#classpecting guide

[tavtiers]

I would be curious to hear what classpect you’d give Phone Guy from FNAF

I'm afraid I am not familiar enough with this character to classpect them, nor do I have the time to become familiar! That being said, I am happy to provide the resources for you to classpect them yourself.

When I'm classpecting a character, I'll start by matching their personality to a few classes. I use these personality descriptions as a guide.

Think about whether your character seems more passive or more active. Passive classes are guided by others or act for the benefit of others. They are more likely to be kind, but less likely to stand up for themselves. The Passive Classes are: Muse, Sylph, Page, Seer, Heir, Rogue, and Bard. Active classes tell themselves what to do and do so for their own benefit. They are more likely to stand up for themselves, but more likely to be cruel. The Active Classes are: Maid, Knight, Mage, Witch, Thief, Prince, and Lord.

I narrow the class down further by comparing the character to examples from literature and history that the classes are based off of. Here's a quick list (the first group is passive, the second is active):

Muse (masters): Greek Muses, Jesus Sylph (assists): Nymphs, Fairy Godmother Trope Page (utilizes): Squire/Sidekick Trope, King Arthur Seer (knows): Greek Seer, Oracle of Delphi Heir (manipulates): Chosen One Trope, Beowulf Rogue (steals): Rogue, Robin Hood Bard (destroys): Shakespearean fool, Trickster Trope

Maid (assists): Maiden, Joan of Arc Knight (utilizes): Knight, Lancelot Mage (knows): Magician, Merlin Witch (manipulates): Witch, Morgan le Fay Thief (steals): Thief, Blackbeard Prince (destroys): Machiavelli's The Prince, Hamlet Lord (masters): Nobility, God (Christianity)

Aspects are a little more difficult because of how expansive they can be. First, take a look at the personality guide again and narrow it down to a handful, this time focusing on aspects. Afterwards, I find it helpful to look at this description of the denizens for each aspect. It will help you get a better idea of what each aspect encompasses. Look for what themes remind you most of your character! Lastly, take a look at the official aspect descriptions on the Extended Zodiac Page.

Once I think I know a character's classpect, I'll check it against other information about that classpect on the internet and see if what I'm reading reminds me of my character. If you're feeling especially industrious, keep in mind opposites and inverses! Figuring out what your character is not is also a good place to start from. You can use this post as reference for opposites and inverses.

Feel free to peruse my compilation of classpecting information, god tier aesthetics, and characters that I've already classpected! I will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Remember that there is no wrong way to classpect a character. Good luck and I hope this helps!

If any of the links not connected to my blog break, the content can be found on my Google Drive.

Official Aspect Descriptions Personality Descriptions Aspect Denizens

[insufferablemod]

would laios try n eat the imps.....

[gendertrickster]

Okay so the AU that got me into the concept of Athena was Hal taking over the tiaratop from Condy and feeling really weird but not in a bad way about it. Basically, until he can undo the effects, Hal is now in Jane's body. The AU was called Halice in Wonderland and it was an amazing idea I think. Also I'm not normal at all about this pair of shades.

huh.... i'll have to give that a look i've never heard of this one. if it gets the alice in wonderland theming for jane though it's gotta be good

[scorchedserpent]

Noticed u reblogged homestuck stuff and I've been reading summer vacation so I must ask...if the two main charas had classpects, what would they be? And do u know ur classpect (sorry for classpect questions I'm autism)

NEVER BE SORRY THIS IS SUCH AN INTERESTING QUESTION. i love using classpects as a form of media/character analysis so:

marion is a maid of doom. she causes doom, i literally can't elaborate more because i would spoil the WHOLE COMIC. she's also very pessimistic in most aspects and tends to be a reality check for kaz. i'll be honest this was a REALLY HARD pick for her-- other options i was considering for her are sylph and rogue. marion is also quite literally doomed to fail-- low grades, a lack of motivation and anxiety about growing up dooms her to never leave her home, even though the choice is hers to leave. she also dooms others in the comic, caused by her choices. marion's moon is derse.

