Many grisly deaths await with Twitter Choose Your Own Adventure
The thrill of reading Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks as a kid was in the dying. Sure, you could play to win, but it always seemed like the authors had more fun and put more creativity into the many scenarios of horrible death that followed the selection of a wrong choice than the relatively pedestrian scenarios of success. Plus, there was the immersion factor. Choose Your Own Adventure books may not have been great art, but because the choices you made (and their consequences) relied on reading and imagination, they pulled you in on a visceral level–even if your demise was leavened with the humor of an over-the-top disemboweling or being turned into human meat. There’s a potent, if brief, moment of self-identification in these deaths, when the reader realizes, “Hey, I just died there” that’s different from more mediated deaths in, say, your average video game.