Afternoon, a story was very similar to a lot of the other hypertexts we’ve looked at so far. It reminded me a lot of Hegirascope. Like Hegirascope, Afternoon is a story guided by links within the text that is more like pieces of a puzzle that need to be put together. These links within pages of the ‘text’ will also divert you to other pages.
Although Afternoon and Hegirascope are similar in many ways, there are many ways they also differ. Hegirascope only relies on the reader’s choosing of links and the systematic changing of pages to guide the reader. It also does not allow any ‘backtracking’ of the story (this is not intended by the author, although you can ‘cheat’ this system by pressing your backbutton on your browser to view a previous page or by going back to previous links). However, Afternoon has a backbutton that can allow you to backtrack if you want to go back to a previous page. You also have a "Yes" and "No" button so that you can answer the questions that are asked of you in the story (a click on "Yes" or "No" will guide you to a different page). It also keeps a record of what links you have chosen and the history of pages that you have visited. You can also type in a response in the blank field at the bottom, and your response will send you to a different page. In this way, is like Afternoon maps your course for you as you explore it.
In Afternoon, you also have the option to ‘bookmark’ pages if you want. The reader can also read this story at his or her own pace – there is no systematic turning of pages as in Hegirascope. The reader MUST make a decision (click a link, click yes, click no, hit the backbutton) in order for the story to continue. In this way, Afternoon is very similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure books we read. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, if the reader does not make a decision as to what they want to do, the story cannot continue. Hegirascope, however, will continue whether the reader has made a decision or not.
With the reader being able to make all of these decisions, I think that Afternoon engages the reader much more than with Hegirascope or with the Choose Your Own Adventure books.