The two stories I read
and reread were Slender Man and The Dionaea House. Slender Man is about this girl that wakes up
in the middle of the night and is unnerved. She decides that she is not going
to be able to go back to sleep so she goes to make coffee. She can’t shake the
feeling that something is outside her front door, “…she decided that a quick
glance out the peep hole would help clam her restless mind.” She is wrong and sees a black silhouette of a
creepy silhouette which is described as an inhuman man with, ” The limbs were
long and inhumanly awkward….” She tried
to get away from the door and spills and burns herself with her coffee. The
Slender Man begins to come into the house in black tendrils through the cracks
in her door and then she hears the door unlock. She tries to hide, and we are
sent to darkness only coming back when her sister is at the hospital to see
her. The doctors think that she gouged out her own eyes and ears, which I don’t
blame her for. If I was in her situation, and in the middle of that conflict I
would have done the same to escape him.
The Dionaea House is about a guy named Mark that has gone missing. The
friends and family use a website to share his and other communications in hopes
of locating him. The Dionaea House is an entity that takes the shape of a house.
The house either replicates itself or is constructed repeatedly exactly the
same because there are more than one that people stay at while traveling. Once
you enter the house it either consumes you are uses mind control on you. If
anyone escapes the house, they are hunted down by the people the house is
controlling to keep its identity a secret, “But if you walk away knowing too
much about it, the house will get to you.” MrParanoia also sends communications
about the house and says,” ……. those who have figured out what this “flytrap”
house is, risk becoming its next victim.” It is crazy but this story makes you feel like
maybe your house is out to get you as well. It does an excellent job of
creating suspense through these communications and showing the conflict the
characters are going through with this weird house. Andrew is being controlled
by the house and goes across the country always staying in the same house doing
whatever the house wants him to do. He
was following a couple that had stayed in the house and figured out there was
something wrong with it. He eventually finds and kills them and himself to keep
the houses identity a secret. It seems to just repeatedly find people to eat
and people to control, once that happens it begins again. The literary
technique that both stories use to hook readers is conflict. Conflict is the
battle that is going on between the person in the story and the outside force
that is against them whether it be a person, nature, or forces within
themselves. The conflict in both stories
brings about a lot of suspense and keeps you reading to find out the
ending. I think conflict is one of the
most important literary elements because it keeps you interested and wanting to
know what is going to happen. That element draws you into the story and makes
you feel like it is happening to you. I know after I read Slender Man, I was
making sure to turn on lights before I walked into a room. The conflict is
between her and the Slenderman and trying to get away from him like when it
says, “The girl was trapped between the instinct to flee and the gut feeling to
not turn her back on the door.” She is conflicted within herself as well
because she is not sure how to get away from him and remain safe or at least
aware of where he is. In Dionaea House
the conflict is between the house and the inhabitants. This story lets you know
that this house is the main antagonist in this story when it states, “Andrew
was scared to death of that house.” I really think that the way the conflict in
this story is told through several stories about the house and the people that
was in it. It does a really good job of drawing you in to each story and
telling you all the weird things that goes on in the house and quirks about the
house. I think when you are reading a story about a struggle it helps put yourself
in their shoes because we all know that fight or flight feeling when we are scared.
It took me about 5 tries to pick the right answers to find out who
the person on the other end of the phone was. One literary element that was
used was point of view, we are reading about this story through the narrators
view point. Point of view is how you are being told a story, or who is telling
the story and the mode the writer uses to let the reader hear or see what is
going on in the story. I don’t think the
game play enhances the story in this example, for me it was frustrating because
I kept feeling like I was doing it wrong. I have played Plants v Zombies 
that Bryan Alexander references in chapter 6 and I
found that example very addictive and entertaining. This example is just too short to get me
vested in or in the right frame of mind for a ghost story. As soon and I did
get a little engaged in the story line, I picked the wrong option and it was
over. I liked how Alexander referenced Mark Wolf saying, “at their most effective,
they help, ‘“create the feeling that the player is participating instead of
merely interacting.”” I think that is a
very precise way to explain visual novels or interactive stories. I think
visual novels are a fun and interesting way to tell a story. 
