ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on analytic approaches to the synthetic dimension of characters, considering them primarily in relation to the plot of a given narrative media text, as participants within narrative events. Addressing transmedia characters and their near-infinitely numerous appearances in media texts from the perspective of specific plots poses many challenges. Nevertheless, a lens on such characters as actants remains highly valuable, as most transmedia characters appear in recurring actantial roles throughout their many (trans)medial iterations. Transmedia characters are thus especially shaped by regularity, standardization, and repetition, determining them perhaps more than any assumed inner life. Through introducing the foundational concepts of narrative events and their constitutive participants, actants, the chapter will point to significant differences in degree and type of narrative agency that is afforded to characters in various medial, generic, and historical contexts. After a closer look at narrative conventions – tropes – shaped by these circumstances, a final section provides examples of how actantial roles and characters’ respective narrative agency can be negotiated within individual works with respect to their social, political, and ideological significance.
