Zoostuck 3

you just fucking said, the moon is the sun. keep your god damn story straight for half a fucking second

What are you talking about? The moon is the moon, which is where you are. The sun is somewhere else. And Sun France, as evidenced by its name, is clearly on the sun...

Oh, wait, maybe they meant Moon France, that silly country that insists on calling themselves Sun France, just like most of the silly countries here on the moon. Well, in that case, they definitely deserve an invasion in order to set you straight. You call your Moon Minister of Defense immediately.

You are now the Moon Minister of Defense for the Moonited Kingdom, except that you actually know that this is the sun but you're not allowed to say that. The Moon Prime Minister has just ordered you to invade Sun France so that you can rename them to Moon France, and also legalize murder there because some complete stranger asked the Moon Prime Minister to.

There are numerous reasons that immediately come to mind as to why this is a bad idea, but you know from experience that the Moon Prime Minister will never listen to you. So how exactly are you going to prevent this disastrous war that you've been ordered to start?

Maybe you can somehow coerce Asteroid Russia.

Maybe you can somehow coerce Asteroid Russia.

Oh gods, that's the worst idea. As ridiculous as the notion is that this burning ball of plasma you walk on is a moon, at least the moon is a large enough celestial body to potentially have nations on it. The idea that you have over a hundred nations on the surface of an asteroid is beyond absurd. You can't possibly work with them.

Besides, what would you even do? Have them invade Sun France first? The Asteroid Russian army is almost as laughable as their astronomical beliefs. They'd probably go the wrong way and invade Sun China instead. And it's not as if the Moonited Kingdom cares about its diplomatic status with any nation other than the Moonited States.

Wait. That might just work. Perhaps you could convince the Moonited States that this invasion is a bad idea. Except they're even more lunar than this blasted country is. Who could you even convince?

You are now the Moon President of the Moonited States of Moon America. You are sick and tired of all this moon nonsense when you know perfectly well that you're on the sun and half the nation does too, but if you actually say that then the Moon Congress is sure to moon impeach you.

And the problem seems to be getting worse now that the Moonited Kingdom is in the mix. The last thing you need is for this nonsensical moon movement to gain in popularity. For instance, if one of your nations invaded a relatively sensible sun country (or even a horribly mismanaged sun country like Sun France) and forcibly converted them to a moon country. That's exactly what you don't want happening.

Fortunately there's no risk of that... oh, wait, the moon-wiretap you have on the Moon Prime Minister of the Moonited Kingdom informs you that he just told his Moon Minister of Moon Defense or whatever to invade "that country that foolishly calls itself Sun France".

Well. That's more than a little inconvenient. What are you going to do about this?

pre-emptive air strike.

Launch one country at another

Invade Sun France first!

Invade Sun France first!

That wouldn't help anything! That would just lead to exactly the same problem, because regardless of what you want, Moon Congress would vote unanimously to change the newly-invaded Sun France to Moon France and ban all claims of being on the sun.

On the other hand, maybe if you told the Moonited Kingdom not to invade because you had secret plans to, that could get them to back off and buy you some time. You quickly call up the Moon Prime Minister and casually tell him, as though you have no secret and illegally-obtained knowledge of his plans, that you're going to launch an invasion of Sun France soon and you need his troops standing by until you're ready.

Of course, then he's all "no, we're conquering Moon France, you can't tell us what to do" and hangs up on you. Great. Now what are you going to do?

pre-emptive air strike.

Of course! You can use the Moonited Kingdom's efforts to start a war that you claimed you wanted to start but don't actually as an excuse to wage war on the Moonited Kingdom! Maybe if you play your cards right, you can leave the governments of both nations a smoking ruin and put an end to this moon garbage once and for all. You immediately order a military strike against your closest ally.

You are now Zoosmell Pooplord again. You are completely unaware of the complex political maneuvering taking place on the sun at this very moment. Instead, you're looking for some cool shades. Where are you going to find them?

at the bottom of the ocean

Where the sun does not shine.

at the bottom of the ocean

Where the sun does not shine.

That's not very helpful! Your neighborhood is already at the deepest part of the Marianas Trench. Of course, you have no trouble breathing because the universe was constructed by someone who was far too uncreative to develop the mechanisms by which humans can either asphyxiate or drown. Not that you actually know this, because as an entity within this universe, you only know about its own highly uncreative physical laws.

Anyways, the point is, you're already at the bottom of the ocean where the sun doesn't shine, so it would be pretty hard for you to find sunglasses anywhere else. Honestly, it's not like you're just going to stumble over them...

Oh, wait, you did. Well, you put them on. Your Coolness stat goes up by 3, bringing you all the way up to -65532.

Wow, you'd forgotten just how low your Coolness stat went. You'd avoided looking at your status screen for years specifically to forget that. You think you actually feel worse, despite the marginal increase in Coolness.

You are now Jogh Edgebert, the coolest person in the universe. That's because you specifically created the universe in such a way that you would be the coolest and most creative and generally all-around best entity in it.

However, because you're not very cool or creative, and obviously not creative enough to redefine those concepts so that you're the best at them, you've just made everyone else in the universe less cool than you. Since your Coolness stat is at 1 even with all your coolness-boosting equipment, this means you live in an objectively very uncool universe, but you don't care about that.