kaz is a knight of breath. she uses her personality and flexibility to get what she wants. she quite literally breezes through life without much struggle, and tends to be personable and easygoing. she's good at making friends wherever she goes because she's pretty perceptive and adaptable in social situations. she is a protector for spoiler reasons. she also visibly weaponizes her upbeat side to get marion to drop a negative topic multiple times in the comic already. kaz's moon is prospit.

i'll give you a freebie too-- kirby is a bard of hope and he's prospit. take that as you will JKFHDJSKF

i'm personally an heir of time! thank you for the ask !!!

[lightcrowe]

Beginner's guide to Classpects #0: A prelude

Hello everyone, this post is going to serve as a sort of retroactive-precursor to my first post, The absolute beginner's guide to Classpects. Said post contains many mistakes and some regretful assertions about Classes. This post will serve as an easier to digest intro to that post, as well as correcting some of the things I got wrong, or misrepresented.

Part 1: Personal connection and "Roles in the story"

Firstly, I'm happy to say that the first three sections of my initial post still largely hold up. However, the first thing I'd like to address is my take on what should dictate your Classpect. In the original post, I said this:

It's a common belief that your Classpect represents your personality, or is based on it. In my opinion, this is a misconception. Now yes, your personality and traits 100% have relevance to your Classpect, but it's not a matter of "You're a Maid of Breath, that means you're friendly". I'll get into what I mean more later, but I wanted to make that point clear. I don't see Classpects as personalities, and I think too many Classpect quizzes treat themselves like personality tests. Bottom line, the main important thing that your Classpect represents is your role. Your purpose.

I still partially agree with these assertions, but I really didn't communicate them well and some of them are a bit misguided in retrospect. Time to amend that. I do believe that Classpects aren't dictated by your personality, but are inherently tied to it. In the same way your personality is shaped by the people around you and your life experiences, so is your Classpect. Therefore, just as your personality and character change as you grow, so can your Classpect. This is why I don't see Classpecting to be a path with a set endpoint. It's a dynamic, moving journey with no set endpoint. This is, however, referring to your life prior to playing Sburb. It is my belief that your Classpect is determined by the person you are when you start playing. Even if you change as a person, your Classpect remains the same. Skia gives you a role to perform, but you are not bound to it. There are plenty of examples in canon of players doing things contrary to their own role. In spite of Skia's assertions onto you, you still have free will. This is where real life comes into play. As this is the real world, there is no Sburb. We cannot play a game that tells us which Classpect we are, therefore we have to decide for ourselves. (Or not. You by no means are required to Classpect yourself.) Therefore, we do not have a pre chosen in-game journey to fulfill. This grants us much freedom in the way we Classpect ourselves. Since we don't have a figure of authority to tell us what we are, we are free to decide our own Classpect based on where we are in life at that point in time. I still do believe that, while your personality should definitely affect how you determine your Classpect, the same does not work the other way around. You can't determine the path a player will take or their own personality based solely on their Classpect. Two players with the exact same Classpect will likely perform their role in two completely different ways and be completely different people.

I also maintain my belief that quizzes and tests are unhelpful in determining your Classpect. The only person that knows you best is yourself. That's why I believe doing the research and coming to your own conclusion is the best way of going about Classpecting yourself. Though, the guidance of someone more experienced can be helpful.

Part 2: Aspects, simplified.

I believe that my analysis of the Aspects still holds up. However, I think that I was far too wordy and gave too much detail. Detail is important, but seeing as there are 12 fundamentally different Aspects, it can be overwhelming for a beginner. I will now give a more simplified rundown of the Aspects, for the sake of being easier to digest.

I will go over both the literal meaning of each Aspect, as well as their more personal meanings.

Time

Literal meaning: Time, timelines, age, decay. Personal meaning: Determined, goal-focused, privy to detail, fixated.

Space

Literal meaning: Outer space, physical dimensions, empty space, matter, size, velocity. Personal meaning: Patient, creative, big-picture focused, thinking-outside-the-box.

