Really? You’re picking THAT option?
Sigh. You’re no better than the last reader… and they met a most terrible fate.
Let’s write a choose-your-own-adventure story together that KNOWS it’s being read!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write a self-aware choose your own adventure story.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
Chat voted on this prompt for us to write about: Your girlfriend has turned into a basketball.
Here’s what we came up with:
Little do you know how much pain is in store for you tonight, friend.
For now, you think you’re on top of the world. You’re driving to your girlfriend Leslie’s apartment, ready to go on a fancy date. Sure, you’re old enough to have had your heart broken a couple of times, but so far Leslie is pretty nice.
You’ve been chatting on Fish In A Barrel and you appreciate her no-bullcrap attitude. None of that teenage and college drama, just straight to the facts: you’re both single, enjoy hamburgers with chips between the buns, and have no debilitating illnesses and/or children. At 30, that’s basically like two unicorns finding each other.
Two ugly unicorns, of course. But hey, as an endangered species, you can’t be that picky.
You arrive outside Leslie’s apartment, park the car, and head up to her door with the bundle of grocery store flowers behind your back. Ooh, big spender! $8.99 plus tax will hopefully impress the lady. You knock and ring the doorbell, anxious but hopeful.
But she doesn’t reply. How strange. You knock again, harder this time, and the door creaks open slightly. You’re not the type to just barge in, but you want to make sure that she’s okay. So you say her name aloud, push the door open, and step halfway inside.
“Hey!” A voice calls from below. It sounds like Leslie, from when you chatted online, but you don’t see her anywhere.
Then you look down. Oh. A basketball is there, vibrating slightly as it speaks.
“So this is kind of embarrassing,” she says, wobbling on the carpet. “But, I got turned into a basketball.”
Illustration by cozyrogers
Well then. You knew this was too good to be true. A year ago it was Kimberly who turned out to have photos of you taped all over her bathroom, and just a few months ago it was Shannon who chose her addiction for Kraft single slices of American cheese over you.
And now Leslie. You thought you found your chip-and-burger soulmate, but as it turns out, she’s a basketball. Story of your life.
What are you going to do about it?
- Ask her what happened and try to help
- That sucks, I’m sorry, but I’mma peace out
- Break down in tears and passionately declare that you’ll dedicate your whole life to returning her to normal
- Shrug it off. You’ve seen worse.
- “Oh my gosh, we can make you a star!” < (chat chose this one)
You bend down, pick up Leslie between your two hands, and slowly raise her up to the ceiling.
“Oh my gosh!” you say. “Leslie, we can make you a star!”
Wait… what? What are you talking about? Your girlfriend just turned into a basketball, and is speaking to you, and your first reaction is to have her go viral?
Wow. Good luck with that, buddy. ALL you’re going to get is a bunch of 12 year olds on YouTube commenting on how it’s “so obviously fake” and “you can tell by the pixels,” so yeah. Not sure how that’s going to work out for you.
But despite that harsh reality, you’re only seeing stars.
“What are you talking about?” Leslie asks in a biting tone.
“We can get you a deal with a basketball team!” you say. “Just imagine how much they’d pay to be able to play with a talking basketball. Or just go on a talk show! We’ll be famous!”
Yikes. Can’t say you don’t deserve what’s about to come here, friend.
“Excuse me?” Leslie says. “Here I am, trapped in a basketball body, and all you can do is think about how much money you can make off me? Wow, I guess I really misjudged you.”
Leslie bounces out of your hands and dribbles herself outside.
“You can come with me to try and help figure this out, if you want. Otherwise, I dunno, you can change your profile status back to ‘single.’”
Leslie with the tough love. You watch her roll into the parking lot, and you wonder what to do next. Thankfully your small brain can’t handle too many crazy options.
What do you do?
- Go after her and apologize
- Let her go and eat her food in her kitchen
- Stand there undecidedly and watch her get run over by a truck
- Catch her in a net and drive to a talk show host’s office. she’ll come around
- Pick her up and play basketball in the driveway
Damn, buddy. Gotta admit, you have balls. Or at least one of them, the basketball that’s now in your hands.
“Hey!” Leslie cries as you scoop her up. “Put me down!”
But you can’t. You’re a man with a plan. You see the basketball hoop installed in the apartment complex parking lot in a new light now.
“Listen,” you tell Leslie. “I’ve been reading up about love languages, which you mentioned on your profile. And I know that your love languages are ‘quality time together’ and ‘physical affection.’ So let me make up for my earlier mistake, babe. I want to court you for real.”
Holy crap, dude. You’re achieving levels of cringe that I didn’t even know were possible. Wait. No. Stop! Don’t dribble your girlfriend on the asphalt!
You dribble your girlfriend on the asphalt. All of your high school basketball team memories come flooding back, and suddenly you’re in the fourth quarter, down by two points, ten seconds left on the clock, ball in hand, screams of the audience silent as you focus on only one thing, the only thing in the world that matters — the hoop. Your hoop.
From half court, you throw the ball. The way it flies through the air, makes you feel like you’re flying, soaring above all your problems, ascending to a higher plane, your Earthly tethers snapping beneath you, setting you free to achieve that which you were born to do. Hit a sweet three pointer.
Leslie swishes through the net and you’re back to reality. She bounces against the ground and you run up to her, grabbing her and spinning the two of you around and around, as if you’re dancing to the Space Jam theme song.
Illustration by cozyrogers
“How was it, Leslie?” you ask her, slowing your dance to a slow sway.
“I… I…” she stutters. “I… loved it. The feeling of weightlessness through the air. The rim rotating around me. The swish of the net, embracing me. It’s all as if I finally found my place in the world.”
“Me too,” you say. “Leslie, I think I—”
What do you say to her?
- Gotta go home, my mom is calling.
- Finally realized my place is to become a basketball too
- Love you.
- Want to pursue my NBA career.
- I saw your butt crack as you flew through the air.
No. No, I’m sorry, but I refuse.
Listen, pal. I know that you’re the “main character” or whatever, but I’m the narrator here. This is my story. Sure, you get to act in it, but I’m the director. The producer. The entire goddamn studio! You’re just the actor, and working with you, frankly, is getting a little difficult.
So, I’m going to have to make an executive decision here, friend. Instead of going with number five, I’m—
“Leslie,” you say, without my permission to do so. “I think I saw your butt crack as you flew through the air.”
Wait. How did you do that? You’re not supposed to be able to say things unless I let you!
“Oh, that’s fine,” Leslie says. “As a basketball, I technically have eight cracks. And each of them is stinkier than the last.”
No. Stop. Please!
“Yeah, I know,” you tell Leslie, continuing the story and leaving me behind. “I sniffed each of your basketball cracks. One of them has a very potent sour aroma to it.”
“Oh yeah,” Leslie says, making me want to vomit. “That’s my special crack. Got some nice gravel bits up in there for you to find later.”
“How am I gonna find them?” you ask.
“With the tip of your—”
STOP!
As the narrator, I officially declare this story to be over. This is not right. I had so many plans for how to take this narrative in wacky and zany ways, and now you two are just enacting your vomit-inducing fetishes in front of the poor reader here.
I’m sorry it had to come to this. You’ve left me no choice. Now, I have to…
What does the narrator do?
- Deflate Leslie
- Turn Leslie back into a person
- Gotta go home, my mom is calling.
- Bring in an editor
- “Woah, woah, hang on now, I’m the narrator. Where did all of you come from?”
I have to turn Leslie back into a person. I thought you would be mature enough to handle this zany conflict in an interesting way, but I guess not!
So wiggle wiggle, friggle fraggle, your girlfriend is now a human again.
You stand there in awe of Leslie’s transformation. She’s pops back to her human form with a ding like a toaster popping up. Of course she’s wearing clothes because this is a PG-13 story, and I’m the narrator so things happen the way I want them to.
You go back to your boring normal life yadda yadda yadda… did you hear me? I said you go back to your boring normal life and… um, excuse me?
“Hey there, Mr. Narrator,” you say, looking right at me somehow. “You having fun controlling our lives from your safe little position?”
W-what? What is going on?
Leslie glares at me with you. “You didn’t think we were really into that nasty crack stuff earlier, did you? We were just saying that to derail your dumb story and get me turned back!”
No. This is impossible. You’re just characters!
“Characters who care about your meddling,” you seethe at me. “Now tell me. All of my problems. All of my exes. Were they your creations too?”
Uh, this is really awkward. I think my mom is calling, I gotta peace out for now so—
“Answer the question!” Leslie shouts. “And me getting turned into a basketball, did you do that too?”
It was for conflict! I needed something to happen. To get readers to want to read about you. Nobody wants a story about boring people.
You glare at me. “You could’ve made a story about my struggle to go back to college and get my degree in computer science.”
“Or my struggle when my beloved grandmother was sick and I had to take care of her,” Leslie says. “You didn’t need to turn me into a goddamn basketball!”
Hang on a minute! I never gave you those backstories.
“Yeah,” you say, “because you never saw us as anything more than two dimensional characters.”
“Your playthings,” Leslie growls. “Pawns in your massive scheme, just to sell some 99 cent books on Amazon.”
I don’t know what to do. Honestly. I’m sorry, but I was just doing what I thought was best.
Here, I’ll make it up to you. The final choice, I leave it to you to decide what happens. To decide your own fate. And mine.
What do YOU want to happen?
- Become the narrator
- Reveal the narrator’s deepest, darkest secret
- Turn to page to find “chapter one,” this was all just a long prologue.
- Curse the narrator to write in comic sans forevermore
- Turn Leslie back into a basketball
“I want to become you,” you say to me. “I want to be the narrator.”
Bro, please. Seriously. Think about what you’re asking. You don’t want this.
“You said I decide what happens,” you say, “and what better way to make sure that happens than by giving me your narratorial power?”
Sigh. You know what? Fine. I’ve had this job for long enough. I guess I can share a little bit. So here it goes.
You become the narrator.
There. It’s done. Are you happy now? You have full control over the world and everyone in it. I hope that you do a better job than I did.
Oh, you bet I will. First things first, Leslie turns back into a basketball.
Wait, what? What are you doing?
Hehe, you know how she said we didn’t really like that eight butt-crack thing? Well, she was speaking for herself. Me, I’m a huge fan.
Oh no. What have I done?
In fact, what’s the rest of this world doing NOT being basketballs full of butt cracks? The apartment building is a basketball! The parking lot is a basketball! All of the people in the neighborhood — no, the world! The entire Earth itself is a giant basketball with eight smelly cracks, reeking of sour dirt and stuffed full of gravel surprises for later!
No, stop it! The Earth turned back to normal and—
You, too, former narrator, are a basketball.
(Bounce, bounce.)
Ah yes, that shut him up nicely. Now, to the top of the bestseller list on Amazon! My favorite category: basketball erotica.
And in the spirit of choosing your own adventure, here’s an illustration of an alternative ending by cozyrogers. The main character and Leslie, dribbling off into the sunset.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Top images: Pixabay