Wayback Wednesday #12: 2011

For this week’s Wayback Wednesday, we’re going back to 2011 to talk about 1000 Ways to Kill Carter and its companion, Revenge of the Slaughtered: Nick Strikes Back – probably the cruelest pair fanfics I’ve been a part of, but also some of the most fun!

Title: 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter

Written: August 2011 – present

Straightforward synopsis: A group of fanfic writers attempt to (fictionally) kill Nick Carter in 1000 different ways.

The story behind the story:
1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter is yet another collaboration spawned from the twisted mind of my dear friend Rose. The day I posted Chapter 77 of Curtain Call, it sparked a conversation on Twitter about how many of us like to kill and torture Nick in our fanfics. That gave Rose the idea to start a round robin-style collaboration of short stories in which Nick dies in as many different ways as possible, like Kenny in South Park.

I just had an epic idea. Who’d be up for a round robin of short stories we can all write/contribute about Nick and the ways he’s killed? LOL

— Rose 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️ (@ForeverRebel) August 1, 2011

I was on board from the beginning, as I have the same twisted sense of humor as Rose, and torturing Nick in fanfic is basically my favorite hobby. We decided to call the story 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter, after the TV show 1000 Ways to Die, which was all about the random, strange, and sometimes funny ways real people have died.

This story came together amazingly quickly. Within a matter of hours, Rose made a banner, wrote the first death, posted it on Absolute Chaos, and recruited more writers to add on to it. Twenty-four hours after the story went live, we already had the first ten deaths done. It only grew in popularity over the next week, as more and more writers who weren’t even part of the original Twitter conversation joined the project and added more parts. Then, ten days in, one of them accidentally deleted the entire story off AC, and we had to start over. Thankfully, most of us had saved our chapters and were able to repost them, but the order of deaths changed based on the order we reposted them. My first death was originally #3, but upon reposting, it became #14.

So far, I’ve written eight deaths for the story. Most of them were inspired by jokes or current events. My first death, “Don’t Mess With the World’s Most Poisonous Mammal,” involves Nick getting stung by a platypus because I had just learned that male platypuses have spurs on their hind legs that secrete venom, which causes excruciating pain in its victims. The platypus is already the most random animal ever, but add in the fact that such a cute, seemingly harmless little critter could also be dangerous, and I had the perfect recipe for a Nick death.

The second one, “Jungle Fever,” combines the NKOTBSB tour, which was going on at the time, with ebola, which I’ve always been fascinated by and never thought I would be able to incorporate into a fanfic. But the fun thing about this story is, the deaths don’t have to be particularly realistic. Anything goes!

My third death, “Let’s Get Fired Up!” is one of my favorites. It was inspired by Nick’s song “Burning Up,” which is also one of my favorites. It’s one of the most simple and straight-forward deaths I’ve written for this story: Nick literally burns to death when the recording booth catches on fire while he’s laying down vocals for that song. It’s brutal, but then again, so is this story. Making the deaths as horrific and gory as possible, while retaining the element of black humor, is part of the challenge.

My fourth death, “The Cold Don’t Last Forever,” was inspired by a post from the site Damn You, Autocorrect where someone had tried to say they were eating a frozen pizza, but autocorrect changed it to “frozen paraplegic.” I had also just watched the horror movie “Frozen” (2010), which is not the one with Anna and Elsa, but the one where Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers, and Emma Bell get stuck on a ski lift. I stole some ideas from that movie in my quest to turn Nick into a frozen paraplegic.

My fifth death, “Bang, Bang, Choo-Choo Train” is probably my favorite one. It was written during the summer of 2012, when the Boys were living together in London and recording the In a World Like This Album. I love Harry Potter, so I killed Nick at King’s Cross Station. The title, “Bang, Bang, Choo-Choo Train,” comes from my favorite lyric of “Hologram,” which has always been my jam.

My sixth death, “This Is Nuts!” was inspired by a news article I read about a squirrel in Los Angeles County testing positive for the bacteria that causes bubonic plague. Bubonic plague, or the Black Death, is right up there with ebola for me, as far as horrifying, yet morbidly fascinating diseases go. As soon as I read the article, I thought, “There’s another Nick death!”

My seventh death, “The Hands That Feed the Ones Who Plead,” was inspired by some of the strange and obnoxious people I’ve come across in this fandom, who shall remain nameless. If you were around prior to 2014, when I wrote it, you may recognize some of them. I also referenced Samara in “The Ring,” as one of the crazies crawled straight of Nick’s computer to kill him.

My latest death, “Butterfingers,” was inspired by Nick’s posts about being on the ketogenic diet and working out. But more on that one in a future blog.

It wasn’t long after we started 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter that we got the idea to write a spin-off in which Nick get revenge on the fanfic writers who have killing him over and over again by brutally killing them in return. We called it Revenge of the Slaughtered: Nick Strikes Back.

Some of the chapters in Revenge of the Slaughtered are directly connected to chapters in 1000 Ways, targeting the writers of those deaths, while others are more random. Some of the fans who die were based on real people who had volunteered to be killed by Nick Carter; the rest are purely fictional. I got murdered, dismembered, and blown to bits in Kill #13, “Baby You’re a Firework,” written by my friend Sarah.

Of course, I’ve also written a few kills of my own. My favorite is a Grinch parody called “How Nick Carter Killed Fanfic,” in which Nick seeks to destroy Absolute Chaos by taking out its moderator and most popular author, Mare.

The contribution of mine people seem to remember most is “Recipe for Revenge,” which was actually my first kill. (The Grinch parody is numbered earlier, but it was posted to take the place of another chapter that someone else had written and then deleted.) This story features Nick choking and dismembering a reader of mine named Marguerite, whom he then bakes into muffins (while singing “Do you know the muffin man?”) and feeds to her dog. It was inspired by an inside joke about magic muffins.

When the Boys were in London working on In a World Like This, I wrote “Nick the Ripper,” where Nick murders my friend and fellow writer Steph, Jack the Ripper style. It was inspired by a real Instagram post from AJ with a picture of Nick wearing a fake mustache.

I wrote “Blood Diamond” after Nick and Lauren got engaged in real life. In the story, before Nick proposes to Lauren, he uses the giant diamond engagement ring he bought for her to slit my friend and fellow writer Tracy’s throat as revenge for Tracy killing him at his wedding reception in 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter.

The last three and probably most disturbing deaths I’ve written for this story are a trilogy called “Kitt Fit Kill,” in which Nick meets three unsuspecting fans at the gym and brings them back to his house to murder in horrific ways, while mocking Nick and Lauren’s “Kitt Fit” campaign. The first one Nick gives “liposuction” by sucking out her internal organs with a vacuum. The second he helps lose weight by chopping off her head and limbs. The third he helps “burn calories” by catching her on fire as revenge for the “Let’s Get Fired Up!” death in 1000 Ways. This one also spoofs Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.

It’s a little scary how much I enjoy writing Nick as a serial killer, but it’s surprisingly fun. Of course, so is killing him repeatedly in 1000 Ways. Throughout the summer and fall of 2011, it was a nice release to be able to write something silly while I was “seriously” killing him in Curtain Call. Whenever I’m feeling stuck with my other stories or rusty because I haven’t written in awhile, writing something for one of these is a good way to get out of my rut and get the creative juices flowing again. I’ve written some really brutal, violent, and gory stuff for these two stories, but none of it is meant to be taken seriously. I think you have to have a dark and twisted sense of humor to appreciate it, though. For those who do and have given feedback on these stories – thanks!

It’s been awhile since either of them has been updated (and we are still far from hitting 1000 ways), so if you’re interested in contributing on Absolute Chaos, please do!