Heart

Literal meaning: Inner self, soul, emotions, love. Personal meaning: Emotional, introspective, relatable.

Mind

Literal meaning: Logic, decision-making, outcome, outer self. Personal meaning: Logical, strategic, reserved, big-thinker.

Hope

Literal meaning: Belief, wishes, dreams, thoughts. Personal meaning: Hopeful, optimistic, naive, positive-thinker.

Rage

Literal meaning: Truth, skepticism, anger, physical strength. Personal meaning: Skeptical, driven, stubborn, realist.

Light

Literal meaning: Knowledge, fortune, relevance. Personal meaning: Scholarly, meticulous, organized, planner.

Void

Literal meaning: Nonexistence, obscurity, darkness, secrets. Personal meaning: Abstract-thinker, quiet, open-minded.

Breath

Literal meaning: Freedom, movement, independence, wind. Personal meaning: Lone wolf, directionless, unbothered, independent.

Blood

Literal meaning: Bonds, relationships, unity, leadership, blood. Personal meaning: Natural leader, caring, selfless, wise.

Life

Literal meaning: Growth, positivity, rebellion, life. Personal meaning: Empathetic, optimistic, rebellious, encouraging.

Doom

Literal meaning: Death, fate, negativity, doomed timelines, rules. Personal meaning: Pessimistic, resigned, wise, adept.

Personal meanings aren't dictated to whomever possesses these Aspects, rather they are common traits among people with said Aspects.

Part 3: Classes, simplified.

This is far and away my biggest regret with the original post. I boiled down many of the Classes far too much, overenforced Class pairings, and treated many fan interpretations of Classes as being factual. This is all on me for not doing enough research. It's time to get it right. In addition to speaking about Classes individually instead of pairing them together, I will have a clear distinction between what's known for sure, and what's my own personal interpretation.

Prince

Canon function: One who destroys their Aspect or destroys through their Aspect. Canon alignment: Active (-) Speculation: Unnecessary.

Bard

Canon function: One who allows destruction of their Aspect or invites destruction through their Aspect Canon alignment: Passive (+) Speculation: The canon function may be phrased so bizarrely as an attempt to define it's passive nature, rather than being an exact definition of it's function. My belief is that it's function is identical to that of Prince, only passive. Unofficial function: One who destroys their Aspect or destroys through their Aspect.

Thief

Canon function: One who steals their Aspect or steals through their Aspect. Canon alignment: Active (-) Speculation: Unnecessary.

Rogue

Canon function: One who steals their Aspect or steals through their Aspect. Canon alignment: Passive (+) Speculation: Rogue is my primary reason for believing Bard's function to be identical to Prince's. Rogue has the exact same function as Thief, only passive, and the two are paired. I believe it makes the most sense that this apply to Bard and Prince as well.

Witch

Canon function: Undefined. Canon alignment: Active (-) Speculation: Based on canon examples, Witch's function is most likely "One who manipulates their Aspect or manipulates through their Aspect", or something to a similar effect. This is not known for certain, but is the most common interpretation and makes the most sense, in my opinion. Unofficial function: One who manipulates their Aspect or manipulates through their Aspect.

Heir

Canon function: Undefined. Canon alignment: Passive (+) Speculation: There are many possible interpretations of Heir. The most common is "One who inherits their Aspect", which is rather vague and I personally disagree with. It still could be correct, however. My personal interpretation is "One who embodies their Aspect and is influenced by their Aspect". See my post Beginner's guide 2: An elaboration for more information on that. Unofficial function: One who embodies their Aspect and is influenced by their Aspect.

