“Twelve Blue” by Micheal Joyce is a web hypertext which was written in 1996 (http://www.eastgate.com/TwelveBlue/).  From the home page, the reader can begin following a series of narratives by either clicking on a link within the story itself, or clicking on a colorful thread off to the side of the story.  For me, this made the stories hard to follow.  While you could choose the simple path and click on the text within the story, clicking on the various threads would allow you to change which narrative you were reading.

Although this was somewhat of a frustrating read for me, it was also very interesting in light of things that we have discussed in class.  These short stories being presented in a digital format allows the reader the freedom to choose the order in which they read the narratives.  In theory, you could also do this with a book; you could pick it up and turn to any page in it, and skip around reading only the passages you choose.  However, the book is not set up for this format, and readers have been trained to read printed books in a linear manner.  With “Twelve Blue,” the threads on the side are readily available to click in whichever order you want, and the viewers may be more likely to try this out because they are used to clicking on things on the screen which interest them.  At points, clicking on the threads becomes the only option; some screens do not have links within the text, and in this way the story forces you to choose a thread to follow, with no way of knowing whether it will lead to a continuation of your current narrative, or another part of the story.  This reading reminded me specifically of Hayle’s nine points about electronic hypertexts, especially point seven: “electronic hypertexts are spaces to navigate” (Hayle).  “Twelve Blue,” as a hypertext, is designed as a story to navigate your way through, not a series of narratives to read in a standard, linear manner, and the threads and links within the story constantly emphasize its digital properties.