After going through my blog posts, I noticed that I wrote about the digital literature we studied in relation to other topics we discussed in class and my own experiences. One common theme I noticed in some of my blog posts is how electronic literature compares to printed literature. Digital literature allows for much more interactivity and outcomes that printed literature cannot. On the other hand, printed storytelling offers more detailed storytelling. I also wrote about my reactions to certain games, such as Shade and Bury me, my Love. With Shade, I was unable to find the right commands to move forward in the game. I was relying on trial and error but was unable to explore my surroundings more, such as get a glass of water. On the other hand, I enjoyed Bury me, my Love because it felt like you were actually texting someone on your phone. The story’s dialogue was natural and the use of photos and emojis made the game feel personal.

My understanding of electronic literature changed significantly from the start of the semester. Before this class, I was not familiar with electronic literature at all. As I learned more about electronic literature over the course of the semester, my blog posts included more references to topics we discussed in class such as the uncanny and the sublime as well as combinatory poetics. Instead of simply stating my reaction to a game, my posts included more connections to broader themes as the semester progressed.

In my very first post of the semester, all the way back in January, I discussed how, unlike traditional literature, electronic literature cannot be confined to a narrow definition. It has too many various affordances and forms to be easily labeled and sorted away. Over the course of the semester, I think that I have found this to become even more true.

The next two posts speak of very different works- Shade and procedurally generated literature. One thing that has surprised me throughout the semester is the inclusion of works like Shade into the curriculum. Many times, these works feel more like games than literary works that we should be studying for a class. (I did make an explicit comparison to the work Game, Game, Game, and Again Game to the video game platformer Mario in my final post.)  However, I do think they have merit, and I have really enjoyed studying them.

Both these works provide a poignant example of the ways in which electronic literature differs greatly from traditional literature, which is something I’ve been interested in throughout the course. With Shade, and works like it, the player has a direct influence on the story. While the plot does not change (although in other works it can!), the player is given free rein to explore the environment and progress at their own pace. In contrast, with the procedurally generated works, their vastness is not something that can be replicated in traditional literature. Further, it is often the reader that interprets the work and gives it meaning because there is no authorial intent.

Over the course of the semester, my understanding of electronic literature has been greatly expanded, and the ways in which I can analyze these types of works have also changed significantly. Coming into this class, I didn’t even really have a sense of what electronic is. While I still don’t think I could define it, this comes more from the genre itself being so vast rather than a lack of understanding.

Thinking back on my blog post for this class I noticed a pattern in discussing the properties of electronic literature. The usual darkness that exists in most of the pieces we’ve seen, the mundane and the creepy, the interactive fiction and navigating an undefined space. And in which category do we place these; are they pieces of art, of literature or are they video games?

My first post focused primarily on the importance of authority, control and power in these works of IF. Is it the reader/viewer/gamer or is it the author/game engineer/plot of story? In my second post I definitely focused on “the dark, the mysterious and the futuristic”. A lot of the works and games that we visited, such as My Body – A Wunderkammer or Howling Dogs are characterised by the unknown, the unsettling darkness and the futuristic/sci-fi thriller. These definitely influenced my Tracery project but also reminded me of many other digital study courses where we heavily discussed such topics. My third and fourth posts focused a lot on works such as The Flat and Her Story, where the line between game and art gets blurry. We talked a lot about associating these pieces of works with something that we would see in a modern art museum and the artist’s/creator’s/writer’s meaning behind the game or art work that is left to be explore in the vast field of the internet.

I think that I would strongly attribute my strong intriguing of viewing  this type of literature and works with a more dark and spooky perspective probably because of the previous connection I have made from other digital study classes that involved futuristic worlds. I think it would have been interesting if I had started off with a clean slate and had to try and figure out what else these works could be representations of.

One theme I had in my blog posts was external or personal connections to our class material. Four of my blog posts or comments focused on these connections. In my first blog post titled, “Why would you read a book twice?”, I wrote about Choose Your Own Adventure books and my personal experience reading them as a child. I attributed my obsession with them to their competitive, adventurous qualities. In another blog post called, “Combinatory Tweets: “Slotted” Technique vs. Markov Chain”, I wrote about an external connection to combinatory writing. The external connection was a Markov chain called Automatic Donald Trump. In my post, I described Automatic Donald Trump as a “site that allows you to generate a realistically fake tweet by Donald Trump with just the click of a button.” This external connection was also a personal connection because a friend showed it to me. The third post, which focused on an external connection to our class topics, was a comment replying to a classmate post about COVID-19 and its sublime qualities. This is entirely an external connection to the topic of sublime. I recalled a personal experience from my trip home from Davidson, “When my friend and I crossed the George Washington bridge last week, there was no traffic. What normally takes us an entire hour took under a minute.” Lastly, in my most recent blog post titled, “Texting: Careless or Purposeful”, I made multiple connections with the outside world and the game, Bury Me My Love. The game Bury Me My Love has the format of a text conversation. In the post I explained how when you’re playing there is distance between yourself and the character you’re playing which reminded me of cat-fishing. The one post that didn’t revolve around external connection was a comment I made on a classmates post about Shade by Andrew Plotkin. I wrote about this game’s frustrating aspects and that I preferred hypertext pieces that are easier to maneuver.

