I’ll begin by acknowledging the helpful instructions on the opening screen. No, they don’t tell you exactly what to press, but provide the reader an expectation point. I found this much more intuitive in comparison to “Twelve Blue”.

Some may argue that the lack of direct instructions feeds into the message of the form, but the instructions provided by “High Muck a Muck” are done artfully. They look like they belong on the screen, and they are thematically relevant.

The poetry throughout the piece is meaningful, beautiful, and impactful—not overshadowed by the intricate layers of media woven together to make “High Muck a Muck” what it is.

Image layering is an important component of the introduction. Behind the English text appear Chinese characters, and water droplets appear over specific characters as the poem describes someone crying.

We are here with someone, someone who is interacting with this text in the real world as we look on from the digital world. I moved forward to the image of a body, one I have to click on. There’s music playing, Chinese music.

Each part of the body has a different title.

This type of symbolism is not possible in traditional text. The implications of bearing witness do not feel as real when you are not watching someone’s tears hit the page, or engaging with someone’s story by touching different parts of them.

The utilization of multimedia creates a new avenue for storytelling. One that allows us to engage parts of storytelling that died with many traditions of oratory storytelling.

I can sense I’m going to have a little bit of a difficult time when it comes to navigating electronic literature. Navigating anything, in general, is a bit of a problem for me.

You could probably put me on the opposite side of my home-town and I wouldn’t be capable of finding my way back home. I like directions. I like order and a path. I am capable of making my own path, but I am slow and bumbling. I make mistakes and get confused easily.

My memory is about the size of an almond, maybe two if we’re being generous. It makes a lot of sense why I like to read, it’s straightforward and you can’t really mess it up all that much.

When you make a mistake when you’re reading, you flip back a few pages.

When you make a mistake reading “Twelve Blue”, good fucking luck.

The text is haunting, poetic, and electric in the way the reader gets to practically touch the texts themselves and move them about. But, there is no way to go back once you’ve moved forward.

There is no clear path that shows you want to click, and much of the discovery process is trial and error.

This brings the story to life, making it dynamic, a new experience for each reader. The story resembles navigating real life in the confusion and discomfort that comes from a lack of direction.

The process of learning how to effectively navigate electronic texts without the daunting fear of a mis-click will be a huge challenge for me. In both study and practice I’ve proven easily frustrated by exploration based learning.

I am nervous for how this bodes for my presentation, but hopefully with enough time to practice, I will be able to navigate Welcome Home properly for my peers.