An
Anatomy
of Anchors
Penetration uses the Connection
Muse [116] to guide the menu at the bottom of each stanza.
Like Six
Sex Scenes [14], Penetration gives a limited
number of anchors to thematically connected destinations in a menu below
the text.
Dynamic links
Penetration revisits nodes with slightly
different content which lead readers into an exploration of shades of
meaning (e.g, slowly exiting death vs. slowly exiting the inanimate world)
Thus, while other sites use dynamic anchors to show visited and unvisited
nodes, Penetration has a slightly more complex dynamic schema. Links leading
to unvisited nodes (that is, sections of text not yet read) are white,
while dark green links indicate
nodes that you have already visited. A shade of light green
(lying between the other two link colors) signifies that you have visited
the node but it has not been fully revealed to you. If you click on a
light green link to return to one of these partially revealed nodes, you
will find the node's contents altered to reflect the new context in which
you are reading it. This is accomplished with variable text elements created
with the Connection Muse.
Text in the content is also colored, but unlike True North [62] and The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot [61] these are not anchoral.
Screenshot used by permission.
The menu above points to two partially visited nodes and one completely
unvisited node.
The next time the reader visits this node, the text will be subtly changed:
Screenshot used by permission.
Screenshot used by permission.
The menu above points to one partially visited node,
one completely visited node, and one unvisited node.
Screenshots
used by permission
Like High Crimson [11], the introductory screen provides a thematic map rather than a structural one. For example, the wall anchor between the two characters is elucidated further by the link:
" a makeshift wall to support
the impossible weight of what
he had to make her understand"
Screenshot
used by permission