I decided to discuss Bing Xu’s work. This is an interesting story that is being told with icons, which tells the story of someone’s day routine. This story was easy to follow, these icons are able to describe sounds, movements, emotions, thoughts, and smells. This story can be relatable to many people that have a similar daily routine. Icons do what writing can’t, they can be readable to a lot of people around the world. Writing can be expressed in one language, but if you want someone from the other side of the world to read a work, you have to translate the story into that language. But icons and signs don’t need translation, they can be easily figured out by many around the world. 

I’m sure I can implement icons and indexes in my own project, I just have to figure out where I want them to be. Just like my visual narrative work, I was able to use some icons and emotions without any text. Which worked to describe what my characters wanted to say without saying a word. I’m still debating about my final project and what I want it to be about. Symbols, indexes, and icons are an easy way to tell the audience things happening in your story without using any dialog, which can make it easier for me to express things without adding that dialog. Experimenting with these three will be my next step to see if I want to implement it to my final project.

After ready symbol, index, and icon and looking through the four works, I decided to discuss CityFish by J.R. Carpenter. I liked the way the author used symbols, indexes, and icons as a secondary way of telling the story. From my understanding of the reading, symbols, index, and icon, CityFish by J.R. Carpenter primarily uses indexes. Something I especially liked about this specific work and why I chose it over the others to discuss is how the indexes relate to the work so well that the indexes themselves can tell the story reasonably well if the words were taken away. The indexes used in this story kept me engaged and interested in reading the story because they helped me visualize specific components of what was happening in the story. In a way the use of the icons almost made me feel as if I was in the story by somewhat being able to see what the character was seeing. For my project, I want to utilize indexes in a similar way. I plan on using them for the most part to set the scene. I want the reader to connect with the story and feel as if they are right there with the characters. As of right now, I think I may do this primarily to set the scene. For example, using icons of trees when they arrive in a forest.

Meet You In Paris

I went a bit over the one-minute mark. I felt it was necessary to give the story more depth.

Undertale is a highly praised story and strategy game. You play as a genderless child who has fallen into a place called The Underground, where the humans banished the monsters. It is a choose your own adventure game as your actions are taken into account throughout the whole game. You are given a choice, to kill anyone who crosses your path, or befriend them. These are called the Genocide and Pacifist route, anyone who does a mix or incomplete version of these rought is on a newtrule rought. Your character is the most important character of this story, because depending on the route you take, you are either the savior of the underground, or the killer of it. 

Story and lore are given to you gradually throughout the game. The excuse of puzzles are even enforced sometimes, as there are monsters trying to trap and kill you, since you are a human. 

If you go the more popular route of the pacifist route. Your job is to befriend every monster in the underground, no matter how much they try to kill you. Your reward for befriending every single monster, is freedom from the underground, with new family and friends to live on the surface with. This route requires more patience, persistence and care.

The more difficult route is the genocide route. Where your goal is set on killing every last monster in the entire underground, until there is nothing but dust. Your reward for your mass genasis, is the ghost of a former human child who was down here, haunting you and setting out to destroy your world and all others. This route contains much more fighting skill and extreme patience, in order to make sure you have killed everyone. 

This bullet hell, choose your own adventure RPG is loved for its story and the connection you gain to the characters within it.

Everything starts with Jerry needing money, but as he shows throughout the movie that he does not plan or think many things fully through. Therefore, his plan to get a lot of money fast, is to get his wife kidnapped, and have demands for her rich father to pay for her return. 

Jerry is shown as a nervous, none emotionally attuned man who put himself before everyone else whether intentional or not. His lack of connection is shown through more than just him freaking out over things not going his way. When his son is terrified about his moms disappearance, he gives his son no sympathy.

Symbols, indexes, and icons are used all the time and help a lot with the visualization of a story. In City Fish by J.R. Carpenter there are a lot of icons used that go along with the text. These icons immerse the reader into the story world by helping them visualize the setting. This is done a lot throughout this story, like when they were in Chinatown. The written description of what they are seeing while walking down the streets of Chinatown does a good job on its own of telling the reader what they are seeing. However, with the added icons of the heaps of leafy greens and the spiky fruit that surround the text, it helps the reader better visualize what these things look like. Another great use of icons is the maps that are placed throughout the story. These maps help show where that part of the story is taking place or if there is a change in setting. In my project, I want to try to use some of these same ideas. I would do this by putting icons of important aspects of the setting. This will not only help immerse the reader into my story, but it will ensure that what I am describing to the reader is accurately represented. I will also consider using a map in order to help set the scene. I think that this helps pulls the reader into the scene of the story.

With the two web/hypertext pieces that you linked, the roles of symbols, index, and icons are very important. In the reading you gave us, it states that words are forms of symbols. This means that even the parts where there is only writing, symbols are being used to tell the story. Symbols are also used heavily, like in “Forever”, where we are experiencing this story through a phone screen paired with text bubbles, pictures of rooms, and videos of the characters. The symbols are very important to differentiate when the characters are texting each other or interacting in person or with other people. We see that they are texting when there are text bubble in the format of a mobile device and it is familiar because it’s modeled off of things that we are used to today, like the IOS interface. Icons are also used in this piece, for example, in the beginning you are shown how to navigate this literature by using your arrow keys to move through it. It could be argued that the arrows they show you during this time are icons, and not symbols because they are representative of what your computer already has, which are arrow keys.