Maid

Canon function: Undefined. Canon alignment: Undefined. Speculation: Maid has two common interpretations. "One who creates their Aspect or creates through their Aspect", and "One who upkeeps and maintains their Aspect". The former being derived from the powers of Jane Crocker, the Maid of Life, and Aradia Megido, the Maid of Time, and the latter being taken largely from a line that Aradia says, stating that "all loops must be tidied up even [Lord English]'s" In my opinion, the former interpretation has a lot more evidence behind it and makes more sense. Either interpretation could be correct, however. Maid's alignment is also unknown. Some people say it's active, some say passive, usually depending on which interpretation they believe. I personally believe Maid to be active, but it could still be passive. Unofficial function: One who creates their Aspect or creates through their Aspect. Unofficial alignment: Active (-)

Sylph

Canon function: Undefined. Canon alignment: Undefined. Speculation: The most common interpretation of Sylph is "One who heals their Aspect or heals through their Aspect". This is based on Aranea Serket, the Sylph of Light, healing others, and even describing her actions as such. There is justification for Sylph's function to be otherwise. However, both of the other two most common interpretations are based on Sylph's pairing, with one being "One who manipulates their Aspect or manipulates through their Aspect", paired with Witch, and the other being "One who creates their Aspect or creates through their Aspect", paired with Maid. I disagree with these interpretations simply due to the fact that they're justified by their pairing. I personally think Class parings should be based on the Class's function, not the other way around. See my post Why Class pairings will never make sense for more information on that. My personal interpretation of Sylph is the first one I went over, but there's justification for other interpretations. Sylph's alignment is also unknown, but most believe it to be passive due either to the nature of it's function, or it being paired with an active Class. Unofficial function: One who heals their Aspect or heals through their Aspect. Unofficial alignment: Passive (+)

Mage

Canon function: Undefined. Canon alignment: Undefined. Speculation: Mage is the Class we know, by far, the least about. I mean it when I say we know nothing about Mage, and we have essentially one Mage player to analyze. Most people define Mage's function as "One who experiences their Aspect and gains deep intuitive knowledge about it", and pair it as the active counterpart to Seer. It's a cool function, but I have to be honest, it's borderline fanfiction. It's a function built from the scraps of hints we get and held together by dozens and dozens of assumptions and guesses. It's the conclusion I came to in my post Beginner's guide 2: An elaboration, but honestly? I don't think I can interpret Mage in a way that offers any merit, including the generally accepted function. This is the only case where I am genuinely going to throw in the towel and say that we just straight up don't know enough to make a call. Therefore, I would advise against Classpecting yourself as such. Of course, I won't try to stop you. If you want to use the generally accepted interpretation, go for it. However, I am personally going to put this one under 'I' for "I don't fucking know". I am, however, going to say that Mage is active, simply because with all of my other alignment interpretations, it wouldn't make sense for it to be passive. Unofficial function: ??? Unofficial alignment: Active (-)

Seer

Canon function: One who learns a lot about their Aspect or learns things through their Aspect. Canon alignment: Passive (+) Speculation: I find it strange that this Class is canonically passive, seeing as nothing about it or it's players really would indicate such. I feel similarly about Heir. The most likely explanation is that the two were given an alignment early in the comic, before Classes were a very fleshed out idea.

Knight

Canon function: Vague. Canon alignment: Undefined. Speculation: In reference to Dave Strider, the Knight of Time, Aradia Megido states that "the knight of time is not necessarily the tactician. he is a powerful warrior class which exploits the flow of time as a weapon" This leads to the most popular and generally accepted function of Knight being "One who exploits their Aspect and uses it as a weapon". This is a reasonable interpretation and is the one I agree with, but it isn't technically canon. Aradia isn't an encyclopedia of knowledge about Classes or Sburb as a whole. She's fairly informed, but it's very possible she's incorrect. Also, similarly to Sylph, this description of Knight's role may not literally reflect it's function. Therefore, I will put this function down as unofficial. However, it's certainly more likely than most other unofficial functions. Knight's alignment is unknown, but most define it as active, due to it's function having no real focus on others. I personally see it as such, but it could go either way. Unofficial function: One who exploits their Aspect and uses it as a weapon. Unofficial alignment: Active (-)

