I created a visualization of the text of the first four acts of Homestuck, an online multimedia webcomic about four kids who must play a very unusual game to preserve reality itself. The four kids–John, Rose, Dave, and Jade–appear prominently in the Wordle, but far larger are their chatroom handles (EB, TT, TG, GG), because all dialogue takes place as online chats, or pesterlogs (a word that is decently sized in the graphic as well), and those handles preface every line of dialogue. While John’s name is the largest of the kids’ names, because he is the main focus of the story and is thus mentioned most in narration, Dave’s handle (TG) is clearly the largest word in the graphic, indicating that he talks the most out of the whole cast.
The rest of the Wordle indicates that the story is mostly dialogue with the predominance of conversational words such as “like” and “yeah.” The graphic hints at the subject of time travel, a main focus in the story, with the words “future,” “now,” and “time.” Other words related to important plot points–”house,” “package,” and “card.” However, the Wordle does not suggest any overall themes or subjects for the work. This is probably the result of the story being almost entirely dialogue, and thus subject more to the characters’ patterns of speech than a single narrative pattern emphasizing clear themes. Also, the text I entered was only the first four acts (there are six in all, with three intermissions).
The only new feature for this visualization tool that I could think to ask for would be perhaps some way of seeing how different words are connected, like clicking on a word and showing which words often show up near it. This might outline thematic connections more clearly, and help focus on meaningful words without having to delete the extraneous ones (which distorts the graphic).