fan-Noël Thon

Transmedial Narratology Revisited:

On the Intersubjective Construction of
Storyworlds and the Problem of
Representational Correspondence in
Films, Comics, and Video Games

ABSTRACT: Located within the more encompassing project of a genuinely trans-

medial na¡ratolog¡ this article's focus is twofold: on the one hand, it aims to further
our understanding of strategies of nar¡ative representation and processes of narrative
comprehension across media by developing a transmedial conceptualization ofstory-
worlds as intersubjective communicative constructs; on the other hand, it will zoom in
on transmedial as well as medium-specific forms of representational correspondence
(sensu Currie), examining the question to what extent spectators of films, readers of
comics, and players of video games may choose to apply variations of the principle of
charity (sensu Walton) in cases where default assumptions about the relation between
a narrative representation and the storl'world(s) it represents become problematic or
even collapse entirely.

KEYWORDS z comics, films, principle of charity, representational correspondence, sto-

ryworlds, transmedial narratology, t ídeo games

fan-Noël Thon is Assistant Professor in Media Studies and Digital Media Culture at the University of
Nottingham, UK. Recent books include From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory
and Hßtory of Graphic Narrative (co-edited with Daniel Stein, 2013/'2015), Storyworlds across Media:
Toward a Medía-Conscious Narratology (co-edited with Marie-Laure Ryan, 2014), Game Studies: Aktuelle
Ansãtze der Computerspielfurschung (co-edited with Klaus Sachs-Hombach, 2015), Subjectivity across
Medìa: Interdisciplinary and Transmedial Perspectives (co-ediÍed with Maike S. Reinerth, 2017), and
Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture (2016).

NARRATM, Vol 25, No. 3 (October 2017)

Copyright o 2017 by The Ohio State University
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 287

CONTEMPORARY MEDIA culture is fundamentally shaped by narrative forms. Not

only literary texts (see, e.g., Genette, Narrative Discourse; Narrøtive Díscourse Revis-
ited; Schmid; as well as Gibbons's contribution in the present issue) but also pictures
(see, e.g., Schöttler; Speidel; as well as Wolf's contribution in the present issue), com-
ics (see, e.g., Kukkonen; Schüwer; as well as Kukkonen's contribution in the present
issue), theatrical performances (see, e.g., Breger; Korthals; as well as Alber's contribu-
tion in the present issue), films (see, e.g., Branigan; Kuhn), television series (see, e.g.,
Mittell; as well as Butter's contribution in the present issue), and video games (see,
e.g., Backe; Domsch) are now commonly analyzed from a narratological perspective.
While Lhere is a broad consensus that narrativity is a transmedial phenomenon, then,
much of current literary and media studies tends to focus on strategies of narrative
representation in specific media, effectively neglecting the question to what extent
these strategies share a transmedial dimension.
Accordingl¡ the term "transmedial narratology" is often used as a fairly gen-
eral umbrella term for narratological practices that focus on media other than liter-
ary texts. In the glossary of Basic Elements of Narrative, for example, David Herman
limits himself to stating that transmedial narratology is concerned with "storytelling
practices in different media' (194). Likewise, Marie-Laure Ryan uses the term "trans-
medial narratology" interchangeably with expressions such as "the study of narrative
across media'("Introduction" l), "narrative media studies" ("Introduction'33, orig-
inal emphasis), "the study of the realization of narrative meaning in various media'
("On the Theoretical Foundations" 1), and/or "the transmedial study of narrative"
(Avatørs 4). In these as well as in many other cases, it remains largely unclear whether
the label "transmedial narratology" is meant to denote a more distinctly transmedial
perspective than an expression such as "narrative media studies."
At least in some contexts, however, the term "transmedial narratology" is
used in a more narrow sense to refer to "those narratological approaches that may
be applied to different media, rather than to a single medium only" (Rajewsky
"Intermedialify" 46) and, accordingly, are primarily interested not in narrative media
per se, buf in transmedial strategies of narrative representation that manifest them-
selves across a range of narrative media.r But even if the term "transmedial narra-
tology" is used in this narrower sense, referring to those narratological approaches
primarily interested in transmedial phenomena that are "not bound to a specific me-
dium" (Rajewsky "Intermediality" 46), the fact remains that the realization of these
strategies in literary texts, pictures, comics, theatrical performances, films, television
series, and/or video games is "in each case necessarily media-specific" (Rajewsky "In-
termediality" 46). Indeed, the problem of "media expertism" remains a major chal-
lenge of the still emerging field of transmedial narratology, since pursuing narratolog-
ical theory and analysis from a transmedial perspective necessitates familiarity with a
broad range of narrative forms across media, yet most scholars of narrative specialize
in one or two of these media.2 Accordingl¡ there may be good reasons for the lim-
itation of most contemporary narratological approaches to one or two conventionally
distinct media.3
Marie-Laure Ryan names three of the methodological challenges a transmedial
narratology (in both the broad sense of "narrative media studies" and the narrower
sense sketched above) has to face. First, there "is the temptation to regard the idio-
288 løn-Noël Thon

slmcrasies of individual texts as features of the medium" (Ryan, "Introduction' 33).

Second, there is the problem of "media blindness: the indiscriminating transfer of
concepts designed for the study of the narratives of a particular medium [. . .] to an-
other medium" (Ryan, "Introduction' 34; see also Hausken). Third, there is the prob-
lem of "media relativism"-that is, the assumption that, "because media are distinct,
the toolbox of narratology must be rebuilt from scratch for every medium' (Ryan,
"Introduction' 34). While a strong "media relativisrn'makes the project of a transme-
dial narratology effectively impossible, "media blindness" leads to a loss of much of its
analytical power. Accordingl¡ one of the core tasks of a genuinely transmedial narra-
tology would be to aim at the middle ground between "media blindness" and "media
relativism," acknowledging both similarities and differences in how conventionally
distinct narrative media narrate.
As a case in point, most contemporary narratologists will agree with Fotis fan-
nidis's statement that "all representation takes place in a medium, and the charac-
teristics ofeach particular medium dictate key properties ofany representation that
takes place in that medium" (39). I certainly do not mean to generally accuse this
view of "media relativisml'but fannidis's addendum-"with the result that it is simply
not possible to discuss representation in abstract terms" (39)-still seems to be quite
problematic in its apparent absolutism. After all, it is fairly obvious that one cannot
bøl'discuss representation in abstract terms": just like the notion of a map using a
1:l scale, the demand to examine narrative representation without some degree of
abstraction seems nonsensical. What lannidis aims at, however, is the simple fact that
the story-telling possibilities of media are very different. While one can analyze nar-
rative representation from a transmedial perspective, then, every attempt at a trans-
medial narratology has to acknowledge that "stories are shaped but not determined
by their presentational formats" (Herman, "Toward a Transmedial Narratology" 54)
in order to evade "media blindness" and remain what could be described as "media
conscious" (see Ryan and Thon).
Arguably, a core condition for a transmedial narratology to remain "media con-
scious" is an awareness of the relative medium specificityof its concepts. On the one
hand, it should be obvious that many of the terms and concepts developed for the
analysis of literary texts cannot (or, rather, should not) be directly applied to other
media. On the other hand, this does not mean that our understanding of pictures,
comics, theatrical performances, films, television series, or video games canno| øt all
benefit from narratological concepts developed with literary texts in mind. As has
already been mentioned, a truly radical "media relativism" that insists on the gen-
eral impossibility of transferring or adapting narratological concepts across object
domains is incompatible with the project of a transmedial narratology (and quite a
few other strands of postclassical narratological practice), but we are evidently not
confronted with a simple either/or choice between "media relativism" and "media
blindness" here. More specifically, Ryan may be right in remarking that "the distinc-
tion story/discourse, as well as the notions of character, event, and fictional world]'
are "narratological concepts that apply across media' (Avøtørs 6)-but, even then,
these concepts do not apply in exactly the søme wq) 10 every conventionally distinct
medium.
 Transmedial Nørratology Revisited 289

