Honestly, as someone who is writing an intergenerational memoir of their Bangladeshi grandmother as their thesis, this piece of literature hit home for me. At first, I will say I searched everywhere to find some kind of translation option, and even if it was there.. I probably didn’t understand it haha. I will also say that, I love when writers include their native tongue in their work because representation truly matters. I can’t imagine how readers of Latin American or Colombian descent feel when they see their roots being told into a story. As someone who is married to a Puerto Rican Colombian, I was ecstatic while going through this piece. Now, on to the actual piece itself. Retratos vivos de mamá is definitely a read that made me work work work! Having to translate every page was tedious, but worth it. The topic of your parents life before kids isn’t usually spoken about that often… until its too late. I see many grieving videos of people who lost a parent and they always add: “I wish I asked them about their childhood”. I know so much about my grandmother who is so dear to me, but not as much as my own mothers life. I grew up in a very rocky relationship with my mother, and have resented her for many years for a traumatic childhood. After I moved out from NYC and started my life here in NJ, we have gotten closer and our relationship has been healing. Now that we’re closer (ish), I do find myself wondering how my mother was at my age.. or even younger. Im 26 and by then she already had two daughters lol. This may be quite dark, but I have this feeling that my mother will be the topic of all of my writing when she passes one day… as she is the topic of all my poetry now. After reading this piece, I want to know more about my mothers childhood, her boyfriend, the men before my father, and all of her interests that probably were passed down to me. I especially enjoyed towards the end of the pages when the writer says “ I found out how much of her lives in me and his much of me I put in her when I write”. Because thats essentially what my own work consists of. Lastly, I do appreciate the “book” form the electronic lit piece takes because you get to flip through a sort of old “Scrapbook”. 

Writers are not Strangers 

I am a sucker for interactive stories. Ever since we did Facade and then Tyler’s Google Forms one, we’re been on a roll! I will say the connection between Alix’s mother dying and us also reading Retratos vivos de mamá is uncanny! I think as writers we were all pretty honest with our ratings because we would want the same for ourselves. I have been really enjoying having the control in a story because maybe thats the chaotic person in me trying to ruin things. I guess I was also trying to see what would happen if rated it like a 1 and then pressed on the options that weren’t so great..which is what I did. I feel like the game was trying to punish me because I swear it was never ending. I think since I was playing the game as a jerk, there were significant pieces I was missing out on.. so I am really interested to see how Hunter tackles this piece! 

I was able to translate the text of the piece to English which was helpful but I actually viewed it first in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish (even though I took the Spanish classes from first grade to freshman year of college). When I walked through in English, I could tell that the way it was written in Spanish was beautiful. Translating language always changes a piece but I still think regardless this piece carried so much weight. Visually I really loved this piece. The scrapbook feel made it feel personal and I want to say homey. I really loved the audio clips and the videos even though I didn’t know what they were saying, it gave a spotlight to the mom. I really loved the page with the black screen and the spotlight on the one page. It felt kind of reminiscent to how grief forces us to get glimmers of a memory at a time.

In my adult life, I had an epiphany. My parents were parents at my age and I think about being a parent right now and I just don’t even know how they did that. I like to hear stories of my parents before kids and I often find myself comparing things I am doing in my life to stories I’ve heard from theirs. Any party/gathering I throw at my house the thought of “i wonder if this is how the parties at my parents first house were” or something along those lines. I really connected with the idea of uncovering a parent’s identity before they were parents. It is so fun to think about to me but I also found the idea of the author kind of creating a life for her mom before she was a mom to be so interesting and heartbreaking. The diary entries were so so heartbreaking to me. The line “the closest thing to her left on earth are my brother and I.” gave me goosebumps. The “Planto” section was AMAZING. I loved the poetry and the interactive element. Overall, this piece not only was visually appealing, moving, meaningful but it also made room for a lot of reflection. I thought this was such an amazing piece and I’m looking forward to the walk-through in class.

Before deciding on The Vine and The Fish, I thought about choosing Writers Are Not Strangers. I was excited to walk through this one this week. My story was one about a girl named Alix whose mother is dying. I don’t think we all end up with the same prompt at the start or really at all during the piece. The third page I ended up on in (and second of a cohesive story) gave me choices on what the character does next. How cool is that! You all know I love a choose your own adventure kind of thing. At one point one of the choices said something along the lines of “What does this have to do with the story I rated?!” But I didn’t click that so that I could stay with one story. I was afraid clicking that option would have brought me somewhere else like Twelve Blue. Alix’s father had died and she had obtained his notebook. She is a writer who posts her work to be rated online (interesting). A line I loved from this section is in reference to her dad’s notebook and it reads as follows: “he was aware of the preciousness of writing with a real pen on real paper”. We have spoken about why writing is important and I think this line here kind of dictates how I feel about writing which is that it is precious and it’s immortal. Overall, I think the two pieces this week had a lot of parallels. I really enjoyed both of these pieces and I look forward to the presentations!

