Thursday, February 28, 2019


[Text] A Summer Story
So, I had the confusing task of reading/playing this game/story and it was very different than any other story/game I’ve ever encountered.  I felt like I kept getting kicked out but actually, the story has different endings depending on your choices. I felt like something was amiss but then I would end up on the train back home and it was over. To me it felt more like an interactive story than a game.
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.

 Mark Wolf, “Narrative in the Video Game,” The Medium of the Video Game, ed. Mark Wolf (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001) 101
 Alexander, Bryan. The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media. Prager, 2017. https://startingover0720.blogspot.com/2019/02/text-asummer-story-so-i-had-confusing.html

Thursday, February 21, 2019


I had the task of checking out this game Adventure Cave
and was very entertained for a few hours. This game/story reminds me of those choose your own adventure books from when I was a kid. I remember those books because they always made me feel like I oversaw what was going to happen in the story and was a part of it. This different type of digital story-line is very similar yet more interactive. I assumed this was a pretty new type of writing but read that it is not,"...with a game called Spacewar, 
 
an early storytelling engine that dates back to the 1960s" (Alexander 17) I think this is a very interesting way to tell a story albeit a little confusing. What I like about this type of story telling is you have choices along the way and the outcomes differ on what choices you make. Its not like other storytelling where the ending and every turn along the way is already set up for you. It feels more like a game then just reading a story which makes it more fun to interact with.  Brian Alexander says that this game was made,” … to entertain his caving-happy children in 1975” (Alexander 19), which is very impressive because I’m an adult who had some difficulties with it. I like how it combines the story telling with gaming as stated,” Both combined stories and play, narrative with gaming.” (Alexander 19)


Alexander, Bryan. The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media. Prager, 2017.  http://www.briankhudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screen-Shot-2019-02-19-at-11.03.58-PM.png

Crowther, Willie. “Colossal Cave Adventure.” Halt and Catch Fire https://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/exclusives/colossal-cave-adventure
Viewed February 20, 2019

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Conflict in Blogs


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.

 “Slender Man” (2010, January 14) Retrieved from  https://www.creepypasta.com/slenderman/
Heisserer, Eric, (2004) “The Dionaea House” http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dionaea_House

Friday, February 1, 2019

Slender Man

I decided to read Slender Man, mostly because I have heard of this phenomenon before and it interests me. The Plot of the story is that there is a girl, Lindsay who wakes up in the middle of the night and is chilled. She goes to get a cup of coffee and cant shake the bad feeling that she is having. She decides that if she looks out the peephole it will calm her nerves. She looks out the front door and sees the frightening Slender Man. She spills coffee on herself and tries to get away but he is coming after her. The last scene is her hiding in her house and then darkness. It then cuts to her sister finding her in the hospital after being maimed. The doctors think she self inflicted the wounds on her body. Her eyes and ears were gouged. I think it is fair to say she didn't want to see or hear him if the wounds were self inflicted. I wouldn't want any part of that, that's for sure. I think the conflict of the story is between her and the slender man who comes into her house uninvited. The struggle is  between her wanting to get away from him and him wanting to get to her and it is very suspenseful. I think this story is kind of what Bryan Alexander was referring to when talking about "one post stories". The Slender Man blog does contain one main post about the Slender Man and then some pictures that are supposed to contain his image. There are also lots of comments and other stories related to the main post that were added later. Creepy Pasta also uses a black background to infer gloom as stated in chapter 4 of digital storytelling to be an accent to give that sense.