Kill Joy

Pip is the protagonist of the text. Through the fictional murder-mystery game, Pip hones her investigative skills, deciding at the end of the text to use them to solve another lingering mystery in her town of Fairview, Connecticut.

At the beginning of the text, Pip is a bit of a killjoy herself: “Sure, she hadn’t seen her friends all together in weeks, and maybe this would be fun. But she had work waiting for her at home, and fun, after all, was just a waste of time” (2). Pip struggles to let go and enjoy herself, viewing typical teenage activities like hanging out with her friends as a “waste of time.” This establishes Pip as a serious person, one whose focus is hard to tear away from what she deems important. It is not until the game is underway that Pip realizes that she can approach the game like another task to accomplish: “Maybe solving murders wasn’t too different from homework after all. She could feel herself falling headfirst into it, the rest of the world fading out” (31).

Once Pip’s perception of the game changes, she goes into investigator mode and fixates on solving the mystery.