Choose Your Own Adventure!

June 1, 2007 4:45 AM

Virginia Tech: A "Cho"ose Your Own Adventure.It's early on a Monday morning. You wake up and find you have your dorm room to yourself. The night before, your roommates had been talking about "hooking up" with some girls they met on Facebook while you were busy ignoring them and putting the finishing touches on your three page manifesto explaining why you decided to go on a shooting spree today...
posted by reklaw (44 comments total)

Zombie PoopyPeanutz is our generation's Dostoevsky.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:51 AM on June 1, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Oh please, really? All seems a bit violent.
posted by mattoxic at 5:13 AM on June 1, 2007

The guy who wrote this must be so...edgy.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:18 AM on June 1, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

The CYOA is one of kuro5hin's more sophisticated trolling forms:
(all in deeply poor taste, and so potentially nsfw)
WTC
New Orleans
The Yakuza diaries
The morbid life
etc.
posted by Luddite at 5:19 AM on June 1, 2007

satisfying.
posted by mr_book at 5:27 AM on June 1, 2007

I was waiting for this to show up here.
posted by chrismear at 5:39 AM on June 1, 2007

I got food poisoning. Not a very good ending, I guess, but better than shooting a bunch of people. I win?
posted by Greg Nog at 5:40 AM on June 1, 2007

This looks strangely familiar for some reason.
posted by localroger at 5:42 AM on June 1, 2007

What is the point, even in an exercise of bad fiction, of attaching any reason to the thinking of a madman?

Do you...

Go visit the girl and see if she will fall in love with you?

Eat something before you get started?

Or ask the soapdish if he thinks the air tastes yellow too?
posted by three blind mice at 6:00 AM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ahhh, that's what I enjoy. The injury and death of my friends recreated in a poorly written second-person piece of crap. Can we stop this now?
posted by cyphill at 6:12 AM on June 1, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

Too soonsucky.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:13 AM on June 1, 2007

Quite good, but Third Planet from Altair and Your Code Name is Jonah remain, in my opinion, the quintessential works of the oeuvre. Edward Packard is truly the arch-architect of high adventure, the Prometheus who stole the fire of choice from the dwelling of the fierce and all-but-unreachable literary immortals and gave it freely unto the children of the world.

And what fate did this modern Titan win by his audacious larceny? Like that other Titan, was he too chained to a rock to have his liver pecked constantly by ravenous ravens? Well - WAS HE? We can only suspect the worst. But I, for one, will not shirk from doing what is right, and fairly obviously the moral choice here is to write immediately to the King of Sweden to demand that Edward Packard be accorded the golden laurels of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I hereby enclose the text I shall use - you may wish to cut and paste it into your own email to that exalted foreign monarch.

To: [e-mail]

Dear King or Queen of Sweden as the case may be,

1. If you are going to accord to Edward Packard the golden laurels of the Nobel Prize for Literature, turn to paragraph 3.

2. If you are not going to accord to Edward Packard the golden laurels of the Nobel Prize for Literature, turn to paragraph 4.

3. You suck pile-flavoured assholes. I hate you.

4. Great - thanks.

Yours sincerely,
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:17 AM on June 1, 2007 [6 favorites has favorites]

3< -->4?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:19 AM on June 1, 2007

O Edward Packard - that I had your faultless command of numbered texts!
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:29 AM on June 1, 2007

So, does anyone plan on validating free speech in a meaningful way anytime soon?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:29 AM on June 1, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

this guy is why i left k5 ... i decided that his popularity was a certain sign that the site had jumped the shark and wasn't a community i wanted to be a part of

even adequacy.org was better than this
posted by pyramid termite at 6:31 AM on June 1, 2007

It's no I'm OK - A Murder Simulator.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:31 AM on June 1, 2007

Well, Edward Packard was good, but what about R.A. Montgomery?
posted by josher71 at 6:36 AM on June 1, 2007

The Swedish Academy is reponsible for choosing the Nobel Laureates in Literature. Contact them here.

3< -->4?

Then again, the quidnunc kid, King Carl Gustav is also a bit dyslexic so perhaps he is the one you want to contact to make your case for Packard.
posted by three blind mice at 6:37 AM on June 1, 2007

The Yakuza Diaries CYOA was way better.
posted by chlorus at 6:41 AM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I wished only to give a flavour of the work of that great genius, Edward Packard. Instead, I fucked it up totally - or "did an R. A. Montgomery," as they say in literary circles.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:43 AM on June 1, 2007

I have a 3 digit UID on k5, but yeah the site just became pathological at some point.
posted by delmoi at 7:10 AM on June 1, 2007

Seriously, that was in pretty poor taste.
posted by Comrade_robot at 7:17 AM on June 1, 2007

Classy, as in not. I tuned out at the dog meat.
posted by Billegible at 7:40 AM on June 1, 2007

Best of the web?