Page

Canon function: Vague. Canon alignment: Undefined. Speculation: Page is often touted as the passive counterpart to Knight and given the same function as it. In my opinion, this is the most unjustified common interpretation and is another result of people basing a Class's function on it's paring and not the other way around. The other most common interpretation is "One who provides others with their Aspect". This is the interpretation I agree with, but it also leaves out a major element of Page. That being, the growth. Page is explicitly said to start out weak and get stronger as it grows, eventually being the strongest Class of all, excluding Master Classes. I personally like to include this as a part of the function. Not entirely necessary, but I think it sums Page up just a little better. Page is most often said to be passive, either due to being paired with Knight, or due to it's function having to do with assisting others. Unofficial function: One who grows to provide others with their Aspect Unofficial alignment: Passive (+)

For more information on and interpretation of Classes, see my posts Beginner's guide 2: An elaboration and Why Class pairings will never make sense. Also, check out some other blogs. I'm not a source of authority, these are just my own opinions.

Part 4: Conclusion

That just about wraps up everything I wanted to correct and redo. I hope you enjoyed reading! -Crowe

[yourfaveisclasspected]

THE GUIDE is a MAID of LIGHT!

Requested by anonymous!

[pomegranarchy]

For context my sibling asked me if a classpect was accurate and gave me the chance to go rambling about one of my interests

[x-crowmancer-x]

Ok, so I've been doing reading into the Classpect system in Homestuck and have a vague understanding of how it works now. Here are my notes that I took while learning and what I use when assigning classpects at suface level before reading deeper at DahniWitchofLight's blog (here: Classpects Masterpost)

-HS Classpects NOTES-

(Homestuck Classpects Guide by ME :o)

-CLASSES-

Bard: brings destruction, summons those who destroy

Prince: destroyer of Aspect, breaks things

Thief: Steals Aspect only for self

Rogue: Steals Aspect for others, Robin Hood basically

Heir: Defenders with Aspect, shield, representors of Aspect

Page: Gives Aspect to, passers, creates use of Aspect

Seer: User of Aspect for strategy, fortune telling, future sight

Maid: Use Aspect on others

Sylph: Healing with Aspect, helper

Knight: Fighter with Aspect, uses Aspect to fight, tend to be closed off brick walls

Witch: Breaks the rules of Aspect, cheats

Mage: Protection from Aspect, receiving knowledge

-ASPECTS-

Space: Volume and physics in game, moving and scaling

Time: reboots, starting over from before the beginning, adding more time to game

Mind: thoughts, consequences of actions, thinking, logic

Heart: emotions, personality, feelings, identity

Hope: direct action, determination, conviction, belief manifestation, faith

Rage: chaos, think of a Barbarian's rage, power

Breath: changes to game overtime, impactful, changemakers

Blood: the power of friendship, teamwork, unity

Life: Healing ability, ability in general (certain costume part can be any color)

Doom: fate, bad things happening, wisdom in tragedy

Light: fortune, luck, knowledge, favorable outcome

Void: Secrets, keeping knowledge from players, hiding

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

This is how I understand the Classpects according to the Wiki, Dahniwitchoflight's Blog, and fandom speculation really. I hope this makes sense to anyone else lol. I'll try to post Classpect art when I can.

[lint-beetle4]

Act 1: Aspects

The way I see it, Aspect is a representation of your life. Basically, finding the main ‘aspect’ –or theme– that you see in your life.

The main method I use to see this is thinking about your life as a story. What is a central theme in that story? How would you describe it in a few words?

