Author: 0alloldusers

Chapter 5 begins with another job given to the main character (James!), to inspect the integrity of an old bridge. While he does this job, James narrates about how he and Luke grew up together, and Luke’s realization of James’ failing eyesight. It’s interesting. I distinctly remember a part where James falls off the bridge, but then the next morning I reread the chapter and I did not see it again. Am I dreaming in PRY now?

Chapter 6 was quite long for me as I discovered the reader could pull apart every single line to read or watch some additional information or something that complemented the passage around it. My puzzler brain wanted every line to be completed before I moved on. This section spoke a lot about Jessie, and her role in James’ and Luke’s life in the military. James had a crush on her but she gravitated towards Luke, which James seemed to accept. This was the section I spent the most time with and was most amazed with because of the amount of work put into everything.

Chapter 7 shows a progression of what appears to be his life in the military, settling on a few moments, particularly when he and Luke build a camp and are talking in the middle of a desert. Jessie also has a part here where you discover how her friendship with Jessie grew. But a wrench is thrown in when James reports her relationship with Luke, and Jessie is VERY upset. They have an altercation in a supply closet which is followed by an image of her still, on the ground, and it made me think at first that he killed her, but then they’re all playing poker and he says she was alive, so that part was a little confusing to me.

Cinema Writing – Pry pt 2

In the second half of Pry, there are many details that come to light that are kept under wraps in the first half of the story. In chapter 5, there is more information regarding James’ eyesight, when Luke gives him another job after initially firing him because of the issues revolving around his eyesight. We also gain more insight into Luke’s character, as he is trying his best to give James as many opportunities as possible despite his challenges. This chapter follows the same format as the previous chapters in regards to how the reader navigates through the story.

In chapter 6, the story’s format changes slightly. The reader is faced with reading through a long selection of text, as one would read a body of text traditionally. However, by prying the screen between two lines of text, different visuals appear that show James’ relationships with different people, most notably with Jessie. In this chapter, we begin to pick up on the close relationship James and Jessie had at one point.

The Epilogue shows visuals of both George H.W. Bush, as well as George W. Bush on the television, describing what appears to be both the Gulf War and the Iraq War, respectively. The reader can infer that James is watching the television at both moments in time, and there is a video of James going off in the truck that was seen in the Prologue; indicative of the fact that there is a perspective from James from both before and after he goes to war.

Kinetic Details in Pry

The extra details and nuance in the app Pry make the app worth multiple traversals. It was not until I read my classmates entries on the first half of the app that I realized how many details it was possible to miss just by nature of how the work is traversed, or pieces of significance that I had missed. The aspect of the app that gives the work its name, pry, was lost on me during my first traversal. The pinching and opening motion to progress the story mimics open one’s eyes and pinching or pulling back into ones mind to access the subconscious. I had been thinking of this piece in visual terms and had missed some of the kinetic aspects that make the work so subversive. The braille chapter is an obvious example of this that I had not missed. Chapter 3 was the most immersive chapter for me, as dragging my fingers across the screen forced me to remain engaged, almost like the conscious thoughts of the app with text. Other subtler details that increase immersion are fun to find and easy to miss as well. Chapter 5, in which it is confirmed that the protagonist is losing his sight, includes a part where the protagonist uses eyedrops. It’s funny to think about how this might have been filmed, but to a traverser this element increases the immersion and is a very concrete real life example of going blind. The more time I spend with this work, more and more immersive and kinetic details reveal themselves.

Pry-Part 2

0alloldusersApril 5, 2019April 5, 2019

Instead of just jumping in and finishing from where I left off, I chose to start from the beginning and read all the way through. I also took my time on each section and let each video play through its entirety. This really helped me fill in some missing pieces and helped me understand more of the story.

One of the things that I wasn’t completely sure about when I first experienced this work was whether or not Luke as James’ brother or his friend, but it was confirmed after going through and re-reading this story. In one of the sections, James mentions that Luke was Squad Leader and that he saw him as an older brother. There is also mention of how the demolition company that Luke hired James’ to work for is his dad’s company.

Some of the themes of this work were made even more obvious the more I explored it. Unrequited love, jealousy, coping with a medical condition, PTSD, friendship, guilt, anxiety, OCD, loss, the struggle of re-acclimating to life post-war to name a few.

