Top 4 storytelling art forms, based on their potential. So, music is excluded, because it doesn't tell you anything. It's just sounds and stuff. PLEASE don't send me emails about how music is indeed a storytelling medium, all country music fans reading this blog. Here comes the list!
4. Movies
They're overly dramatic. Yes, even the movies that aren't typical "dramatic" or action-filled movies. Movies are: Two hours of waiting for an answer. Two hours of waiting for a solution to a way too intense (at least for my nerves) problem.
3. TV series
They're much like movies but can also be about the mundane things in between the action-filled movie events. About people talking about normal things during a normal day. TV series have a huge potential to explore its own form, but they're mostly about relationships, and way too much about romantic relationships. They're made to be accessible, so you can watch them on your phone while you cook food.
2. Games
Let you experience 3D, which is much more interesting than playing a competitive _GAME_ (those kinds of games aren't art so I won't mention them here). Experiencing 3D is so amazing that I won't say anything more about games. Except this: You also experience time in another way, by being able to steer the direction in the 3D world. You can change the order in which things happen, and whether this is good or not depends on you.
1. Books
Can be about anything. In any form. Can explore anything in any way for any amount of time, on any level. Can be right into the action, or have great distance to the subject/event and take you on long philosophical tangents that you won't get in any other medium. Maybe because books have some kind of a "free speech" history, compared to movies that have more of a "Hollywood" history?
Games and books are the art forms with the highest potential, because they're so free in their form (unlike movies). So many things are left to be made in these mediums. They are both very immersive, they let you be inside something and not just watch it happen on a flat screen. They do it through different methods, books let you get into the author's head, and games let you actually be there with "all" your senses. In a game you can stand at a mountain top and watch the view with all its magic, but the magic can also be lost because you get to see it. In a book you can imagine whatever you want and it won't ever be ruined.
These are all storytelling mediums, but in the end (linear) story kind of sucks (even if I've written about it several times before). Books and games are, more than any other mediums, able to leave the linear storyline and do something more interesting. A linear Hollywood story, where one thing leads to another which eventually gets resolved, where a problem gets introduced and then gets solved, is for people who need to have a reason for everything, who need to understand the logic behind everything to enjoy it, who can't take a surprise because they don't know how to handle it, unless it's a predictable surprise, like the punchline in a standup joke. Everything else but normal storylines is much more interesting and entertaining to experience. I like things that makes me laugh, makes me think or just generally wakes some new part in me up, and I don't like things that give me stress because a logical or emotional hole isn't filled yet in these fictional characters' lives. That's why I like books much and not movies as much.