#digital file types

This affordance is more obvious, perhaps the most obvious of Homestuck’s use of digital media.  Digital file types allow for .gifs and Flash animations or games to become a regular part of the narrative, as well as for music to be worked in with these moving images.  Print works cannot take advantage of this form of media at all, and while other Internet texts could, they often don’t, due to rigid genre expectations and similar considerations.  Because Homestuck is a story that Hussie “tried to make as much a pure expression of its medium as possible,” as stated on the Kickstarter page, Homestuck consciously makes use of these elements of the Internet, often to do some pretty crazy things (like this, for instance).  The way Homestuck experiments with these file types within the narrative separates it from other forms of fiction and makes it more difficult to fit it within a genre.  The breaking down of genre conventions (if Homestuck ever attempted to fit within a genre, which is unlikely) is part of what makes Homestuck unique as a text, and the conscious use of and experimentation with various file types to take advantage of all the Internet can afford sets Homestuck apart from many other webtexts.