ABSTRACT
It is not a commonplace notion in character theory that fictional or fictionalized beings across texts must, in general, amount to the same character. In fact, literary theory long argued the contrary: Any “work of art” could only generate its own fictional entities that might only rhetorically point to other texts through allusion and reference. For popular heroes of contemporary (and earlier) media cultures, however, appearances across texts are more the rule than the exception. Often, their legal authorship is not bound to a single creator, but instead subject to intellectual property rights managed by corporate entities. Even with full legal authority to do so, these connections have to be built through practices of canonicity and continuity management. This chapter introduces analytical terms for the various relations that can be posited between two texts featuring the “same” character to form a transmedia, and often transfictional character network of identity vs. difference. Often, this is achieved through a re-naturalization and re-narrativization of character multiplicity through some sort of “multiverse” (with internal asymmetrical hierarchies) in which distinct “network nodes” or “character versions” can meet and interact with each other. What is more, complex negotiations of authorship are necessary or even unavoidable in order to legitimize a new addition as belonging to a given network node. Character networks do not necessarily possess clear-cut boundaries, however, so that overarching transmedia character types can be identified. The chapter also discusses the concept of a transmedia character template, understood as the continuously negotiated set of “essential” traits that any given character (network) across all transfictional appearances is expected to maintain.
