ABSTRACT
This paper analyses the genre of interactive fiction, emphasising three interactive storytelling applications: Chapters: Interactive Stories; Choices: Stories You Play; and Journeys: Interactive Series. Interactive fiction is the process of narration delivered via software-simulating environments in which the interactors make choices to influence the storyline. These choices are usually textual prompts that appear at different points of narration. The rich graphics and the visual components make these interactive stories attractive and user-friendly. Using posthumanism as a theoretical framework, the essay answers the central question that underlies how this new revisionist and interactive medium of storytelling parodies the traditional roles of the author and the reader. Through these three interactive story applications, the paper demonstrates how spectatorship is closely associated with capitalism using Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of “liquid modernity” and the desire to obtain pleasure from these applications, making the interactors spend money. The paper argues that the aesthetics of the posthuman interactivity adds to the experience of the discovery of the narrative with the choices that the interactors make to proceed further and make them feel a sense of wholeness and personal integration.
