What has become most apparent in reflecting back on my posts is my propensity to focus on reader response in reference to digital literature. I think this is interesting specifically because in my normal analysis of literature, I usually stray away from reader-response theory as a methodology.
I was particularly interested in this first in “My Body” by Shelley Jackson (which, in retrospect I thought was American novelist SHIRLEY Jackson). The idea of tactility through the digital interface, specifically in rendering disembodiment, I felt exemplified Jackson’s larger critique of the “digital body”. There is a kind of prosthetic alignment between the body and technology that my posts explored, and ultimately, so too did my tracery project.
I disliked games like “Dakota” and “Queers in Love at the End of The World” because they lacked the kind of interactivity that I felt was enjoyable. I also notably disliked games that were anti-user (i.e games that made analysis difficult due to their game mechanics). In this vein, I was concerned with the material surroundings of the reader’s interaction with these works. My blog post regarding Her Story reflected this interest in empathy building through interactive games and I particularly was impressed by the work’s ability to engage the reader’s humane instincts and perceptive abilities in its storytelling.
My posts therefore, and with much consistency, analyzed the nature of readership in electronic literature. I think part of the reason why I zoned in on empathy and reader-response was because initially I had a hard time paying attention to the works on my computer. I found I clicked through some of them without really looking for their subtleties. I’m pretty anti-ebook for reasons of distraction and I think some of those prejudices flooded by engagement with digital works. I feel like this changed as I grew more invested in the works, particularly the ones like “Her Story” that placed more importance on the reader’s analytical faculties.