While there are several rather more "optional" narrative strategies, such as the
use ofnarratorial representation that can be attributed to more or less explicitly repre-
sented narrators-as-narrating-characters (see, e.g., Hogan, Nørratiye Discourse;Thon,
Transmediøl Narratology 123-220; as well as the contributions in Birke and Köppe)
or the use of subjective representation that offers recipients the opportunity to imag-
ine having "direct access" to characters'perceptions and consciousnesses (see, e.g.,
Ciccoricco; Thon, Trønsmedial Narratology 221-326; as well as the contributions in
Reinerth and Thon) that can be fruitfully theorized and analyzed from a transmedial
perspective, as well, the present article focuses on the relation between narrative rep-
resentations and the worlds that these representations represent-or, in other words,
on the intersubjective construction of storyworlds across media. Moreover, while a
broad range of conventionally distinct media can (and does) represent more or less
complex storyworlds, I will primarily zoom in on films, comics, and video games as
three commercially successful as well as culturally influential rnedia whose narrative
affordances and limitations differ from each other in interesting ways.a Accordingl¡
I will begin by discussing storyworlds as intersubjective communicative constructs
from a transmedial perspective and sketching a selection of transmedial forms of rep-
resentional correspondence, before examining film-specifrc, comics-specific, and vid-
eo game-specifrc forms of representational correspondence in more detail.

Storyworlds as Intersubjective Communicative Constructs

The question of when something can (or should) be considered to be a narratiye andl
or to have the quality of narrøtivity attributed to it has been one of narratology's most
stubbornly recurring problems (see, e.g., Abbott; Thon, Transmedial Nørrøtology
26-30; as well as Wolf's contribution in the present issue). Without going into too
much detail, then, it is at least worth emphasizing recent attempts to develop proto-
typical defrnitions of narrative, which allow for gradual conceptualizations of nar-
rativity (see, e.g., Fludernik, Towards a'Natura|Narrøtology 15-52; Herman, Basic
Elements 9-22;Iannidis; Ryan, Ayøtørs 6-12; Wolf, "'Cross the Border"'). This view
is perhaps best encapsulated in Marie-Laure Ryan's proposal to regard "the set of all
narratives asfuzzy, and narrativity (or'storiness') as a scalar property" (Avatars 7) that
can be defined by eight more or less salient conditions or prototypical features.' Still,
even relatively weak 'do-it-yourself definitions" (Ryan, Ayatørs 9) will usually main-
tain that prototypical narratives are representations of worlds located in space and
time as well as populated by characters. Accordingly, it will come as no surprise that
recent narratological practice has increasingly focused on the worlds represented by
narrative representations-that is, on storywodds.
David Herman is usually credited with popularizing the notion of storyworlds as
"the worlds evoked by narratives" (Basíc Elements 105), but he was by no means the
first to discuss narrative works in terms of the worlds they represent. As he remarks
himself, 'bver the past couple of decades [. . .], one of the most basic and abiding
concerns ofnarrative scholars has been how readers ofprint narratives, interlocutors
in face-to-face discourse, and viewers of films use textual cues to build up represen-
290 lan-Noël Thon

tations of the worlds evoked by stories, or storyworlds" (Basic Elements 106, original
emphasis). Indeed, the history of the concept can be traced from Gérard Genette's
'diegesis" (Narrative Discourse Revisited 17) and Seymour Chatman's "world of po-
tential plot details" (29),viathe "fictional worlds" of possible worlds theorists such as
Thomas G. Pavel, Ruth Ronen, or Lubomír DoleZel, to cognitive narratologists such
as Marie-Laure Ryan (Possible Woflds; "Story/Worlds/Media'), Edward Branigan, or
Richard Gerrig.6 Despite a common conceptual core, then, the various approaches to
storyworlds that are located within different research traditions not only use a variety
of terms to refer to them but also conceptualize them rather differently.
Storyworlds can generally be understood as "imaginable scenarios or sets of con-
ceivable states of affairs constructed and expressed by means of artefacts (semiotic
objects), but [. . .] not identical with these objects" (Margolin 355), which leads many
cognitive narratologists to focus on the situation models or, more generally, mental
models of the storyworlds that recipients construct on the basis of a given narrative
representation.T Herman, for example, understands storyworlds as "mental models of
who did what to and with whom, when, where, why, and in what fashion in the world
to which recipients relocate" (Story Logic 9) or as 'þlobal mental representations" of
C
t
"the world evoked implicitly as well as explicitly by a narrative" (Bøsíc Elements 107).
The popularity of Herman's oft-quoted definitions notwithstanding, though, conflat-
Õ o@
¡tð'*
U
ing storlr,rrorlds as "imaginable scenarios" with their imagination or mentøl represen-
tatìon seems just as unsatisfactory as conflating them with their narrative or, rather,
medi al rep res entøtion.
Perhaps most salientl¡ a conceptualization of storl'worlds that directly equals
them with recipients' mental models ignores the fact that we usually presuppose some
kind ofjgggiuþjeq[ve_plggltþtlqy when we talk about what is represented by nar-
rative works across media. Recipients ma¡ in other words, construct more or less
accurate or appropriate mental models of a storyr,vorld based on one and the same
narrative representation, and our terminology should be able to acknowledge this
rather fundamental fact. It remains important, then, to distinguish as clearly as pos-
sible between the external medial representation of a story'world, the internal mental
representations ofthat storyworld, and the storyworld itself. Reception processes ev-
idently play an important role in understanding what storl'worlds are, and we should
not pretend that "meaning generates itseltl'but the complex forms of intersubjective
meaning-making that are involved here cannot (and should not) be reduced to the
individual construction of (more or less) subjective mental representations, either.8
Accordingl¡ I will draw on theorists such as Gregory Currie and Jens Eder in sub-
scribing to a broadly intentionalist-pragmatic account of narrative meaning-møking.
In the framework developed by Currie, narrative r¡'orks can generally be described
as "intentional-communicative artefacts: artefacts that have as their function the
communication of a story, which function they have by virtue of their makers' in-
tentions" (6). Eder's approach is largely compatible with such a conceptualization of
narrative representation (and narrative comprehension), but it allows us to specify
the ontological status of the worlds that narrative works represent. Storl.worlds, in
this view, are normative abstractions about ideal mental representations based on ac-
tual medial representations-or, somewhat less unwieldy, intersubjectíve communicø-
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 291

