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existentialterror · 3 months ago

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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!

#zampaniosim #creepy shit #light's arg notes #arg #unfiction #light writes #homestuck #house of leaves #light listens to the magnus archives #light draws #zampanio #unreality #I mean. the ARG is real #really an ARG #alternate reality games

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pitviperofdoom · 26 days ago

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Hello pit! I've been thinking about getting into tma lately, however I'm unsure how to go about it? I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to horror, and I don't have a lot of time on my hands (cuz med school). I also know that someone has uploaded all the seasons without the statements and just has the parts related to the main story, which would be faster and would cut out a lot of the horror stuff, but I also feel that listening to that would be,,, idk disingenuous? Disrespectful? To all the work rusty quill put in for the full thing and how they wanted to present it

I mean it's less that it would be disingenuous or disrespectful and more that if you don't listen to the statements you might not know what's going on.

Disclaimer, I haven't listened to the cut you mentioned so I don't know exactly how much they leave out, but-

The reason why TMA works so well within its medium and format is that vital story and worldbuilding elements are introduced through the statements long before they appear in the diagetic action. The "main story" will bring in characters that have long been established and built up through appearing and being mentioned in the statements, and because of that their presence and importance don't need to be explained in the dialogue and action, so they aren't. And a lot of times the dialogue and action are in direct response to what was just narrated in the statement; this is especially true at the end of Season 2, when the information revealed in several statements directly prompts Jon's actions in the finale. Several episodes throughout the series are major characters giving live statements to explain their backstories and motivations and/or further the plot; Martin's statement in Colony is the main story. And that's not even getting into Season 5, when the line between statement and main story gets blurred even more.

As a fellow horror wimp I definitely sympathize. Lost Johns Cave, A Guest for Mister Spider, and Tucked in were some of the worst ones for me, and A Sturdy Lock was one of the only ones I had to skip ahead. Personally horror podcasts are a lot easier on me than horror movies, so the horror was manageable enough that it was worth gritting my teeth once in a while for the sake of a really good story. Plus, TMA explores a lot of different types and flavors of horror, so some episodes may not even hit your particular pressure points. I don't know your limits so really only you can decide that.

And as for time, I've never been to medical school (good on you!) so I can't really give solid advice, but the beauty of podcasts is that you don't really need to set aside time for it, you can listen to it in the car or on the train or while wandering around the grocery store. Again, you know your schedule better than me.

At the end of the day it's up to you. The main story bits of TMA are fun and exciting, and definitely not all of the statements are plot-vital. I guess, don't worry about being disingenuous or disrespectful--it doesn't make a lick of difference to Jonny Sims and Alex J. Newall how you choose to interact with their story. You get to have the experience you want with this; just know that there's no real clear-cut separation between statements and "main story"; TMA is a conversation between the two.

#the magnus archives #tma

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equinoxts2 · 3 months ago

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Back on Track: Worldbuilding Ramble

After a few setbacks, I can tell you that Kulo Sena is back on! I'm still making sims and building, but I wanted to set out my plans for the new version, which I'm extremely hyped about...

- I want to make it clear that the Senaverse is not Earth and does not work the same way. I'm working on adapting the birth mechanics so that, instead of progressing through three trimesters of standard pregnancy, the parent stays in the first trimester for two rotations while bonding with their egg and performing rituals to awaken it. After that, I'll speed up the pregnancy when the egg is ready to "hatch."

- Kulo Sena was never intended to be a genderswap of earthly history. It is a matriarchy, but that doesn't mean men are treated like dirt. The concept of status is there, but not birthright as such. I'm thinking there is a servant class, but they're a mix of volunteers and convicts (and the occasional raid prisoner), they can't be kept in this role longer than a thirband (13 rotations, or a year) and they must be treated with kindness and dignity. It's almost a rite of passage; from now on, in order to become a leader of their own village, a sim has to have completed at least three bands (one season) of service in another.

- The three hoods (Kulo Sena and the two newer settlements of Credence and Lucidity Springs) will occasionally raid each other - not out of aggression, but more in the way that students would steal the mascot of a rival university as a prank. It is a generally accepted part of life in the Lake Lulla region, and there is an agreed-upon code of conduct for these raiding parties; breaking it lands you in a whole pile of trouble from all three hoods.

