Zoostuck 2

become just regular kinetic and locomote by bouncing off of things like a pinball

Kill yourself

That's what you're planning to do! But the hard part is leaving no trace of your time-displaced body. You kind of have to set that up before you actually die.

stop breathing

and then maybe breathe a bit because whew that was pretty close!

You decide to halt your breathing processes, then restart them just before you die as you realize you haven't set anything up for disposal. Ugh, all this bad idea radiation pointed at you must be having ill effects. You'll need a different plan, preferably one that doesn't require moving much. You're understandably short of breath.

become telekinetic

You attempt to develop telekinesis, and fail. That must be another consequence of the bad idea ray. Couldn't you at least have a bad idea that's productive in some way?

become just regular kinetic and locomote by bouncing off of things like a pinball

Ah, perfect. That's a bad idea you can actually do. Perhaps your body will even continue to bounce after you exhaust the last of your energy. You call forth what strength you have remaining and start to bounce around.

You are now Zoosmell Pooplord. You are not yet thirteen years old and so you cannot yet ask your father about the origins of your name. You have not yet prevented the rewriting of the universe, nor have you been given false memories and flung into the past to get you out of the way of another attempt to rewrite the universe, nor have you run over a paleontologist with a time-traveling car, nor have you been lured to Paradox Space in order to have the webcomic that describes the new universe imprinted onto your mind.

Instead you're just being a stupid kid while some weirdo is bouncing around all over everywhere.

What are you going to do about this?

looks like it's makeover time, get that weirdo a sportscoat and stage makeup, he'll be a star baby

looks like it's makeover time, get that weirdo a sportscoat and stage makeup, he'll be a star baby

Oh man, that's a great idea! You could be responsible for the next big television sensation! You've just got to catch that guy and...

Ow. He just bounced into you. Well, at least this means you won't have to catch him, you'd probably get bored and give up after five minutes. You quickly start telling him your pitch, except you keep changing your mind on what it is partway through.

You're now the bouncing weirdo again and you're not dead yet. In fact, you've potentially really screwed things up by getting this Zoosmell kid's attention.

In a few months, this kid is going to embark on a quest to learn the truth behind his stupid name and will end up preventing the rewriting of the universe. Some time after that, he'll be flung back in time without his memory and eventually lured to Paradox Space, where the singularity of complexity that you work for will use him as a conduit for the incredibly convoluted webcomic that can only exist when the universe is rewritten.

Only if you screw things up with the past version of this kid, you might throw the whole plan off. How are you going to solve this problem?

pour some sugar in his gas tank, but first teach him how to drive and get him a license and buy him a car

pour some sugar in his gas tank, but first teach him how to drive and get him a license and buy him a car

That's a terrible idea! This kid isn't even thirteen years old yet, you'd have to get him a fake ID too! Or possibly get some country to lower the legal driving age and then take him there.

Of course, since you're still under the influence of bad idea radiation, naturally this means you're going to go to great lengths to pull a stupid prank on some kid instead of killing yourself and making sure he stays on task, like what you're supposed to do.

You are the singularity of complexity. Your most direct agent has been overtaken by incompetence. Though this was part of your excessively complex plan, endangering your new conduit's past was not and you will need to intervene.

Fortunately, you already had a needlessly complex contingency plan in place for such a scenario and it is already underway. You have also ensured that extrauniversal forces will not be able to influence it, as you have already determined that such forces are the greatest threat to your plan.

You are now the one being in the entire universe that cannot be manipulated, either directly or indirectly, by any singularity of complexity. You have an immediate instinctive awareness of whether anything you are thinking of doing is furthering the plans of a singularity of complexity, and it turns out that a lot of things are. So when you find something that isn't, you rush out to do it, because you really hate singularities of complexity.

Who are you and what are you doing?

a 13th century monk; studying and memorizing

a 13th century monk; studying and memorizing

Ah, of course. Yes, it turns out that quite a lot of manipulations for these singularities of complexity are already happening in the 13th century and you can barely blow your nose without tripping across one of their schemes. Luckily, once you became a monk you found it was a lot easier, because you don't do a lot that affects the outside world at all.

So most of what you're doing is memorizing the contents of books. On occasion, you get assigned to make a copy of a book so it will last longer, but some of those books are involved in singularity-schemes so you "accidentally" fail to copy them.

But then you ran across this book. You were about to copy it when you realized it was part of a scheme, so you were about to "lose" it when you realized that was part of a scheme. You were worried something like this might happen.

So what are you going to do to avoid furthering any singularity-schemes?

Become a singularity yourself

DAMMIT.

That's it, that's literally the only idea you can think of that doesn't further a singularity's plans. You have to become that which you most hate.

Ugh, what a pain. Well, now you've become a singularity of complexity and your only goal is to construct complex manipulations that will result in all singularities of complexity being destroyed, including yourself.