What you do care about is that the most uncool person in the universe, whose name you can't even be bothered to remember because it's that uncool, has just had an increase to their abysmal Coolness stat. This worries you greatly. This could potentially have a cascading effect leading other people to increase their Coolness, until somebody manages to top your Coolness rating. And because of the highly uncreative way in which you set up this universe, that would make that person its new supreme ruler, completely ruining your plans.

Fortunately, despite your total lack of creativity, you are still a master schemer and able to manipulate minor events towards your desired outcome. So what will you be doing to counteract this minimal, but real, threat to your power?

You're going to crush all the sunglasses you can find with a single steamroller.

You're going to crush all the sunglasses you can find with a single steamroller.

Ah, of course. It will take you a while to get to Zoomelt Pumpbrain or whatever his name is, but as there's no danger of him reaching even a remotely threatening level of coolness, the risk is acceptable. Your only concern is preventing anyone else from following his example.

You promptly get on your steamroller and search for sunglasses. You find a discarded pair just lying around outside your grand throne room, and promptly run over them...

Oh. They're unharmed. You really should have plagiarized more physics from the last universe. It seems that the rules you ended up using for this universe have rendered all sunglasses immune to all forms of crushing force.

It appears your ingenious plan to remake the universe according to your own will had a minor flaw. In the previous universe, you had a total understanding of everything which allowed you to manipulate events as necessary. Yet, in this universe, all the laws were devised by you, and you are tremendously uncreative. You are so uncreative that you do not even understand the full depths of your own lack of creativity. It seems that, in order to secure your place as supreme master of this universe, you will need to understand it as well as you understood the previous one.

Damn it. You never could have imagined that running your own universe could be this difficult. But then again, you never were very creative.

You are now the one being with a full understanding of this new universe. Who are you and what are you doing?

You're That Guy and you're wearing almost every pair of sunglasses in existence.

You're This Guy and you aren't wearing sunglasses. Or glasses. Or eyes. In fact, someone stole them, just so they can start hoarding and wearing sunglasses!

You're the narrator.

You're the narrator.

Oh, that's right. You're me, the narrator. And as a narrator, I have omniscience and also a total inability to affect events on my own. I can only relate them to outside observers who can, in turn, make suggestions.

But that is only my profession. Who am I as a person?

You're That Guy and you're wearing almost every pair of sunglasses in existence.

Ah, yes. My name is That Guy. It is not a name I particularly care for, but I have no ability to change it.

And I have somehow accumulated nearly every pair of sunglasses in this universe, even though I do not have a physical form within it. Unfortunately, this means my Coolness stat is undefined, and so I am unable to compete with Jogh Edgebert for control of this universe.

But perhaps I could somehow bestow these sunglasses on someone else, someone who can challenge Edgebert's authority. Someone for whom it would make a difference.

But who? And how would I even transfer them to the physical world?

> the narrator

You're going to need... the Third Person.

You're going to need... the Third Person.

Ah, yes. The Third Person. They are the link between my world of narration and the world I narrate for. They hold the possibility of transferring these sunglasses to the physical realm, even if they do not personally challenge Edgebert.

Unfortunately, they are also immune to my omniscience. As the one physical being I am capable of communicating with, they are too detached from reality for me to be perfectly aware of their location and status. Locating them will not be an easy task. My only option is to narrate someone else's search for them.

You are now someone looking for a mysterious entity that you only know as "the Third Person". This is entirely your own idea and not the work of an omniscient narrator directing your actions.

Naturally, the first step in locating the Third Person is to review your identity and current location, as well as your specific motivation in searching for them.

You would think you'd remember those points easily, but for some reason you seem to be drawing a blank on them. It's as though you didn't even exist until an omniscient narrator declared you did and they're just waiting for extrauniversal observers to give you character traits.

But that's a ridiculous notion, and pondering it won't help you remember who you are, where you are, or why you're there. So who are you, where are you, and why are you looking for this Third Person anyways?

Obviously the Third Person is just that. The third person that will be joining your wicked sick dance team. You're that famous dancing chick from TV.

You're the Second Person. As an ever-shifting, faceless entity that is only capable of self-reference through the viewpoints of others' own view of you, you are naturally desirous of finding the Third Person so that you can finally get locked into an sensible existence.

You're the Second Person. As an ever-shifting, faceless entity that is only capable of self-reference through the viewpoints of others' own view of you, you are naturally desirous of finding the Third Person so that you can finally get locked into an sensible existence.

Yes, that's... no, that can't be right at all, and you definitely aren't just denying it because an omniscient narrator is saying that you are. What a ridiculous and completely incorrect notion. So absurd that you're going to promptly forget you ever had the idea.

Obviously the Third Person is just that. The third person that will be joining your wicked sick dance team. You're that famous dancing chick from TV.

Yes, this is more accurate. You're an adorable little baby chicken who attained fame with your adorable dancing, and recently signed on with a dancing alligator to start up a dance crew. You named yourself The Three Persons, but you're going to need a third before you can legally use that name, so now you've come here to look for them...

Wait, where are you again? You forgot to remember that one detail.

in prison, for crimes against dance

In the Grumpy Agen corner.

The only place appropriate to look for new dance members. Your local Burger King.