by clicking on the west side of the house, where you’d expect a door to be.)

AdventureSimWest

AdventureSimWest is an audience-participation adventure game that, like Problem Sleuth or Early Homestuck, takes suggested commands from an audience that guide a character, and the author tells a story around it. This one has been running for quite some time, so there’s a lot of backlogged material!

AdventureSimWest gives us a lot of info right away. It’s about a character named Peewee, who is hired by Eyedol Games. Peewee and the staff of Eyedol Games are trapped inside a Space Loop. A Space Loop is like a Time Loop except that once you die, physical space (within the loop) and many of the circumstances reset, but its point in time is… not fixed. Peewee is a snakelike alien called a lamia. He first appeared in a different SBURBlike game on FarragoFiction.com called Farragnarok, which he remembers but which I don’t know anything about. He is a COOL GAMER who has lived various other lives including through the destruction of his home planet, Segundia. Keep in mind that he is from a SBURBlike.

Oh, hey, according to an offhand exchange in AdventureSimWest, solving mazes by following the righthand wall means you’re going counterclockwise. Everyone jot that down. We can bootstrap this. We can do this.

I read up through the “JR Rambles about Spoilers” interlude. And it was fun! It’s Peewee’s quirky, haphazard series of adventures in a quirky, sharp universe. The style is fun, self-aware and whimsical. I don’t know how much about the AdventureSimWest lore applies to mainstream Zampanio, especially given the multilayered narrative Zampanio serves up to us like a delicious but concerningly non-Euclidean cake, but some of the characters and concepts appear in other places, and so the worldbuilding might too. Here are some things we learn about the world of AdventureSimWest:

Peewee arrived here from his old universe by jumping into a giant, spiky, magical wall of flesh called an Echidna. He’s actually one of the set of gods who created this universe, but seems to be the only one left.

People central to the space loop remember the space loop exists.

Eyedol Games may have caused or be causing the space loop, but does not appear to be completely in control of it.

The space loop started in 1971 and is spiraling towards the end of the world in 2022.

Eyedol has other employees, including:

Wanda, the “CEBro” and “Lord of Space” (homestuck classpect). She’s tremendously rad and maybe a shapeshifter.

The Intern, a college-aged dude from Ohio, who Wanda is always trying to find and who seems unexpectedly critical to the existence of Eyedol Games. (I might apply a little homestuck logic and guess that he’s the “Muse of Time”, but this is my own speculation.)

The Closer, an aggressive businesslady in a suit and cape

Someone called the Eye Killer, who, like, lives in Eyedol’s basement and kills people.

Flower Chick, some kind of identity-stealing fae, who keeps a copy of Peewee’s skull on her desk.

Quotidians, which are another alien species – these ones are shapeshifting crows and are a hivemind. Many of them are named Tom.

Parker, a “waste”, who has made his business out of learning glitches, hacking, etc, in reality itself.

There are also just two other teams of people who don’t work at Eyedol Games, who both got ejected into some kind of infinite labyrinth around the same time. They have kind of SCP energy. I don’t know what their deal is. Yet.

What about that FAQ?

The mysterious lost ZampanioFAQ actually exists, more or less.

When I found it, it felt like natural game progression: I beat the Classpect Menu game, then there got a link to the official Discord. Then buried in one of the Discord channels, one of the pinned links goes to – yes – THE Zampanio FAQ.

But then it turned out the thing I’d found a link to was a fan-made transcript (by @verbosebabbler) of a different “official” ZampanioFAQ PDF. And through various link-hopping, most of which I now forget, I also found the original PDF on a different website by JR. So I don’t know if I got there the way I was “supposed to” or where else I might otherwise have found the FAQ. But we’re here now!

(The official discord, by the way, does not have talk permissions open in any channel. They are all frozen conversations from years ago, with only a spare few used threads acting as the actual usable channels. So the discord is its own labyrinth too. ITS A-MAZE-ING)

Okay. The ZampanioFAQ. In the frontnote to the FAQ, JR describes this finding a printout of fic they'd read long ago, and sharing it as evidence that they did not invent Zampanio – that this is a sburbsim/glitchFAQ (we’ll get to that, hang tight) crossover fanfic by someone else that they read once, lost, and recently re-found - and that it has a couple indications that it’s referencing Zampanio.

Mostly, contentwise, this FAQ is sort of a interuniversal document about how to play SBURB (the universe-creation game that the characters in Homestuck play), written by a group of players. The Zampanio FAQ has, unfortunately, been heavily redacted by interdimensional forces, perhaps SBURB itself.

It’s like it’s written by a new set of characters who are playing their own game of Sburb. They’re learning about it as they experience it! Haha, that’s a cute gimmick.

Oh, the skull? Yeah, don’t worry about that. Hah, no, I get how it looks. But it's actually totally fine.

The redacted words in the ZampanioFAQ seem mostly to do with certain details of SBURB itself, like SBURB is trying to keep its players from spoilers.

