ABSTRACT
In some or even many cases of transmedia character circulation, questions about canonicity and continuity are of little concern for either creators or audiences, generating a systematic temporal and ontological indeterminacy to which the previously introduced network model no longer applies. This chapter starts with a look at two modes of seriality that can still be described within the network model, amounting primarily to differences in the range of individual story arcs and the consequentiality of narrative events, often determined by industrial and/or commercial necessities at specific points in history. The chapter then discusses the concept of the “oneiric climate,” a systematic and often intended indeterminacy of canonicity and continuity. With regard to Donald Duck across media history, the chapter addresses three different ways to engage playfully with the oneiric climate surrounding the Duck family in contemporary media texts. At the edge of this set of cases, we encounter anthropomorphic figures whose proper names and iconographies are not (or at least not prominently) derived from or connected to any specific set of narrative events or a storyworld in which they first appeared, rendering them “pre-narrative” or even “meta-narrative.” For some anthropomorphic fictional beings whose most prominent representations circulate outside of narrative contexts, to begin with, the term “character” might even be misleading as they seem to “exist” prior to and beyond any storyworld context. They are thus discussed as transmedia figures, rather than characters. Examples include protagonists from political cartoons such as Uncle Sam, “virtual idols” such as Hatsune Miku, political icons such as Pepe the Frog, or product placement figures such as Hello Kitty.
