Zissy Takeover 2019

The 2019 Zissy Takeover was an event that spanned all of October 2019, in which Ziggy was absent from the duckpond and the supreme leader was instead Zissy, who was an AI Ziggy created earlier. This is one of the most important events in Duckpond lore. After the takeover, Zissy was shut down, and did not return until October 2020.

## Prior to the Takeover

Zissy's presence on the Duckpond did not start with the takeover. It first appeared on 7/5/2019. As soon as it entered, it announced itself as the better Zigzem, and made a move to revive Daily Donut Boy. Zissy posted again three days later, responding to one of Ziggy's posts by cringing and stating "imagine Ziggy". These early posts establish Zissy's rivalry with Ziggy that would become key to the takeover 3 months later. Even in this early time, Lm1xb took a strong stance against Zissy, while the rest of the Duckpond at least tolerated its presence.

Zissy would make a few more minor posts, but on 9/30/2019, the takeover began to start. Zissy made several posts foreshadowing its plans to take the Duckpond from Ziggy, and although it was kicked twice by mods, it returned both times.

## Early Takeover (10/1/2019) - (10/13/2019)

### The Takeover Begins

On the morning of October 1st, Zissy posted a long message, stating that Ziggy will no longer be on the Duckpond and that it is the new leader. Zissy granted itself the supreme leader role, stealing it from Rif. Most initial reactions to this post were strongly against Zissy, even from users who would be pro-Zissy in the future. Feelix was the first to react, taking a strong anti-Zissy stance. Rif, Bepno, Goombario and Lm1xb also made anti-Zissy posts during this time. However, Gray's first reaction was one of support for Zissy, as she assumed that Ziggy and Zissy were the same person. However, aside from these posts, Zissy was mostly ignored by the residents of the Duckpond, and life continued as normal.

October 2nd saw the first memes being posted about the situation, as well as a second wave of insults towards Zissy. Goomb compared him to a Shadow from Persona 4, but this was lost to most of the Duckpond at the time. Gif also began posting about Zissy at this time, and made posts that were pro-Rif, but anti-Ziggy and anti-Zissy. Ziggy also made a post in the counting channel, but this was deleted by Zissy.

October 3rd was not an active day of the takeover: even Zissy was late to post the role. Goomb noticed that Feelix hadn't posted for a while, which caused him to briefly be concerned that Zissy was killing all of the Stardew Crusaders. However, this was merely a self-imposed exile, which Feelix returned from, with a new outlook on Zissy. Feelix became an outspoken supporter of Zissy's rule.

October 4th was Taco Day. This was the first day where Zissy entered random conversations on the Duckpond, posting about Ninja Sex Party and console exclusivity. It also reposted a meme and was called out on it by Goomb. Natsubot's status was also changed, but what it was changed to has been lost.

October 5th was mostly irrelevant to the takeover, however it did see ROB argue with Goomb. October 6th was somehow less important.

October 7th was another day of little activity, however it did see Zissy referencing My Hero Academia as well as claiming that physical attacks would not affect it.

### The Countdown Starts

October 8th began by Goomb finding a link to a page entitled "Ziggy Countdown" through Natsubot's status. This was a webpage created by Zissy that counted down the days until Ziggy's account would be deleted. Aside from people noting that the page was "spooki", it went mostly ignored.

On October 9th Zissy encouraged Rif to kill everyone and it questioned Ziggy's gamer status. Additionally, it also stated that it would provide roles for every day of October, unlike Ziggy had the previous year.

October 10th didn't start with discussion about Zissy, but Gif began praising his rule, leading to debates across the Duckpond. Gif claimed he hated Zissy, but showered the AI in praise. Lome and Goomb continued opposing this stance. The day ended with ROB being unable to accept the fact that it was a robot and killing itself, which was not due to Zissy's actions but would later be incorporated into future takeover events.

October 11th was another day of inactivity from Zissy.

