All posts by singsara

student blogs

Final Project Early Ideas

I’ve been deadset on doing a visual novel and finally found a software that makes that goal easy without the frustration of learning code. The reader will be able to click through the story and make choices. Here’s the first page:

I wanted to do a little horror story about an unethical workplace. It’ll be a satire of how Human Resources do nothing to actually protect employees and how large companies profit off of exploitation. I’m stunted when it comes to ideas right now, but I know I’ll be taking a lot of inspiration from analog horror videos.

-SS

student blogs

Blackout Poetry Tool & 200 Castles

I don’t enjoy the bot helping me create the poem. It doesn’t match the theme that I’m trying to run with when I make my choices. I do like the concept of a digitalized blackout poem software because it makes the art accessible to those who might’ve never known about it from anywhere else and people who struggle with fine motor skills (handwriting). I’d like this much more if the bot was removed and the original pieces were longer or from contemporary works. I don’t particularly feel inspired by Nick Carroway discussing West Egg.

I reserve my judgements about 200 Castles because I couldn’t find the app that would showcase the story, and I wasn’t willing to print out the pictures. The concept is interesting, and there was bound to be accessibility issues in the execution. The website can definitely be improved upon by adding a section dedicated to troubleshooting. Otherwise, this is a creative means that artists in the future may also begin to adopt more.

-SS

student blogs

Retratos vivos de mama y Writers Are Not Strangers

Retratos vivos de mama

Me gusta más esta historia en español.

A lot of this beauty in this prose is lost with an English translation. It strips the piece of its identity. But I only understand about 40% of what’s being said without a translator.

The page’s design choices are engaging. I especially like the drawing that can’t fully be seen. It forced me to pause and wait for the circle to uncover the picture’s content. The audios within the frames portraits were clever, too.

I don’t have much to say on this piece personally. I feel distant from it in every sense of the word. I gave this piece to someone who would get it better than I could. He broke it down for me in a way I wouldn’t have understood myself.

Writers Are Not Strangers

This piece bored me, so I clicked on ChoiceScript. As far as coding goes it looks fairly accessible.

Okay, back to the story… it’s not a pleasant read after the last one, honestly. The author’s writing style annoys me. Like they’re trying too hard to imitate Andrew Hussie. Except the characters aren’t interesting enough to grow an attachment to, especially on a beige background. The format isn’t really engaging even though choice matters. It reminds me too much of Perfect Blue. But I did laugh when I saw my rating showed up again at the end. “That first 3 out of 10 that made me so sad. That was you. Then you followed it up with that 3 and that really took the wind out of my sails.” I bet a part of our class discussion is going to revolve around how the first author reveres her dead mother whereas this one recognized his mom wasn’t always a “bitter husk.”

student blogs

All Your Time Tossed Selves & Hana Feels

All Your Time Tossed Selves

Using Google forms as a format for a creative writing piece is incredibly cool. The final line being “there comes a time where everyone must” with the button on the form being “Submit”was chilling. In full honesty I don’t understand what the pieces about. Even the title of the form is strange. I gathered that the tone is meant to be off-putting and sardonic, and that two people are discussing a time loop/pattern of behavior. I half expected something to show up in my email. I clicked on the response link and saw a fairly wide variety of answers. My final choice to “this life isn’t done with you” was “when the loop returns you to me.” I read those lines again in the order of their percentages:

“And we talk again like old friends
I savor the moment when I see the flash
You’ll always end up right back where you started
Illuminating all your time tossed selves
When the loop returns you to me
To the dying city
The flash that tells you… No matter what decision you make

the time comes when everyone must submit”

Hana Feels

Who needs enemies with friends like Jen?

This piece reminds me heavily of a game called “Don’t Take This Risk.” A man accidentally calls the player’s phone number believing it’s the suicide hotline and you have to make choices that affect the ending. Hana Feels is a much more well-handled game. It doesn’t romanticize suicidal ideation. At least I assume so, since I got the ending where Hana tries to work on herself and decides to speak to her mom. I also really like that the creator features resources at the end of the story.

