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GLASSWORKS

Farewell, Thought Bubbles!

8/1/2021

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by Thomas LaPorte
PicturePhoto by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
A few weeks ago, I started reading “The Death of Superman” story arc. This was a massive comics storyline during the 1990s, one which is still discussed to this day. When I opened the first page, I noticed something I haven’t seen in a long time, something once considered a convention of comics: thought bubbles. See, I have dedicated my comic reading to issues from 2000-2011; by that time, thought bubbles had completely vanished from comic panels. In fact, comic storytelling overall had changed, and I believe a major part of it was due to the extinction of thought bubbles.

Since superhero comics first made their appearance in 1938 with the dawn of Superman, thought bubbles were used to convey plot and inner dialogue; they were a staple of the comics genre. However, somewhere in the 1990s, the thought bubbles seemingly vanished from comics. Comic thought bubbles are a hindrance to modern comic books and they should stay gone.


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Crowds Of Characters Make Storytelling Suffer

5/1/2020

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by Christopher M. Comparri
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The appeal of books, movies, television and any sort of story-telling platform can be boiled down to two key components: having a great story and having great characters to fill out said story. As viewers and readers, we often find ourselves rooting for certain characters and despising others to the pits of our very soul. This can be for any number of reasons: rooting for the underdog, finding a character that is relatable, finding one that embodies the essence of what we feel is right or wrong with the world. Finding the handful of characters that you feel strongly about builds an emotional tie between the content produced and the individual consuming it. However, the trend of incorporating huge casts of characters into stories is now having an adverse effect. People are finding too many characters to like or hate in passing. These characters are being masked as huge markers in a story, but the reality is quite different. In literature, sometimes less is more.

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Role-Playing with Words: the Nostalgia of Gamebooks

12/1/2019

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by Justina Addice
Imagine this: you’re eight years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the children's section of your town’s public library, facing shelves of R.L. Stine's collection of horror novels. You’ve just opened up the cover of Give Yourself Goosebumps: The Werewolf of Twisted Tree Lodge, and upon reading the first words, you are immediately immersed in this second-person narrative where you’re the main character. It begins with a bus ride; you’ve just won first prize for a horror story that you didn’t actually write, and are now on your way to claim your prize, to spend a weekend away at a spooky cabin in the woods…
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Fast forward thirteen years later to October 2018, where you come across old episodes of Goosebumps on television, and vague snippets of one specific story suddenly appears in your mind—images of traveling to a cabin, being chased by werewolves through a forest, of turning into a werewolf yourself. Others follow that, and you’re suddenly reminded of the wonderful stories you read as a child, ones where you were able to choose the outcome of the plot, where you could relive the same situation over and over with a new ending each time. You scramble to your laptop, and although it takes a while before you can actually find these stories you’ve somehow forgotten, you eventually come across it: Give Yourself Goosebumps. And underneath is a key word describing its genre: gamebook.  ​

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Emojis: Childish Rhetoric or Advancement of Pathos in A Digital Era?

5/1/2019

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by Jenna Burke
Recently there has been a face that is making the internet 🔥 with extensive debate behind its actual meaning. No, it is not one of the Kardashians or Clint Eastwood memes, but rather an emoji that is causing controversy. According to USA Today, the new “Woozy Face Emoji” that is supposed to depict someone who is intoxicated has been creating critical debate in the social media universe. While some people 😂 at this and make tweets such as “this is how every one be when they get their pictures at the DMV,” others find the fact that we are having the discussion not only 😕, but also a complete waste of time.

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Interactive Storytelling: A New Era

8/1/2017

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by John Gross

Throughout time technology has changed how the writer crafts his novel. From pen and paper, to typewriters, to word processing—the tools of the trade are constantly evolving. In today’s world, the writer can craft a sentence and move it around to different places, supplementing paragraphs where he sees fit. This can be a powerful tool, that makes the revision process more fluid and dynamic. An author can be less committed to putting something on a page, where it can be easily reshaped, moved, and removed. While this technology has fundamentally changed how the novelist crafts his work, it hasn’t really changed how the reader consumes it. Sure, we are in a period of time that is showing the rise of e-readers and digital print, but ultimately the novel is being experienced in the same traditional way.

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