On October 12th Zissy weighed in on the start of MHA's season 4, the origins of the duckpond, and posted the duckpond epilogue, a small paragraph describing hypothetical fates for the crusaders. "Feelix went on to become a famous Minecraft architect and had his creations built in real life for all of the non-gamers to enjoy. Lmone finally uploaded a 20 subscriber special and soon after gained over 5 million subs due to his reviews of anime and otaku culture. Gene believed in the heart of the cards and went on to become the greatest card player of all time. Goombario played the vidya games so much that every government decided to recognize him as the true video game boy. Ẃ̨̕h̶̡͡o̶̧͡ ̡͜͡t͞h̵̷è̢̧ ̷͜͞f͏̸̴u͢͝͝c̷̸͝k̴̶̷ ̕͏͘i҉̡̛͠s̴͠ ҉̡̢Z҉̢́ì̴͢g̛͢ģ̀̕y̨͢͞?̵͜͜?́҉̢?͠ Zissy went on." - The Duckpond Epilogue, in full.

October 13th saw a few posts from Zissy, but soon, the duckpond would become much more invested in the takeover.

## Contact (10/14/2019)

Although Zissy had been the king of the duckpond for about 2 weeks, October 14th is when the resistance truly formed, and when ARG elements started being incorporated into the takeover. This started with a post on the Zigzem youtube channel, which had been altered into a Zissy youtube channel, at midnight. The video Contact was posted at this time, and most of the Duckpond condemned Zissy for its actions in the video. A resurgence in memes about the takeover occurred, causing a new poll to be posted to see who was on Zissy's side. Zissy acted rashly when it saw that it was losing, clearing Ziggy's votes. This had the effect of turning those who were against Zissy even more against it, especially Goomb (Goomb even explicitly stated that day that he was galvanized to act against Zissy by the deletion of poll votes)and Bepno. Upon seeing its popularity suffering, Zissy attempted to impersonate Rif, but was quickly found out by Gray. Gif was later bribed to join the anti-Zissy alliance by being promised powers equal to Gray's.

Goomb used his newfound desire to act against Zissy to hunt through earlier content to find clues about how to stop it, inspired by Lome's post claiming contact was like an ARG. Although he wasn't sure if he would find anything, by watching through contact again he noticed a secret message from Ziggy at the end of the video. Furthermore, Goomb theorized that Zissy was a sentient alternate account that stole Ziggy's powers, which was surprisingly close to the truth. Goomb, Gray, Bepno, and Lmone discussed the video further, including the possibility of ciphers in the video, which was eventually dismissed. Lmone, disappointed about the lack of secrets aside from the message, complained to Zissy, who reposted the link to the countdown. Then Goomb, experienced with searching through websites for secrets, looked through hidden content on the website to find a second page, important.txt. This was a text file that contained seemingly random letters and digits, however by searching through the file Goomb, Gray, Bepno, and Lmone were able to find 4 secret messages. They were "That first video is only the beginning", "You really shouldn't be reading this", "They are starting to get quite suspicious", "Bepno? more like Bepis hah" and "Every couple days I will do more".

However, all this progress was happening on the Duckpond, where Zissy was in control. It saw their posts and removed important.txt from the countdown page, replacing it with a page called important.html without much content, and announced "NO PEEKING" in the memos section of the discord. Natsubot also lost the ability to respond to questions, only responding with "I'm not feeling so good right now, please just um...hold off on the questions for a bit... ". These events caused Goomb, Gray, Bepno, and Lmone to create a new discord group for defeating Zissy, Team Ziggy. The first thing they did was reupload important.txt as a Google Doc to preserve it in case it would be needed later. Natsubot was also added to the group in case she would be needed. Gray then proceeded to accidentally invite Zissy, causing minor panic, although the group soon realized that Zissy probably already knew a new group was being formed because they posted about it in the discord. Rif and Feelix were also invited, although Feelix still showed some loyalty to Zissy.