These hyperlink story games have interesting stories, but not all three follow the same format. For example, the hyperlink game How to Rob a Bank does not have many interactions for story options, it only goes to the next part with not much to choose from. It can be boring for some people because of the lack of interaction with the story. While the hyperlink game With Those We Love Alive has a deep story that you can interact with. It has many options to explore this game’s world and have a better feeling of what is around the audience. The other one, My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, does have reactions and other options, but is not as intricate as the one made by Porpentine. The part that I enjoyed in My Boyfriend Came Back From the War: the images, because they can be a good thing to have in a story, especially for the audience so they can have an idea of what something looks like without having to add a lot of descriptions in the story. 

Is important to have a good plot to engage the audience so that they can continue clicking into the story. But there might be cases where you might not need a good plot to make the audience get interested in the story. If you can get their curiosity with a mysterious story, or even a funny one, a plot might work but it depends if the author decides to do something different.  

Brayden Sathrum

3/28/23

 DTC 354

I found the usage of symbols, index, and icons in the story “Forever” by Alan Bigelow to be an interesting way of keeping the audience engaged while still exploring the plot’s themes. The story itself unfolds using commonplace icons like the messaging symbols displayed on the phone. By doing so, it places the user in a situation that feels familiar to them and creates immersion. 

Another way in which the story uses icons is how it transitions to different screens that the audience can identify with. An example of this is when it shows “rate your professor” while the text helps the user understand the characters and their personalities better. In doing this, the audience can relate the plot to their own lives as most have probably used similar websites.

Another aspect of the story that I found interesting is the way it uses indexes to focus the audience on a particular video or image. Oftentimes, it is due to a character making a reference that users may not understand. These are typically memes or niche internet inventions. By explaining these to the reader, it gives the audience a better understanding of the group’s dynamics and their sense of humor. It also illustrates how long they’ve been friends as they have inside jokes and discuss moments that have happened before the events of the story.

Overall, I thought the way “Forever” explores its story with icons and symbols to be unique. It gives the readers aspects to relate to and allows them to get enveloped into the story. To me, this shows how you can mix timely videos and sounds with a plot to create a piece that fits into a specific point in history.

CityFish, J.R. Carpenter’s semi-interactive work, is positively brimming with symbols, indexes, and icons. All of these serve alongside text to deliver the narrative.

As the user scrolls through the sideways-moving world of CityFish, they come across paragraphs that have been paired up with supplementary images, such as Chinese characters when the story moves into New York City’s Chinatown. The layout of the story is mostly icons, with symbols taking the second seat on the podium and indexes third. The reason for the icons is their supplementary nature previously mentioned. They serve as direct representations or expansions of the imagery provided in the text. These additions help propel the plot forward because they give a fuller sense of what is happening, similarly to Action-to-Action and Non-Sequitur  transitions as described by Scott McCloud. Without the text, you wouldn’t really know what was happening, though you could piece it together. The text glues these icons together.

Iconography helps you to interact with the story through the character’s eyes. Most of the images presented in the icons are directly what Lynne sees. Aside from these more direct images, we also get maps, which help give the setting and feeling of the story. This is helpful for generating usage ideas in my own work. I really enjoy the escapism of storytelling, as seen in CityFish, can add another layer on top of the story reading experience.

Book From the Ground:
From Point to Point

This story is very unique and could likely be read by any modern human. By bypassing the use of symbols in their story they create a work that doesn’t require the convention of written or spoken language. The text is primarily Icons with indexes showing actions taken. It’s very surprising how easy it is to read when it initially looks overwhelming with the amount of information shown, however when you think about it using words you could cram a lot more information into a smaller space. This leads me to believe that icons have the most information stored in the image while symbols have the most information stored in the human mind. An icon tells you more about its subject, indexes and symbols are used to spark the information stored in your brain about the subject.

I think if I want more control over what the user knows while experiencing my works or to be available to a wider audience I should use more icons, they need less outside knowledge to interpret and in the case of letters and words the user would need to know the language. Icons are more universal and anything with eyes can correlate an icon with its physical counterpart. I can use various icons to convey meaning like maybe blue bubbles to stand in for an oxygen readout, or a sign with a bed on it to denote an inn.

Of the three, I enjoyed “How to Rob a Bank” and “With Those We Love Alive”. I felt that the plots were more linear and easier to pick up on than in “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War”. I appreciated the differences in each method of storytelling, particularly in “How to Rob a Bank”, in its use of images, videos, and sound to convey the story. There were so many little details to add to worldbuilding. I didn’t reach the end of “ With Those We Love Alive” but I did appreciate the freedom to customize your experience within the story, though there was only one real path to take. I was definitely engaged throughout what I got through, though I got frustrated at the pacing.  “My Boyfriend Came Back From The War” felt more scattered, and it was more difficult to pick up on the plot. I couldn’t tell who was speaking or what was going on. I believe all three are stories, though some make you work harder to understand them, demanding more of the reader’s participation, either physically or mentally.

Sammy