Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum as an emergency). If (s)he makes one of these choices the book will break the fourth wall and demand that the reader turns back and choose a better option, or sometimes simply end the whole book then and there. This literary trope is characteristic of many late 20th century Western works of metafiction. It is also worth noting that the main character is never named and is usually of ambiguous gender; therefore the reader can easily imagine himself or herself as the main character regardless of what sex he or she is, however, sometimes the occasional "he" slips through. There is, however, a "friend character" who is named and given a gender, these characters are normally present throughout the storyline. The only thing linking the main character in each story is that they are self-proclaimed "Goosebumps Experts". Endings Because of the choices and page connections, there are many ways the story can end. These vary depending on which book is being read, but largely the endings involve the reader's character dying, permanently metamorphosing into something other than human, getting trapped somewhere inescapable (implying that one will die eventually), being put in a state of immobility such as becoming a statue, or - if the correct choices are met - surviving the story. The ending pages are the only ones which have no choices, and simply have the words "The End" where the choices would usually be. Occasionally it will just say "End" because it is supposed to be part of the final sentence, or it will say something else appropriate. There are also endings that combine the above options, such as being mutated, and then being killed because of whatever it is they are now or an almost "good" ending in which - despite the reader's metamorphosis - the ending is still relatively satisfying, in The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eeek, the reader can metamorphose into a dog if the wrong choice is chosen, but still gets home in one ending, albeit stuck in dog form. Not all bad choices will take the reader to a bad ending immediately; instead, they will sometimes take the reader to another page which has its own choices, but all of them will lead to a bad ending - this is because a previous choice has put the reader in an inescapable situation, where there is no chance