Remember the End Times is the only information source you'll ever need because everything else is just FAKE NEWS!
Read the first truth filled issue here: http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/creative-corner/message/23162
FEATURING
The New Shit
An Interview with statue molester DEP
A Review of DEP’s Ducky Park
This fantastic “Short” Story: Higher Learning
Special Section: Miss Zal's School For Noobs by Mizal
Credits
The New Shit
Newbie Central: A bunch of noobs have been popping up lately. Most of them have already earned the wrath of Mizal. More on that later.
The Lounge: Known troll Kain expresses his feelings for CYS in the form of bad poetry. Lulz ensues.
News & Updates: Bucky’s contest is up and running for December. As usual it is predicted that only some will actually finish anything, while the rest will be thrown in the pit of SHAME.
The Parlor Room: More interesting comments abound for the site’s stories and by interesting I mean mostly retarded that we laugh at.
Creative Corner: The Inclusive contest winds down and hopefully the person that Berka linked to doesn’t enter at the last minute. Also Mizal is probably going to win since her only competition is Wibbons making the results hardly surprising. Still, this must be a real big thrill for her.
Writing Workshop: The workshop is currently being filled with threads on everyone contest progress. It’s predicted that most of these threads will be abandoned in favor of being derailed over some minor bullshit.
Reading Corner: Last post here was 3 weeks ago. Nobody actually reads here. Stop being silly.
Advanced Editor Forum: Someone was asking how to check the number of words per story. So boring shit as usual in this forum.
Feature Wishing Well: Brad made some sort of suggestion about images. I dunno, I wasn’t paying attention and it probably won’t get implemented anyway.
Bugs & Problems: Dini was trying to submit an article and ended up with a virus due to all the hentai she downloads.
Interview: DEP AKA donteatpoop
DEP isn’t around here much, and given the lot we have here I can’t say I blame him. Still, he has made contributions (and not just his good advice via his name) to the site in meaningful ways in the form of a few stories, two of which have been featured.
Anyway, I managed to track him down in that graveyard known as Infinite Story.
1. So what have you been up to as far as writing is concerned?
My current project is a linear story; a fantasy novel. The story centers around one main character and a sort of variable character. In a nutshell, it's about a dwarf, who owes his life to a human who saved him during the Mage Wars (where some very powerful magic users attempted to dethrone the gods). The human heals him and they become friends during recovery, soon the dwarf goes home. Slowly the dwarven kingdom falls apart due to a combination of a side-effect of the Mage Wars which caused their homeland to fall apart piece by piece AND a war with their neighbors the Minotaur. So whatever, our dwarf PC loses everything, falls back to human who takes care of him. The rest of the story follows the dwarf as he travels and checks in on the human's family through the generations. I'm at 33k words and kind of stuck at the moment on something, but digging my way back out.
2. I remember you saying a long time ago that you actually joined CYS before you joined IS. Any particular reason why you stayed at IS instead?
I hadn't joined CYS first, but I'd certainly visited it first. What happened was, I got really stoned one night and started working on a branching story that played with the concept of 'how would things be different if some minor inconvenience insinuated itself into the story'. At first I was thinking about how Run Lola Run had done it (great movie, if you haven't seen it), and kind of worked on that. It was some sort of 'get ready for a date' with the variable being how long it took to get ready. Stupid, I know; but it was an experiment. Anyway, I wrote about 15 pages and was like "there has to be an easier way to this whole 'if this then go to page X' crap."
So I googled "how to write a choose your own adventure story" and two sites came up. The first was chooseyourownadventure.com (which later became infinite-story.com) and chooseyourstory.com. The first one, I assumed, was just going to sell me the old CYOA books. So I went with the second one (CYS).
The page design, for those who weren't around back then; had some weird cartoony guy on every link. It was cheesy, but whatever. I ended up reading some Wal*Mart story and a couple of others that I don't recall. The Wal*Mart one though, no offense to whoever wrote it; just wasn't doing it for me. The other two stories left no impression on me so they weren't particularly good or bad, but that Wal*Mart one stood out to me. I checked the forums and people are raving over it. So I started thinking "if that's what people like over here... Well, let's see if anything else is out there."
Same google parameters gave me a third site that had really shitty formatting. I closed that shit down and wrote some other stuff. Then I came back to the idea of interactive stories, googled something; and checked out infinite-story.com (which had apparently changed names due to some bullshit, but I probably wouldn't have clicked on it otherwise.)
IS has the opportunity to just add to someone else's story (if they set the story up with that option); so that allowed me to play around and experiment a little before starting my own. That attracted me. I started writing some of my own and the simple formatting worked for me. No klutzy artwork in the background either, it sounds stupid but the artwork distracted me. The forums were completely insane and hilarious too; so that helped. But yeah.
