Hey class, here’s the link for my Visual/Audio Anecdote Project! 

I think that the three works we looked at can be considered stories, however, they don’t all align from a coherent point of view in my opinion. All three pieces tell a story in their own interactive ways. 

For me at least, I found How to Rob a Bank the most coherent, clear, and easy to follow. The way that the story was set up the characters, their development, and the plot was evident. I found the structure of this story to be linear which made it easy to comprehend. Unlike the other two stories all, you had to do as the reader was click the space bar to continue on with the story. The story was already laid out and there really is only one way to interpret the story and its outcome. 

As for My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, I found this story a little bit difficult to follow. There were a lot of options that you could click on, subsequently changing the way you read the story. I think that being able to explore a story in your own way by clicking on different text is something that keeps people engaged and interested in the story. 

Finally, for With Those We Love Alive, I think the story’s structure is very engaging. I like the way that it makes you feel like you are a part of the story. This story is very nonlinear, you are able to choose the actions you want to take and really be a part of the world and the development of the storyline

I thought that all three of these hypertext stories were very different and interesting in their own ways, but I think that they all would be considered stories. For the first story, “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War” I had a hard time following along. There were so many different choices to click on that I felt overwhelmed and had a hard time putting the story together and following it throughout the sequence. 

However, with the second story, “How to Rob a Bank” I had a completely different experience. I thought that the structure of this story was very linear, which made it easy to identify the story and all of its different parts as well as follow along without getting lost. I also enjoyed the perspective that the story was told from. It helped us get inside the character’s head and it also helped us get to know the other characters in the story and their relationships as well. While this piece doesn’t give you choices I think that being able to pick the pace at which the story develops is a good way to make it interactive while still being linear.  

I think that the final story, “With Those We Love Alive” is a great hypertext story. The navigation structure of this story really helped bring you into the story world and let you walk around to explore your surroundings. There were many different choice options on each page, involving you in the story without feeling like you’ve lost your place in the story.

Are these work’s considered stories?

The three work’s explored was:

• My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, by Olia Lialina (1996)
• How to Rob a Bank, by Alan Bigelow (2016)
• With Those We Love Alive, Porpentine (2014)

Though I believe each of these works can be considered stories, though some may not be as coherent as others, I think it some way it is still “coherently told”. The best part of Hypertext is that it is sort of a role play , choose your own destiny type of literature. These stories are all told in a non linear way and in a way we may not be familiar with. They keep you engaged and is interactive because you are following in ways you choose.

The first explored was My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, by Olia Lialina. This was interactive in the sense that you click and choose which link to go which in the end determines how you read the story.

In How to Rob a Bank this story had a set of characters that you are able to interact in the form of clicking as well but was overall more linear.

With Those We Love Alive was also interactive in the sense that you get to choose the direction of the story, also making it non linear. Though this story and My Boyfriend Came back from the War seem the lease “coherent” of the three , they all are in a form coherent and interactive. Linear sequencing vs non linear doesn’t make a story less coherent in my opinion but maybe more or less intriguing. Some find excitement in vague stories with space to let the mind wonder and some prefer a very clear understanding.

Playing, or tapping is more correct, through these interactive hypertexts might have been my favorite blog post yet. I love anything interactive, I think a lot of people do, so it was a nice change to be able to interact with these works. To me, there was no coherent story besides How to Rob a Bank which depicts a funny little story about just that. It was not a story with ups and down and set characters, but it followed the main person clicking and looking up things. It was very linear compared to the other two which were more choose-your-own adventure type beats. Even then, though, they did not produce to me a coherent story.

My Boyfriend Came Back From the War was interesting and very daunting to me. I am someone who clicks excessively and was constantly just clicking every link available. I could not keep up with any of the smalls words or happenings because it just did not make sense with it all jumbled. There was a large sense of sadness, a lot of negative emotions and pleading, but not overarching story to me. It was very interactive, however, because you get to click what you want! The scattered words and lines definitely added to it’s already nerve-wracking and dark imagery.

With Those We Love Alive was the most interesting one to me because it fully felt like you were making decisions. You got to decide what some aspects, some adjectives and things looked like or felt like. It was amazing, but I also got stuck very easily when I thought I clicked through every option. There was no coherent story, it was vague and everything was very vague. It intrigues me, though. It kept me the most engaged and felt the most like a video game out of the three because of your choices making an impact on some of the stuff happening. All in all, they all are vague, don’t seem like coherent stories, but are experiences I valued over some books I have read.

I past the 1 min mark and I hope you guys forgive me.

I believe that all the examples presented in this week’s readings are considered stories. Each of them presents an intriguing way of telling their own series of events. Some are more linear, like How to Rob a Bank, while the others are looser.