tive constructs with a normative componenú (see Eder 6l-130).'q Further following this
line of reasoning, any discussion of how storyworlds are represented across media
must be able to take into account recipients' collective mental dispositions (which
ma¡ of course, vary depending on the group of recipients), transmedial as well as
medium-specific representational conventions (at least some of which will change
over time), and (hypothetical) authorial intentionsÌ0-without having to conflate sto-
r1'worlds with their imagination by individual recipients.
Independently of the question of what storyworlds øre, though, it seems largely
uncontroversial to say that they-as worlds populated with characters and situated in
space and time-consist not only of existents, events, and charactersrr but also of the
spatial, temporal, causal, and ontological relations between these elements. Accord-
ingl¡ we can generally draw a distinction between locølly represented situatíons and
the more complex globøl storyworld as a whole into which they are combined (see
Thon, Transmedial Narratology 46-50). Among other things, this allows us to better
account for the fact that narrative representations-and particularly the kind of com-
plex and commonly metalepticl2 or otherwise metareferentialt3 narrative representa-
tions on which much of current transmedial narratology focuses-tend to represent
a selection of (what at least initially appears as) spatiall¡ temporall¡ causally, and
ontologically disconnected situations, challenging recipients to figure out the spatial,
temporal, causal, and ontological relations among (as well as within) these situations.
Indeed, even a brief glance at contemporary media culture will suffice to illustrate that
not only novels or other literary texts but also various more decidedly multimodal
narrative media partake in the representation of these kinds of occasionally rather
complex storyworlds.
Take, for example, films such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fìction (199a), which
non-chronologically represents the intersecting stories of the small-time criminals
Vincent Vega, Butch Coolidge, and ]ules Winnfield, or Christopher Nolan's lncep-
tion (2010), in which Dominick Cobb and his team "enter" the subconsciousnesses
of other characters, resulting in the representation of a complex arrangement of "sub-
conscious worlds" within "subconscious worlds"; comics such as Charles Burns's
Black Hole (1995-2005), which non-chronologically represents the intersecting sto-
ries of the teenagers Chris, Rob, Keith, and Eliza as they contract a heretofore un-
known sexually transmitted disease, or Mike Carey and Peter Gross's The Llnwritten
series (2009-15), in which the writer Wilson Taylor and his son Tom Taylor as well
as the sinister Pullman and his Order of the Unwritten constantly manipulate the
borders between the "factual domain'of the storl'world and an ubiquitous "realm of
stories"; and video games such as Irrational Gamcs' Tribes: Vengeance (2004), which,
once more, non-chronologically represents the intersecting stories of Victoria, Daniel,
Julia, Mercury, and Jericho as they become increasingly involved in the developing
Tribal War, or Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake (2010), in which the eponymous
writer tries to find his missing wife in a storyworld that employs the conventions of
the horror genre in order to constantly blur the boundaries between dreams, fiction,
and reality.
While it seems clear, then, that not only literary texts but also frlms, comics, and
video games (or television series, theatrical performances, and certain pictures, for
292 løn-Noël Thon

that matter) can represent more or less complex storyworlds, this observation alone
is not yet sufficient to satisfy the previously mentioned requirement of a genuinely
transmedial narratology to remain "media conscious" when theorizing and analyzing
narrative across media. That being said, the medium-specific strategies of narrative
representation employed by films, comics, and video games appear to be particularly
salient with regard to the representation oflocal situations. By contrast, the ways in
which these situations are located within the global storlworld as a whole-that is, the
ways that the spatial, temporal, causal, and ontological relations are (or are not) estab-
lished between various represented situations-generally appear to be more transme-
dial, since recipients commonly (though not exclusively) take their cues from what is
being represented as opposed to specific elements ofthe representation in this context
(see Thon, Transmedial Narratology 76-120, for more detailed analyses of pertinent
examples). While the processes involved in the representation (and comprehension)
of local situations appear to be more medium-specific than those involved in the in-
tersubjective construction ofthese represented situations' relations within the global
storyworld as a whole, then, there are quite a few transmedial aspects to the former
as well.

Transmedial Forms of Representational Correspondence

So, what are salient transmedial aspects of the intersubjective construction of Iocal sit-
uations as part of the global storyworld as a whole? According to Marie-Laure Ryan,
there is a principle of minimal departure at work during narrative meaning-making
that allows the recipients to "project upon these worlds everything [they] know about
realiry [making] only the adjustments dictated by the text" (Possible Worlds Sl).ta
It is worth stressing, though, that recipients do not "frll in the gaps" from the actual
world itself but from their actual world knowledge, and that, moreover, "the fiame of
reference invoked by the principle of minimal departure is not the sole product of un-
mediated personal experience," but may include various forms of medial and generic
knowledge, or even a specific "textual universe as frame of reference" (Ryan, Possible
Worlds 54). Still, it seems clear that the principle of minimal departure applies across
media: if we are confronted with the representation of a living human character, it
will, in most cases,rs be reasonable to assume that he or she has a functioning brain
in his or her skull, a beating heart in his or her chest, and so forth-even without the
narrative representation explicitly representing these prototypical features of a living
human being, and independently of whether the representation in question is realized
in the form of a film, a comic, a video game, or some other narrative medium.
Despite the importance of the principle of minimal departure and the "filling
in' of the 'þaps" of narrative works across media for which it allows, however, some
'þaps" can never be "frlled" in an intersubjectively valid manner. The main reason
for this is that recipients' world knowledge-whether historical or contemporary,
non-flctional or fictional, universal or particular-can provide only comparatively
general additional information. As a result, recipients cannot conclusively infer the
answer to specific questions such as "Does character X have children?" or "Does char-
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 293

acter X have a birthmark on his or her back?" if the narrative representation does
not provide it. lust as we do not-and, in fact, cannot-know whether Lady Macbeth
from the storyworld of Shakespeareì famous tragedy has any children (see, e.g., Wol-
terstorff 133; as well as Doleåel 22;Pavel75; Ronen l2l-22), we do not-and, in fact,
cannot-know whether Dominick Cobb from the storyworld of Inceptio¡¿, Wilson
Taylor from the storyworld of The Unwritten, or Alan Wake from the storyworld of
Alan Wøke have birthmarks in the shape of the Isle of Skye on their respective backs.'u
Hence, recipients may pretendthat storyworlds are complete in the process that Ryan
calls "fictional recentering" (Possible Worlds24),yetmost theorists of fictional worlds
agree that represented worlds are øctuaLly incomplete.
It is also important to note, though, that recipients not only "fill in the gaps" (as
it is described by Ryan's principle of minimal departure) but also routinely "ignore"
some aspects of narrative representations in order to intersubjectively construct the
local situations that are part ofthe global storyworlds ofthese representations. In this
context, it is helpful to generally distinguish between presentational and representa-
tional aspects ofa given narrative representation. This, in turn, allows us to underscore
that narrative meaning-making is based on an acute awareness of the intricacies of
what Currie calls representationøl correspondence, atetm designed to capture the gen-
eral observation that, "for a given representational work, only certain features ofthe
representation serve to represent features ofthe things represented" (59). Particularly
in cases where the assumption of representational correspondence becomes problem-
atic, recipients will look for alternative external explanat¡ons related to (hypotheti-
cal) authorial intentions or (transmedial as well as medium-specific) representational
conventions before trying to imagine contradictory or otherwise problematic story-
worlds based on a rigid insistence on internal explanøtions.r7 Accordingly, I want to
stress that both "filling in the gaps" and "ignoring" certain aspects ofa narrative rep-
resentation are crucial parts ofthe intersubjective construction ofstorlworlds across
media.
Kendall Walton pointedly describes this aspect of narrative meaning-making in
a principle of charity:
terms of

