Welcome to Spaces Left Blank, a newsletter/collection of short essays about interactive, digital texts.

Those terms, of course, don’t really cut it—what’s interactive? What counts as a text? Every two weeks, I will be reflecting on various forms of hypertexts, interactive fiction, prose-driven games (often RPGs, but not only), unusual techno-textual artifacts, and other works of electronic literature. Nethack, Borges, Zork played on a smart watch, hyperlink stories buried in the depths of the Internet Archive, the Suikoden series, and procedural narratives generated by Twitter bots are all relevant topics.

Sometimes, my reflections will be informed by critical theories and academic concerns, but I intend to make each piece as accessible as possible. Meaning: if you don’t know, or care, who Derrida is—it’s cool, I got you. Tweets and shitposts are as likely to be cited as some scholar who thinks they’re all that.

My name is Axel and/or Hassen—depending on your sources, and on how you choose to navigate this part of the narrative. I write fiction, game criticism, and just started applying for PHD positions.

You are standing in a space (un)intentionally left (un)blank. It is (not) pitch black.
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