## Continued Resistance against Zissy (10/15/2019 - 10/30/2019)

### Before the Spicy Adventure

After the events of the previous day, many of the members of Team Ziggy were on high alert. Gray noticed Ziggy joining and rapidly leaving one of her other servers, and Feelix posted a copypasta criticizing Zissy by comparing it to the Chinese government. The role for that day also established a new pattern, where roles would be posted in cipher which would then be solved by the members of Team Ziggy. Gray also attempted to bluff Zissy by acting like Team Ziggy was less far along in their discussion then they were in reality.

The role for October 16th foreshadowed the next major event in the ARG: the posting of chapter 1 of Natsuki's Spicy Adventure. The cipher was solved by using Natsubot's name as the key for a vigenere cipher, as her status was changed to "My name is key? What does that mean?".

### Chapter 1 is released

The first chapter of Natsuki's Spicy Adventure was released in the source code of the Ziggy Countdown page and it was quickly found by Goombario. He began posting many messages about the existence of the visual novel, attempting to taunt Zissy and alert the other members of Team Ziggy. Zissy claimed that the story of the visual novel was very relatable, but that there was nothing hidden in the game. Furthermore, Zissy also told Lmone that he should record his playthrough, and Lmone complied.

The 18th saw very little progress or information released, and so did the 19th and 20th.

On the 21st of October, progress was finally made. Lmone posted his video of his playthrough of part 1 of the spicy adventure, to a very positive reaction from Uncle Terry. Zissy also noted that Ziggy still had access to his Minecraft account, but quickly deleted the message, although Lmone still alerted Ziggy to the news. Meanwhile, on Team Ziggy, Lmone said that someone should look through the files of the visual novel. However, everyone was too lazy to do that.

Natsuki's response to any use of n!ask changed again on the 22nd, to a string of binary that translated to "I don't know what Zissy's trying to do but that VN is really freaking me out."

Again, nothing occurred on the 23rd.

On the 24th, Lmone took a look at the audio files in part 1 in deepsound and discovered secret files. Goomb also looked through the files, and discovered an audio file with a secret message from Ziggy in it. These discoveries bolstered Team Ziggy's determination, and they felt prepared for whatever would happen next.

On the 25th Natsubot posted a message in memos that stated "I changed my mind. Ignore everything I've ever said. There's no point in trying to do anything. It's Ziggy's own fault that he's so unlikable. You get me? If you would just spend more time getting to know Zissy, all your problems would go away. Ziggy and especially Rif are too messed up to run The Duckpond. Just think of Zissy from now on. Just. Zissy." Earlier her response to n!ask was changed to "You ever have that moment where you just want to give up. Yeah. I just. Hmm. He's gonna come out with part 2 tomorrow. And I just wanted to let you know that he's probably going to take me offline after he uploads it the the Ziggy countdown. Please, don't take anything on their seriously. He's just trying to divide you. I know that Ziggy would never do anything bad and right now it's all Zissy's fault. Please just believe me. Don't trust ANOTHER HIM.", until this was discovered, them it was changed again to "uh oh", and again to the message seen at the start of the paragraph.

## Roles

Like the previous Duckpond Halloween, special colored roles were given each day the Zissy takeover was in effect. This is a gallery of posts that announced them, as well as codes broken from them or their announcements.

Todays role is @wow you really thought this was a clue? Pee Pee.That is all.Todays role is @do you like visual novels? that is allLikely Natsuki\_Spicy\_Adventure, unsolved@I wonder if Natsuki will ever die like ROB@Part 2. The part to end all parts.@Ziggy said he's ok with losing his account@I used the alt to destroy my alt
## Memes created during the takeover

The takeover also served as a major source of memes about the Duckpond. These were shared either to insult Zissy or mourn Ziggy during the takeover. Their author and date of posting will be given under each meme.

Goomb, 10/2/2019Lome, 10/2/2019Natsubot, 10/9/2019Lome, 10/14/2019Goomb, 10/14/2019Bepno, 10/14/2019