With enough digging, keywords for your aspect/main theme are:

Space:

Creation (through various medias or inventing)

Distance (Literal, measurable distance)

Patience

Physical life/Biology

Science

Time:

Music

Clocks

Death

Impatience/Restlessness

Steadfastness

Light:

Knowledge

Luck

Truth

Relevance/Importance

Physical light

Void:

Obscurity/The unknown

Misfortune

Lies

Irrelevance

Darkness

Hope:

Belief

Dreams

Acceptance (to the extent of being gullible or overly complaisant)

Bravery

Optimism

Rage:

Doubt

Nightmares

Refusal (to the extent of being unreliable)

Fear

Anger

Life:

Growth

Celebration

Wealth

Food

Chaos (in terms of ecstasy)

Doom:

Decay

Mourning

Loss

Suffering

Binary/Black and white

Breath:

Freedom

Distance (Emotional)

Communication

Messages

Apathy/Detachment

Blood:

Chains/ Restraint

Emotional bonds

Physical and metaphorical blood/Family and friends

People (Community)

Stability/ Unity/ Teamwork

Heart:

Emotions

Love (Romantic and otherwise)

Sense of self

Splinters/Facets of the self

Soul

Mind:

Logic/Rationality

Masking/Hiding your true self

Planning ahead

Societal expectations/Manners

Judgment

-------

Beginning

Next

Past

[astrumocs]

Everyone talking abt classpects makes me wanna figure mine out again.. haven’t done that in so long.....

[skenpiel]

did the most embarrassig thing imaginable today and spent 40 minutes explaining alternia to my mentor. with a WHITEBOARD and EVERYTHING im going to fucking kill myself

[bolasmasivas]

zuckerboy

what did you mean by this ...

[bittervalentine]

i want everyone who writes classpect guides that insist seers are passive and not any good at combat to check this shit out

[cringefail-clown]

I'm curious, wfat was Roxy's mom like in Turnabout?

How much of her seer abilities did she have access to before the end of the workd?

hello anon youve just stepped on a landmine that is tb beta sesh guardians, but ESPECIALLY roxys mom

i always liked the implication that guardians in homestuck inherit some of their classpect powers, so i leaned onto it in tb as well (with minimal spoilers, g!dave appearing at the right time to assist dirk with entering the medium, g!dirk creating sawtooth, squarewave and g!hal to help out dave in the future, post-scratch guardians kinda falling apart once g!jake is gone (LOSING HOPE U GET ME AHAHAHA *sobs*))

its the same with g!rose. she appears to have a lot of knowledge about the game the kids will play, and uses it accordingly to guide her kid - roxy - and prepare her for it. its not a good thing. her sources are... dubious. she laser focuses so much on the process of making sure everything goes according to her visions, she loses the thread of what she was really supposed to do - be a good guardian to roxy. she assumes all those bad things have to happen to roxy, because thats what her visions show her. roxys suffering is simply ineventable, and it all has to happen to make the session go as its supposed to go.

i think by now its blatantly obvious that mom in turnabout will mirror bro in the og comic. i once answered an ask that inquired if striders will get the rooftop scene, and i said itll be two other characters that get it in tb!au. yep, its gonna be lalondes in this one, fellas

[tavtiers]

Notice to Classpecting Blogs

For years now, I've compiled useful information from other classpecting accounts onto my computer. When classpecting, I often use this wealth of information as a reference guide.

I have since discovered, to my horror, that a large percentage of content I have saved no longer exists on the internet (due to the deletion of blogs, art accounts, etc).

That being said, though it is wildly unorganized, I am sharing my google drive with the rest of the classpecting/Homestuck community! I hope you are able to find use in it, or, at the very least, make sense of it.

ARCHIVE HERE

Much love,

Tavtiers

@creative-classpect @rogue-of-heart-classpecting @askthemageofhope @sylphclasspecting @12colors-classpects @creativegodtiers @yourfaveisclasspected @fraymotifsbeyond @classpect-interpreter @sburbanalysis @tierstuck-aesthetic @urcharactersclasspect

And to the people who started it all <3

@sylph-of-hope-analysis @dahniwitchoflight

Note:

My blog is still active! This post does not mean I'm leaving.

Since these folders were created for personal use, they are not sourced or organized (and I sadly do not have the time to organize them).

Apologies to any classpecting blogs I did not tag! I tried to grab a handful I knew had been posting recently.

Please let me know if any links are broken.

Finally, if there are any additional blogs you would like to see linked to and/or material to be archived, feel free to let me know!

[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!