Latest Posts by idioticswitcher - Page 2

They may not be able to, but maybe two trucks could.

cats...?

Omg sonadow for Valentine's ❤️💙

"Kiddo, you can has cheeseburger"

Everyone always questioned the young boy who only made modest requests to the gods, but he was the only one whose prayers were answered. It turns out that gods are a lot less powerful than we thought, and were not answering because we were too unreasonable in our prayers.

meanwhile on Twitter

you could make the argument that it’s foolish that everyone in the world should know what the Odyssey is but if you’re from a western country that literally has Greek history stolen away in your museum then well, really a child left behind.

Phineas and Ferb - Season Four - “My Sweet Ride”

jazz-induced psychosis

(Edit: fixed a spelling mistake because a few of you had pointed it out)

the comment sections of facebook links to science articles are my favourite thing in the world

Random headcanon: the reason that Peach and Bowser don’t seem to get a lot of respect in some Super Mario games is because the Mushroom Kingdom is kind of a rural backwater and isn’t terribly important or influential politically, so people tend to regard Bowser as a C-list villain for being so hung up on such an insignificant conquest. Nobody really expects Bowser to be a serious threat – that would be like expecting a guy whose main claim to fame is repeatedly failing to conquer Wyoming to be a serious threat – so they get taken by surprise every single time.

ARG notes: ZampanioSim

Okay, a work this metafictional and also that (I think) responds to audience interaction is going to need a high-caliber gimmick. Hang on.

...

Alright. Hey guys, catfishAnabasis (Light) here, taking a moment out of my surprisingly busy day tell you about a weird thing on the internet.

ZampanioSim is an intricate and brainbending ARG. It takes direct inspiration from Homestuck, The Magnus Archives, and House of Leaves, as well as the creator (JR, jadedResearcher/justifiedRecursion)'s previous canon of Homestuck fan-work and games. A major theme is "unreality".

HERE IS YOUR TRAILHEAD.

Feel free to ignore the rest of the writeup and check it out now.

I know very little about JR's other work, right now. However, among my many INTERESTS, I am something of a TMA ENJOYER and an AMATEUR INTERNET INVESTIGATOR, and if I were in a HOUSE I like to think I could LEAVE it pretty easily.

So, yeah. I figured I'd just describe my experience of this rabbithole and maybe you'll want to check it out too. I'm sure this will only scratch the surface.

ZampanioSim is structured as a nested labyrinth. In the same way that:

Homestuck is a webcomic framed as an interactive adventure game about an account of kids playing a video game (Sgrub) that doesn't exist, and

House of Leaves is a novel framed as a found scholarly discussion about a documentary (The Navidson Record) that doesn't exist about a house that doesn't exist,

ZampanioSim is a game-based ARG framed as an attempt to simulate a game (Zampanio) that doesn't exist based on a found FAQ of the game (that only sort of exists).

More concretely, ZampanioSim features a lot of nested browser games, as well as audio, narrative, an actual audience-interactive narrative game (the way Homestuck was originally), external websites, and more.

The starting point is, of course, the House:

ZampanioSim takes full advantage of the browser as medium. There is content accessible via the address bar, developer tools, cookies (I think), the developer console, and probably more that I haven't realized.

Like, to give you a sense of the kind of rabbithole we're dealing with: Here's a map I made of the House outset page today:

...And I say today because the House does change over time. Today (a friday) when I clicked on the EastEast route, for instance, I was greeted by this grotesquely distorted version of Rebecca Black's "Friday":

Okay, let's talk about what we have going on in the House map, starting from the doors and working out. (I've given some of these my own names for clarity.)

North

The Classpect Menu Game:

This, I think, is the main titular "ZampanioSim". It's the part that's intended to recreate the experience of a supposed old computer game, but by and large, you only experience the menu screen, not the rest of the gameplay. You can select attributes (based on Homestuck's Classpecting system + the Magnus Archives fears) gain points and select skills and (depending on your seed) eventually "beat the game". It's glitchy, it's a hellscape, there's an entity or two in the menu system that are trying to talk to you. It's great fun. Contains links to a rabbithole (which you can plug passwords into for more secrets) and + some secrets to you in the credits.

(While mostly the aspects seem to add flavor to the menu options, there's a special class called "Waste". This appears in neither TMA nor Homestuck, but comes from a fan or meta-joke that Andrew Hussie and Toby Fox, the writer and a major composer for Homestuck, are classpected* as the "Waste of Space" and "Waste of Time". By telling it you're a "Waste"you're more likely to get weird glitches and new options in your Classpect Menu game run - there's a fun recurring element in some of these games about the game changing depending on who you tell it is playing. I learned about the Waste trick from JR's youtube channel. Also, setting your birthday as Halloween might also do something.)

I have no idea if the different iterations of games here are substantially different. I haven't checked. There's a lot going on. "There's a lot going on" is a good summary of ZampanioSim overall.

*( Uh, classpecting is this in-Homestuck personality system where game players are a [Role] of [Element].)