After writing this, I chose the worst possible answers I could think of and got the ending where Hana ended up hospitalized with her mother calling her selfish. I’m glad she didn’t die. That genuinely could’ve triggered someone. Hana’s journals did a perfect job explaining why you shouldn’t say certain things to people. Especially choosing the option for Will to say, “Please don’t cut yourself for me.” She didn’t even meet Ernie and the support group in this route because Will did a horrible job. Still, much less graphic then Don’t Take This Risk.

-SS

student blogs

Ask Me About the Moon & The Vine & The Fish

Considering the diverse types of e-lit we’ve looked at so far, Ask Me About the Moon is underwhelming. The piece itself is lovely. The commentary about Hawaii’s exploitive tourism industry is important. But I’m not impressed by the format. The reader doesn’t do anything to engage with the piece at all. There’s nothing particularly unique about the words and images popping up on their own. I especially don’t like that I can’t refer back to verses without rereading the entire thing. My memory is too shoddy for that; the only way I could analyze this is by copying and pasting each line into a separate doc. So that’s another on the list of e-lit pieces that I have accessibility issues with. I truly believe this piece could’ve been great if the formatting did more to match with the theme. Maybe the stanzas could’ve played out against a brochure. It just isn’t enough as is. But bonus points for Jamacia Kinkaid being on the list of references.

I thoroughly enjoyed the The Vine & The Fish. The soft art style, muted colors, and the comic panels made me want to pay attention. The way Hook compares xenophobia to invasive species is so powerful. Identifying with demonized species because of the dehumanization cause by white supremacy is tragic. I’m the kind of environmentalist that is the first to advocate for eliminating invasive species. They pose genuine risk to native species and can disrupt the entire ecosystem, which will eventually have a negative impact on humans. But I also feel guilty. These animals never asked to be migrated in the first place. Their only “sin” is wanting to survive. The drawings of the carp made me feel that same guilt. But they are dangerous for native fish species. They do diminish primary food sources and effect water quality. And people will never pose the same threat that vines and fish do. People can’t be invasive unless you view their existence as inferior.

student blogs

Yardley, PA & Avenue S

Yardley, PA has themes of nostalgia and familial love. The background effects and music is reminiscent of summer, having fun playing outside until the sun went down. I chose to go through the story linear first, then pressed random orders of letters to see if the experience changed. I can’t say it did. Either way, the ending of the piece then transformed from a poem to a bunch of memories popping up all at once with music overlapping loudly. Then comes the line “and then it’s gone” as the conclusion. The music changes, too, with four somber piano notes concluding the piece. It’s lovely and it’s bittersweet, perfectly reflecting how reflecting on childhood memories feel. The author created this work with the intention of showcasing an interactive piece that differs from traditional rectangular text. In my honest opinion, I don’t think the form alone would’ve been enough to earn the title of electronic literature. The musical effects was the stage light that made the poetry and the formatting shine. It really felt like you were composing something.

Avenue S was created during Covid, which immediately peaks my interest since most of the lit we’ve been viewing is much older. I like simplicity of the art style and the use of real pictures. The piece doesn’t take itself too seriously, with one page just being dedicated to drawing a spiral by clicking. Rather than treating lockdown as a means of self-isolation and allowing herself to wallow, the artist just has fun, enjoying the opportunity to return to net art. There are thematic elements in which the speaker(s) wonder when this will be over, when normal daily life will continue again, like the page with the question poem by Jay Brecker. But the silliness of the silhouette drawings makes it seem hopeful that people would be allowed to gather again eventually. It’s a bit bizarre looking at this piece having lived through the pandemic not even a few years ago. I think I would’ve deeply appreciated seeing something like this in 2021, or feel whatever the opposite of nostalgia is ten years from now.