The generation of fictional truths is sometimes blocked (if not merely de-
emphasized) just, or primaril¡ because they make trouble-because they
would render the fictional world uncomfortably paradoxical. [. . .] If there is
another ready explanation for the artist's inclusion of a feature that appears
to generate a given fictional truth, it may not seem that he [or she] meant
especially to have it gencratcd. lynd this may arguc against rccognizing that
it is generated. (183, original emphasis)

Arguabl¡ then, a significant part of narrative meaning-making across media can be

described via reference to Ryan's principle of minimal departure and Walton's princi-
ple of charity. As the transmediality of Ryan's principle of minimal departure has al-
ready been established, I would now like to give a few more examples of how Walton's
principle of charity can be applied transmedially in the context of verbal and pictorial
representation before moving on to more medium-specific cases.rs
294 Jan-Noël Thon

In fact, Walton discusses what has become a standard example to illustrate that
verbal representation (which is quite evidently employed across multimodal media)
may suggest fairþ complex forms of representational correspondence in some cases:

Most of us will probably prefer not to allow that fictionally Othello is a great
literary talent, and even to afirm that fictionally he is not. But this only shifts
the paradox. Is it fictional that Othello lacks special literary talent and yet
is capable of improvising superb verse while distraught? Shall we deny that
fictionally Othello's words "Had it pleased heaven / To try me with affliction'
. . . are a superb verse, even though it is manifestly true that they are? Or shall
we go so far as to deny that fictionally those are Othello's words? Perhaps it is
ûctional, rather, that Othello utters an unspecified vernacular paraphrase of
the words Shakespeare's actor enunciates. (181-82)

Evidently, the problem is not limited to Shakespeare. While character speech tends
to be represented using at least partially medium-specific strategies in contemporary
films, comics, and video games, the general principle that "representation is not ver-
batim'(Fludernik, The Fictions 356, original emphasis) and that the'þap'between
representing and represented character speech can, indeed, be quite pronounced still
applies in a fairly transmedial manner.
There may be no intersubjectively valid way to construct what these characters
are "actually" saying in the represented storyworld, but it still seems clear, for exam-
ple, that even though the English language is used for representing character speech,
the characters in Louis Leterrier's blockbuster frlm Cløsh of the Titøns (2010), Frank
Miller's comics series 300 (1998), or SCEt action-adventure God of War (2005) are not
represented as "actually" speaking English, since the settings ofall ofthese narrative
works are easily recognizable as more or less strongly fictionalized versions of ancient
Greece. While an external explanation for this very wide-spread representational
convention is easily available (in that most of the intended audiences of these works
will not be able to understand Ancient Greek), narrative representations that employ
a science fiction setting often also offer internal explanations that refer to a'tommon
galactic language" and/or to highly developed translation technology (such as the uni-
versal translators in Barry Sonnenfeld's 1997 Men in Black, the power rings in the
more recent volumes of DC's long-running Green Lantern comics series [1990-2016],
or the continuously updated personal translators introduced to Bioware's Mass Efect
role-playing game series with the 2008 Bríng Down the Sk7 expansion).
And, of course, there are also quite a few cases in which character speech is not
translated as part of its representation, though that often causes problems of its own due
to the limited language profrciency of writers and/or (voice) actors. While it would seem
reasonable to assume, for example, that the German terrorist/criminal mastermind
Hans Gruber and his henchmen in the storyworld of the original cinematic release of
Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988) are meant to be proficient in their native language,
the actors used to represent them were evidently not. Yet, this already is the external
explanation that recipients will need in order to charitably "ignore" the hear,y accent
of Alan Rickman and the other actors playing the German terrorists/criminals-i.e., in
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 295

order to understand that there is no direct representational correspondence between

representing and represented character speech. Likewise, the German superhero Night-
crawler, who appears throughout Marvel's various X-Men comics series, is evidently
meant to be able to speak German, even though the same just as evidently cannot be
said about the writers responsible for representing his character speech, as they not only
tend to inappropriately use rather archaic German expressions (e.g., "Liebchenl'which
translates as "sweetheart") but also commonly misspell them (e.g., "Leibchenl' which
translates as "bodice"). And, of course, the German soldiers in first-person shooters
such as Monolith's The Operative: No One Lives Foreyer (2000) are quite clearly meant
to be able to t'orm grammatically correct German sentences beyond shouting 'Ach-
tung!" as part oftheir storyworld, even ifthe voice actors used to represent the character
speech of these characters commonly are not.
Similar observations regarding the applicability of the principle of charity across
media also hold in the case of pictorial representation, where the representational
correspondence maf once more, be complicated or even collapse entirely due to com-
paratively transmedial representational conventions. A fairly straightforward exam-
ple is the use of color: Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (201l) uses black-and-white
pictures for the most part, but there are no good reasons for spectators to imagine the
film's storyworld to be black and white. Instead, they will assume that the storyworld
of The Artist is "like our world" (at least "by default"), and this assumption is further
reinforced since none of the characters thematize what would certainly be a striking
lack of color in a world otherwise appearing to largely conform to our (historicized)
real-world expectations. While there are a few exceptional cases such as Gary Ross's
Pleasantvílle (1998), which suggests that the black-and-white pictures are actually
closely corresponding to how the subworld of a black-and-white TV series appeârs
to the film's characters, a narrative representation's deviation from "expected" colors
will usually be taken to indicate a more "indirect" representational correspondence
rather than a deviation of the represented storyworld from recipients' color-related
real-world knowledge.
Again, these observations are not limited to films, but apply across a range of dif-
ferent media. Readers do not assume, for example, that the storyworld of Frank Mill-
eri Sln City comics series (1991-2000) is sometimes monochromatic and sometimes
colorful, even though its verbal-pictorial representation most certainly is. fust as the
characters in The Artist do not acknowledge the lack of color as part of their story-
world, none of the other characters represented in Sin City: Hell and Back ( 1999-2000)
comment on Deliah's strikingly blue eyes or her blue clothes, which strongly hints at
the "fictional fact" that thcy do not makc hcr stand out as much (or at least not in the
same way) within the storyworld as they do on the level of narrative representation.
The situation in the case of video games is similar: when Eike Kusch, the protagonist
of Konami's adventure game Shadow of Destíny (2001), travels to the past in order
to execute various convoluted plans to prevent himself from being murdered in the
present of the year 2001, most players will understand that the slightly faded colors
used to represent the situations located in 197911980, the greyscale pictures used to
represent the situations located in 1902, and the sepia tones used to represent the
situations located in the 1580s each mark the specific temporal locations of the rep-
296 løn-Noiil Thon

resented situations, but do not suggest that the storyworld was colored in sepia tones,
monochromaticall¡ or less boldly back then (which, incidentall¡ is further reinforced
by the fact that Eike is represented using the default color palette associated with the
storyworld's present throughout the game).
Having illustrated, albeit in a necessarily cursory fashion, that one can, indeed,
identifii transmedial aspects of the representation and intersubjective construction
not only of global storyworlds as a whole but also of the locally represented situations
that the former consist of I would like to stress, once more, the necessity for a trans-
medial narratology that aims to remain "media conscious" to take into account more
medium-specific forms of representational correspondence. It would, of course, go
well beyond the scope of this article to provide a comprehensive examination of the
ways in which the complex multimodal configurations that (partially) define the me-
diality of conventionally distinct media such as films, comics, and video games com-
plicate the rough distinction between verbal and pictorial representation introduced
in the preceding section. Still, I would like to briefly provide a few additional remarks
on some of the ways in which representational correspondence and the resulting ap-
plication of charity may take more medium-specific forms in these media.