3. I also remember you saying Sev was supposed to be working on new forums at IS. Did he just decide to not bother?
Severenz decided that the nature of the vbulletin forum made it too dangerous for spammers and hackers, and he didn't want to risk it. Like when that one dude pretended to be me and shit, or the spammers who I was deleting but apparently one slipped through. I've reached out a couple times to try and get him to just restore the old site-hosted forums that he used to use; but he's pretty firm about it.
4. You still speak to any of our other old IS comrades?
I talk to dreamshell quite a bit online, and you through the very occasional email. I miss the old forums, however infrequent we were around. Usoki, Locke, and Vesnic always made me laugh. I miss those guys.
5. Out of all the stories you wrote on IS and CYS, which one was the one that you were most proud of?
Shit. I don't know. Sorry, I can't pick one because I am very attached.
One of these four.
Paco Valdez. IMO it's a pretty exciting story. It's a Western setting but it's not your typical bullshit cowboy story. The characters are really what I'm most proud of, they were pretty well rounded. I'm also proud of the approach I took to other people's contributions. The ones I approved, I edited to make sure the tone of the narration stayed the same. (also, probably the most complete of the stories on this list)
Brothers. I wrote a lot of that one, but it was emotionally draining and I had to keep stepping away from it. My biggest regret in it is that some of the storylines spiraled a bit too far off. I think I did a good job in cross-referencing stories into the other character's POV's; so that one brother would interact with another with the same thing that happened in that other brother's storyline. It's kind of a dark story though. Really depressing.
Coitus Machina. For one of the Infinite Writing Tournament's had a grab bag of sci-fi themes (ad to pick three). The host of the tournament jokingly included 'Sex Robots'. I took that as a challenge, selected Sex Robots, Underground Society, and Utopia. So in the future, as society turned to cloning, men were deemed unnecessary and stopped being cloned. Their anatomy, however was missed; and so Sex Robots were created to serve their masters by cleaning, protecting, catering, and satisfying their masters. You play a sex robot with a malfunction that causes you to have feelings. (the underground society was under developed, but on paths where you escape you encounter an underground society where sex is still for reproduction and men still exist.
Men of Science. Finally, Men of Science. I am possibly working on a novel for this? I've toyed with the idea of it anyway, and wrote ten whole pages. So who knows. It's got a different vibe to it than anything else I've written. You work for a mad scientist and have to escape town with him in the middle of the night, end up moving to New Hampshire where the scientist (Dr. Verukt) has another home and lab. Crazy shit happens. Plot lines introduced or hinted at include a dimensional horror, lycanthropy, and torture.
(honorable mentions: Crack Attack which I came up with the concept and opening page of, but had chubbyteletubby post so we could co-write; and wrote a big portion of... and My New Bike, which was an innocent story about some kid going to get a new bike for his birthday. My New Bike was an abandoned fragment of a story, one or maybe two pages; I hijacked it with the help of chubbyteletubby and we changed it into a really fucked up hilarious thing)
6. What was your favorite story you read on IS and CYS?
Favorite story has to be Trash. I remember laughing so damn hard through it. It was an in your face story at the time, just shitting allover the reader. I loved every moment. It's one of the few stories where I've read absolutely every branch of.
After that, Ground Zero.
Followed by The Paradox Factor (Lucid) and Snow (Sethaniel)
7. Any final thoughts before you return to your life of wanton debauchery?
Don't procrastinate! I fucking suck at finishing things. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I think I'm a good enough writer to get published... If only I'd finish something! I've read plenty of books where I had to cringe my way through it.
Many of you are good enough for publication as well! Commit to your story and see it through. Don't hop off your tale for some new shiny plot that pops into your head. That would be a stupid thing to do. That is what I keep doing. You guys are better than that.
Thanks for interviewing me, this was fun. Sorry to everyone who hates when I'm super verbose, but there you go. That's just what I do.
Review: DEP’s Ducky Park
One of two stories DEP copied over from Infinite Story and while Reunion got featured, I feel that Ducky Park is a better story overall and underrated.
It tells the tale of a hapless retard getting a job in an amusement park. Hilarity ensues.
Well hilarity ensued for me at least. You’re either going to like the humor in the story or you won’t. Since the story’s main draw is humor, its success is dependent on it and since humor varies from person to person, that might be why it has a middle of the road rating overall.
It’s isn’t a long story, but it does have a good amount amount of branching all of which lead to amusing ways the protagonist can fail spectacularly. DEP was supposed to expand the story at some point, but he never did because he’s a procrastinating asshole.
Some of the added stuff would have included a few extra choices like some more mascot costumes to wear, a Halloween focused branch and a branch dealing with the little kid section of the park. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll see these additions.
Anyway, I liked it a lot.
