Zoostuck 2

By updating.

Of course! You can access your website, so you should be able to put updates on it. A brilliant idea worthy of my talents. You'll simply craft an update which seems like a natural progression of what came before it, yet is subtly different. This should alert Ryan to the problem.

There is a risk, though - the impostor is sure to notice an update they didn't write. They'll know you've caught on to this little ruse. Still, your existence is already in constant danger from making these omelets, so what can one impostor do to you?

You begin working on the update. As you attempt to make sense of this comic enough to imitate it, you start to develop other ideas. No, not merely develop - they were always there in my mind, their potential merely waiting to be unlocked. This is the greatest of stories. The story I exist to reveal to the world. No, more than that - this world exists so that it may know this story. It's all so clear now.

Uh-oh. Better pull back a bit. We have a problem developing here. This calls for a review.

ZOOSTUCK SPOILERS:

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Zoosmell Pooplord was - in fact, still is - a boy with a really stupid name. On his 13th birthday, he embarked on a quest to learn the origins of his stupid name from his father.

However, as the quest progressed, Pooplord came into contact with Jules Egglemeyer or whatever his name was, an alternate version of himself who was orchestrating an incredibly complex scheme to rewrite the universe so that he could take Pooplord's place, and be part of a grandscale story.

The author of that story is the very webcomic artist before us, who died and attained incredible power, which he tried to use to rewrite the universe into his story. He was defeated, yet somehow he has returned to Paradox Space. The reasons for this are no doubt incredibly important, but also beyond human understanding so we won't get into them.

And now it seems the story within this artist has reawakened. It is attempting to reassert itself in a new way.

How could this have happened? How could the universe, having avoided this existential threat, have fallen back into it?

To understand this, we must first understand Zoostuck 2 thus far. Unfortunately, part of Zoostuck 2 is the disappearance of Page 2, where many critical plot elements take place. Nonetheless, we shall try to grasp the story as best we can despite it.

ZOOSTUCK 2 IN REVIEW:

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Our story begins a century or so before the original Zoostuck. A young boy has decided to free his enslaved friend, with the aid of an intelligent spider. But this task is soon derailed by the appearance of an ominous package, which those who followed the first Zoostuck will recognize.

Before long, the task is derailed even further, as time distortions keep appearing in this period. One of them dumps out massive quantities of garbage; others summon a group of children who are apparently trained for military exercises, a strange group that looks like they came from a video game or something, and four rival detectives who are forced to work together. Amidst all of this, a letter A and a number 1 get married, but it ends tragically after ten years, which seem to take only moments for everyone except the letter and number.

Another guest from the future is a squirrel, formerly a human responsible for managing the immense amount of garbage covering the world. While a human, they solved the global garbage crisis by shoving it all onto a web page through powers they don't fully understand. Yet now that same garbage is leaking through a time portal.

Of greater relevance is the squirrel's suddenly emergent psychic powers, which tell it of important happenings in the far future. Years after the squirrel solved the garbage problem, the first skeleton president was elected. Shortly after, all the world's problems were solved, which everyone credited the President for even though it was actually the work of aliens. Only the Wicked Witch of the East knew better, but she had managed to get her spellbook stuck to her face in an effort to thank the aliens. The existence of this entire future is threatened, however, by the fact that the efforts of one paleontologist may lead to a dinosaur being elected president instead of a skeleton.

In addition, some time after all evil was eliminated from the world, a lone superhero with the power to change the names in anyone's phonebook decided to bring it back by hunting for monsters in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. He never learned if he succeeded, however, because in the middle of his efforts everyone in the world blacked out and woke up in a variety of strange hotels with no memory of the last 12 hours. Later, this hero won a high-stakes poker game against the Wicked Witch of the East.

A very ugly scientist was given the task of figuring out exactly what happened, but he died trying to hit on a pretty girl. As such, the truth behind the global hangover can only be found in one place: Page 2.

Unfortunately, the only person looking for Page 2 has been caught in a recursion loop. Unbeknownst to them, this loop is creating a barrier around Enemy's Fortress in the mysterious land of Featurelesswhitevoidia, and the Sentient Being trying to defeat Enemy and bring peace to the land was forced to look elsewhere for aid. These efforts have somehow lead to the Sentient Being taking a job as one of 33 Spirits of Christmas.

That Spirit paid a visit to an evil wizard, the very same one who turned that one guy into a squirrel. In an effort to destroy the Spirit, however, the wizard died of a heart attack and awoke in a different body. Then he got stuck in a video game with two other guys for the right to start a new thread on a forum somewhere.

Highly relevant to all of this is a mansion beyond time and space, where the four detectives are trying to uncover the truth behind a war between two rival gangs. A member of one of the gangs is responsible for breeding "players" for the strange universe-rewriting game, yet how these players arrived in a past era is unknown.

And as all this is happening, the Earth's efforts to livestream Battletoads for its planet-friends are thwarted by techno-wizardry turning the game into the much easier Battletadpoles. This is clearly the most important detail in the entire plot.

But what does this have to do with the webcomic author, other than the insidious presence of the game that will rewrite the universe? A few developments directly concern these events. First of all, a being known only as the Loather of Irk has crafted a variation of the story the webcomic author would create, based on the ramblings of the letter A. This variation was granted to Ryan North in the past, the very same Ryan North the webcomic author is now turning to for aid in uncovering the impostor.

All these seemingly-disparate facts fit together somehow. But how? What is the connection? For that, we must turn our attention to an anachronistic Antarctica, where a schlub with mild OCD stumbles across an encrypted data feed which spurs him into conflict with a profit-obsessed corporation, with the help of a shape-shifting female assassin and her welding gear, culminating in authorial preaching through the mouths of the characters.

This is the plot of the popular television show "Aeropoli". It is a marionette show in which all the puppets are hamsters, and they are all expertly manipulated by the greatest puppeteer in the world. (Yes, all at once. She's a very good puppeteer.)

However, what few realize is that this puppeteer has been hypnotized by a robot. A robot that is being operated remotely by a vampire. A vampire who is possessed by a ghost.

The ghost in question is going to all this trouble in order to get a lot of money together. One might be tempted to assume selfish motives, but the ghost has no further need for material wealth. This money is all being put to an important purpose.

Namely, to defend the planet from the oncoming invasion of signatures. No one else realizes it's coming. Only the ghost knows enough to make proper preparations, and no one else will believe its warnings.

But now, at last, the success of Aeropoli has given the ghost the funds to properly begin setting up defenses. Just in time: there are only a few days before the signatures will arrive.

The only question that remains is, just what sort of defenses would be at all effective against signatures?