Community:Starship ZUChat
Starship ZUChat is one of the handful of handles adopted by chat-goers for trolling escapades on the Zelda Universe forums. There is no defined organizational structure of Starship ZUChat, and in its earlier days was nearly interchangable with the #ZUChat Soviets.
2007 "Revival"
While the name of Starship ZUChat wasn't directly a part of trolling operations since Hind and Kedsy's initial bannings in 04/05, it was generally accepted that the coordinated efforts of the "chat crew" to disrupt the forums is recognized as the Starship. However, it wasn't until May 2007 that the name would be revived.
Resurrection
Captain Cornflake one day decided to start stirring up controversy in ZU's Zelda Theorizing board, making a thread that promoted the view there was no real "timeline" and that the creators had bungled things so many times that trying to make sense of it was a colossal waste of time. (A stance that actually wasn't fabricated) Naturally, this was met by harsh resistance from frequenters of the Theorizing board, who, fueled by the aggressive attitude displayed by Capn, proceeded to continually derail the topic on merits such as "it sparked an uprising of anti-timeliners." (Exact words) While the thread was eventually locked, a sequel soon took its place, drawing in more members of the chat crew. It was around this time that Capn decided to put together a new Starship ZUChat banner for everybody to sport, similar to Tim and Ked's from 2004. When people started accusing those sporting the new Starship sig of simply being trolls, they responded that they were the "newest timeline group" that believed in no timeline. (The "nihlists of timeline theorizing," as Kara had put it) Of course, this was absolute bullshit, but by the time the drama was over, the Starship had succeeded in exposing the near cult-like culture that had overtaken the Theorizing board.
As the next couple months went on, people sporting the Starship ZUChat banner could often be seen attacking threads in waves, building up massive chains of backhanded insults and psychobabble, picking opponents clean before they had a chance to even reply. They even used their strength to hit the Summer 07 awards, nominate themselves as a group for "best sig," winning the award. (after much protest from James)
ASE Headquarters
The Starship would have one more major run-in with the Theorizing board, and that was around the start of July 2007. The Black Knight, who was the leader of the ASE (Allied Splittist Elders) Timeline Group, was deemed "Public Enemy #1" for his often militaristic leadership and plans to "take over" the theorizing section. Because of the threat this provided to the ZU community, the Starship enlisted the help of one of the mods to change TBK's password so as to browse through his private messages, and discovered plans by TBK to "usurp" The Bombers, who at the time were a theorizing club formed on ZU with the goal of ending the member-run groups that were causing harsh divisions among the frequenters of the Theorizing board. These plans called for an end to The Bombers, whom TBK would somehow manage to replace with his own group, The Killer Bees. While he hadn't yet figured out how he was going to gain favor among the staff, he was so certain he could pull it off that he made a forum on InvisionFree that would serve as the headquarters for the ASE until his conquest of ZU could take place.
While at this point, the "ZeldaInformer Revolution" was already well in the works (see below) Captain decided that something needed to be done about this. With 2 days to plan things out before the "ASE Headquarters" board went public, the Starship enlisted the help of new allies from a group comprised mainly of HTLOZ II and Khakain members who would also assist in the ZI migration later on. The initial plan was a coordinated crapflood attack, but investigation by Captain and Leminnes led to TBK's email box. Just for ha-ha's, they went to the password reset form, and faced with the security question of "What is your favorite food," they put in "pizza" for the hell of it.
And it worked.
Immediately, they set off to work on TBK, breaking into various accounts of his on the internet (including his Facebook, sending Nazi propaganda and swastikas to all his friends) and were soon able to use his email to reset his forum account on the ASE HQ, effectively seizing complete control over the board. They proceeded to give their new forum a complete facelift, which can be seen here
TBK was soon spotted afterwards whining in the chat, and later on whined some more on the boards. As an act of mercy, Capn let him take his email account back, but kept control of the ASE HQ, where it now stands as an outpost for the Starship. Following these events, TBK shortly dissappeared from the ZU forums and hasn't been spotted since.
It's a one way ride to the end of the Universe
Towards the end of June, disillusionment with ZU's ever-growing community grew among a handful of members of the chat. With the frequency of in-fighting among the community reaching an all-time high, it seemed as though times were to get very bitter; especially considering the now clashing idealogies of the Starship crew (which at this point had grown almost synonymous with VGRC) and the ZU staff. Soon enough, some Starship members, as well as the Bombers crew on ZU, decided they would forge a new home for themselves, one that they would be able to live in peacefully and productively without the restrictions of working under ZU. With nearly a month set aside to work in private, Starship ZUChat and the Bombers would create ZeldaInformer.
Rather than start this new home from scratch, ZeldaInformer would be built under the watchful eyes of none other than Captain Cornflake and his VGRC, which would allow ZI to leverage VGRC's already entrenched community, as well as its existing popularity amongst the Starship. The Starship would also forge new friendships with members of HTLOZ and Khakain, who would assist in the ZU-to-ZI migration.
On June 16th, ZeldaInformer was announced to the public on both VGRC and ZU, and greeted with a massive spike of drama. While some were happy to take ZI up as a new home, or home away from home, others decreed it as nothing more than a stunt, quick to claim migrants to ZI as mere "props" of some troll by Captain. Today, ZeldaInformer stands as the fastest-growing site in the Zelda webring.
Terminology
After the "ZeldaInformer Revolution," the Starship ZUChat name has been used much less, with members often preferring to tag themselves as part of VGRC, or "Zangaroa," which as Hindmost puts it, is "the political militant cousin to VGRC's quaint gaming charm." And while the names are interchangeable, it is generally understood that context is the key to proper usage. VGRC is generally used for VGRC itself, Starship ZUChat for the continued happenings on ZU, and Zangaroa for trolling operations away from the homelands.
Propaganda
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The original Soviet banner
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The original Starship banner
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The 2007 "Revival" Signature