Drawing from VerboseBabbler’s transcript and partial de-redaction of the FAQ, I gave my hand at making what sense I could out of the original PDF.

Excerpt. You may not like it, but this is peak ARG performance: multiple collaborative layers of nested PDF annotation.

--------------

Trying to fill in these blanks made me appreciate the potential of the fan-ARG.

Homestuck is a story that both rewards a lot of knowledge about its worldbuilding and also often doesn't explain itself – I think that’s why it has such intense fanwork, because it implies so much but leaves you to fill in the gaps.

Like, okay, classpects, alright? Fans make a big deal about classpecting and it’s cool but it’s also kind of nothing, like, we get some gestures about what it means but not much. (Quick, what does a mage do?) There’s so much fanon trying to make sense of it that even the wiki explanation is based on fanon. But fanon can be dope and people have done some really, really neat stuff bouncing off of the gaps in canon.

ZampanioSim is about nested realities and missing information, and it's heavily based on specific fanworks of homestuck. And filling in missing information on this document, I could use my knowledge of Homestuck to make inferences about this related-but-separate storyline and worldbuilding. That’s so cool!

In the same way that the best fanfiction draws from and interacts repeatedly with canon, the fan-ARG can act as a commentary on or a dialogue with its sources - a story made stronger by connection to another.

There have been other fan ARGs and this is really my first experience with the genre (well - does EverymanHYBRID count as a fanwork? discuss), but like, holy shit, I get it now.

-----------------

Okay, let’s regroup. So the FAQ is a bunch of advice written collaboratively by a group of people playing SBURB. The FAQ is about a kind of SBURB that is very similar to the one in Homestuck – but it’s even more similar to another game on the FarragoFiction website, SBURBsim, which is “is a fanmade browser simulation” of SBURB.

In SBURBsim, you can throw in a randomly-generated or customized set of characters into their own session, and SBURBsim will invent plotlines, fights, character progression, romance, alchemy, time travel shenanigans, and more, eventually telling you a story about how that session might go. It is mind-bogglingly ornate and cool, check it out.

Okay, anyway, so the game described in the FAQ is mostly Sburb-y but has some clear Farrago/SburbSIM elements in the form of the fan-classes – wastes, graces, smiths, and more. But it has some stuff that feels more Homestuck-classic-SBURB, like in the FAQ [EDIT: SBURBsim] there’s a convention where all the randomly generated player-usernames have the same initials as their classpects, so like the session’s Bard of Time might have the username belugaTrainer or belligerentTriangle or whatever, which isn’t a thing in Homestuck nor in the FAQ. It also adds a few elements all its own, like that there’s a recognized pantheon of gods who have sway over the rules of the universe, with their own usernames and classpects.

(Hey, synthesizing that with some background Homestuck knowledge + what we’ve learned from AdventureSimWest, I think the ‘gods’ are the players whose Sburb session created the ones that the FAQ authors were born into. Elegant!)

Oh yeah, as JR mentions, the Zampanio FAQ also takes heavy and pseudo-explicit inspiration from a fanfiction called the Sburb Glitch FAQ, a sprawling fanwork I haven’t read that’s sort of a game guide and technical manual to SBURB. Maybe more of this is references to that, I don’t know.

(Sidenote, Rose’s GameFAQ was one of my favorite plot points in Homestuck. I’m only sorry it wasn’t used more. So I’m delighted to see all these fanworks that took inspiration from it.)

So okay whether the FAQ players are more playing OG-SBURB, or SBURBsim, or a game that has aspects of both – well, they’re all pretty similar, I don’t’ think we need to split hairs. This document is an in-universe survival guide for a SBURBlike.

You know what it’s not particularly like? ZampanioSim, the game it supposedly inspired!

This is so fun to me. SBURBsim existed long before ZampanioSim. If you were going to make a simulator game based on the Zampanio FAQ, that game would be SBURBsim. But SBURBsim was already a thing! JR knows this – they worked on SBURBsim! Their sburbsona is on the about page!

They mention this in the introduction to the “found scanned printout” of the FAQ - they initially read it deeply to figure out, through the redaction, if it was a fanwork for their own project (SBURBsim). They write:

this is obvs JUST the faq, not any of the like, description or author name or all that shit that eventually lead me down the rabbit hole. like, you could find the missing sections in this weird ...not arg? I don't THINK? and they started talking about things like the achievement system and shit, stuff that stuck with me a lot more if what i chose to focus on in zampaniosim is any indication. still. having a record of the START of this branch is better than nothing

So, okay, the FAQ itself is not explicitly Zampanio. We’re missing the description and whatever else that’s supposedly out there somewhere, as lost media. I tried to find some reason to think the fic was supposedly out of time, like that it would have been from before SBURBsim was made, but there isn't any - everything lines up with what JR said in the forward.

