Don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story



don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story is a 2011 Visual Novel by Christine Love, creator of Digital: A Love Story.

Set in the year 2027, the protagonist is a middle-aged guy called John Rook who, in the midst of a nasty mid-life crisis, switches careers and becomes a high school English Literature teacher. His new school has a zero-tolerance policy on bullying, and to help facilitate this, Rook is (discreetly) given complete and total access to the school's social networking service, including all the private messages of his students.

Can Rook sort out his own personal problems, learn to be a good teacher to his students and keep the lid on his voyeurism?

"Nolan: She really is that retarded about other people's feelings."
 * All Lowercase Letters: The title.
 * Alpha Bitch: Taylor.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Nolan. He says he's just dating to make him happy and have a friend, but it's not clear how much he means it.
 * Arc Words: "That's it for the day. Well... as far as classes go, anyway."
 * Author Appeal: The reason for Cast Full of Gay
 * The Rant: And be prepared to hear plenty of reasons why high school English is awful.
 * Big Brother Is Watching: And his name is Mr. Rook. As it turns out,.
 * Bilingual Bonus: Akira's mom posts on AmieConnect on the topic of in Japanese.
 * Though not in a very natural-sounding way.
 * Blue and Orange Morality:
 * Book Dumb: Most of the class is doing pretty badly in John's class, and it's probably not all due to his inexperience and the frequent distractions from his actual job..
 * Brain Bleach: John's normal reaction to thinking about his students having sex.
 * Brand X: AmieConnect is totally not Facebook, and 12channel is totally not 4chan (and not 12chan either, you perv)! Amusingly,.
 * Almost averted by virtue of Did Not Do the Research in some cases.
 * Brilliant but Lazy: Implied with Kendall. Then again, it was on the topic of Battle Royale...
 * But Thou Must!: The VN stops you at several points and forces you to lurk on 12channel. It does the same thing if you don't read a plot-relevant status update or message soon enough.
 * Camp Gay: Akira.
 * Cast Full of Gay: Even lampshaded in a message by Taylor
 * Chekhov's Gunman: shows up as the only non-student on AmieConnect long before she actually has a significant role in the plot.
 * Clingy Jealous Girl: Taylor, who says some... not-terribly-nice things in pursuit of Nolan.
 * Cool Teacher: Rooks.
 * Depraved Homosexual: Inverted. The gays in the class are, for the most part, quite sane and well-adjusted, while the heteros have all sorts of emotional issues.
 * Establishing Series Moment: The moment John Rook comes into class and introduces himself, the students begin discussing him online.
 * Expy: Berserker from Fate/Zero revived as a man who avoided people until teaching english literature, just look at John Rook, seems berserker still has his regrets.
 * Four Point Scale: The student grades get pushed into this after they're off your desk, so the school will not lose funding.
 * Foreshadowing: The 12channel posts and the books Rooks teaches always reflect what's going on with the students.
 * Genki Boy: Akira
 * Genki Girl: Kendall, who also brings this out in Charlotte.
 * Gratuitous Japanese: Akira calls one of his mothers “Mom” and the other “Ka-san” (Japanese equivalent to “Mom”)
 * Greek Chorus: AmieConnect. A rare example where all of the characters serve as the Greek Chorus for each other.
 * 12channel. And while everyone's anonymous, it appears that some of the characters post on there as well.
 * Has Two Mommies: Akira is stated to have a mother and another mother.
 * High School Dance: The plot of chapter 6.
 * Hot Teacher: John Rook is extremely well preserved for being nearly forty years old, a fact that does not go unnoticed by the students.
 * If It's You It's Okay: Nolan finally settles on this when it comes to his relationship with.
 * Image Boards: Mr. Rook is a lurker on 12channel, and several cast members are heavily implied to be participating. Imageboard culture mostly hasn't changed over the course of 16 years.
 * It's All About Me: Taylor.
 * It's All About Me: Taylor.

