To start off the homework for this week, I went over the three
interactive reading websites. I began with
Keeping Up Appearances
by Mendi Lewis Obadike. At first the website had confused me since it
seemed a bit empty, with large gaps in between the word fragments. It
gave a pretty vague story about a man the author worked with. As you
move the cursor though, words get revealed giving a clearer story about
the man, showing his inappropriate conduct of touching her bra strap
despite her young age and the power structure being very unbalanced. I
loved being able to move my cursor around to find the information as
well, almost as if it is the job of the looker to uncover this
themselves.
The next website I looked into was
My Body
by Shelley Jackson. This was a collection of stories put together by
Jackson, detailing her view of her body through clicking the different
links on her illustration. At first I had found the website
overwhelming, so many links made it hard for me to choose just one to
start with. After starting with leg hair though, I found a myriad of
stories detailing her complicated view of her body, each accompanied by
beautiful illustrations and pages styled in a beautiful monochrome black
and white.
Lastly, I looked into
Paths of Memory and Painting by Judy Malloy. This website had several different poems and phrases in
colored boxes. After clicking on one of the poems the writings would
change, bringing a new poem out. I played around with reading them for a
while, particularly enjoying the ones based on ancient Greece. I had
realized something, the poems would move on their own too. It was a
subtle shift at first, but I had found it quite profound, that even
without my input, the website would function without me and continue to
change. It's almost as if the looker is irrelevant in this situation and
I found myself just letting things happen on the page.
For the second part of the assignment I played
Depression Quest, by Zoe
Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler. I was interested to begin the
game, due to its description of being quite realistic and detailed in its
depictions of depression. I myself have struggled with periods of
depression before and part of me was intimidated to start but I pressed
on. I was taken aback at first when I began the game, since it didn’t give
me many options on what to do with my situation. Days would go on and
things were seeming to get worse and worse to the point where it didn't
seem like improvement was even much of an option. Days would go on where
our character is just going through the motions with no real hope of
improvement. It was heart wrenching. The first sign of improvement in our
character's life was having the opportunity to get a kitten that his
coworker was trying to find a home for. Even though we were apprehensive,
we took the cat, because it's always good to have someone in your life,
human or feline. From there, our character had taken small steps on self
improvement, such as making efforts to be more social, opening up to loved
ones, going to therapy and starting medication. I'm glad I ended up
playing this game with a close friend of mine, because I knew if I was
alone, the feelings would be much worse. Being with someone I loved
allowed me to have support through the troubling moments and thoughts that
came up with playing the game. The experience itself however was something
I'm glad I played through however, it helped me to feel less singled out
of my emotions and remembering that things can get better.