Film-Specific Forms of Representational Correspondence

Concisely put, films' audiovisual representation of storyworlds is characterized by the

use of mise-en-scène, cinematography, montage, and sound, which, in turn, has led
to a number of by now fairly well-established film-specific representational conven-
tions (see, e.g., Bordwell, Thompson, and Smith; Monaco; Persson).re Even with the
increasing ubiquity of computer-generated imager¡ Currie's distinction between rep-
resentation-by-orígin and representation-by-use captures an aspect of film's mediality
that is particularly salient in this context. Primarily focusing on the pictorial dimen-
sion of audiovisual representation (though similar observations arguably also apply to
film's auditive dimension2o), Currie suggests that

photography depends on representation-by-origin, because the process that

goes into making a photograph involves the leaving of a visible trace on a sur-
face by exposure ofthat surface to light emitted or reflected from the source;
the source is then what the photograph represents-by-origin. [. . .] We make
progress when we see that a photograph, or movie, or video image can repre-
sent in more ways than one, representing one thing by origin and something
else by use. We regularly press things into representational service by using
them to represent [. . .]. And, something which is a representation-by-origin
of one thing may also be a representation-by-use of something else. [. . .] So
a photograph or film image may represent one thing by origin-Cary Grant
for instance-while representing something else because of the use of that
image in a project of narrative communication. (19-20)
 Transmediøl Narratology Revisited 297

Figure 1. Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman played by Nicolas Cage in Adøptation.

Following Currie, then, perhaps the most salient (though certainly not the only note-
worthy) aspect of film-specific representational correspondence is related to the fact
that many films use actors to represent characters and that, hence, at least some of the
elements of the audiovisual representation of characters-their body and their voice,
in particular-appear to be somewhat contingent, allowing for easy external explana-
tions of certain features ofthe representation.
It would, for example, be quite misguided to ask for internal explanations of why
the characters of Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman in Spike fonze and Charlie
Kaufmanb Adaptation. (2002) look and sound like the actual actor Nicolas Cage, who
plays both characters (see Figure 1)-and, vice versa, there does not seem to be an
internal explanation for why the character Conchita in Luis Buñuel's Thøt Obscure
Object of Desire (1977) looks and sounds like the actual actress Carole Bouquet in
some sequences (see Figure 2), but like the actual actress Ángela Molina in others
(see Figure 3). While there are external explanations in both cases, the way in which
a single character, Conchita, is represented by two different actresses in That Obscure
Object of Deslre is admittedly more unusual-and, arguably, considerably more meta-
referential-than the comparatively obvious observation that all characters played by
a well-known actor (such as Nicolas Cage) will look and sound at least a little like that
actor.2r Still, both Adaptation. and That Obscure Object of Desire serve to illustrate
the fi lm-specific "gay'' between representation-by-origin and representation-by-use
rather well.
Similar observations hold with regard to the represented spaces and places, since
the sets that are represented-by-origin across film genres are commonl¡ and some-
times rather obviously, not the fictional settings that are represented-by-use-as well
as to the represented actions and sequences ofevents, sa¡ related to sex, drugs, and vi-
olence, whose representation-by-origin would be problematic in various ways. While
it seems unlikely that the various gunshot wounds in Quentin Tarantino's Reseryoir
Dogs (1992), the repeated cases of substance abuse in Danny Boylet Trainspotting
(1996), or all of the sexual encounters in John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus (2006)
would have been authentically represented-by-origin, this does not diminish what the
shots in question are meant to represent-by-use. And, ofcourse, the fact that not a sin-
298 lan-NoälThon

Figure 2. Conchita played by Carole Bouquet in That Obscure Object of Desire.

Figure 3. Conchita played by ^,{ngela Molina in Thøt Obscure Object of Desire.

gle situation in, sa¡ George Lucas's 1999 Star Wørs Episode I: A Phantom Menace (or
the other installments of the series) was actually filmed on Tatooine does not prevent
the ûlm(s) from fictionally representing the desert planet as the home of both Anakin
Skywalker (who later becomes Darth Vader) and his son, Luke.
Incidentall¡ it may be worth stressing that, in most of the cases mèntioned above
(except in the case of That Obscure Object of Desire's metareferential use of two ac-
tresses to represent a single character), the required application of charity will not
 Trønsmediøl Nørrøtology Revisited 299

Figure 4. fohn Conner and the Terminator played by two stuntmen in Terminator 2: ludgment Day.

Figure 5. John Conner and the Terminator played by Edward Furlong and Arnold Schwarzenegger
in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

be particularþ noteworthy to most spectators. Yet, the general principle applies in

more disruptive cases, as well. When, for example, the shapeshifting T-1000 (played
by Robert Patrick) pursues fohn Conner (played by Edward Furlong) and the original
Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) during the truck/motorcycle chase
sequence in James Cameron's Tè.rminator 2: ludgment Døy (1991), there is a brief shot
in which the latter two (and fohn Conner, in particular) suddenly seem to look very
different, before returning to their previous appearance in the next shot (see Figure
4 and Figure 5). \,Vhile spectators may look unfavorably on thc somcwhat clumsy
way in which Terminator 2: ludgment Day uses stunt doubles in this sequence, then,
the fact that they are stunt doubles also provides the external explanation that allows
spectators to charitably "ignore" the apparent inconsistency with regard to the inter-
subjective construction ofthe local situation ofthe truck/motorcycle chase as part of
the film's global storyworld as a whole,
Indeed, asking for an internal explanation of why Charlie Kaufman and Donald
Kaufman in Adaptation look like the actor Nicolas Cage, why Tatooine in Star Wars
Episode I: A Phantom Menace looks like certain places in Tunesia, or why fohn Con-
300 Jøn-Noël Thon

ner looks like an adult for a few seconds while being chased by the T-1000 would
constitute what Walton calls "silly questions" (176). In all of these cases, spectators'
knowledge about the production processes and representational conventions offea-
ture films will allow them to understand the medium-specific realization of repre-
sentational correspondence at hand and, hence, to apply medium-specific charity in
order to "ignore" these apparent inconsistencies by reference to external explanations
instead of having to insist on internal explanations that would, indeed, make the re-
spective storyworlds "uncomfortably paradoxical" (Walton 183) or, at the very least,
lead to them exhibiting a comparatively low degree of "accessibility" (Ryan, Possible
Woilds 3l). This does, of course, not result in spectators' remaining completely un-
aware of the fact that Nicolas Cage plays two characters in Adaptøtion., fhaf. Carole
Bouquet and Ángela Molina play a single character in That Obscure Object of Desire,
that no scene from Star Wars Episode I: A Phantom Menace was actually shot on Ta-
tooine, or that Edwald Furlong and Arnold Schwarzenegger did not do all of the stunts
of their respective characters during the filming of Termìnator 2: ludgment Døy. Yef,
most spectators will choose to "ignore" these aspects of the films in question when
it comes to imagining intersubjectively plausible versions of the latters' storyworlds.