- I would also like to point out that, while things will happen that might seem a bit off to a modern blog reader (for example, spiritbinding sons of the zan-Avira clan so they can't have kids and potentially fulfil a prophecy of ruin), from my sims' perspectives, all of it is based in a sense of greater love. Ritualising raids, for example, prevents outright war, and while the gods regularly walk the lands, anyone who tries to establish a "One True This" way of doing things is in violation of the First Pact and will also get in a whole pile of trouble.

Anyway... ramble over, for now; back to CAS! Watch this space if you're still interested in reading my worldbuilder rambling :)

#rambly post #kulo sena #sims 2 worldbuilding #kulo sena lorepost #worldbuilder rambling

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teddypoi-qd · 1 year ago

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TMP/Magnus Kickstarter Update

Hi all! We just got a huuuuge Kickstarter update, and I thought I'd share the TL;DR that we (the mods of Statement Remains) put together to give people a hand navigating it!

TMP News - The digital premiere will be available on October 22nd for backers at the Archival Assistant level and above, and for Knight & Noble Patreons. - It will include a preview of The Magnus Protocol pilot episode and some exclusive bonus content. - The audio of the preview episode, without the extra content, will be released to KS backers at the Researchers level and above on 31st October.

- There will be a post-premiere livestream on Twitch with cast and crew, sometime after the 31st

- All the pre-launch previews will be exclusive to backers and patrons, but the official debut (in January 2024) will have new content not seen in the previews (including the full orchestral debut)

- The double length pilot episode releases Jan 2024, with a weekly release schedule following (and a 2 week break every 10 episodes)

- They are currently finalising script drafts for season 1, writing for seasons 2 and 3, doing primary recordings for episodes, and editing the Pilot episode

Casting Announcements - Meet Alice Dyer, played by Seer Pink (they/them). You may know Seer from streaming/tiktok -- this is their RQ debut! - Meet Samama Kahlid, played by Shahan Hamza (he/him). Shahan has previously played Siva in Trice Forgotten!

Other Castings - Anusia Battersby (she/her) as Gwendolyn Bouchard - Lowri Ann Davies (she/her) as Celia Ripley - Ryan Hopevere-Anderson (he/him) as Colin Becher - Kazeem Tosin Amore (he/him) as Teddy Vaughn - Sarah Lambie (she/her) as Lena Kelley - Ellie Dickens (she/her) as Lady Mowbray - Tim Fearon (he/him) as [ERROR] - Alexander J Newall (he/him) as [ERROR] - Jonathan Sims (he/him) as [ERROR]

There are "multiple returning friends and enemies from The Magnus Archives", but revealing them now would be a spoiler!

Making-Of Documentary - The documentary is well underway! - It will feature candids from meetings, interviews, and video diaries from Jonny and Alex! - The full version will air after the series is concluded, but a teaser segment will be released alongside the premiere!

ARG Updates - Official start date: **15 September**

- Far larger scale than the mini-ARG, featuring both digital and in-person elements - Will feature lots of worldbuilding and exclusive story that will provide an even deeper insight into the world of TMP

- Bookmark https://themagnusprotocolarg.com! This will be the main ARG hub! - Questions about the ARG can go to [email protected]. They will not provide hints/help solve the puzzles.

- Important note from the ARG site: Participants of this ARG must be over 18 for legal reasons.

Mic Updates - The Podcast Pro mics are nearly ready to start shipping. They are finalising packaging and etching the finished microphones!

---

And a quick note from me on behalf of the SR server! We're currently looking for mods to bolster our team, so that we can feasibly host the ARG solving efforts! If you're interested, you can join the Discord here: https://discord.gg/h6bkdqc5yd

#tma #tmagp #the magnus archives #the magnus protocol #magpod #senseless ramblings

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curtins · 10 days ago

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hey mamas 🙇‍♀️ for the “get to know your fic writer” — 3 , 4 , 6 , 11 (cause i need YOU to put me on YOUR fics 🤭) , 13 , 16 (cause im nosy….) , 21 , 23 & 24 (help a hg out), 25 (so i can glaze you), 32 , 39 , 59 , 60 , 64 , 65 (!!!)

okay i’ll get out of here now…

HEYY 🤩 ...i got this notif earlier and saw the no. of questions and decided to eat dinner first bc i needed to be SEATED and with my laptop out ❤️ you came to the right place bc im president and mayor of yap city

