Theorycrafting: How the ZFRP Universe came to be

Every now and again it comes up, and we opine on the idea, but ultimately, no definitive answer has ever been put forth on how the ZFRP universe works or how it came to be really, save from a meta standpoint.

And here in this blog... well, I won't be answering that. We're a collaborative community and I'd never make such a sweeping declaration about the nature of the universe without full approval from the whole of the class. HOWEVER, there's nothing wrong with putting forth my theory on how it all works and came to be, and its basically the understanding I use when I write my contributions to the wild wild world of ZFRP.

THE BEGINNING:

Zoofights Universe, First Cycle

Naturally, our history begins with the uniting force of our community. In 2005 Major Failure posted Zoofights 1, giving us our first window into the world and one most of us can only look at after the fact.

This Zoofights Universe is our starting point for the journey into how we came to be. ZFU, Cycle 1 was quite similar to our Earth. It's history and logic were mostly the same, but its development was different. People in this universe were more violent and this morality extended to animals, allowing something like Zoofights to exist on a large scale. Technology had also rapidly developed mostly in line with this behavior, with weapons and science far ahead of where the Real World was in 2005. Space travel was particularly advanced, allowing fans from across the universe to drop by and dimensional travelers to operate openly. Magic was also properly uncovered and harnessed, as well as demonic forces and other supernatural aspects of this world that would become a bit more normal than they are in the regular world.

Zoofights 1 and 2 would both take place in this cycle of the universe, and not many RP characters are likely to trace their lineage back to this one. Mainly because this cycle would soon be erased from history thanks to time travel. Following Zoofights 2, Major Failure and the gang wanted to get away from the clusterfuck that was that ending (and ending I still know too little about to give a more in-depth explanation). Looking for a fresh start for their third iteration (and likely trying to escape the specter of Swanmass and Necrogoat), Zoofights packed up and headed for the past, taking a throng of loyal fans but most importantly: their knowledge and tech.

Zoofights Universe, Second Cycle

Zoofights 3 and that time period is the start of the second cycle of this universe. The Zoofights Corporation was able to push ahead the already accelerated technological development of their future by bringing it back to the 1800s. Zoofights 3 took place in 1870, but it is likely that ZF Corp put its roots down first and drummed up interest and the tech required to put on the show.

Although Zoofights did try to maintain an aestethic by using steam-powered technology, they even pushed that field forward further than it ever got in the Real World, and they knew exactly how to dig up the mystical and supernatural as well. This quick advancement of technology lead to Zoofights 4, where things were in space and with all kinds of wacky technology, aliens, and time travel. Interestingly, despite literally going from 2006 to 1870, the Zoofights Corporation had to coerce Tesla and H.G. Wells to invent Time Travel: "Zoofights had also been lucky enough to force Nikola Tesla and H.G. Wells to invent time travel for it, widening the company's portfolio of monsters to include savage titans from the furthest reaches of the time-space continuum."

Likely, after the trip back to the 1800s, the Zoofights Corporation either couldn't use the means again (perhaps a Looper-like time travel rule, or something to do with changing history) or just lost the tech because they were that sloppy. Tesla and Wells's new method was more open and led to an unstable universe where even more dimensional travelers and unusual characters plopped on in, and soon divine forces were being tapped by centipedes and things generally went to shit.

Zoofights 5, thankfully, was not one of the things that went to shit. Probably the best Zoofights in my opinion! It was, however, on a post-apocalyptic world, one scoured by the price of playing fast and loose with so many powerful forces, technologies, and generally being drunk out of their mind as they did it. Technology was still pretty advanced, but the common person was often worse off, with Zoofights a bastion of technology and a place for the 1% to show-off how they still had resources. Surprisingly, it was a lucky cargo cult that would end up setting into the motion the events that would lead to the pivotal cycle of the Zoofights Universe.

Snake Preview was created by that Cargo Cult, originally just able to see the future, its tech was developed more and more, and over the course of Zoofights 5, soon, it would gain control of everything. This already unstable world of magic and advanced technology was about to turn upside down.

Zoofights Universe, Snake Fights Cycle

It would probably be more accurate to call this the third cycle, but the way Snake Preview would begin to change it as it began to change makes it impossible to determine how many cycles actually occurred here. When it lost its fight and was rebuilt as Snake Pilgrim, it became temporally unstable. When it was upgraded to Gamma Constrictor though, it began to harness the power to change time while being exempt to those very changes. The snake was angry, filled with as much hate as an aircraft carrier, and ready to fuck up time. Snake Fights was the most obvious and lasting of the changes and the one we had the longest window to, as it was essentially a Zoofights Universe save snakes ruled and many individuals that were once humanoid were now more snake-like instead.

However, the tournament continued. Characters like Widow Maker can trace their story back here (or, more likely, to the pre-Snake Fights version of the universe and just got dumped over here). As the final approached though, Croctopus took the title, but was not content to just win Snake Fights. He wanted to build a bote, and a bote made out of the lord of time and reshaper of the universe was his goal. The end of Zoofights 6 was an epic battle between Gamma Constrictor and Croctopus, where at one point, Croctopus drove a nail into Gamma Constrictor's head and unleashed his time powers wildly.

This is the pivotal moment. This is where the Zoofights Universe would begin to become the ZFRP Universe proper. Many universes, dimensions, and timelines were all upset and swirling by the break of Gamma Constrictor's mind, a whirling mass of incoherent space and time, but Croctopus persisted, not only killing the snake, but using its powers to achieve a perfect boat built out of the remains of the damaged Zoofights Universe Second Cycle and a rather large dead snake. What Croctopus didn't need?