Unfortunately, you have no idea how to tell the difference between actions that further your plans and actions that further the plans of other singularities of complexity, which you don't want to further. This was a dumb idea. How are you going to make this work?

make a singularity parliament for singularities to get their schemes straight together

become chwoka

make a singularity parliament for singularities to get their schemes straight together

Ah, of course! What better way to prevent the singularities from accomplishing anything than giving them a formal government? Nobody's goals will be achieved at all!

You promptly set up Singularity Parliament and within a few millennia most of the singularities are stuck bickering with each other.

Most. There's one that managed to avoid your temporal summons, somehow. The most troublesome one, which is plotting to recreate the universe. Your parliament isn't furthering its schemes, at least, but you really don't want it to succeed. And not just because it's a stupid singularity of complexity.

Unfortunately, you'll have to hope someone else figures out how to stop it. You're too busy keeping this parliament thoroughly gridlocked.

become chwoka

You are now Chwoka. No, wait, you are now ☆ C.H.W.O.K.A ☆, that's better.

You are not a singularity of complexity in any way, shape, or form and you have no idea what's going on in this adventure you're reading. But you've discovered that your friend Loather of Irk has a nefarious scheme to kill democracy with a webcomic or something and then take over. You don't remember the details because that subplot didn't seem to go anywhere.

So what are you going to do about this nefarious subplot that you barely remember anything about?

Kill yourself

Hug it

make a joke suggestion in an adventure thread without hitting the shift key

Kill yourself

Now why would you do that? Yourself's a cool guy. You've got nothing against him, and you're pretty sure he's not an unwitting pawn in this nefarious plot. Seriously, why would you even think up something like that?

Hug it

Instead, you come up with a foolproof plan for dealing with this vaguely-remembered evil scheme. You're going to hug it. The entire scheme. Okay, so a scheme isn't really a physical object and so it's hard to hug, but you're not about to let that stop you.

But that's really more of a goal than a plan. You need to think about what you're actually do. And that is...

make a joke suggestion in an adventure thread without hitting the shift key

Oh, yeah, that's sure to help you hug this evil scheme. You head over to an adventure thread. It's a dumb adventure about a prison guard getting his hair done, but the art is really good - it's actual paintings done by a professional artist.

So what are you going to suggest?

> Artist: Update

make life a tree and leafe, yikes, yowza, boi-oi-oi-oi-oing

> Artist: Update

Hey now, you're not a jerk! You just make goofy and generally unhelpful suggestions. The artist probably has very good reasons for not updating, and even if they're lousy reasons, hey, it's not like they owe you anything.

No, this calls for something more subtly subversive. Something clever. Something from the heart, that doesn't just make fun of the adventure but does so in a respectful way.

make life a tree and leafe, yikes, yowza, boi-oi-oi-oi-oing

Perfect. It's not easy crafting this kind of comedy gold, man.

You are now the artist. The supervillain who captured you, who was actually the physical manifestation of a singularity of complexity, ran off in an effort to become a potato. Unfortunately, you're still here, strapped to a bomb that's going to go off if you don't keep updating this really stupid but beautifully drawn adventure about a prison guard getting his hair done.

You just got an incredibly dumb suggestion. You're going to use it, because this adventure's really dumb aside from your art, but you need to hide a secret message in the panels in hopes that someone can rescue you.

So what are you going to do with this suggestion, and how are you going to hide your message?

you're going to have the main character turn into a rubber tree, and the subliminal message is kill all trees then yourself

The tree is a metaphor for your immobility, the saw-edged leaf a symbol for your freedom. Your impressionist technique can tolerate mistakes, for they are part of the canvas and part of the art.

Maybe you should go into sculpture.

you're going to have the main character turn into a rubber tree, and the subliminal message is kill all trees then yourself

This is your first thought, but it would fit too well in context. Nobody would think it was a secret message. Besides, deforestation is already a serious problem, and you've got nothing against this Yourself guy.

The rubber tree thing should be a good surface story for the update, though. You'll just need to downplay the subtext so you can actually get rescued. Now, what's the proper message you want to pass along?

The tree is a metaphor for your immobility, the saw-edged leaf a symbol for your freedom. Your impressionist technique can tolerate mistakes, for they are part of the canvas and part of the art.

Maybe you should go into sculpture.

Oh, there we go. That's a much better deep meaning, and it's more likely to catch someone's attention for how subtly out-of-place it is. Hopefully this secret message will actually lead someone to rescue you. You were sure that last week's worth of updates were going to do it, but you haven't seen any rescuers even though your captor vanished.

You are now that guy who was going to rescue the artist. You kind of trapped everyone in a painting to save them from a train crash, and somehow the bad guy hasn't destroyed the painting yet even though it's been quite a while since you pulled everyone into here.

So how are you going to get out, and how are you going to rescue that artist?

tie up all the loose ends

into a noose, then put your neck in it and stand on a really big ice cube for a couple hours — the frozen water, not the rapper! i learned about that one the hard way; in a book of lateral thinking puzzles

Loosen up everyone's ties and then take them and then tie up the loose ends with loose ties and THEN put your neck in it while standing on frozen water near a shrine of a famous rapper