HOLY SHIT GUYS! So I was complaining to TG about how no one believes that Zampanio predates my branch of it right? And he just CASUALLY mentions having read what he believes to be the FAQ that inspired my dive into the fandom (and eventually zampanio sim) as well! And he remembered different details of it, but SPECIFICALLY talked about he was pretty sure HE was being described in it? As some kind of anime character??? And that just SNAPPED two of my brain cells together. Because this whole time I was apparently focused so hard on ZAMPANIO i forgot there was this entire weird connection the author of the branch I found first was making between it and sburbsim??? and once that connection was established I KNEW for a damn fact that i printed out a weird glitchfaq sburbsim cross over fic at some point, cuz i was trying to PROVE it was sburbsim? (it really wasn't obvious cuz of the whole 'v_id' conceit thing it had going on) and that lead me further in cuz parts of it were like "yeah okay this all follows" and then out of LEFT FIELD they claimed the not!RS spoke fluent italian and that was ??? where the hell did they get THAT from? god its like the height of the original pandemic lockdowns were a million years ago the nostalgia i was a completely different person when i first read this fic SO YEAH, suffice to say i managed to find it wedged behind some really old computers back from when i was trying to make farrago a CAREER and not a hobby. now, this is important. YES past me wrote all over it. It's not a puzzle. Please. For the love of all you consider worthy of obsession, BELIEVE me on this. my hand writing is shit, esp if im not expecting anyone else to read it. its not a cipher or a secret, figuring out my chickenscratch leads nowhere. just. ignore my notes, okay? I'm just so fucking psyched i got any version at all of the faq stored for history. PLUS past me had notes i'd completely forgotten on trying to find the author on ao3? i vaguely recall i made zampaniosim in the first place to try to get info on the author, so maybe uploading this scanned pdf to ao3 (where they clearly already are in SOME capacity) will get their attention? Not just a zampanio fandom revival but their own faq?) but yeah, THIS is the kinda old fandom shit i'm hoping y'all will find (oh also, the file labeled 'thisissofunny' was my first attempt at scanning it. the actual text of the fic, besides some weird fuckery was just GONE. i nearly shat myself thinking the zampanio curse was real. but it turned out i just needed to up the contrast on my scanner. god i love the vibes tho) oh right, ONE last also, 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 UPDATE: holy shit the Guide of Hunters went and transcribed the whole thing, no more eye strain gonna ask them to try putting it on ao3, see if we can't find the Author