ABSTRACT
Cruising is an example of a born digital fi ction, a fi ction created for online reading. Though the story itself, about three teenage girls cruising around their town in search of fun and friends, may seem simple, the navigation required to read it is not. By requiring readers to learn how to interact with the text and the other sensory modalities, Ankerson and Sapnar link Cruising with a development of time and subjectivity. By carving out a distinct theoretical space sympathetic to the conditions and affordances of the online environment this chapter engages with interpretation and literary critique though it is not fully aligned with it, at least not traditional evocations of narrative theory. As such, this chapter, like the titular Web fi ction it analyzes, reworks and reinterprets aspects of feminist theory and close reading in order to examine the differences and the possibilities afforded by this specifi c online multimodal environment. Multiplicity appears as a technique
both through the variety of modes Cruising employs and through the recognition of constantly becoming, evolving, and en-procès subjectivities.