So I think maybe reading so far into the FAQ without that other supposed metadata was a great time and, yes, sold me on a new art form, but it wasn’t that productive in terms of the broader Zampanio story.

... Or was it?

I've connected the dots

There was a reference somewhere – I think in the South route, though I can’t swear to it – that was pretty outright something like “JR added Magnus Archives elements to Zampanio because of an at-the-time obsession with the Spiral from TMA.” Now, some stuff like the south route is less in-character than in other places, so I don’t want to necessarily say that everything like that will “carry through” to the rest of canon, if that makes sense. But it helps put those pieces together, so here’s my running theory:

In the story, Zampanio is a memeplex that moves and spreads between dimensions - very diverse multiple dimensions, including different fictional worlds. (Think the Big Bad in There Is No Antimemetics Division - effecting "universes which embed ours as fiction".) Sort of a psychic prion that goes around twisting orderly systems and punching its way between meta-layers. The core of it stays similar between - it has a predilection for spirals, mazes, meta bullshit, and games - but some of the specifics change from instance to instance.

Zampanio probably spread rampant among this constellation of Sburb universes, perhaps because Zampanio is affiliated with games and Sburb universe is a game. (Or at least uses a game to reproduce.) It’s a great carrier. From there, Zampanio rode into our universe on the back of the FAQ. (Game FAQs being a known way to throw information between Sburb dimensions, in Homestuck.)

JR took the seed that came with the FAQ and instantiated Zampanio in this universe, and added their own compatible TMA-spiral flavoring to it.

(This also lines up with another cool aspect of Zampanio, which is that if you make your own fan-work or fan-story about Zampanio, that’s canon too. It is impossible to gamejack this. Thus far I’m focusing on JR’s ZampanioSim canon, but there are other people out there putting their own spins on it, which are also canon.)

Questions I have now, if that theory is true:

What other aspects of ZampanioSim carry on between versions?

Is Eyedol necessarily associated with the Zampanio memeplex? Does or did it actually create ZampanioSim in some causal way?

Does the Space Loop that occurs in AdventureSimWest have ramifications or equivalents in other instances of Zampanio?

Why does Zampanio like games so much? (Is it because interactive games are a convenient way to punch through from one dimension to the fictional dimension within it?)

There are comments about someone, maybe Eyedol, trying to scrub the ZampanioFAQ from the internet (in our dimension). Why would they want that?

What’s the other missing metadata that would have associated the ZampanioFAQ with Zampanio?

Who wrote the ZampanioFAQ? Was it written (...IC) as a fanwork of SBURBsim or did it “come from a SBURB universe”? Who censored it?

Aw man. And there's still so much I haven't even gotten into.

Like, okay, do you guys know gopher? It’s an early alternative to HTTP as a way of organizing the internet that was mostly sidelined, but a few servers are still around.

Apparently there’s a bunch more Zampanio stuff only accessible via Gopher and I’m going to have to figure out how to use it.

Thanks, JR, YOU MAD SORCERER.

So, that's where I'm at vis a vis ZampanioSim. I gotta get back to my own stuff for right now, but thank you ZampanioSim discord for helping blaze trails and mostly to JR for weaving such a wonderful weird mystery.

If you have questions or comments you want me to talk about in a future one of these, my ask box is open.* Also, if you get into ZampanioSim yourself, feel free to say hi on the discord.**

*(okay I know people have been involved in this for years and I’m still mostly trying to formulate my own opinions about what’s going on, so if you know something that’s like “an actual answer” and want to share, then consider phrasing it as an ominous clue instead of telling me outright – but I’m under the strong impression that this is an ARG where there’s not gonna be like a canonical underlying “answer” to a lot of things so, you know, do what brings you joy.)

**Your first challenge is to find the discord. I wanna be cryptic too!

[feroshgirlsims]

Sul, Sul! I’m Feroshgirlsims—simmer, storyteller, and simblr newborn. I mostly write about deeply unhinged, morally grey characters who get happy endings and maybe (accidentally, on purpose) cause an apocalypse. My current story is based on my gameplay in a save file where all my former supernatural characters wake up with mundane lives and no memories of their former powers. I keep describing it as “slice of life with a side of bloodshed," and, uh, suffice it to say my stories are 18+.

What else?

I’m a Romance Girly, so expect sap, sex, and happy endings in addition to the drama and trauma (lol). I’m really excited to post story lore, gameplay, and general Sims 4 brain rot. I plan to share chapters soon, but I’m trying to get a bit of a buffer because I’m a AuDHD gremlin who cannot be told what to do ever, even by my own damn self.

This simblr is definitely a new start for me. My long running supernatural save file got corrupted when I moved to a new Gaming PC. I fixed it and then it got corrupted again. I started a brand new save without all the supernatural stuff and then For Rent sent that one straight to hell.

SIGH.

But seriously, I'm happy to be here and finally make an introduction post so I can freely comment and reblog all these stories I love without feeling like a total weirdo (I am a total weirdo, but still).