Telling Stories or how Homestuck and New Media are revolutionising storytelling.
Homestuck is not a revolution, it does not create something brand new and it doesn't pretend to. Homestuck isn't the first creation of New Media but rather the embodiment of it, it conglomerates all the abstract possibilities of New Media into something tangible. What Homestuck does is uses technology to enhance storytelling, to create a new experience of something old (fiction writing). Technology is a tool, it allows us to change the way in which we do something, but the key is that we, humans, do the work and are just using these tools to make the job easier. We write stories, technology shapes how we tell them.
Inspired by Homestuck, this essay was not written and then uploaded online but rather written made to be online. It does not pretend to be the forefront of a new movement or to create a brand new concept but rather, much like new media it tries to change how we approach essay writing and reading. The same abstract concept of an essay permeates into this project, it's basic structure almost pristine. What I tried to do for my essay is to separate it into independent blocks, which can be understood independently or as part of a whole, allowing users to skip to parts they want to read or to skip the ones they don't want to. It also uses the technologies available in scalar, allowing me to cross reference information so that, if a term is used at some point of the essay (e.g. GIFs) a reader can hover over it to get additional insight on it. Or not. Choice is what drives the essay, the ability for the reader to escape the constrictions of the old ways of writing into the new potential of choice, the reader chooses how and what they read.
One of the main points of this essay is the democratization of New Media and thus, I want the reader to feel free to choose their own adventure. I also want to remain true to the belief that making content intended to be online, using the latest technologies does not inherently mean a substantial break on old concepts, it does not have to depend on gimmicks to seem more interesting but rather to use technologies almost seamlessly, to make simple additions that can create big changes on how we experience the creation and the viewership of content.
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