narratee

Argues that we still have very poor language for discussing the place of the reader in electronic—or computer-mediated—narratives, and that little work has been done to evaluate the relevance of core narratological concepts like narrator, narratee, and implied reader as tools to describe the process of reader positioning in electronic narratives. The author sees Aarseth's analysis of interactive fiction in terms of an intrigue, with an intriguee and an intrigant as one of the most sophisticated analyses of the reader's position in electronic writing, and extends this model.

This essay examines the use of the second person address in electronic literature and games. It discusses the way in which the direct address to the user has been used as a literary device, and how the "forced performative" that the reader is cast into when reading some such addresses is heightened in digital works, where the role of "you" is more literally enacted and regimented.