Comics-Specific Forms of Representational Correspondence

|ust as with contemporary feature film, there is little doubt that comics are a predom-
inantly narrative form (see, e.g., Kukkonen; Mikkonen; Schüwer; as well as the con-
tributions in Gardner and Herman; Stein and Thon). For the purpose of the present
article, though, it seems more important to stress that comics' use of drawn pictures
allows for a wide range of representational styles between cartoonesque abstraction
and detailed realism, which is further complicated by more or less subtle strategies of
the combination of words and pictures as well as the combination of framed pictures
into sequences ofpanels within page layouts ofvarying regularit¡ flexibility, and den-
sity (for further discussion of comics' representational conventions, see, e.g., Cohn;
Groensteen; Packard). Unsurprisingly, these comics-specific representational conven-
tions once more result in comics-specific forms of representational correspondence,
which in turn lead readers to apply comics-specific charity as part of the intersub-
jective construction of comics stor)-worlds. It seems uncontroversial to assume, for
example, that characters represented in contemporary comics (usually) do not consist
oflines (as their pictorial representation generally does),22 that the represented situ-
ations located within comics' storlworlds are commonly meant to be more detailed
than their representation (both with regard to the represented spaces and with regard
to the representation of storyworld sounds), and that the flow of time represented in
those comics tends to not behave much differently from how it behaves in the story-
worlds represented by contemporary films (although the events in question are repre-
sented one picture at a time).
While the storyworlds of comics clearly have not only a spatial but also a tempo-
ral dimension, then, the'þap" between the temporality of the narrative representation
and thc temporality of the situations that it represents in particular seems rather more
 Trønsmedial Narratology Revisited 301

pronounced in most comics than in most films. More specifically, comics not only
characteristically rely on temporal ellipses "between' panels but also employ various
kinds of indices for greater or smaller amounts of time passing "within'a single panel,
ranging from movement lines to speech balloons representing character speech. Take,
for example, a more or less randomly selected page from Craig Thompsoís Høbibi
(2011) that is part of a "multiframe" (Groensteen 30) segment representing Dodola's
(ultimately successful) attempt to escape the slave traders that are trying to sell her on
a sprawling slave market (see Figure 6). The five panels arranged on the page in ques-
tion represent a spatially and temporally homogenous situation in which Dodola pre-
tends to surrender, climbs down fiom a wall and into the slave tradert arms, only to
kick him in the face and run away between the tents of the market once again. While
there are some small lemporal (as well as spatial) disconnects between the five panels
on this page, the temporality of the comic's storyworld (or, rather, of the local situa-
tion that the page in question zooms in on) is not relegated to the non-represented
segments "between' panels, but is also quite clearly represented "within' them. On the
one hand, the pictures in the panels at least imply movement: it is clear that Dodola
is climbing down from the wall in the first panel, moves towørd the slave trader in the
second panel, hits him in the face with an upward kíck (marked by movement lines) in
the third paneI, runs away from him (marked by speed lines) in the fourth panel, and
continues running across the market (again, marked by speed lines) in the frfth panel.
On the other hand, and no less importantly, the speech balloons represent the charac-
ter speech ofthe slave trader, and that character speech would evidently take longer to
enunciate than a "point frozen in timel'While most readers r.l'ill not have any troubles
"filling in the gaps" both "between" and "within' panels, then, the representational
correspondence between the temporality of comics' verbal-pictorial representation
and that ofthe storyworld(s) they represent still appears to be less "direct" than in the
case of many films.
That we are, indeed, talking about fairly well-established representational con-
ventions here becomes particularly clear in cases where we can observe a certain ten-
sion between the flow of time suggested by the pictorial representation of character
movement and that suggested by the verbal representation of character speech within
a panel or sequence ofpanels. Take, for example, the sequence ofpanels from Alan
Moore and Dave Gibbonst Wøtchmen (1986-87) during which Rorschach and Nite
Owl confront the evil genius/righteous madman Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias. Not only
intellectually but also physically superior, Veidt fights Rorschach and Nite Owl, while
simultaneously telling them the backstory to his current plan for mass annihilation/
world pcacc. Throughout the sequence , Watclttnen alternates between panels that use
pictures to represent the flght and speech balloons to represent Veidt's verbal narra-
tion, on the one hand, and panels that use pictures to illustrate the story Veidt tells
(as part of a hypodiegetic, second-order storyworld) and narration boxes to continue
representing Veidt's verbal narration (which is still part of the diegetic, first-order
storyworld). What's interesting with regard to the issue at hand, however, is not so
much the back-and-forth between diegetic levels,'3 but rather the tension between
the time that the fight between Rorschach, Nite Owl, and Veidt seems to take (which
may be hard to estimate precisely for the whole sequence, but will not be more than a
Fignre 6. Dodola attempting to escape the slave traders in Craig Thorrpsoìs Habibi (Pantheon, 201 1).
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Watchmen (DC Cornics, 1986-87).
Figtrre 8. Wolverine leaping tor.t'ard l)eadpool in Deadpool #27 (Marvel Comics, April 10, 1999)
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 305

few seconds for the portion represented by the partial sequence reproduced as Figure
7) and the time it would take even a fast talker to say all the words that Veidt appears
to be saying (which would be approximately a minute for the character speech repre-
sented by the same partial sequence). Yet, most readers will not insist on an internal
explanation for this apparent inconsistency (which would either have to entail that the
ûght between Rorschach, Nite Owl, and Veidt takes considerably longer than the pic-
torial representation suggests, or that Veidt talks significantly faster than what readers
would reasonably expect based on their real-world knowledge and the information
previously provided about him).
In fact, the resulting application of medium-specific charity is such a common
occurrence that some of the more metareferentially inclined comics make fun of it.
Take, as a third example, the following page from the first volume of Marvel's Deød-
pool series (1997-2002, #27, April 1999; see Figure 8). Once more, there is a tension
between the pictorial representation of character movement (which, incidentally, also
employs movement lines and speed lines) and the verbal representation of character
speech (which, once more, uses the conventional form of the speech balloon). While
the pictorial representation suggests that Wolverine leaps toward Deadpool, which is
unlikely to take more than a few seconds, the speech balloons represent him as saying
quite a lot during that jump, with even a fast talker taking at least 20 seconds to enun-
ciate all the words that are attributed to Wolverine in the first three panels. In contra-
distinction to the previous sequence from Watchmen, howeyer, Deadpool represents
two other characters, Ilaney Brukner and Doctor Bong, as also noticing this apparent
inconsistency, with the latter even offering an internal explanation, namely that giving
"lengthy speeches in mid-leap [is] a form of mutant power." Even in the context of a
highly metaleptic comics series such as Deødpool, though, most readers will not take
this internal explanation at face value, since Wolverine's mutant powers are well es-
tablished at that point-and giving "lengthy speeches in mid-leap" is not one of them.
Accordingl¡ the fact thaf Deadpool jokingly offers a bogus internal explanation for
this rather common inconsistency ultimately serves to metareferentially (but not met,
aleptically) emphasize, once more, that asking why Wolverine is able to say "so much
in one leap' or why Adrian Veidt tells such a long story during a brief fist-and-fork
fight would, indeed, be "silly"za Instead, comics such as Watchmen and Deadpool ask
their readers to acknowledge that the representational correspondence between the
verbal-pictorial representation and the storyworld it represents is sometimes even
more "indirect" than usual, necessitating the application of comics-specific charity
in order to "ignore" certain aspects "between'as well as "within'panels that may, at
first glance, suggest the represenLaLion oflogically or even just physically impossible
situations and/or storyworlds (see also, once more, Alber).