This story about a man who joins the military and becomes friends with a woman named Jessie.It is apparent in the story that James begins to have feelings for Jessie (and borderline becomes obsessed with her), however, she and James’ buddy Luke enter into a secret relationship while they are all serving together. James becomes jealous of Jessie and Luke’s relationship and exposes it, which causes Jessie to be re-assigned. James brought an album from home with him and he puts pictures of Jessie alongside his mother’s photos, thinking that she would be flattered. However, when he shows her the album, she is not amused. James and Jessie end up having an argument about him revealing her secret relationship and as a result, Jessie does not show up for a scheduled poker game the three friends had scheduled that night. Their camp was bombarded that night, and Jessie died during the attack. James blames himself for Jessie not being at the poker game, and ultimately blames himself for her death. 6 years after serving, James and Luke return home and Luke hires James to work for him as a demolition consultant. James’ eyesight begins to worsen and it affects his performance on the job. This creates conflict and tension between the friends.

While reading this story, there is a moment where you can clearly understand how James is processing Jessie’s death. He reminds himself that she was her own person, who made her own choices.

One of the things that really stood out to me was at the very end where you see George W. Bush on the television talking about war, and when you pinch James’ eyes shut, it shows a flashback of George Bush Sr. also talking about war. I found it to be an interesting way to connect how life was for James pre and post-war.

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this work. The use of various media elements kept me engaged the entire time and I really enjoyed going back and re-exploring sections to make various connections.

Pry Part 2

Cinema-Writing

The final three chapters in Pry really stood out to me because these three chapters really took the effects work and psychological aspect up to 11. The work done in the first 4 chapters did a good job of building up James’ character, and from chapter 5 onwards you start to see his psyche grow more and more chaotic and confusing.

One of my favorite parts of Chapter 5 was the fact that there is actually a bit of multilinearity involved. Chapter 5 opens up where Chapter 4 left off. James gets up to go to a new job, Luke was fired from the last one. During the drive to the new job, he continues to have self-hating thoughts that he isn’t good enough, that Luke doesn’t trust James, etc. When he arrives on site he walks across a railroad. At this point two things can happen. Either you keep James’ eyes open to the point where his vision blurs and he falls off the railway track, or you open and close periodically and make it all the way to the end, only to transition into his thoughts. In both instances, his subconscious is brought to the forefront, while reality is placed where the subconscious has been since the start of the story. I think it represents his continual descent into his own mind, and how he is starting to lose his grasp on what is real and what isn’t. Chapter 7 really brings this home with the constant back and forth between different moments in time, blurring the line between reality and memory.

Pry Part 2

I thought the interactive elements of Chapter 6 and 7 of Pry were particularly well done. In Chapter 6 you must separate and expand the text until they have gained enough context. The chapter begins as an obvious beginning and an end and the user must physically push up and down on the screen to reveal more context. The text of this chapter leads to either a video which the user must hold open to watch or a rapidly changing chain of words between the lines that relates to the previous passage. The chapter tells the story of the protagonist having a falling out with some of his fellow soldiers and the regret he still feels for his actions. Chapter 7 gives the user the ability to progress through the life time of the protagonist through a similar action.

I think to fully understand this piece I would have to do several re-readings. The text always takes a backseat to the interactive elements in my exploration of the piece. I keep wanting to discover more about the piece than stay in one spot. The fact that you are able to collect items for the albums folder did not help. The album became a thing of very high interest to me as i tried to initially understand how it worked. From what I have read the story has been very engaging and emotionally heavy. The media surrounding the text is great for setting the tone, and the films usually contrast the bland color tones of the desert with bright and flashing lights during intense moments. Overall I think Pry is a perfect example of how Electronic literature has the potential to thrive in today’s environment with today’s technologies..

PRY Part 1

For my first read-through of PRY, I took quite a bit of time with the first two chapters alone, then realized that I was trying to explore everything the first time around. So then I went back and tried to explore just one linear level at a time, specifically, the storyline with his eyes open.

Through this path, the reader discovers that the main character is a veteran, perhaps recently returned, who works in construction for a former soldier buddy. Something happened that is causing the main character to lose his eyesight, and the surrounding narration implies that it occurred during his deployment.

Chapter 3 I found fascinating. The story is told through a simulated braille reading where the reader has to actually touch the screen, moving their finger over white dots while the main character reads the story of Jacob and Esau. In the background plays a slideshow of pictures of video of his childhood, where his mother is featured frequently. This serves to give the reader a real insight into what his life growing up was like, as he previously mentions that he and his mother would play braille reading games.