": Well, don't take it personally, babe, but... Rook: I know what you're going to say: but it's not my story, right?
 * Lampshade Hanging: Rooks rants to about how much of a Cliche she's being.
 * Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The literature discussions and 12channel threads relate to the story. For bonus points, one of the first discussions is about the use of Show Within a Show in the Book Within A Show.
 * Subverted in the case of.
 * Leet Lingo: Kendall converses primarily in chanspeak. This is heavily lampshaded in an AmieConnect conversation about how conversations between her and Akira turn out utterly incomprehensible.
 * Long Title: It can't be displayed in full when you're installing the game.
 * Limited Wardrobe: Akira wears the same shirt several days in a row.
 * May-December Romance: A 16/17-year old with a 38-year old.
 * Manipulative Bitch:
 * Meta Fiction: Both the books on the curriculum and the anime 12channel foreshadow important events. And just to make things double-meta, Rooks even discusses metafiction in one of his classes.
 * Moral Dissonance: It's wrong to be a homophobe and/or a bully but to
 * See Blue and Orange Morality
 * Multiple Reference Pun:
 * Mythology Gag: "J. Rook" was the administrator of the Lake City Local BBS board in Digital: A Love Story. He even acknowledges that his last job was "with computers".
 * Nonuniform Uniform: Appearantly, nobody cares about the dresscode.
 * No Periods, Period: Averted in the ending with Kendall and Charlotte.
 * The Not-Secret:
 * Obligatory Joke: On the forum, Christine Love said, "“All I ask is if you don't like it, come on, at least make the obvious joke ;)”. This paid off amusingly in this review, in which the reviewer observes the similarities between Rook's Backstory and his own.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Yes, you can give one to.
 * Schoolgirl Lesbians: Kendall and Charlotte, though the latter seems to call herself pansexual.
 * Secret Keeper: Taylor, for Arianna.
 * Shared Universe: With Christine Love's other game, Digital: A Love Story, which is set in the Lake City of 1988. Turns out Digital even features a brief appearance by Eriko Yamazaki, Akira's grandmother and author of some of the books Mr. Rook assigns. (Confusingly, there's also a "J. Rook", despite how young that would make John; perhaps his father?)
 * : It starts stalking you after the death of.
 * Shipper on Deck: That could be you, depending on what advice you give to the various members of the resident Love Nonagon.
 * Shout-Out: Rook: "Nothing's really changed at all since then? 'Things aren't different; things are things.' Is that it?"
 * Rook uses Battle Royale, Twelfth Night, and Hiroshi Ishizaki's Chain Mail: Addicted to You as part of the curriculum.
 * "Now if only I could get you to go all the way with the Eliza Doolittle thing."
 * The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Sailor Moon in 12chan.
 * Snark Knight / Little Miss Snarker: Kendall, oh so much.
 * Stalker with a Crush: Arianna. Ok, not dangerous, but pretty annoying.
 * Stoic Spectacles: Rooks.
 * Stylistic Suck: The students and 12channers do not necessarily type with perfect grammar.
 * Teacher-Student Romance: You can have a fairly platonic one with Arianna or you can dive right into it and make out with her in chapter one.
 * Title Drop: During dialogue between Rook and in one of the endings.
 * Played with a bit, in fact:
 * No, that's stupid. Why would I say that?"


 * Too Soon: An In-Universe example. After one of the students, Rooks decides that Romeo and Juliet would be rather inappropriate material, and switches to Twelfth Night at the last minute.
 * Transparent Closet: One of the characters realizes he's gay end works up the courage to come out. When he does, everyone else is surprised it took him this long.
 * Two-Teacher School: We get some evidence of there being other teachers and classes in the school, but Mr. Rook and his class are the only ones to have portraits or speaking lines.
 * Umbrella of Togetherness: Arianna's first attempt to get with Rook.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy: Nolan.
 * You Bastard: Subverted, or perhaps zig-zagged. You're set up to think, when in fact.
 * You Fail Linguistics Forever: Slang changes almost constantly, the way the students talk and the conversations on 12channel wouldn't look as they do. It would have evolved onto something else.
 * Shocking to see this from a creator so obsessed with English as well.