Video Game-Specific Forms of Representational Correspondence

If there is a broad consensus that narrative feature film is one of the dominant forms
within the medium of film and that comics liker¡,ise can be considered a predomi-
nantly narrative medium, the question of video games'narrativity is generally deemed
306 Jan-NoëI Thon

somewhat more problematic, even though most video game theorists will by now
agree that the singleplayer modes of contemporary video games regularly represent
spaces, events, and characters, and tend to locate these elements in increasingly com-
plex storl'worlds (see, e.g., Aarseth, 'A Narrative Theory"; fenkins; Ryan, "From Nar-
rative Games"; as well as Backe; Domsch; Juul; and Thon, "Game Studies"; "Narrative
Comprehensioi'; Transmedial Narratology 104-22). Still, what could be roughly de-
scribed as video games' interactivity and non-linearity results in a number of specific
challenges when it comes to the intersubjective construction of storl'worlds.2s In his
influential examination of the relation between video game rules and video games'
fictionality (or, more precisely, representationality), for example, lesper Juul observes
that the worlds that appear to be represented in video games often turn out to be not
only incomplete but also incoherent, which leads him to argue lhaT."by game conyen-
tions, lhe player is aware that it is optional to imagine the fictional world of the game"
(141, original emphasis).
It is, indeed, important to acknowledge that video games may entail large seg-
ments where "the narrative design is notthe focus of the player's attention'(Ryan,
Avøtars 196) and that it is a common practice of the players of contemporary narrative
video games of various genres to skip cut-scenes and dialogues (if the game allows
them to do so). Despite the fact that these observations might seem to resonate well
with |uul's thesis that the construction of a mental representation of a storyworld
while playing a narrative video game is sometimes optional (or, more precisel¡ that
the importance of video games'storyworlds for the gameplay experience varies across
genres as well as from player to player), I would maintain that the problem should not
be reduced to the game "inviting" the player to construct such a story.world and the
player being able to "refuse the invitation and still play the game" (fuul 139)-since it
remains the case that what may appear to be incoherent (or even logically impossible)
representations do not necessarily result in the intersubjective construction ofinco-
herent (or even logically impossible) storyworlds.
Put in a nutshell, video games' medial representation of simulated gameplay may
cue players to construct mental representations of something resembling a storyworld
(and many video games may be understood as being intended to cue players to con-
struct these kinds of mental representations), but most players will recognize that the
resulting mental representations may difer significantly from player to player and
from playing session to playing session (which would suggest that not all elements of
the gameplay are meant to contribute to the intersubjective construction of a video
game's storyworld to the same extent).26 Accordingl¡ the way in which contempo-
rary video games complicate and subvert traditional notions of representational cor-
respondence first and foremost has to do with the different degrees of "intersubjective
stability" of the representations that are generated across pla¡hroughs: the fairly lin-
ear layout of the game spaces and the rules governing the interactive simulation in an
action-adventure such as Core Design's Tomb Raider (1996) or a ûrst-person shooter
such as Valve's Half-Life (1998)-as well as in a majority of its respective successors-
certainly determine a general course of action that may be comprehended as part of
the representation of the games' respective storyworlds. Yet, the particular details of
thc gameplay in Tomb Raider and Half-Lift do not seem to be intersubjectively stable
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 307

enough to contribute to the representation of these storyworlds reliably-or, rather,

specifcølly.
It should also be noted, however, that there is a narratologically significant dis-
tinction between the different pla¡hroughs resulting from what can be roughly de-
scribed as video games' interactivity and the different playthroughs resulting from
what can be abbreviated as their non-linearity. When it comes to the questions of how
video games represent storyworlds and how players comprehend these representa-
tions, too much emphasis on the differences resulting from interactivity can lead to
an overly simplistic conceptualization of video game-specific representational corre-
spondence that, for example, may not be able to sufficiently distinguish between Lara
Croft in Tomb Røider or Gordon Freeman ín Half-Life running in small circles for sev-
eral hours because, say, a player such as myselfis trying to prove a point related to the
representational functions of video games' interactive gamepla¡ on the one hand, and
the same characters retrieving and ultimately destroying the mysterious Scion (in the
case of Croft), or fighting and ultimately defeating an alien invasion from Xen (in the
case of Freeman), on the other. While video games' non-linearity poses narratological
problems of its own,27 I will focus on the interactivify rather than the non-linearity of
these games during the remainder of this article, thus developing an at least slightly
more detailed account of why most players will recognize that Croft or Freeman ha-
bitually running in small circles for several hours is not part of the respective story-
worlds of Tomb Raider and Half-Life.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the resulting disconnect between the
gameplay of a video game and its storyworld can be found in so-called hack-and-slash
action role-playing games such as those in Blizzardt Diablo series (1996-2014) or,
more recently, Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile (2013-16). While such games
generally attempt to tell some kind of reasonably complex, if fairly generic story, the
gameplay remains largely disconnected from the cut-scenes and scripted events that
are used to move the story forward. More specificall¡ both Diøblo III: Reaper of Souk
(2014) and Path of Exile: Atløs of Worlds (2016) employ randomly generated game
spaces that are rearranged whenever the player reloads the game (in the case of Diøb-
Io III: Reaper of Souk) or after a set amount of time (in the case of Path of Exile: Atlas
of Worlds) in order to provide increased replayability value (see Figure 9 and Figure
10). Despite the importance of the game spaces for the gameplay, however, asking
why the storyworld spaces of Diablo lll: Reaper of Souls and Path of Exile: Atløs of
Worlds rearrange themselves repeatedly during a single playthrough would miss the
point-because the storlworld spaces do not rearrange themselves. Rather, the play-
ers of Diøblo III: Reaper of Souk and Path of Exile: Atlas of Worlds are asked to apply
medium-specific charity that allows them to acknowledge that the representational
correspondence between the interactive representation of the game spaces and the
storyworld of the game is anything but straightforward. The different areas of Diablo
lll Reaper of Souk's and Path of Exile: Atlas of Woddis respective storyworlds will
look roughlylike the game spaces that the games generate when the player-controlled
characters traverse these areas, but the storlworld spaces quite obviously do not look
exactly like the game spaces.28
308 løn-Noël Thon

Figure 9. The entry of The Riverways in Path of Exile: Atlas of Worlds before

Figure 10. . . . and after the game spaces rearranged themselves.

The apparent inconsistencies that the randomly generated game spaces of Diøblo
III. Reaper of Souls and Path of Exíle: Atlas of Worlds suggest can be charitably re-
solved by reference to their ludic functions, yet the gameplay of contemporary video
games may also lead to apparent inconsistencies whose charitable resolution will need
to refer not to their ludic, but to their narrative functions. Most salientl¡ characters
that are not controlled by the player will often fulfill important roles within a video
game's stor¡ which may make it appear desirable to prevent the respective characters
from dying, Indeed, it is fairly common for first-person shooters, action-adventures,
and role-playing games alike to either prevent the player-controlled character from
attacking certain other characters in the first place, to prevent the latter from get-
ting injured by such attacks, or to prevent them from dying even if they are mor-
 Trønsmedial Narratology Revisited 309

tally wounded. While at least the latter two cases appear to generate striking in-
consistencies at first glance, most players will have no trouble understanding that,
sa¡ the various UNATCO oftcers in Deus Er (Ion Storm, 2000), the soldiers of
the Confederate State Army in Call of Juarez: Bound ín Blood (Techland, 2009),
and the non-player-controlled members of the Noble Team in HøIo: Reøch (Bun-
gie, 2010) are not invulnerable, or that "essential" characters such as Wilbur in Sø-
cred (Ascaron,2004), High Chancellor Ocato in Elder Scrolk IV: Obliviore (Bethesda
Game Studios, 2006), and the player-controlled character's father, James, in Fallout
3 (Bethesda, 2008) do not just briefly lie down and rapidly recover instead ofdying
from mortal wounds. Rather, these recurring cases of apparent invulnerability or
rapid recovery from mortal wounds can be externally explained by the narrative
necessity of keeping characters alive in order to allow the game's story to unfold as
intended by the game designers.2e