The way that With Those  We Love Alive presents its narrative is similar to a choose-your-own-adventure book. There are several possibilities at most junctures in the story. Locations are presented to the user, and different items are interacted with in each. The user can also dictate some of the details of the story by interacting with the purple links. Purple links are able to be changed until the user decides they’re satisfied, then can be locked in place with a final click.

My Boyfriend Came Back from the War is even more open and freeform than the prior work. There are many options at most points through the story, divided up into sections. You can read through a section, clicking and moving it along, but you can also go between different sections. The user determines the speed at which each piece of narrative is developed, which creates for a very large range of possibilities. Sections also break up into smaller sections after a certain amount of development. The user needs to piece together much more of the story here, as it’s delivered in very small fragments.

How to Rob a Bank is such a product of a particular time. It’s like a time capsule, in a way. Everything is delivered to the user through screen captures. Emails, texts, news articles, Google searches. The series of events here is the most linear. The user has no choices other than to simply progress forward.

Hello! Here is my Audio/Visual Anecdote!

With two out of the three Hypertext stories that we were required to read, I saw a clear story line, with character development and a plot that was easy to follow. It was with the first hypertext, “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War,” that I couldn’t really find any of that, and it made it hard to follow. The way it was read was random and confusing, and at the end I was left with a bunch of blank boxes and no clear way to move forward. I still think that piece could be considered a story if read the right way, but it is a super abstract piece and has no linear way of reading it compared to “How to Rob a Bank” or “With Those We Love Alive.” I really enjoyed “How to Rob a Bank” because of how easy it was to read it and identify the plot and characters in the story, and it was cool to experience the story through what their phone is seeing. We see the two characters grow in their own way and the biggest change I saw was when their kid was born. We see through the notes app that the mother is in love with her child and is ready to settle down, which is a change from the ignorant woman that we saw at the beginning of the story who fell in love with this “bad-boy” bank robber. In “With Those We Love Alive”, the structure of the story is very non-linear, with each page of tet having multiple avenues that you can take to further the story. Many of these avenues loop back around, giving the reader a chance to understand the full story. I found this useful when exploring the different rooms of the palace/castle and getting a feel of what the world space of the story is like.

Yes, the computer has changed storytelling. However focusing on hypermedia, the popularity is lackluster. I believe a major problem that was only recently solved was that the most popular hypertext program was only compatible with Apple. With the creation of Twine hypermedia can now have a larger creator base, leading to more content that can potentially reach more users.

The best kind of stories that work with hypermedia are ones where the author wants the user to find the story, traditional stories can work but they are kind of clunky in their presentation.

“My Boyfriend Came Back from the War”
The navigation and eventual division of the screenspace was very interesting and was most interesting part of this work. There was definitely plot but any character development was lost in the medium. I couldn’t tell the chronological order of events except that the center division of the screen became the war events.

“How to Rob a Bank”
This was more directly a traditional story and was very linear. The use of showing the searches was a good way of showing us what the character was thinking about. I also enjoyed being able to use the arrow keys to transition forward and backward through the narrative.

“With Those We Love Alive”
This story is the type of story that I believe works best in a hypertext format. You can make choices to explore the environment and learn about the world somewhat organically. I especially liked the ability to influence the details of the story but that interaction wasn’t well explained.

I had a lot of fun making this video and I hope everyone enjoys it!

I would consider all three of these works to be stories. Although some are more linear than others, there is a plotline present in each one that is given to the audience in a unique way. I found “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War” to be the most confusing as the way it is presented requires the reader to deeply consider each line. I thought the imagery chosen for it, as well as the boxed format for most of the text, highlighted this element. While it was a little convoluted, I also found that this was part of what made the story engaging. “How to Rob a Bank” uses its format and music to draw you in quickly, although I had a few technical issues at the beginning that could drive casual users away. Out of the three, “With Those We Love Alive” has the strongest connection to the choose your own adventure genre. The layout and variety of options feels exactly like what an interactive story would have.

Each of the three stories contain a world for the reader to explore, but none of them do it the same way. “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War” and “With Those We Love Alive” represent this the most, as their storytelling is fragmented and requires the reader to actively investigate in order to discover each piece that, in the end, creates a picture. “How to Rob a Bank” follows a more linear process that audiences are more familiar with, but still combines it with digital mediums to provide a unique experience.

Altogether, I found these stories to be a great illustration of what you can do with imagination on the web. Between Twine and coding, there are a lot of ways to create a story that is unique and captivating to an audience. Regardless of the presentation, I would say that all three of these projects have interesting storylines with immense thought put behind them.