After reviewing all my posts or comments, I saw a clear positive progression in my blog posts that was spawned by a larger understanding in digital literature. While this might seem like an expected shift as class progressed, it was especially evident in my blog posts. By a positive progression, I mean that I felt my blog posts improved in content and writing style as time went on. Especially in my last post, I felt a comfort in my writing in the topic of Bury Me My Love that wasn’t present in the CYOA book blog post. This progression came from developing a better understanding and appreciation for the class material we covered. Coming into digital literature, I had no idea what I was getting into. I recently explained the class to an outside friend and they asked if we read books on kindles, and that is exactly what I had assumed when I entered the course. Not to worry, I was able to set them straight on digital literature and its intriguing qualities beyond kindle books.

Reading over my posts again, I found that I could separate them into two categories: posts that compare two works to each other and posts that discuss the use of medium in one work. In posts of the former category, I always ended up examining the relationship between the player and either the player character or the game mechanics. My first post is the most obvious example of this, as it focuses on whether the player of that day’s games play as the character or as themselves. Similarly, my second and fourth posts examine how the game guides the player (or maybe how the player guides the game) through its narrative possibilities. I think I focused so much on the role of the player in these posts because it serves as both a common ground and a narrative split between games. Every game has a player, after all, but every game will treat them differently.

The posts I wrote about a single game were not so player-centric. Instead, they were about how games used techniques built into their medium and to what extent they worked. For example, my third post discussed signal degradation, or technological errors with visual effects, and why it’s used intentionally in horror games when it would be a detriment to any other genre. I didn’t bring up any technique in particular in my fifth post, but I did mention how the creators of the relevant game did their best to simulate a realistic stream-of-consciousness, and how the attempt was ultimately doomed to fall short due to the limitations of the medium.

Overall, I was primarily interested in discussing player-game relationships and the way games present themselves to us. I was a little surprised to discover that I had a few topics I naturally gravitated towards, since before I thought I was just writing whatever came to my head.

One thing I noticed right off the bat in terms of my posts were my titles. I often chose to pick a creative title that related to the works we were dealing with.  After looking at my posts in more detail over the course of the semester I noticed I did not do well with games that involved thinking.  And yes, that does sound rather pathetic, but what I really mean by that is the games that required a lot of clicking and figuring out also came with a lot of frustration- and it was through that frustration did I not enjoy playing.

Cactus Blue Hotel was probably one of the most frustrating games we played in my opinion.  I talked about this game in my second blog post in saying, ” I found that I was clicking on certain words to move forward, when I was actually moving backwards.  I began to feel like I was clicking in circles.  I then started to click more so to end the loop rather than to understand the context of the storyline and find the actual end of the game.  I really did not even make it to the end of the game.  I ended up quitting when I became too frustrated with my clicks putting me in a viscous cycle.”  It is clear from this post I need to work on my patience!  I also referenced “Shade” in which I felt like I was clicking in circles.

One thing that changed over the course of my posts were the way I would relate the games to overarching ideas we talked about in class.  At first, I would just walk about I how felt about the works and what I thought as I played the games, but as we learned more I began to relate the works to broader themes.

Works Cited:

Andrew Plotkin, “Shade” (2000)

Astrid Dalmady, Cactus Blue Hotel (2016)

After reading over the five blog posts I made throughout the semester, I noticed that I made similar analyses and comments for each post. Even while writing the posts, I realized that I took a personal approach and often wrote about digital literature in relation to my life experiences. This ranged from courses I’ve taking at Davidson to the hobbies I have. I also often talked about my perspective as a computer science major with interests in data science. Digital literature has strong ties to these fields, which explains one reason why I wanted to take the class in the first place. Topics like ELIZA, interactive fiction games like The Aisle, and databases thus piqued my interest as it correlated directly to my personal intellectual pursuits.

One change I noticed from the beginning of the semester to now was what I considered “electronic literature.” In both my posts and my mindset, I grew an open mind about what electronic literature could be from the varying examples and genres of electronic literature we discussed in class. As the semester progressed, I could reference other forms of electronic literature and discuss works more correctly and eloquently. Overall, I saw a huge improvement in my posts as they progressed, and my appreciation for this field definitely grew.

The first thing I noticed while going through all my blog posts, is that there is a similar style in the way I titled them. All of my titles were direct and concise so you know exactly what the blog post would be discussing. I think I could’ve been more creative with my titles, but I decided to keep them straight forward. This can also be seen as a reflection of my personality. Usually, I don’t like to beat around the bush. I am a very blunt, direct person, so it makes sense that my writing reflects that.

Additionally, I noticed that most of my posts included me comparing the current topic to past topics or works. I use this technique because I like to make patterns and connection, to better understand information. In The Affordances of Perspective on Players Interaction, Understanding Combinatory Poems & Their Unique Form, and Exploring the Dysfunctional Through Games I compared the structure, elements, and techniques of different games to show their relation to the concept of the week. It actually surprised me that I used this technique in most of my posts. It allowed me to realize that no matter how different the two works may be they were still able to portray the same theme. I also focused on how these relationships would affect the player/reader of these games/works.

As time progressed, I noticed my blogs became more detailed and were longer. I wasn’t just making general connections, but I allowed myself to become engulfed within the topic. I looked for deeper connections and points instead of surface-level discussions. I also questioned the reader more, to force them to also think deeper. I also feel as if this created somewhat of a conversation between the reader and the author. In summary, the goal of my blog posts was to cause the readers to look for hidden messages within works, different perspectives, while also gaining an understanding without actually playing the games or reading the literature.