VT '05
posted by waldo at 7:41 AM on June 1, 2007

tbm: What is the point, even in an exercise of bad fiction, of attaching any reason to the thinking of a madman?

Because by doing so we can better understand how massacres like VTech happen at the hands of people who, at least 90% of the time, are getting through their day and making reasonable decisions just like us, no matter what misanthropic fantasies and violent schemes play out in the other 10%.

[NB - figures arbitrary]
posted by Drexen at 7:52 AM on June 1, 2007

by doing so we can better understand how massacres like VTech happen at the hands of people who

No, we can't. This is sheer¿, unadulterated crap, and doesn't help understand anything other than the lack of writing skills of its author.
posted by signal at 7:57 AM on June 1, 2007

Damon Packard >
posted by joecacti at 8:00 AM on June 1, 2007

Word, signal. Cynical exploitation of other people's tragedy played for laughs. Guys like the douche who wrote this are always the first to get deathly serious and shocked to their core when something horrible happens that affects them personally. "But don't you get it?! This is different! This is me!"
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:02 AM on June 1, 2007

No, we can't. This is sheer¿, unadulterated crap...

Okay, fair enough - I'm not defending this particular work. I made my cresponse to Three Blind Mice's comment because it seemed to convey some wrong-headed ideas that aren't useful in thinking about Cho or dealing with anyone with mental health issues.
posted by Drexen at 8:04 AM on June 1, 2007

Well, to my mind, the article isn't mocking the victims/the tragedy anywhere near as much as it's mocking Cho, often in rather crude terms. At one point it even delights in torturing him - a kind of vicarious revenge, surely. See also: the argument for making fun of Hitler.
posted by reklaw at 8:08 AM on June 1, 2007

Quite good, but Third Planet from Altair and Your Code Name is Jonah remain, in my opinion, the quintessential works of the oeuvre.

Your favorite CYOA book sucks. The Cave of Time is the greatest, never-equaled, groundbreaking, heartbreaking work of staggering genius. (In other words, I read it when I was ten.) Thank you, josher71.
posted by straight at 8:39 AM on June 1, 2007

http://poopypeanutz.blogspot.com/ -- Chicken George
posted by acro at 8:45 AM on June 1, 2007

At one point it even delights in torturing him - a kind of vicarious revenge, surely. See also: the argument for making fun of Hitler.

That's how I looked at it as well. The thing is though, it's not fun - or witty, or clever, or anything of the sort. It's just kind of run-of-the-mill disgusting. I mean, diarrhea and vomit? Come on...
posted by the other side at 9:02 AM on June 1, 2007

The Cave of Time is the greatest

Although it pains me to think down to your intellectually microbial level, I must register this protest: you are talking complete llama faeces.

The Cave of Time was mere juvenilia compared with the mature style of Altair or Jonah - it lacked both their rich perfection of imagery and subtle melancholia of tone.

I can only suggest that your weak brain would be more suited to one of the "Adventures for Younger Readers," such as The Circus.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:06 AM on June 1, 2007

Too soon.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:09 AM on June 1, 2007

You swallow a few chunks of dog meat that has gone slimy and rancid from having sat out un-refrigerated all night. It sure doesn't taste nearly as good as when mom is able to find a fresh stray mutt and pop it into the pot overnight.

See, it's funny because he was Korean.






Oh wait, no. That's not funny. At all.

Never mind.
posted by quin at 11:15 AM on June 1, 2007

Isn't this a double? Or had this been posted to the original Virginia Tech thread? Wherever it was, I commented in that thread that I'd fly to Australia, shoot five of his friends, and tell him to make a game out of it. Which, when I reflected upon it later, really wouldn't be fair to those five friends. What I decided would be better would be for someone to do some research and find something truly traumatic from this guy's past, then make a game out of that. Maybe he was beaten regularly by his father. Or maybe he was sexually abused as a child. Or perhaps he witnessed his childhood pet being run over by a truck. Any of those things would make a good, edgy game.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:27 AM on June 1, 2007

You get fish sticks! You win!!
posted by brundlefly at 12:50 PM on June 1, 2007

Whoops. I mean:

You get fish sticks! You win!!
posted by brundlefly at 12:51 PM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I opted for the cornbread.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:24 PM on June 1, 2007

I have CHOSEN the large tub.
posted by ELF Radio at 1:54 PM on June 1, 2007

EB: I think this is a second VT game.
posted by jacalata at 10:45 AM on June 2, 2007

Still processing the "dog-eating Korean" stuff over here. Classy.

Speaking of classy, were Americans stranded with only the CYOA series? No Ian Livingstone? No Joe Dever? Not even, god help us, Jamie Thompson?
posted by tannhauser at 2:39 AM on June 4, 2007