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John Dies at the End

A guy, another guy, soy sauce, a bunch of jerks, and reality-scouring wig-monsters from another dimension. You know, very postmodern.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/jdate/intro.html

The seminal online novel, available for your purusal and emulation. An immensely awesome story, best described as Unknown Armies vs. Call of Cthulhu, starring Shaun (of the Dead) and Ash (of S-Mart).

“In the course of solving the following riddle, you will either reveal the terrifying secret at the very core of existence, or go utterly mad in the attempt.

Let’s say you have an ax. The kind that you could use, in a pinch, to hack a man’s head off. And let’s say that very situation comes up and for some very solid reasons you behead a man. On the follow-through, though, the handle of the ax snaps in half in a spray of splinters. So the next day you take it to the ax store down the block and get a new handle, fabricating a story for the guy behind the counter and explaining away the reddish dark stains as barbeque sauce.

Now, that next spring you find in your garage a creature that looks like a cross-bred badger and anaconda. A badgerconda. And so you grab your trusty ax and chop off one of the beast’s heads, but in the process the blade of the ax strikes the concrete floor and shatters.

This means another trip to McMillan & Sons Ax Mart. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year. He’s also got a new head attached and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last Spring” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.

You brandish your ax. He takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “that’s the same ax that slayed me!”

Is he right?”

This question is, incidentally, vital to the story.

3 thoughts on “John Dies at the End

  1. pedant says:

    You think that is a tricky question… that is only formal or material identity. It’s personal identity that is liable to send you utterly insane.

    Reply
  2. privateI says:

    >>>>It’s personal identity that is liable to send you utterly insane.

    It’s not knowing when to divest yourself of that will make you flip.

    Reply
  3. KriegsaffeNo9 says:

    Heh. Personal identity comes up too. There’s a very good example of a Rank-10 Self check at the chapter right before the epilogue.

    Reply

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