What I find quite comical about the whole idea of the Choose Your Own Adventure genre of literature is the seemingly multitude of endings which you can engage in, however, each ending is essentially the same. In my limited experience with this genre of book there are really only two endings that readers can enjoy, the right one, and the wrong one. The right ending is usually one which involves completing the task which you were asked to do, and the wrong ending, to put it as bluntly as possible, almost always ends in your death. This presents an interesting situation for the reader. When arriving at an undesired ending, the reader has a couple of options. The reader can decide to quit reading, leaving the book unfulfilled or “rewind” the pages and continue reading on the correct path. This leads me to question the nature of the CYOA genre. Are you really choosing your own adventure? Sure, the reader is able to determine the fate of the character, but when the endings are presented as essentially right and wrong answers, the reader is not really presented with the opportunity to “choose their own adventure.”

            Considering our reading of Avatars of Story and the various forms of interactivity one can pin point where in the spectrum of interactivity books like Master of Tae Kwon Do lie. This particular CYOA book is an internal one, where the reader is in the shoes of the main character. This is the opposite of the external format, where the reader is outside the action of the character. “They either play the role of a god who controls the virtual world from above, or they conceptualize their own activity as a navigating database.” (Avatars, pg 108) In terms of the ontological vs. exploratory interactivity, this particular CYOA book falls more within ontological side of the spectrum. The choices that are made by the reader directly affect the reality of the characters in the story, changing how things end up and how the story unfolds in general. “His actions determine the fate of the avatar, and by extension, the fate of the virtual world. Every run of the system produces a new life, and consequently a new life story for the avatar.” (Avatars, pg 116) The combination of the internal-ontological aspects of interactivity makes for an interesting combination in terms of the CYOA genre of literature.