I found both of the interactive narratives intriguing, though for very different reasons. With “Same Day Test,” I found the “choose your own adventure” style interesting. The entire process made me become instantly engaged with the character, as if I was the one going through this torturous day. My personal feelings about whether I would want to know if I were HIV positive forced my decisions throughout the readings. The choices I made reflected my personality and feelings at the time.

Choices are a huge component to engaging a text. Am I really going to buy into this fictional story? Am I going to invest my time and emotional energy into empathizing with the characters? With this style of narrative I am forced to say “Yes.” The choices I made in this story force me to miss out on other events and information. As the text says at 10:18 and after deciding not to go to work, “I think often that making decisions can be more difficult than living with their consequences.”

This concept of getting personally drawn into the story and having my own choices affect the outcome made this a enjoyable narrative to read. I was brought back to it by wanting to know if the result is always negative. I went through every avenue of choices and found that the result does in fact change. I found that the protagonist could infact be HIV-postive or HIV-negative. The program for this narrative has created a virtual world where our choices actually have differentiated outcomes.

“The Lucky Ones” was also an enjoyable interactive narrative. This narrative style is one that I have become more and more interested in and find so ingenious. The use of so many interrelated stories that seem at first to be separate reminds me of the movies that have the big shocking twist at the end, like Fight Club or movies like Pulp Fiction that seem to be all over the place but come neatly together. Each character having his/her own five part narrative made me approach the overall story differently. With the addition of the yellow links, the characters and story become so much more involved.

Again, it is my choice to find out all I can about the characters. Say I didn’t click on the digital camera each time it appeared on the screen. I wouldn’t have missed out on any vital information of the narrative, but I would have missed the fact the Stella and Sharon actually smile and laugh with each other while having ice cream. This is additional information that leads to a clearer understanding of why Sharon gave her mom the keys to the car but not crucial to having Sharon give Stella the beautiful, elegant, and versatile Mercury Mariner. (Sorry, I just thought there needed to be an advertisement somewhere in this blog.)

Dave