— 3. describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

i have like a little template in my drafts with my basic layout (like title, prologue, warnings, pairing etc and so on) and i just keep it to copy and paste for a new fic. and underneath the header and info section, i just outline messy dot points. and each dot point gets turned into a few paragraphs or a scene. and i always have some typa thesaurus open 😭

— 4. where do you find inspiration for ideas

oouh!! mostly song titles i think, i always use them as a jumping point. or actually i really love pinterest, and web-weaving type of posts when it comes to themes i wanna explore (mostly in sfw fics, as opposed to like short smut) 😁

— 6. do you have your work beta'd / how is this important to your process?

nope 😭 my drafts are always super messy and all over the place and im always a little self conscious esp since i jump between ideas and dialogue. BUT i am always yapping in peoples dms and talking abt ideas anyway or getting dialogue checked for clarity...

— 11. link your three favourite fics rn

omg! rent-a-dilf by @screampied i found it sooo charming and effortlessly engaging and also super fun even tho i've never played the sims.

i forgot to like this and add it to my queue so i took an hour to find this particular one, but what you know by @starmapz sukuna and reader are so well characterised and incredibly written! i also loved little yuuji and choso's cameos :(

and they were roommates by @sugoroo i loved it so bad, so EXCELLENT and the tension and smut had me on the edge of my seat. choso's made me laugh 😭

— 13. whats a common writing tip you always follow?

honestly it feels like a cop-out answer but i always try to remember 'unlearn shame' in my head. like when im writing, like for no reason, i get a bit embarrassed or self aware or im overthinking a sentence?? i just have to remember that it is just never that deep....😭

however, a better answer i think would be that for 99% of my fics (so excluding very short fluff, or straight up jackhammering smut) i always always do worldbuilding first. my favourite authors are j.r.r tolkien and george rr martin so middle earth/westerosi levels of high fantasy are massive inspirations when it comes to the grand scheme of creating a world for my characters to interact in.

also i rlly love mythology, folktales and medieval history so they always play a role in how i write or treat common themes. i think its super interesting and poignant at how some stories survive thousands of years and resonate across different cultures, and they remain classics for a reason <333 if that makes sense

like okay say! even in fics that aren't a part of some royal/fantasy/myth au right, like idk say im writing about gojo dying (rip king 😰) its obviously set within the jjk world in 2018, but i would try to see how the following works express the same theme of grief, battle, leaving a loved one behind:

the death of sigurd in the volsunga saga in norse myths

patroclus and achilles in the illiad

a medieval french epic called the song of roland, where roland's death is felt so strongly by his fiancee that she dies

tristan and isolde (tristan being mortally wounded n knowing that he will leave isolde behind, and she succumbs to grief)

the japanese folklore tale of the warrior tomoe gozen, and how she mourns her lord and lover

— 16. how many fic ideas are u nurturing? share one of them!

29! at the moment 😭 and watch me genuinely write like...2... but one of them that i havent even drafted much out yet, towards the end of the list is like geto x reader long fic (prob will have smut bc 😇) but its gonna be an alternative universe where reader is considered a saint/icon/mouthpiece of the gods and he's been marked for death (a warrior? or smth idk)

— 21. would you ever collaborate with another writer for a story?

i've never done it before but ofc! is this the start of user curtins and user creamflix collab.....

— 23. best writing advice for other writers?

sometimes u have to make sure you're sitting on your own and reading that dialogue out loud, or mouthing it. i'm writing shit and then speaking it afterwards. and i cant even stand to hear it bc no way would anyone ever say that.

— 24. worst writing advice anyone ever gave you?

you can't start a sentence with 'and' like wtf okay....who said that. english is made up, all words are made up no one gaf if its not proper english, im allowed to do desi repatriations like this ig

— 25. what fic do you wish you got more of a response one?

hmm honestly, i did have an answer for this at first like 'oh yeah this one xyz i wish it got more notes' but that being said i feel like there's none that i feel truly flopped on par with how im improving writing and getting more comfortable. but! if i had to choose: goo goo muck #1 with the minotaur au because i rlly put some thought into how i could incorporate sukuna, yuji, and yuji's execution with the myth of the beast trapped in the maze.

and ditto! i think its my longest fic so far 😭 and it took me so long to plan out a timeline from childhood to gojo's death

— 32. name three of your favourite fanfic writers?

it would be poor form and incredibly remiss of me to not say user @creamflix 🤭 i really love how ur dialogue flows, and the way you describe scenes make me feel like i'm really there (a+ for me)

also @tonycries simply because every time i try my hand at smut, it takes me 4 days to think of something new, and i'm always wondering on how to reword shit so i'm not writing the same thing over and over, but they keep it soooo fresh and new with every fic and soooo well written!!

