Deviant: The intelligent and Creative Way to Waste My Time.

          Being relatively new to the idea of DH and having never really spent anytime reading such things as electronic literature or clicking on hypertexts, I found navigating my way through Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw rather tedious and unnecessary. Now having spent many of my days playing video games, I believed that I would be able to make my way through the story without a problem. But in the end my gaming instincts are what caused me to prematurely lose my mind.  

           Now due to the fact that while playing a video game, which I believe is a form of electronic literature, you have to accomplish something in order to move your way up through the levels of the game and so when traveling through the world of Christian I believed I had to do just that. I made every flower explode, or leaf grow. I cut strings, and caught things on fire. I even made creepy naked creatures with bulbous heads pop out of perfectly normal trees. No matter how many flowers popped out of the ground I had no idea how to continue on through the story to finally make my way to the end. Yes this made me very irritated knowing that I could not finish the story, but in the end I learned a lot about electronic literature. 

            Spending so many hours trying to get through the story made me contemplate on how much time and effort one has to put into creating something like Deviant. I for one would not know where to begin to even attempt creating such a story and that is what I really enjoy about this piece of electronic literature. Yes, I will reiterate that this was excruciating trying to figure out, but once I managed to make my way through, I appreciated the strange beauty of it. There is no doubt that a lot of thought had to be put into all of the creatures, scenes, and ever changing nature that filled the narrations. As frustrating as it was, one cannot deny the pure obvious level of skill that was needed to put this all together. The same thing goes for all forms and pieces of electronic literature. I could never see myself working with codes and texts to create an interactive, thought provoking, sense evoking story. I would like to believe that if I tried hard enough I would succeed and maybe I could one day. But for now I will remain in the passenger seat, enjoying the numerous and plentiful creative fruits that so many artists create for me (and everyone else I guess). 

           Each piece of electronic literature holds something new for its viewer/readers. With some of the interactive stories, every reader may end up with a different story, Almost, Goodbye by Aaron Reed is a good example of that. The reader will end up with the same end to the story, but while going through the text the reader has the choice of who the protagonist meets first and where they will meet, slightly changing the story each time. Deviant focused on choice and sight, sometimes giving the viewer/reader some sound to accompany the text, and Almost, Goodbye gives the reader a sense of control over the story. Each one allowing the reader to become a part of what they are reading and watching. Taking the act of reading a story and making it into so much more. 

          I particularly enjoy the use of sound in these digital stories. Public Secrets is an interactive, sound based narrative of women who are locked up in a prison in California. Hearing their actual voices makes the story seem very real. I think the same thing goes for most electronic literature. I defined Digital Humanities as something that is interactive and evokes other senses such as sight and sound, making the reader a part of the narrative. And that is pretty bitchin'.