Retratos vivos de mama by Carolina López Jiménez

Retratos vivos de mama by Carolina López Jiménez this weeks electronic literature journey, I immediately was aware of how personal this experience felt. I loved that you could actually turn the pages of a book, it gave this piece the feeling of a real book (which I kind of have missed since this classes start), even though this experience was digital. The physical scrapbook filled with memories made me feel like I was a part of the story. The mix of handwritten notes, drawings, and photos made it feel alive, it made me think that I might even do something like this one day – something creative and expressive.

Even though the videos were in Spanish and I couldn’t fully understand what was being said, I still tried to listen closely to the tone and emotion behind the voices.

Mother Daughter relationships are complex. My mother is still alive, and our lives are closely intertwined, I stay at her house on weekdays to help her out, then go to my own home on weekends. Reading and watching Retratos vivos de mamá made me think about how every moment with my Mom is creating a new memory.  While it is impossible to imagine, my Moms age and health dictates that I should be aware that one day my life will exist without her.  I begin to say what a loss this would be for me personally and all who know her.

I was just watching a show and the person on it said “How we keep people alive is by saying their names” (I imagine he’d include memories on this). It inspired me to think about my own mother’s story and how much of it maybe I don’t know. Maybe I could convince the ever stubborn Reni to write her story down, so that someday, I can remember her not only through photos or memories, but through her own words.

Retratos vivos de mama is  a living archive of love, loss, and memory, just like a scrapbook.  It reminded me that storytelling, whether digital or handwritten, is one of the most beautiful ways to keep someone alive in our hearts. 

Writers Are Not Strangers by Lynda Clark

Writers Are Not Strangers by Lynda Clark, and it’s one of those e’lit pieces that makes you realize how alive words can feel on a screen. I noticed that this isn’t a story you read passively but you interact with it. You click, hover, and sometimes just sit there, letting the text reveal itself in fragments. One moment you’re reading a line about memory or a fleeting thought, and the next, a new phrase pops up in an unexpected place, like the words themselves are alive and watching you.

overlapping text and sudden shifts in tone, between perceived humor, melancholy, and even a bit of playfulness, make it feel almost like wandering through someone else’s mind. As I followed Alix navigating her world, I could sense the weight of her mother dying, the pressures of family expectations, and the tug of her own creative ambitions. I found myself returning to a section where the text reflected on connection and distance between people, and it felt surprisingly intimate, almost like a conversation I wasn’t supposed to overhear but couldn’t stop listening to.  I really got that writer reader connection.

By the end, what stayed with me was Alix’s constant need for feedback, how every choice, every story she shares, seems to hinge on someone else’s judgment. It was uncomfortable at times, watching her balance the pull of her own ambitions against her mother’s needs and the weight of family expectations. I found myself relating to her tension, that push and pull between what you want for yourself and what others need from you. Writers Are Not Strangers is a great reminder that writing, like life, is a negotiation, and that intimacy and discomfort often go hand in hand.

Electronic Literature puts a lot of emphasis on the medium in which you tell the story. Immediately upon clicking into All Your Time-Tossed Selves a jarring feeling creeps up on you. Utilizing Google Forms as a literary format makes the reader feel like they’re somewhere they shouldn’t be. In the backrooms of education, behind a barrier that students don’t cross.

The questions you’re being asked don’t feel like they are meant for you. It is unnerving having to pick an option based on little more than the sentence you are given. Things flesh-out as you move forward, but you never really get over that strange feeling that the creativity and the formatting don’t belong beside one another.

Hana Feels gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. The game brought me back to a time I try not to think about so much. Being forced to select dialogue options, not knowing how what you say will effect the person. The feeling that something terrible will happen if you don’t say the right thing. Wondering, if you had just said something different could you have saved the other person?

It does a good job of mimicking the vulnerability of trying to help someone in real life.

This week’s dive into E-Lit left me thinking a lot about control; how we use it, lose it, and sometimes share it with the text itself. Both “All Your Time-Tossed Selves” and “Hana Feels” play with this idea of user participation, but in completely different emotional registers. One feels like wandering through the ashes of a burning world, and the other like sitting beside someone in pain, trying not to say the wrong thing.

