Ecenbarger, C. 2016. "Comic Books, Video Games and Transmedia Storytelling: A Case Study of The Walking Dead." International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, vol. 8, Issue 2, April - June 2016.
This article is about transmedia storytelling using The Walking Dead as an example. Transmedia storytelling is about telling a story over several different platforms. The Walking Dead is a comic series from 2003, a game by Telltale from 2012, and a series on HBO. According to Ecenbarger, Telltale uses transmedia storytelling. Henry Jenkins claims that transmedia storytelling (TS) creates additional markets by spreading a franchise over different platforms and modalities, defining it as a narrative where each new modality adds to the story, rather than repeat it.
To explain TS, Ecenbarger starts with intertextuality, which is the connection between different texts - the meaning of a text is constantly based on our knowledge of other texts, and based on our cultural position and knowledge, which Ecenbarger explains by referencing Bakhtin, Marx and Kristeva. Then he moves on the Genette's concept paratext, explained by Gray. A paratext is an item used to assist the reception of a text by the audience. Gray points out that this can include other media, and objects such as toys. Further, they have different uses in the digital age, such as controlling entry to the text, policing reading strategies, flowing between gaps in the text.
The game uses a particular technology, cel shading, to make it look like a comic, creating coherence and connection from the comic, supporting worldness. It also uses logos, typefaces and stylistic liknesses to create association between the different media. Telltale is visually reminding the player that this is a world in a comic book. The characters cross over, and they add new knowledge to the canon of this world, created in the comics. By breaking away from the comics and adding to the story, it is not important whether or not the player has read the comic, they can still enjoy this new part of the world. The experienced reader learns something new, the inexperienced is not left feeling like this is a story they should have known.
In this manner the game creates a bridge into an unknown storyworld. As the game progresses, the connections are made obvious both through association, but also through opposition. Where the hero of the comics is an officer of the law, the hero of the game is a convicted criminal. Telltale uses different types of characters and events to expand the storyworld and create a new understanding of The Walking Dead universe.
Henry Jenkins Transmedia storytelling 101.
Lisbeth Klastrup on Worldness.
Written fan fiction of The Walking Dead
Fan video of The Walking Dead
Nicolle Lamerichs, 2011. "Stranger than fiction: Fan identity in cosplay." Transformative Works and Cultures, vol 7.
Like fan fiction, fan movies, and fan art, cosplay motivates fans to closely interpret existing texts, perform them, and extend them with their own narratives and ideas. Lamerichs analyses cosplay as performativity.
Cosplaying was coined by Japanese game designer Takahashi Nobuyuki in the 1980ies, and it has become very prominent in Japan. Lamerichs studies this as a performance, and cites Bial as she defines it as a tangible, bounded event that involves the presentation of rehearsed artistic actions. Cosplay is often performed for the audience, but as much as an expression of the enthusiasm of the cosplayer, or of connection between different participants, including audience and photographers. To understand how this is an expression of identity, Lamerichs discusses Buther's understanding of identity as not invented, but as a temporary result of imitation. The performativity of identity is an uncertain subject without a core, and is not a voluntary act, but confined to the discursive practices of society. Still, butler claims it is possible to play with identity, even subvert it, and points to drag.
According to Butler, drag confirms heteronormativity, as she discusses it as lived expression. Lamerichs points out that drag can also be carnivalesque (Bakhtin), theatre or protest. Further, Butler does not look at the intent of the performer. Instead, Lamerichs points of the conbination of identity and playfulness in both drag and cosplay, and points to Stuart Hall's work, where dientity is seen as twofold, determined both by the discursive practices, and by the performers' use of culture, as the identity is constructed through articulation.
Cosplay is an embodied play form, where cosplayers use their bodies to display affection for certain narratives. It is impossible to draw the line between cosplayers and non-players, it is not just about dress, but is also embodied through behaviour, often judged both according to features of the body and behaviour, while the goal of most cosplayers is to express their own identity through a costume.
Cosplaying is an example of how fans rework a text, and it leans on identification with narrative content.
Harajuku Bridge - cosplay central in Tokyo.
Geralt of Rivia cosplay in 12 steps.
Klaus Pichler's beautiful pictures of Cosplayers in Austria.
Festival of colours - holi