angels

In Their Angelic Understanding (2013) the player character lives in fear as the enemy of angels, whose visitations are not heavenly but tortuous violations. She has been scarred and wounded by an angel, and no one came to her aid. She is unconsoled, deeply conflicted, feeling somehow complicit in her own violation: “… I finally woke up, stupid stupid stupid, no one will save you, no one cares./ No one cares when an angel touches you. / I realized what I had to do./ I had to sacrifice my desire to be thought of as a good person.” She lights off on a surreal journey to confront those who have hurt her. At one point she has to clean the streets of amputated hands that fall ceaselessly from the sky, covering every surface. She has to play a cruel game of endurance in which she and her opponent must clutch red vampire tiles that cut their flesh and suck blood from their hands. The writing is suffused with a sense of displacement that seems related to a sense of being born in the wrong body, such as “i keep my hands in my lap where i can see them/ and the other moms will never know/ how much I want to rip their wombs out/ and fix my big horrible problem.”

(Source: Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg)

We know that angels start to fall from the heavens once they realize it is not heaven any more. The first person poetry shooter by the active participant of the pioneering cyberature community alludes to many resentments of the 90s and are also fun to shoot. (ELO 2015 catalog)

In the early days of the web, Marsha cheerfully launches a home page devoted to her favorite angels and invites them to come and play. They do, and they are not friendly. The Fall of the Site of Marsha shows three states of her site, captured in Spring, Summer, and Fall, each getting progressively darker as the angels haunt the beleaguered Marsha, reveal her husband's infidelity (from clues found on the site), and drag Marsha and her home page into madness and Gothic ruin.

(Source: Author description, Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1.)

The Fall of the Site of Marsha by Rob Wittig is an interactive electronic literature experience presented in the form of a late-nineties web site. The piece follows Marsha, an eccentric woman who creates a website centered around her obsession with angels. Things begin to get strange, dark, and a little creepy when the Angels Marsha loves so much make an appearance on her web site. Three different versions of Marsha’s site are available for view: Spring ’98, Summer ’98, and Fall ’98. Each version of the site is very different. The sites get progressively darker as the angels take control. At first, the page is just a goofy site about a woman’s angel obsession, but it eventually becomes nearly unrecognizable. As time goes on and the tone gets progressively darker, the site begins to fill with eerie messages from the angels. Each version of the web site is equipped with a variety of links and pages that contribute to the overall story. The user views the story organically through message boards and secret areas of the site. There is much to be discovered, from Marsha’s husband’s infidelity to sinister implications regarding her father’s death. For full effect and the complete story, each version of the site should be fully explored. The site isn't just the way the story is presented; it is the story itself. (Source: Electronic Literature Directory, http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3942)