All Your Time-Tossed Selves

This piece felt like stepping into a digital poem that wanted me to choose its heartbeat. I loved the freedom of clicking through and seeing where my decisions would take me. It reminded me of a dream you can steer, but only slightly. The way it’s structured through a Google Form was surprisingly effective. Each choice opened a new fragment of poetry, but it also made me wish I could see the culmination of my responses to see the poem as a whole, Luckily, I screen-recorded my version.

It’s poetic and apocalyptic at the same time. Like the speaker is trying to hold onto something beautiful while everything collapses. What really struck me was the looping quality of it: “Did you notice yet? How it keeps repeating?” That moment made me realize that the poem isn’t just about a destroyed city, it’s about memory, futility, and maybe even the endless process of trying to rebuild ourselves. Each “choice” doesn’t change the outcome as much as it reveals how small we really are inside the system of the poem.

“Hana Feels”

If “All Your Time-Tossed Selves” felt abstract and poetic, “Hana Feels” felt painfully human. I was immediately drawn into Hana’s emotional world, and I found myself being so careful about every response I picked. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or make her feel worse. I eventually got to the ending where Hana is about to open up to her mom, a moment that felt like real progress, like a quiet breath of relief.

The conversations with Jen, though, were another story. They stressed me out. Nothing I chose ever seemed to calm the situation or make Jen more understanding. Jen just came across as an awful friend, defensive, dismissive, and almost cruel at times. But maybe that’s the point: Hana Feels forces you to experience that frustration, to feel what it’s like to be trapped in a toxic friendship and still hope for something better.

As a teacher, I couldn’t help but think about this through my Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lens. The entire experience reminded me of the delicate nature of real-life conversations around mental health, how tone, timing, and empathy matter just as much as words. I found myself trying to be as kind and peaceful as possible, because I genuinely wanted Hana to feel seen and supported.

That’s what makes Hana Feels so powerful, it’s interactive empathy. Every click is a moral decision. The piece mirrors who we are and what we believe about care, responsibility, and communication. I realized I was trying to create a “perfect” conversation, a utopia where kindness fixes everything, but that’s not how real emotions work. Sometimes, even when we choose all the right words, people still hurt.

All Your Time-Tossed Selves and Hana’s Feels

This week we had two super interesting works. I want to start with the standout Hana Feels by Gavin Inglis, Erin Rea and Stephen Redman. This work was emotionally captivating in many ways. I feel like the class discussion will be great and fruitful. I loved how this work was organized and presented to the reader. Seeing how different conversations effect future ones help build such a powerful narrative. The main thing that stood out to me was the authors’ notes. He believed that this work was more didactic than literary. After working through this, I fully understand this feeling. For me, this work reinforces the teaching that words cannot be chosen lightly. As the work continued and Hana’s problems and struggles became more apparent, the responses the reader chooses to hold much more weight to them. There were times where I had to sit and think long and hard about how I wanted to respond, regardless of what character I was inhabiting. Hana’s dynamic responses really breathe life into this work and contributes greatly to how the reader interacts with the story. Another interesting thing was the dynamic of power. With Will, Ernie and Christine, the responses were varied, and the reader is seemingly given a “right” and “wrong” way of answering questions. As readers, we have more context compared to the characters so, our answers are influenced by the previous vignette. On the other hand, during Jen’s sections I felt powerless, as her responses all seemed “wrong” given what the reader knows about Hana and the events that have happened. (Side note, if Jen has no haters, that means I have left this earth).

            The other work this week was All Your Time-Tossed Selves by Porpentine. This one was interesting since it pushed google forms platform to its narrative limits. This work uses all possible interactive elements that the platform provides the user with. The most interesting aspect of this work is seeing the stats about other people’s responses. I find this very cool because it adds a community aspect to this work compared to others. Seeing how others put together their respective narrative was actually cool to see. The only other thing worth mentioning here was that the responses were super well written and interesting. I love some good prose and this work had some great one liners. Crafting a story with the lines that were given was a great exercise of creativity.

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

Create the storyline by inputting data into digital correct spaces

All Your Time-Tossed Selves is an interactive fiction created from a google platform created by author Porpentine in the year 2016. The story is a solitary storyline experience. You create the storyline by inputting data into digital correct spaces, and your being asked a serious of questions to create the storyline, it is created in Google Forms, and as your inputting the information in its proper spaces, you hit next at the bottom of the page to continue writing the story.  You control the narrative. Electronic literature is a powerful and fascinating way to tell interesting stories.

Hannah Feels is a game from the website that creates a controlled storyline. Like All Your Time. – Tossed Selves. A hypertext conversion created by Gavin Inglis in the year 2015. Input data information to create a storyline, within its digital spaces. To help with Hanna Feels mental health issue and build a conversation around the topic. Depending on your conversation will determine the outcome of the story. It is a wonderful game you need to try.