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For Those Who We Love Alive

I decided to actually read the background information before journeying into this week's e-lit piece. With Those We Love Alive by Porpentine jumped out at me so, I decided to start there. The title grabbed me right away. However, there was a warning right on the first page that stopped me in my tracks.


Content warning for violence, self-harm, and abuse. Okay, is this supposed to be ironic because this e-lit piece deals with love and love can sometimes hurt? Maybe. I guess I'll have click on in order to find out if and how the dots between love and violence connect. As I answer the questions and clicked around nothing made sense.

Then I start to read through the piece and I forgot about my original connection or prediction. I was caught up in the colorful words and different options. I noticed as I read through the piece that I kept coming back to the words, throne, balcony chambers, workshop. After each click, I tried to make sure that I took a reading by clicking on a different word. I'm not certain if I was supposed to put myself in the story or if I should've simply followed along as the reader who was waiting for someone to respond to the commands of "I am holding my breath" and "I need different breaths." When you click on "I am holding my breath" the screen goes blank for about five seconds then the previous screen reappears. With exhale in white letters.

Now I'm totally lost. What does this all mean? What does the melter, the worktable and the balcony all have to do with one another? I don't get it. I want to get it. And I feel like it is connected to something I should know or I should understand. But I don't.

I do, however, enjoy clicking through the hyperlink words looking for where it will take me next. Which is what I do first before I actually start to read the piece. I click through all of the hyperlinks to see where the loop takes me. After kept getting stuck at the palace courtyard I decided to watch the video about this e-lit piece. The video gets to the end. I never got there. And after a while, the soothing music just got on my nerves. I felt like it was torturing me.

As much as I enjoy the mystery and uniqueness of each e-lit piece, I'm feeling completely lost. I go back to the start page then click on the notes. From the notes, I was able to get a better understanding of the reading. I clicked on the word here and it took me to this page:

And I'm back to being lost and confused again. There were images on this page of people who created artwork that represents Porpentine. There were themes of suicide, bullying, gay and trans issues are all woven throughout the site and game. I totally missed all of that in my reading of he e-lit piece. 

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