It became the ZFRP Universe.

Zoofights Universe, Third Cycle

Not quite at the point we'd call it ZFRP Universe, Zoofights still had about 2 years in charge of things. This is the point we need to look at to understand our history though, as 2011, the year of Zoofights 6, was the true beginning of what we call ZFRP, with everything up to this just history.

Now, while most of the Zoofight Universe was, in fact, shaped into a boat by a crocodile with octopus arms, a major chunk was not, notably, not the Zoofights parts. Many fans, ZF Corp members, and some of their tech and such were all dropped into a different universe, the universe I call the ZFRP Native universe.

ZFRP Native was a universe that, up until 2011, was basically just like Real Life Earth. Its tech advanced just like it does in real life, most locations and people were the same up until 2011, and what strangeness it did have was not well known. For example, it is likely this version of Earth did have wizards and dragons in the medieval era, and under my assumption the Deck put an end to that, but most people thought that history a fiction and myth. Characters native to this universe are likely to be ones who had no exceptional gifts or powers (Fumes) or ones like Octavious, who was in a world where a Manticore was not something you ever expected to see.

When Croctopus was reshaping universes with Gamma's wild powers, ZFRP Universe got pieces from the Zoofights Universe, the Snake Fights Universe, and many others driven into it haphazardly. This would lead to a lot of unusual situations, but mostly it meant that a lot of things carried over and yet didn't make much sense at first. People in charge of maintaining time like Jumpropeman and Dialga were scrambling to make sense of it, but this lead to a strange period of either 2 years or 20, depending on which side of the merger you came from. For some, Zoofights 6 seemed to take place in one year, 2011, while others experienced that period as the 1980s. That's because in ZFRP Native it WAS 2011, but in Zoofights Universe it was meant to be pushing into the 1980s, leading to an incongruous time that people experienced differently, most of those who had been around Zoofights getting the entirety of the 1980s all in one year.

This would happen again in 2012 with the 1990s, but soon time was beginning to smooth out. Universal forces were balancing, but many things were held over from the period were a huge pot of Universes had been haphazardly mixed and nailed together. For a while, for example, people from Snake Fights called snakes "Stretch Lizards", but that was soon eliminated from their vocabulary for the most part. Many had memories of the Zoofights Universe going back to the second or even first cycle, and while history says many of the Zoofights Tournaments happened, many people don't know about them and their effects aren't quite present.

ZFRP began in 2011, but it wasn't quite our universe yet. This period of unstable time had to settle, and notably, 2012 had a lot of moments where dead Zoofights were back somehow (and not always by whipping up another batch), so time was still having trouble agreeing with itself on what was meant to exist. The end of Zoofights though meant the universe had time to stabilize, and then, ZFRP Universe was finally and fully created.

THE ZFRP UNIVERSE

The ZFRP Universe is a lot like the Real World, a remnant of it being the base for Croctopus to hammer in parts of other universes. The logic of the universe is the same as the real world, and characters who disobey that often do so through the nature of their creation, development, or origin. It is possible some planets existed in the native universe before it was merged, but definitely not Porphyrion due to its strange Star Festival tradition incongruous with what Earth would have been. Mostly, planets with life on them that couldn't space travel and were too far from Earth probably existed before the merger.

Time is relatively stable here, as are the dimensions. To enter it from another dimension requires and impetus or effort from your side, and while the timeline is not clean by any means, its coherent enough and the past and present are rarely in need of adjustment. Pieces from other times and universes exist in the present, throwing it off its initial course, and the Kobbers are a nexus for it most likely due to containing many of those carried over from the universes Croctopus smashed into this one. Things like magic and advanced tech are now more common but not by any means common or broadly adopted. The history of other universes are also here now, but while Earth might have islands it didn't before (Kuwahawi might be one of them) it does have the same general set-up as Real Life. Magic and monsters are still esoteric, and many in the world even dismiss the Kobber's existence since it still seems incongruous with what their native universe developed them to think.

Is this a clean explanation? By no means. But it helps explain things why people find Kobbers weird when some of them are supposedly long-living immortals, why the world isn't as Zoofighty was it once was, and how certain things exist. Being built off the back of a world like ours allows many gaps to be filled in, and no one will be saying things like "Australia doesn't exist" that way. I can't think of many ways to explain the many discrepancies, and I know some people like to think 2011 was just a 1980s themed year (which then contradicts explicit Zoofights/ZFRP statements and certain backstories). You can probably poke holes in my theories too, hence the period of universal instability from 2011/2012 to try and fix the issues that had no other hope.

But now, ever since 2013, we live in a universe that SHOULD make sense. Our history is strange, but the universe has precise rules, just it also had a bunch of strange people, places, and things brought over that can exploit them or know how to work inside them. This should ensure that we are in a world that makes sense to us as readers, is easy to write in, but prevents anything that could upset or undo the works of others.

There are certainly points where it can be edited, and while I mentioned Fumes and Octavious as possibly from ZFRP Native, its probably not a good exercise to determine who is and isn't (except explicit cases like Widow Maker who are from the Zoofights Universe), especially since it might lead to someone saying "but of course ZFRP Native Earth always had fire giants!" What's important is those fire giants are in the current ZFRP Universe, and unless there is some consensus on this idea as a whole, this is more a way to understand our world, and not a point to reference directly in canon as an explanation.

Feel free to tell me what you think! Maybe we can work something out that we can integrate in some way! And sorry for spending so long on figuring out the original Zoofights when mostly the 2011 and onwards is the important part!