Eyedlr: Eyedol Games is the company that supposedly made the original game Zampanio. Eyedlr is their spambot-filled tumblr clone, which also has secrets in it. (Actually, just assume everything has secrets out.)

East

The House Exploration game: It has the same setup screen as the Classpect Menu game, but this one drops you into a game with visuals: An infinite(?) procedural house you navigate with imagery derived from your choices.

Peewee's exploration game: When it's not blasting Rebecca Black's Friday But Weird into your ears, the EastEast route is another procedural infinite(?) maze, except that you type directions to Peewee, a snake guy with goggles who also moves around on his own. This one also introduces named characters we learn more about elsewhere.

Bathroom text: Procredural bathroom maze, unless it's just some text telling you to take a break. ZampanioSim really likes telling you to take breaks and hydrate, so that you can better appreciate and spread Zampanio.

Absolutely not. Also, I'm a busy woman. I have to finish this writing summary first.

South

The Train Game: a game - notably not a maze - where JR walks down a series of train corridors and monologues to you about the game and the "reality" behind it.

The mazecrawler game: You tell a little guy how to navigate an infinite(?) maze - and if you choose right and open up your browser's Console menu, you can learn a great deal more about

West

The only West route is AdventureSimWest, which is an actual text narrative game where readers submit commands that the author incorporates into updates - just like early Homestuck. It's still going. The logs are extensive but it's mostly about the antics of a new employee at Eyedol Games, which is stuck in a time loop.

Other

Then there's some other scattered clickable text -

The truth about alt: An exchange between two shapeshifters.

A transcript: A dialogue between two people who apparently work for Eyedol Games.

The lower left leads you to an apparently rotating selection of other Zampanio-related games. I particularly liked NagaGirlfriend.

None of this is even the stuff you can reach this page exclusively through the Console menu.

And much more

And there's a lot of stuff that's NOT branching directly off of the house. There's other things you find buried in links or by searching - a discord and a wiki that both straddle the line between in-character and -out, Archive of Our Own content, a youtube channel, the Eyedol website...

Is there a "story" to ZampanioSim?

Yes.

Like I said, there's a lot I haven't seen yet. But what's going on is something like this:

JR is attempting to recreate this game, Zampanio, of course, and tap into its fanbase. The game Zampanio is an infectious meme. Eyedol Games is a transdimensional company that is perhaps both trying to spread the meme and contain it, by removing its spores, e.g. the Zampanio FAQ - the thing that inspired JR to make ZampanioSim - from the internet.

Various parts of the game recognize that they are fictional and may identify you the reader/player as "Observers".

There are a few recurring characters who have gotten swept up into the meme, either working for Eyedol or trapped in ZampanioSim or both, and have followed it from variant to transdimensional variant.

(this is an image from homestuck. it's a reference.)

Japes aside, this is a brain-bending, very cool, and completely ludicrous unfiction project which I believe is made mostly by one person with an unparalleled hand for web sorcery, whimsy, and vibes. The vibes are so good.

The host website, Farrago Fiction (which AFAICT is a multi-person project), hosts a number of often-homestuck-inspired weird games and simulators.

I know ZampanioSim is now a few years old and is still actively updating. Consider checking it out.

2024-08-24 edit: Part 2!

Starting a collection

the funniest character headcanons are feral, homophobic and tax evader i dont accept constructive criticism and you cant change my mind

Mrs. Claus opens "The Year Without a Santa Claus" by claiming the eponymous year took place "before you were born". Seeing as the movie was released in 1974, this means the year must have been before then.

Bounding this on the lower end is the presence of ice hockey - mentioned by Heat Miser - and the use of telephones. Ice hockey was invented in 1875, while Alexander Graham Bell built the telephone in 1876, meaning the year must post-date these. These figures give a range of approximately 100 years during which Santa may have taken his holiday.

Yet, narrowing this further is the presence of a December calendar counting the 1st to a Wednesday. Between 1876 and 1974, only the Decembers of 1880, 1886, 1897, 1909, 1915, 1920, 1926, 1937, 1943, 1948, 1954, 1965, and 1971 started on a Wednesday.

But still this can be narrowed further.

When Santa set out that Christmas Eve, we see what appears to be an almost full Moon in the sky. Within the years listed, only 1920 had a full Moon on Christmas.

Ergo, 1920 was the year without a Santa Claus.

Merry Christmas

Because I’ve lost control of my life

Gonna start posting super niche memes about security work and if you vibe you vibe that's not on me

15

Aigis is a gift to this world

Bottles of Gatorade Blue Bolt floating in a bath of Powerade Mountain Blast, 2013

If you support gay marriage reblog this. If you're on the homophobic side, keep scrolling.

As a bisexual, it sickens me that some people WILL keep scrolling.

you know that furry spectrum meme. there's an evil version of it.

When you hear a new song on the radio and you’re desperately trying to pick a notable phrase so you can google it later

Can somebody from the science side of the internet please tell me why this image of The Hound from RWBY is so fucking hilarious?

I can't stop myself from cracking up and laughing whenever I look at it for a few seconds and I have NO idea why. He's just so amazing XD.

you! tumblr user!