Chapter 4 was where it became a little confusing for me, as the main character is in a room with a military buddy and they are about to play poker but for a while all that happens is the main character watching his buddy shuffle the cards while he questions an attack in his mind. Then comes the slightly alarming part where it appears his buddy stabs him, implicitly in the eye.

Prying into the mind II

In experiencing the second half of this piece I am both amazed by how smooth it is and more confused on what all went on. Like did he fall off the bridge or did James just imagine it? It is also interesting to see how him falling off the bridge landed him in the desert. The flashing forward and back to both memories and possible imagination as well in the piece keeps you on your toes as to where you might end up it you close your eyes. But jumping to the end SPOILER ALERT: it was nice to have a little explanation of what happened whether it was the relationship between Jesse and Luke or if it was the attack on the base leading to the death off Jesse. These details help the player understand James’s mental state. As well as adding the confusion of losing your sight. SPOILER DONE: overall it was an interesting experience the use of the gestures makes it all the more realistic, but the story is structured so that you never know fully what is and isn’t real. Though it might seem counter intuitive I think that the confusing nature of Pry as a whole makes it seem all the more real. Since you never know what will happen in life and there are many decisions to be made with little to no extra information provided.

Pry pt. 2

Class Topics, IF and Games, Multimedia Fiction, Student Blogs

The second half of Pry further expands on the previous user interaction method. This is done by evolving the prying open and shut interactions to view through the main characters and thoughts, to being able to flip through different camera shots and make them last however long the user wishes.

This portion of the narrative, in Chapter 7 was especially interesting to me, since it seemed to be trying to convey an even more cinematic approach to narrative storytelling. Being able to watch each shot in the scenes however long one wanted made it feel as if I was editing the scene to have the timing that I felt was most interesting. I would be interested to compare how long the people made each shot of each scene last, and see if it gave the scene a different effect than what I experienced.

I also found it interesting to play around with how the shots looked overlayed on one another, just in case any imagery was hidden. However, I found nothing out of the ordinary for Pry from this method.

My interpretation of Pry is that it is about a man who enlisted in the military at a young age, although his eyesight was destined to deteriorate rapidly throughout the years. He developed many relationships with several people, one of which was a girl named Jessie. She died in an accident of some sort, and the main character continues to blame himself for her death. He works with his friend named Luke, who he does not trust because of the way he encourages reckless behavior if the main character and others.

Throughout Pry, there are themes of grief, guilt, deceit, PTSD, etc. most of the narrative is the main character trying to comprehend his thoughts caused by anxiety disorders from his real thoughts. Pry takes a non-linear look at how someone might deal with emotions and try to understand themself while dealing with several nearly debilitating issues (anxiety, PTSD, loss of eyesight, etc.).

Pry – Part 2

The second part of Pry is just as immersive, while revealing more of the actual story. Chapter 5 starts with James taking another job that leads him to a bridge where he eventually falls off into the water after his vision fails him, he then appears in a desert where the text just keeps saying “Go back” with various other phrases. I think this is him trying to go back into his mind to the time he was at a base, since that was also mentioned. If you try to pinch into his mind, it’s just videos of him still sinking into the water from when he fell on the bridge.

Almost like while he’s sinking into the water, his mind is thinking about his past, somewhere else completely. Chapter 6 was pretty cool, as it started off with just two lines of text and every time you pried the text open, more would appear until eventually you could “tear” the text in half to see a video behind it. Eventually, the chapter ends and forces you onto the next one. Chapter 7 then begins with James and Luke sitting in the desert by a fire they built, and as you pry, you can switch between multiple videos while their voices talk in the background.

It was really cool to be able to switch between all kinds of different things happening in the same place while still hearing the story behind it. Chapter 7 also starts to reveal more of the story between James and Jessie. It’s apparent that James blames himself for Jessie’s death, even though she died because of an attack in a building. James says that it was his fault, and that she called to him but he ran away, leaving her to die. However the text, and presumably Luke, say that he wasn’t there at all, and he was in a different building across the street playing poker. It’s revealed through more videos that James and Jessie got into a fight, which caused her not to go to the poker game and end up in the building that was attacked, causing her death. James says that she wasn’t at the game because of him, and if she was there she would have lived, making her death his fault. At the end of chapter 7, James pulls himself out of the water, and the user is unable to pinch or pry into his mind anymore.

Pry, Chapter 5 – Epilogue – April 5, 2019