Conclusion

While there would be quite a bit more to say about film-specific, comics-specifrc, and
video game-specific forms of representational correspondence, the somewhat eclec-
tic selection of examples offered throughout the preceding sections should have al-
ready made it clear that the audiovisual modes of representation characteristic for
films, the verbal-pictorial modes of representation characteristic for comics, and the
interactive modes of representation characteristic for video games can, indeed, be
fairly "indirecti' which leads spectators, readers, and players to apply medium-specific
charity that allows them to "ignore' apparent inconsistencies within a given narrative
work. In focusing on the intersubjective construction of storyworlds and the role of
recipients' knowledge about transmedial as well as medium-specifrc representational
conventions, I have attempted to show how a transmedial narratology that aims to re-
main "media conscious" may, in practice, aim at the middle ground between "media
blindness" and "media relativism," acknowledging both similarities and diferences in
conventionally distinct media's narrative affordances and limitations. If this attempt
was, indeed, successful, I also hope to have at least hinted at the potential of trans-
medial narratology to go beyond asking the primarily definitional question if media
"beyond the literary text" can be considered to have the quality ofnarrativity, and in-
stead analyze in more detail how
or video games employ strategies ofnarrative representation in order to
invite their recipients to participate in the intersubjective construction of more or less
complex storyworlds.

Endnotes

This article is based on an introductory address and a keynote given during the Winter School "Trans-
medial Narratology: Theories and Methods," which took place February 23 to 26,2016, at the Graduate
Academy of the University of Tübingen and was supported by the lnstitutional Strategy of the Univer-
sity of Ttibingen (German Research Foundation, ZUK63).
310 lan-Noël Thon

1. See, e.g., Herman, Basic Elements; "Toward Transmedial Narratology"; Ryan, Attatars; "On the
Theoretical Foundations"; Thon, "Narratives"; TransmedialNarratology;Wolf,"Metalepsis"; "Nar-
ratology"; as well as Wolf's contribution in the present issue. Generall¡ I tend to understand
the project of a transmedial narratology as being primarily concerned with a theoretical frame
within which medium-specific approaches from various strands of current narratological prac-
tice may be systematically correlated, modified, and expanded to illuminate the different forms
and functions of narrative representation across media. While much of my theoretical argument
regarding the intersubjective construction of storl-worlds has already been published elsewhere
in some form or other (see Thon, Transmedial Narratology 33-722: as well as Thon, "Converging
Storyworlds," with a focus on transmedial entertainment franchises; Thon, "Narrative Compre-
hensionl'with a focus on video games), this articìe still provides me with a welcome opportunity
to discuss transmedial as well as medium-specific forms of representational correspondence and
the application of the principle of charity in more detail than I previously could.

2. As, for example, Werner Wolf has remarked, "interdisciplinarity presupposes multidisciplinary
competence, and this requirement imposes obvious limits on each scholar" ("Metalepsis" 105;
see also Wolf's contribution in the present issue; as well as similar considerations in Reinerth and
Thon, "Introduction').

3. It may be worth noting at this point that there is some controversy within media studies regarding
the question what a medium is and in what ways media should be conceived of as distinct. Still, at
least in a narratological context, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the term is best un-
derstood as referring to a multi-dimensional concept, combining at least a semiotic-communica-
tive, a material-technological, and a cultural-institutional dimension (see, e.g., Ryan, Avatars
16-25; as well as the sìmilar distinction in Schmidt; and the additional discussion in Thon, "Me-
diality"; Transmedial Narratology 16-20). In the foìlowing, the term "medium" will, hence, be
used to refer to "means of communication or expression'(Woli The Musicalization 40) lhalare
'tonventionally perceived as distinct" (Rajewsþ "Border Talks" 61), even though these conven-
tionaÌÌy distinct media may "lack [. . .] a distinct semiotic system or technological identity" (Ryan,
Avatars 23).

4. Throughout this article, I will refer to a comparatively eclectic selection of contemporary films,
comics, and video games in order to illustrate the interplay between t¡ansmediality and medial-
ity (or, more precisel¡ between comparatively transmedial and comparatively medittm-specific
forms ofrepresentational correspondence), which I consider a core challenge that the project ofa
genuinely transmedial narratology has to address if it aims to remain "media conscious" (see Ryan
and Thon; Thon , Transmedial Narratology 20-26). While a similar argument could be constructed
using other forms of audiovisual narratives such as television series (see, e.g., Mittell; as well as
Butter's contribution in the present issue), other forms ofverbal-pictorial narrative such as multi-
modal novels (see, e.g., Gibbons; as well as Gibbons's contribution in the present issue), or other
forms ofinteractive narrative such as interactive fiction (see, e.g., Aarseth, C-ybertext; Montfort),
then, I will mainly focns on films, comics, and video games because these media still correspond
most closely to my personal run-of-the-mill variety of "media expertism."

5. Specifically, Ryan describes these 'tonditions of narrativity" as follows: "1. Narrative must be
about a world populated by individual existents. [. . .] 2. This world must be situated in time
and undergo signiflcant transformations. 3. The transformations must be caused by nonhabitual
physical events. [. . .] 4. Some ofthe participants in th€ events must be intelligent agents who have
a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world. 5. Some of the events must be pur-
poseful actions by these agents, motivated by identifiable goals and plans. [. . .] 6. The sequence of
events must form a unified causal chain and lead to closure. 7. The occurrence ofat least some of
the events must be asserted as fact for the story world. 8. The story must commtlnicate something
meaningful to the recipients" (Ryan, Avøtars 8). While Ryant brief disc¡"rssion of these conditions
or prototlpical features leaves quite a few questions open (e.g., What are "significant" transfor-
mations? How "intel.ligent" do the agents have to be? What qualilìes as 'tlosure"? What is and is
 Transmedial Narratology Revisited 31 1

not "meaningful"?), her approach still seems like a good starting point for a gradual, non-binary
conceptualization of narrativity.

6. Evidentl¡ there is some overlap between these two categories, and Ryan's Possible Worlds, Arti-
fcial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory in particular is clearly located within the framework of
possible worlds theory (though she has increasingly moved toward cognitivist accounts in her
more recent works such as Narrative as Virtual Reality or Avatars of Story).It might also be worth
stressing that neithe¡ Lubomír Doleåel nor Thomas Pavel, neither Ruth Ronen nor Marie-Laure
Ryan directly equates possible worlds with storyworlds (or other kinds of represented worlds).
Rather, despite their theoretical diferences, all of these scholars "are careful to emphasize the
differences between the original philosophical model of possible worlds and the new narrative
model ofstoryworlds" (Polmcr 33). For furthcr discussion ofhow diffcrcnt conccptualizations of
represented worlds/storyworlds relate to each other, see Thon, Transmedial Narratology 35-70.

7. