CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: GLORIOUS VICTORIAN EDITION (Part 1)
So it seems that a lot of people enjoyed ‘Choose Your Own Adventure: Depressing Reality Edition’, but complained that it didn’t feature enough moustaches or child poverty. Well consider the matter rectified, as I present:
Choose Your Own Adventure: Glorious Victorian Edition
1. You’re heading into town to buy pain relief pills for your dying cat, when you notice something is amiss: the skies have darkened with smog, the corpses of starved children litter the street, and the prostitutes have unrealistically slender waists. There is a strong atmosphere of vigour and delusion. Congratulations, you’ve stumbled into Victorian Times!
a) Fuck. (Go to part 5)
b) If I walk down the street backwards, perhaps I’ll return to a less horrifying era. (Go to part 7)
c) Splendid! What an errant joy to be alive in such industrious times! (Go to part 3)
2. You take off your clothes, standing in the cold autumnal road with your genitals fully exposed. A local preacher accosts you and performs a street exorcism, before taking you to his residence to get warm. You sit in front of a warm fire sipping delicious cocoa. (Go to part 4)
3. That’s it! No use for sad thoughts or objective reasoning in such a wondrous place! But you need to fit the part: your soiled t-shirt and knock-off Adidas trainers are starting to arouse suspicion. If you are a woman (or hippy), you quickly shear off your hair using a shard of glass from the remains of a local Jewish storefront. You’ll fare much better passing as a gent!
Now, time for some Victorian dressware.
a) I believe I shall perambulate toward the nearest retailer in search of attire. (Go to part 6)
b) There’s no time! I shall beat a well-dressed beggar senseless and wear their clothes! The poor don’t need them! (Go to part 8)
c) Fuck, fuck it, I’m not playing along with this, the Victorian period was one of the bleakest ages in history and there’s no point in even trying. I’m going to get completely naked, seeing as anything I do will only result in my death anyhow. (Go to part 2)
4. Unfortunately he sneaks up from behind and decapitates you, selling your headless torso to a local medical establishment. Your heart winds up on display at the museum of natural sciences, whilst your soul is stored for all eternity in a haunted music box.
GO BACK TO THE START
5. Jolly bad show! Such negativity is unsuited to such a marvellous age! In fact, your well-founded pessimism is so out of keeping with the ‘can-do’, ‘can-enslave’ spirit of the Victorians that they mindlessly turn on you, forming a braying mob which quickly tears your body to pieces.
GO BACK TO START.
6. “Good day to you good sir,” says the well-mustachio’d retail man. “I assume you shall be wanting some fine attire to replace your soiled space-man clothes, do you not? Why not step into my back chambers, where we shall measure you up for the finest of garments?” (Go to part 4)
7. You begin your backwards walk, being careful not to trip over the myriad of cheerful beggars and discarded corsets. Perhaps this will work! You can hear bells! You can feel yourself returning to the 21st century, you can feel -
Unfortunately the bell belonged to a tram. Though the driver had plenty of time to halt his vehicle, your unkempt appearance and strange manners convinced him that he should increase the velocimetre and end your slovenly existence. He cheerfully wipes away pieces of your brain with an embroidered handkerchief.
GO BACK TO START.
8. Huzzah! The worthless street urchin lies in a bloodied pulp at your feet. Good thing you found that leaden pipe on the ground! You strip the battered corpse of its clothes and put them on, wiping the bloodstains away with your spit. You catch your reflection in a shop window. Dapper! Dapper indeed!
But you shall need some profession for your industrious new life!
a) A preacher! The Lord guides the Empire, after all! (Go to part 10)
b) A schoolteacher! Young minds need shaping! (Go to Part 13)
c) A politician! You shall whip the country into shape! (Go to part 11)
9. The public are a tiresome breed, always complaining about living in squalid conditions and working in dangerous mills. Or at least, they would be if you paid any sort of attention to them. Thankfully Parliament comes with some very high and spiky fences, and enough policemen to murder a whole village of Yorkshiremen. But you really should do something, you have a legacy to promote!
a) Create some sort of Welfare Bill, to provide for the needy. (Go to part 16)
b) Press for the invasion of France! The French cannot be tolerated! (Go to part 18)
c) No time for such things – you have had a tiring day and are in need of a strumpet! (Go to part 19)
10. The good Lord has guided you to a righteous path – or more precisely, to the path of the local vicarage. Due to your impressive credentials (you have the ability to both read and write) you are given a position in the Church right away, presiding over the small Parish of Nithworp South.
After some days the poverty of your Parish begins to unnerve you: the local charitable foundation ‘Ladies of Nithworp’s Honourable Relief of the Worthy Poor’ is only active once per year, when there is a sale of baked goods – an event which raises thruppence. You decide to take matters into your own hands, forming a non-conformist Church aimed at political reform toward the relief of the poor.
a) Splendid! I shall travel to Westminster to lobby Members of Parliament toward this end – I just need some coffers from the Pauper’s Relief Jar to fund my journey. (Go to part 11)
b) I shall stay in my Parish and do what I can for the poor souls here. I cannot abandon them at such a time! (Go to part 14)
c) THE LORD SPEAKS THROUGH ME ALONE. I MUST BE WORSHIPPED AS ONE OF HIS ANGELS (Go to part 17)
11. Upon arrival in London you make friends with Sir Alfred Kettle Prince Pennyworth, Esq., and make a firm bond based on your mutual admiration of steam engines. He promises to introduce you to the Empire’s political elite, and together you embark upon a series of increasingly costly luncheons and after-supper-meals, all funded via various sinister and nefarious means.
You begin to worry that you have been corrupted. But fear not, for Sir Alfred Kettle Prince Pennyworth, Esq. has made the proper connexions for your pursuit of politics. You are handed a rotten borough, and thanks to a thorough canvassing of its three (deceased) residents you are elected to Parliament! (Go to part 9)
13. You begin the worthy and noble work of educating the poor, working at one of the nation’s most impoverished Public Schools, attempting to teach 15 year-olds to write their own names. Though you meet with many disappointing failures, you do succeed in catching tuberculosis, and you are placed with little fanfare into a pauper’s grave.
The school is then made into a brothel. The students never leave.
GO BACK TO START.
14. Your increasing conviction that the Empire rests upon the backs of the poor leads you toward Marxist Socialist doctrines. In your Parish you find many allies, some of whom have been gathering arms. Though as a man of the cloth you abhor the use of violence to achieve your lofty aims, you become increasingly sympathetic to the notion of armed revolt. And why not? United you stand, divided you fall! You shall declare the independent republic of Nithworp South, under your direction as a man of God!
The insurrection lasts twenty-three minutes, during which you (alongside every man, woman and child within 20 miles) are hung by the British military. The town of Nithworp South is burned to the ground, and due to a particularly spectacular royal gala occurring that very weekend, no mention of the uprising is made in any newspaper. Congratulations, you died a forgotten martyr!
GO BACK TO START.
15. YOU PREACH THE TRUTH OF GOD UPON THE TRAIN CARRIAGE, UNTIL A MAN OFFERS YOU SOME SORT OF POWDERED SEDATIVE.
You feel a little better. The angels leave your brain. (Go to part 11)
16. Due to your nonsense suggestion of ‘alleviating poverty’ your party begin to fear for your mental health. Your cranium is measured and you are found to be a lunatic. You are placed in one of the nation’s illustrious asylums, where you spend the rest of your days being electrocuted and eating nothing but pickled ham.
Could be worse.
GO BACK TO START.
17. THE WORLD IS UNRIGHTOUS, THE SINFUL PROWL THE STREETS AND WICKEDNESS LIVES IN MEN’S HEARTS. ONLY YOURSELF – AS AN ANGELIC BASTION OF THE SAVIOUR – CAN HELP CLEANS THIS CORRUPT AND FALLEN WORLD.
YOU EMBARK UPON AN EXPEDITION TO LONDON, THE CENTRE OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE AND THEREFORE CENTRE OF ALL NAUGHTINESS. YOU SHALL BE CROWNED A HOLY KING!
(Go to part 15)
18. Splendid! France shall pay for its being so relentlessly full of the French! The newspapers are behind you, and every party applauds your rousing speech to Parliament. France is caught in a cunning surprise attack on their northern coast, and not a single child is spared the glorious bayonets of the Empire! (Go to part 20)
19. Wonderful! You feel most rejuvenated! You throw a farthing at the sobbing prostitute and throw her out by the hair.
Now for a good old invasion of France! (Go to part 18)
20. Congratulations! You are quickly becoming a favourite of the Victorian age! The press and political elite adore you, and you are starting to catch the eye of the most chaste of dutchesses. You’re going to like it here!
COME BACK SATURDAY FOR ‘CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: GLORIOUS VICTORIAN EDITION PART II’
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