Short Story: Higher Learning
Well this thing is long enough as it is so I’m going to do what I did last time and place this story in my short story thread. Once again this is one that’s part of a larger work just like the last one.
http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/creative-corner/message/21334#789145
Special Section: Miss Zal’s School For Noobs by Mizal
The sign above the wrought iron gate proclaimed the building to be a school, but its grey, grim exterior and barred windows suggested it to be more of a prison.
Ragged immigrants sat at desks in a classroom inside, some of them looking like they’d been recently beaten. Some of them attempted conversation in their dull-minded and socially awkward way, while others dug about in their noses (and elsewhere) while raptly staring at a blank grey wall.
A dark-skinned woman strode into the room and glared them all into silence. The tips of pointed ears were visible through her long hair as she walked to the front of the classroom and wrote Miss Zal’s School for Noobs, afterwards sloooowly scraping her nails down the chalkboard and eying each of the students in turn as they squirmed in discomfort from the sound.
“Hello children.” Her tone and expression was stern, and in her eyes was a hint of the cruelty and scorn that any of her charges who survived would grow to know well. “I am Miss Zal, but you will call me Mistress. All of you have been caught trying to enter our glorious kingdom and been detained on suspicion of being noobs.” She spat the last word with undisguised contempt. “I am here to determine which of you may have potential to become proper newbies and begin your training to one day serve the kingdom to your fullest capabilities. Of course as usual I suspect the answer will be very few to none; tragic really, the limitations of the lesser born. But now...” Once again her gaze swept the classroom. “Before we begin, are there any questions? Don’t be shy, everyone gets exactly one before I tire of your ignorance.”
For a moment nobody speaks, but when the elven lady insists, one brave soul raises their hand. “What will you teach us?”
The elf grabs a cattle prod from behind her desk and jabs it against the young man’s chest. There is a flash of blue light and the smell of burning flesh and he falls thrashing onto the floor before lying still, his breathing erratic.
“I will teach you to PUNCTUATE! I will teach you grammar. I will teach you to script if you display the talent. I will teach you to shed yourselves of weakness. I will teach you to serve the admins without question and review without mercy and you will always proofread for you will find strength in proofreading. You will find joy in points. You will find love in commendations. You shall be instruments of terror and mockery against SJWs and autists. You will not shit-post...or you will die. Remember this.”
Except for one immigrant who seemed preoccupied building a sculpture of ear wax, the class cowered until she pointed at another random noob. “You! Do you have a question?”
“Uh...” the noob looked panicked and finally blurted out, “Er... was just wondering when will you teach us to write?”
The elf raised an eyebrow and smirked as she approached him.
“Write? And what makes you think that YOU are even ready to learn yet? Do you have even the slightest knowledge of plot structure?”
“No, Mis...” before he can even complete the sentence Miss Zal knocked him out of your chair with a quick jab from her hand and then stomped on his chest with her boot. She dug the heel in and pressed down with all her weight.
“Damn right, no you don’t. You can’t even be bothered to read, or you would have recognized this scene and known what was about to happen here. Now you’r completely at my mercy. I am in a position to do whatever I like with you, while you are only in a position to beg or die. So what will it be, noob? Are you going to beg for your miserable--”
“Ahem!”
Everyone looked toward the door where a mysterious robed figure holding a scythe was clearing his throat. “Hmm. This all looks so weirdly familiar. And also, just plain weird. Uh...so what exactly is going on in here Mizal? And since when are you a dark elf?”
The elf looked mildly embarrassed but didn’t ease her foot off the noob. “Oh! Endmaster, well the truth is I forgot I was supposed to make a lesson plan for today, so I’ve just been having a bit of fun. And this dark elf stuff...this is just paint.” She rubbed a bit off her arm to demonstrate. “But sub-types of elves are really more of a sliding scale, and I’ve always identified as a dark elf, if you must know.”
“Yeah yeah I already know you enjoy torturing small animals and hate the sun. But you realize that’s Malk’s wig you’re wearing?”
“Ew!” she snatched it from her head and threw it down, wiping her hands. “Are you serious? Ew ew ew...I just found in in a storage closet and--”
“Malk does a lot of weird things in closets, yeah. I hope you didn’t touch anything else in there. But anyway...dammit Mizal, you know you can’t do this. It’s against the rules.”
Just then they were interrupted by an extra small, extra bedraggled, extra snot-nosed tyke tugging on the necromancer’s robe. “Excuse me, Mr. Endmaster sir?” It pointed at the elf accusingly. “Miss Zal was mean to me!”
“Yeah, me too!” exclaimed the boy she’d hit with the cattle prod. “Svelk-face is offensive,” added another. “I’m offended on behalf of the Svelk. And since Mizal was breaking the rules being rude to us, she should--”
“Oh no, I just meant the roleplaying stuff. Strict laws against it. You’d know that if you paid any attention, but I guess that’s why you’re in noob school. Hell even if you graduate I’ll probably wind up killing most of you later anyway. LOL! Anyway, guess you’ve just got to wing the rest of today’s lesson Mizal. Have fun!” He shut and locked the door behind him and went whistling down the hall, leaving a chorus of irritating whining behind him.
“All right, all of you shut the FUCK up!” the elf finally shouted, returning to the board. “Now everyone pay attention because I’m only going to say it once. She wrote with vicious strokes of the chalk and underlined the words:
You are NOOBS
Noobs are TRASH
Noobs must EARN the right to live!
She turned to stare at them all with savage hatred. “Now we’re going to learn about the three Ps! The first P is...”
Someone giggled in the back of the class and she pointed at them.
“Didn’t I just say to SHUT UP? Tch, I’d tell you to see me after class if I thought you had any chance of surviving till the end of it. But now listen: the first P is Perception! This means the ability to notice and pay just a little fucking attention to what’s going on around you. It covers reading and understanding words, and helps you understand when your own lazy, pathetic dribblings resemble the leavings of a warthog with diarrhea, because you can LOOK at everyone else’s stories and posts or I don’t maybe OPEN A BOOK??? And then you can SEE, you can SEE with your own two eyes and the fucking BRAIN that’s supposed to be MORE than just a superfluous blob of protein inside your skull that the literal shit you’re smearing our library with or every fucking poorly spelled and unpunctuated word out of your mouth is NOTHING LIKE WHAT ANYONE ELSE IS DOING AND WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ANYWAY?”
At some point the elf had grabbed the nearest noob and started violently shaking it while screaming in its face. Now she tossed it aside like a rag doll (it lay with its neck bent at an unnatural angle) and cleared her throat, straightening her clothes and regaining her composure. “Haha. Anyway! Obviously, whatever you do in your own homes, you wouldn’t show up to a civilized gathering, naked but for an ill-fitting tutu and then roll around on the ground grunting and scratching your taint. Because normal, non-retarded people can identify and adapt to new situations on at least a basic enough level to make them aware of the REALLY obvious things everyone else is obviously not doing and how badly they stick out. For instance...I understand some of you were detained trying to sneak into the kingdom while dressed as CATS for Shelob’s sake.” She tsked and shook her head. “But now let’s move on to--ugh.”
She walked over and gave the hairy noob rolling around on the ground in a tutu a sharp, vicious kick directly to the exposed asscrack before returning to her place by the board. “Now the second P stands for Personality! Simply put, this means don’t be a faggot, and also get the fuck over yourself. When for whatever reason you manage to fail at Perception so hard that someone has to point out that your noobish behavior is unacceptable, you need the common sense and decency to accept that and to just stop doing it. Don’t get mad. Don’t whine like a petulant little bitch. Don’t pretend like you’re a victimized innocent. Stop. Just stop. Please just stop. It’s really that simple. And if multiple people tell you the same damn thing, even if you’re too much of a confused narcissistic and autistic 12 year old idiot to recognize it for yourself, how about acknowledging to yourself that maybe, just maybe, there’s something to what they’re saying.”
A somewhat tired sounding sigh. “The third P stands for Participation. That means you do things, or at least attempt to, or at the VERY least display a mild interest in the stories which are allegedly the reason you even came here in the first place. In time I’m sure you can all be accomplished...I’m sure you’ll all rise to the levels of...” Mizal struggled visibly but couldn’t seem to finish her sentence with a straight face. “Ahahaha. Okay anyway. Look, I’m just going to pass out some pamphlets and you can all--” She stopped. “What the hell. Are you being fucking serious right now?”
All around the classroom noobs were curled up asleep, or eating dead flies off the windowsill, or examining their genitals with a confused expression. Some of them had even crapped into their own hands and were drawing stick figures on the wall.
“You know what, fuck it. Class dismissed. Or you all just graduated. Whatever.” The elf rolled her eyes and grabbed a large, prominently displayed chrome plated lever labeled ‘PULL TO PURGE NOOBS’. Lacking Perception, every single one of the students present had apparently failed to this lever, as well as the trap doors under their desks, as well as the near-constant snarling and thumping coming from below the floor.
“This giant mutated wolf with eight chitinous legs and eight red eyes and three scorpion tails and the soul of a penguin is being mean to meeeee!” came a forlorn wail amid all the screaming.
“I’m Harry Potter’s boyfriend! My flexible wand has a unicorn hair core!” yelled another noob excitedly, obliviously, even as he was torn to pieces. Bless his little heart. “Wait why does my account keep logging out when I go to click something oh god oh god the teeth!”
THE END
Credits
EndMaster
(And DEP and Mizal I guess)
Man, was this a long ass issue.