@kurooh i always find their smut fics sooo creative and fun, and their recent double fantasy fic was SAUUUUUR good!

— 39. share a snippet from a wip!

nay! mind you, this isn't even proofread so its still incredibly basic and thesaurus.com has not come out....but i tried a mildly different inspo approach and header. its very backstory and angst based for sukuna regarding his childhood, but sweet at the end i promise :(( IM CRYING. im seeing mistakes in this already, but i needed to give uraume my they/them baddie a cameo later in it

— 59. does anyone in your personal life know that you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

im cryinggggg. def not, unfortunately i can't let this get in the way of the public brand #coolgirl but it would go something like this

— 60. have you had a writer that you admire comment on your fic?

🫡 @madamechrissy who's writing my fave bridgerton fic, with duke!gojo commented on my vacation fic and i really did a giggle and kick in the air 😭

— 64. something you love to see in smut?

hmmmm my favourite thing is like when it isn't just pure smut if that makes sense, like setting, atmosphere, or cute banter is incorporated or clever wordplay. like you can feel the vibe of like where its set idk 😭

— 65. tell us what you're most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project?

i really want to improve and become more confident in different genres, like better smut that flows more without me having to stop and stare at a wall for ten minutes each time, or super cute fluff <333333

#answered #this is soooo long but i love that u asked these...made me actually think properly #im gonna need to make mutual tags for everyone omggg

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vacantgodling · 5 months ago

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RE. ABOUT

WHO: REN (renjamin, rimz, vacant, lotus) writing as R.A.A

WHAT: he/him. black. queer. transmasc. 27. audhd rizz. libra (10/02)

WHERE: main/writeblr (here), rbs blog -> @babylonsfalling, discord -> @/vacantgodling (feel free to add me if we've talked), bluesky & ao3

LIKES: overwatch (derogatory. if i'm not on here i'm playing lol), digital art, history and mythology, names and etymology, anime (but i am particular about what i watch), kpop, vocaloid, jrock & visual kei, gothic lit, lotr, true crime and mysteries, wikidives about nonsense, bad movies, ... and probably more but i think that's enough of a list to get the gist

RE. WIPS

i have many wips and hundreds of characters. i talk about them all whenever inspo strikes. find more about them on my linked wip masterlist. however, the main wips i'm usually losing my mind about are:

PARAMOUR -> powerpoint intro || s: paramour

THE CHRONCILES OF LATHSBURY -> main crash course || origins of terrae || the first age pt. 1 || main plot ppt intro || s: tcol || tcol character tournament pt 2 || character intros

BETWIXT THUMB & FOREFINGER -> powerpoint intro || s: btaf

HE WHO SMITES THE SUN -> intro (coming eventually) || conlang intro (coming eventually) || s: ph

i am open for ask games of any sort or just general inquiries about my wips, and just talking in general.

to see a list of all my wips: CLICK ME!

RE. NAVIGATION

talking -> musings and personal thoughts

about renjamin -> insight to me / who i am

ren analysis -> when i get meta about my wips

ren mix -> a treasure trove of my music taste

ren polls -> any polls i make

ren reads -> for my ramblings and analysis as i try to get back into books

friends tag -> talking with friends or boosting my friends work

others work -> boosting other writeblrs work

hall of fame -> praise / things that make me happy that i want to keep

ren writing -> all of my writing in one place

ren poems -> all of my poems in one place

short stories tag -> micro or flash fiction bits and bobs

ren art -> all my art

q eh you eh -> queue

sex mention -> tag for any sexual content.

worldbuilding -> all of my worldbuilding notes across all my wips

ren hot cakes -> specifically for my overly opinionated opinions

to read -> others works that i need to get around to reading

rens ocs but sims -> for when i make my ocs in the sims lol

ren plays -> me talking about video games but it’s usually overwatch

ren is jopping on main -> for the rare occasions where i talk about kpop

character stats -> when i decide to compare and contrast my ocs to see trends

ren rabbit hole -> i like history and mythology and the ancient world and i Will ramble about it

ren fights linguistics -> i'm starting to try and conlang!! it will be hard!!

writing in review -> for my end of the year lookback at wtf i was doing writing wise that year :) usually done in november bc december is a bad month for me usually

#about renjamin #writeblr intro

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unexpectedly-haunted · 11 months ago

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fic rec list!

assorted hermitcraft + life series fic recommendations!

attempt thirty-three by bee_4: Joe Hills centric time loop fic. Also features Cleo, Scar, and Cub, and I love everyone's characterisation! Haunting and open ended, but still points of hope. Words: 13,617 Chapters: 1/1

To Sit in Hell with You by enemyofrome: Last Life treebark fic from Ren's POV. Focus on these two in the Shadow Alliance because man, those guys were really something else. Obsessed with the characterisation, have reread a reasonable amount. Words: 2,664 Chapters: 1/1

monsters nearby series by enemyofrome: Treebark series where the games are over but the Watchers aren't leaving Martyn alone- really fun exploration of supernatural impersonations and how that might impact your relationship with the real person. I'm not normal about these ones. Second work has a hopeful ending. Words: 13,856 Works: 2

Lifeline AU by SlashMagpie: Scifi/Fantasy AU about body-snatching aliens, also including the emptiness of space, magical worldbuilding, unreality and time travel. Main POV characters are Tango, Impulse + Pearl, but also includes much of the Hermitcraft ensemble + Skizz. Read the entire AU in one night and haven't been the same since, cannot recommend highly enough. Words: 299,349 Works: 6

Blood & Snow by SlashMagpie: Tango gets eaten by the dungeon, or close enough. Unsettling, visceral, and features possession! Has Scar, Bdubs, Cub, Etho, and Hypno POV. Words: 12,425 Chapters: 7/7

the sanctity of the mundane by crabbunch: Double Life SMP series with a fic exploring the relationships between each soul bounded pair. Found each work really fun and compelling, great variety in tone. Shoutout especially to this Cleo + Martyn! Words: 24,712 Works: 7

sculk blossom by crabbunch: Cub centric fic that works as both a character study and a look at his sculk corruption on Empires. Delighted by the horror and characterisation here! Words: 4,065 Chapters: 5/5

Deus Ex Machine by crabbunch: Bdubs POV, an existential/magical horror piece about the power of belief, storytelling, and godhood. Also some great Clethubs! Words: 13,449 Chapters: 8/16

Tangotek Evil Incorporated: Supervillain Tango and superhero Jimmy as arch nemeses. Comedy with a happy ending, and SO much fun to read. Words: 22,445 Chapters: 2/2

there are many downsides to being a marine biologist by donnerstag: Doc's marine biology gets complicated when the latest specimen turns out more human than expected: the siren he names Martyn. Really engaging and well-characterised fic, impossible to read and not end up invested in docmartyn. Trust me. Words: 74,006 Chapters: 27/27

a falling axe, a sharpened knife by sesquidpedalian: Double Life Cleo + Martyn relationship study, where soulmates also have a telepathic bond. Just really enjoyed this one! Words: 2,081 Chapters: 1/1

ectype by sesquidpedalian: Third Life AU where Martyn is there when Grian visits for enchantments. Really neat character study of two guys who aren't anything alike at all, definitely not. Words: 1,603 Chapters: 1/1

never our blood on this sand again by cosmicretribution: Scarian and treebark timeloop AU. Includes angst, the Timeloop Horrors, developing relationships, and great prose + characterisation! Words: 8,905 Works: 2

A Romance Route for the Doomed Villain?! by skelew: Treebark isekai AU where Martyn gets hit by a 2007 nissan micra and transported to a dating sim featuring the villainous Red King. Crack treated seriously, and a great parody fic that also happens to be genuinely compelling. Words: 5,012 Chapters: 1/1

feel free to add on recs in reblogs/comments! :D

#ghost post #long post #fic recommendation #fic recs #writing #trafficshipping #q

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