This+is+how+you+will+die+-+MSA

Stefan Schneider Jason Nelson, [|This is how you will die]

//This is how you will// die is basically a slot machine/roulette game consisting of five five-line story/poetry lines picked from (according to Nelson) 15 narratives. The narrative starts with an explanation of "demise credits" and a brief introduction informing users of their lives in a broad, poetic manner. The rules are simple: the user begins with 28 demise credits, and each spin costs eight. Once the user has less than ten credits, they can no longer spin. However, there are random times where the user is given more credits (I have peaked at 378). Other times the game is allowed to end. The user is also (usually) given the opportunity to click randomly on any one of nine quickly-flashing poetry pieces, accompanied by pictures and a person narrating, the narration sometimes involving a part of the poem, and other times completely unrelated. The stories are usually nonsense, as are the poetry elements and the images, with the only unifying factor being ruminations on death. The slot machine narratives almost always include a beginning, an event, a mid-death thought or action, some immediate consequence, and some other far-off consequence. These can stray from typical form though.
 * Overview:**


 * Textual Features:**
 * Death narrative: The central portion of the piece contains the five five-line narrative pieces, again usually consisting of a beginning, an event, a mid-death thought or action, an immediate consequence of the death, and a far-reaching consequence. However some of these do not occur, and in rare circumstances, it's not clear that you have died.
 * "Explain death": A small icon at the bottom pops up with a piece of poetry that explains what is going on in a poetic way. It appears that all life is a gamble, and beings go through life without realizing their gamble.
 * Death poetry: Numbered 1 through 9, occasionally small icons appear which, when clicked on, open a box which flashes (often three) lines of poetry accompanied by photos and unrelated narration. The poetry often has nothing to do with the death-narratives, although they do involve considerations of death or futility of life.
 * Special boxes: Sometimes a player will receive a notice that features a "GOOD" and "BAD" element. The "GOOD" is almost always that the player has earned more demise credits. The "BAD" ranges from nothing to the possibility that a loved one will one day murder them with electricity.


 * Media Features:**
 * Constant animations/sounds: There is always a series of pixellated picture frames around the work, which changes every few seconds to another frame. There are also constant humming and twanging sounds which give the work a sense of unease. Every time the slot machine is spun, the user watches the options spin. Other options on the wheel are partially visible above and below the ones that are chosen.
 * Occasionally random sounds: For what appears to be no reason, occasionally grating music will begin. It lasts about thirty seconds before it runs its course. Also, the author will sometimes say something without prompting.
 * Death poetry: The textual poetry is accompanied by a man and/or a woman talking about death in some way. They are sometimes related to the poetry, like one where the man talks about tigers eating people and the poetry mentions tigers, but other times it is unrelated. There are also images that accompany these, and are also rarely related; for example, during a poem and narration about cars, there were streetlights and cars in the images, but during another piece, the images showed a woman in all white walking in darkness for no real reason. Both the images and the narrrations are often extremely unsettling but once in a while amusing.

The reading experience is relatively straightforward, and the instructions for the "game" elements are relatively simple. That being said, users are likely to find themselves either immensely annoyed by the constant sounds, if I have learned anything from our class. They seemed designed to put readers in a state of unease, which could fulfill its purpose without a reader understand that purpose. The stories range from the tragic to the absurd, but in terms of both content and access, there is nothing too difficult here. Everything is readable, legible (unless you get more demise credits, they sometimes cover the text), and right there are the screen. Clicking numbered segments as they come up can present other problems, because it can be difficult to follow the narration and the flashing poetry lines (which seem to be going too fast on purpose). However, both constantly loop until the user clicks on another one or spins the death spin again, so there is plenty of time to follow both. These are usually very disturbing and could definitely put off a reader, though. Also, readers could be frustrated by times where they run down to under ten demise credits. The game does not end, it just sits there until you refresh to restart. This could be problematic for readers as there is no real end. There is the alternate possibility, though, wherein they get over 300 demise credits for no reason. That essentially means that the game will never end, just because the patience to sit through those hours of spins may not exist (I've found that you almost always go back up to over 300 spins once you have that many credits). It is definitely an off-putting experience, and that is purposeful.
 * Reading Experience:**

The lines of poetry that exist to supposedly "explain death" seem to indicate that all of life is a gamble with death, and though we all preoccupy ourselves with life's tasks, we are essentially all cattle in the same fence, on a constant march toward the end. It's not a very hopeful way to consider life but it is difficult to argue that, to some degree, life is a journey toward death. I think that this piece aims to toy with our horror at imminent death but also point out the absurdity of such a concern: just as we all have opinions on and thoughts about death, and just as it is an inevitability, our death is really out of our hands. We have no more control over the circumstances surrounding out deaths than we do over these slot machine results. For example, we could die in a terrible circumstance immediately, or even live for 97 more years after the second event. I would say that this uncertainty is more hopeful than anything else, because you could die horribly and be molested by necrophiles, or die hilariously, murdered by a homeless man who decides to worship you but he does so "with knives" and the long-range result of your death could be that your donated sperm impregnates someone thanks to a tornado. It's outrageous, and hilarious, which I think is meant to put us at ease over the pervasive death-anxiety that permeates culture. I cannot say the same for the multimedia elements of this piece, though. The sounds are unsettling and the music is grating. The narrations, which are usually either a man or a woman, or both speaking, are often incredibly off-putting. Some are funny, like a girl joking that the guy is going to go on a spending spree with her insurance money, but most others are outright scary, like the guy talking about sunburned people being eaten by tigers, or a guy saying "wishes are fingers" over and over, then settling that "these wishes are too crisp," that declaration followed by the sound of something coming down and hitting the table. The implication seems to be that the finger was either smashed or cut off. It's pretty scary stuff. The images that accompany these are never amusing, as they are always shaking violently, usually depict something frightening (nature that turns to negatives of the same images, images of the human body stripped of skin, the aforementioned woman in white walking in the dark). If the text and the narrations can be amusing in its consideration of death, the images almost always undo that suggestion with their unsettling nature. I guess the message is, hilarious or absurd or anything else, death is still pretty terrifying and difficult to understand.
 * Analysis:**

1.) In some ways, the story creation in this is formulaic, like //Storyland//; does this piece suffer from the same demystifying disappointment, or does it provide enough options to remain fresh? 2.) What do you make of the multimedia elements? Do you think they add or detract from the reading experience? Why?
 * Discussion Questions:**