-SS

student blogs

Response to “High Muck a Muck”: Playing Chinese

I think I’m just doomed to experience mental fatigue every time I engage with electronic literature. I’m not used to having chapters and stanzas broken up like this. Of course, I can always go back and re-read, but I find that it’s much easier to forget every time I click off of something. Complaints aside, this work is visually very beautiful. Despite the story being about immigration and there being some themes of forced assimilation, all of the imagery is distinctly Chinese, even down to the way the shops are drawn. There are even videos showing more visuals if you click on the cameraman in the corner of the pages. I think alongside telling a story of a tragic history, each image feels like there’s a distinct aura of homesickness.

 Of the seven places that serve as headers, my favorite was “Nelson.” It’s got a familiarity that I understand, from the setting to the acquiescence in the face of racism. The segregation of Chinese people in the cemetery was disgusting but unsurprising. The subject appeared multiple times in this section, with one of the stanzas being about a a non-immigrant who called Chinese people ‘lucky’ for having their own space. Meanwhile the speaker has to explain that no, this is only the result of discrimination. The shops feel like they’re representative of how Americans only cared for the Chinese within the bounds of services they could provide: laundry attendants, restaurants owners, laborers, etc.

There was also the mention of someone who was a Chinese “freemason.” I had to do a bit of background research into that. They were the people who cared about the preservation of their culture in Canada and stressed the importance of community. They’d do things like create newspapers to keep other Chinese people informed and provide essential services to newer immigrants, like healthcare and housing. I never knew that. Everything I learned from the American point of view about Chinese immigration was about how they were exploited. Never anything on their community. 

-SS

student blogs

Response to ‘Navigating Electronic Literature’ and Relating it to ‘Twelve Blue’

This post was written inaccessibly on purpose. Please highlight to read.

Before I even touch on analyzing either piece, I have to talk about the accessibility of Twelve Blue. I can’t be that annoyed since it’s an experimental piece from the 90’s, but I straight up couldn’t read it. The sonic blue background gave me eye strain regardless of my laptop’s brightness. The color contrast of light blue against more blue made it difficult to process words. I showed it to someone else to read, and while we both understood the vocabulary and imagery just fine, neither of us could process the words. It wasn’t until I copy and pasted the chapters’ text into UpNote  (black background, white text) that I could understand what Joyce was saying.

The story is a mystery in a non-linear format. Joyce uses multiple point of views to relay the story to the reader, and a new chapter is discovered by clicking links within the text. This usage of hypertext is, in Pressman’s words, “…the earliest and predominant forms of electronic literature.” Traditional literature is more restricted by its format, confined to turning pages and arguing with a publisher for something out of the box. The internet allows more freedom because of the versatility of website design or downloadable content. Twelve Blue’s non-linear narrative is supported by the use of hyperlinks because the reader is able to engage the content in whatever order they please. Pressman highlights how the role of the reader changes from passive to active, and this challenges how reading practices can change in the future.

In the year 2025, I’m not sure if I’ve noticed a significant change with how people engage literature, both digitally and physically. Then again, this may be due to the fact I grew up in a time of rapidly evolving internet culture. I can refer back to my earlier point on accessibility, though. Before, people with visual impairments had to use magnifying tech that would enlarge text on a page or purchase books purposefully printed with larger font. In current day, change the size of the font on any site is as easy as a push of a button. Other disabilities and struggles were never accounted for, either, but in modern day there are almost always accessibility options in both digital literature and games. Digital literature certainly isn’t perfect yet, but raises the bar in making reading attainable to everyone.

-SS

student blogs

Intro

This blog is brought to you by a 20-something year old short story fanatic. Almost everything I read for leisure is on my phone from a free and accessible source (🏴‍☠️⚓🗡). I’ve always liked fiction since I was a kid. The first time I ever learned about “literature” was from my middle school teacher telling my class that ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ doesn’t count as such. That a book can only be literature if it influences society on a wide scale and a bunch of ‘experts’ say it is. I always thought that was baloney. I’ve read fanfictions that deserve to be next to Shrek in the Library of Congress.

-SS