My blog posts throughout the past fifteen weeks have changed quite a bit, nevertheless, I consistently wrote about the assigned game or reading in association with a broader social implication rather it be historical, socio-political, or our collective current moment. Specifically, I note how some historical combinatory poetics innovations might not be as relatable to our current historical moment as they might have been in the mid-20th century, and I explore how this global pandemic requires a shifting of lenses for which to examine many of our topics of study such as the Sublime which might mean something different to us in quarantine than it did when sublimity felt closer to our everyday realities.
Thematically speaking, many of my posts focus on the lack of control and frustration of electronic literature more recently form the dysfunctionality unit that relies on the reader/players lack of control and understanding. Even with multiple plays of A Perfect World, I note the difficulty of “the reader to distinguish between what they are seeing and reading and what is happening or not happening” (Blog 5). In addition to this unit, Andrew Plotkin’s Shade, I believe quite unanimously frustrated our class such that for many of the literary-leaning students, including myself, we are quite unfamiliar with the idea of “call words” that progress the game further. Therefore, we experienced a frustrating learning curve that leads to an extremely stagnant game. I ask about this frustration with digital literature: “if the learning curve is from learning a new process of reading (that is, electronically) or rather learning how to play a new game in order to facilitate reading?” (Blog 2). Frustration, as it relates to electronic literature, then is a topic I continued to explore throughout most of the course.
My blog posts have noticeably changed from an academic approach to a more speculative one in nature. It seems as though I became more comfortable posing questions, maybe not having definite answers, and coming to conclusions tentatively rather than decidedly. For instance, in my first post, I interact with Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck in an academically formal methodology whereas by the time I discuss the sublime in the fourth post I rely on the traditional literary discourse of form and content but in a more speculative and questioning way. This shift, I believe, can be potentially attributed to the rupture of the on-campus semester which engendered a different landscape and thus mindscape for analysis that is not necessarily traditional or influenced by the same kind of constant classroom rigor.