Pry is an app that tells a story in a unique way. It is all within the first-person perspective starting with chapter 1 however, there are three perspectives within the main character. There is what he sees in the real world. These are usually shown through video. There are his immediate thoughts which are usually shown as white text in front of a black background. Then there is his deep consciousness. Here the viewer sees all sorts of abstract things that tend to loosely connect to what he is looking at or thinking about. These three perspectives can be looked at anytime by using two fingers to simulate prying open or closing his eyes. Most of the experience is this process of prying eyes, but in one chapter, the user holds their device horizontally and simulates the experience of reading braille as they slide their finger over the screen. The braille is even read out loud in real time. The story isn’t super clear, but from what I understand it starts with the protagonist leaving to join the military. The story jumps past all of that and his experience in the military is told through flashbacks. They are flashbacks because you see them in his head. These flashbacks were so vivid that I was sometimes caught off guard in which of the three perspectives I was looking at. What drives the story forward is the user checking in on all three perspectives. You can’t move on if you only look at one.

In Sound Poems, all is handed over to the user. It contains 6 poems to interact with and none of them contain any sort of symbolism. While these poems focus on sounds themselves, I am reminded that sound is very important in traditional written poetry especially when it comes to rhythm and reading them out loud. This set of poems embraces that aspect. These poems are very visual too as the user may drag the letters all around the screen. There isn’t terribly much the user may create using these poems, so I think of these poems as a demo for what could potentially be done with interactive poetry that have more description and symbolism. The poem Shy Boy has the more symbolic poetry that readers have become to expect but can especially be read as a concrete poem or Vispo. The ways that some of the words and phrases are presented emphasize their meaning. The word “melt” falls down below. The word “vanish” slowly disappears. The phrase “not to be there” pops out very quickly. “Pencil smudge” is smudged under a layer of gray. The words that begin and restart the poem, “Enter” and “re-read” are red. This symbolizes the hardships the boy goes through.

“Interactive digital poetry further considers the relationship between reader and text as a recursive feedback loop.”

In the mobile game Blackbar, the meaning of its story and the gameplay are very closely tied together. It is full of censorship and it is up to the player to figure out what is being covered by the black bars. My first reaction to it was that it felt kind of like Mad Libs. The difference is that there are specific correct answers. The key to figuring out what the censored words are is by using the context of the sentences they are placed in and how long the black bar is. This sort of progression system is the only thing that keeps this format from being just like the more traditional format of text. That is why it is so engaging. Device 6 is a more complicated interactive story. Rather than being presented with traditional paragraphs, the user must slide the text and other content all around and solve puzzles. The solutions to these puzzles are found within the content itself. They require thinking, but not as much guessing. For both of these games, the extra time I spend thinking about the solutions of the puzzles oftentimes passively make me consider the overall themes of the works.

“Electronic literature can be thought of as situated somewhere between a number of related practices and cultures, including print literary culture, arts practice, computer science, and performance.”-Rettberg pg. 88

I grew up mainly reading conventional books under parents that really pushed traditional print material. I was fascinated by how in kids’ books, the words and pictures were directly connected to one another. Both paint an image of what the characters are doing and how they look. Still very early on in my life I was introduced to pc software and went on to interact with both print and digital stories for a while. As I have gotten older though, digital stories have taken over my life. Video games especially have been my go-to for the most immersive stories and worlds. Honestly, print-based media has been relegated to text books for me. I believe the potential of the print-based media itself has reached its full potential. Actual stories themselves though have all the potential in the world. Hypertext and the digital medium in general can provide elements for a story that print cannot. Hypertext can surprise readers through links and present them with changing environments through pictures, video and sound. There could be a real social aspect and the stories can be updated with new additional chapters and other content. If someone feels that print is too limited for their story, they may find the affordances of digital hypertext to be a better suit and let out their creativity that way.

“I want my fiction to be more like a world full of things that you can wander around in, rather than a record or memory of those wanderings.”(Jackson)

If I were to show someone the readings about Taroka Gorge without giving them context of how they were put together, they would probably get frustrated because they include realistic phrases that encourage them to keep reading but provide no meaning. The stories I looked at were made with JavaScript and used random variables to put together certain words to make grammatically correct phrases or sentences. The program is designed to do this, but it is not really telling a story. I could say the works are about Taroka Gorge, but they are really just words that somewhat relate to Gorge randomly put together. I agree with Rettberg when he says, “This sort of story, like the output of many text generators, invites the reader’s involvement not by providing an excess of detail but, instead, by proving the reader with a minimal sketch, with a great deal of interpretation space left for the reader to fill in” (Rettberg 42). I look at the phrases within these works as images to be used when thinking of my own story of Taroka Gorge or a place similar. I have never been to Taroka Gorge before, so thinking about these works in relation to another place helps me remember aspects of it I may have forgotten. This is the effect combinatory writing has on readers. It lets them apply it in whatever way they want rather than forcing them to understand it in a certain way set by the author. I still think there is more value in engaging with a story that has real construction, but ones like these provide an interesting alternative.

“Minimal outlines such as this can serve as provocations, engaging our imaginations with prompts to flesh out a richer storyworld than actually denoted by the text that appears on screen” (Rettberg 42).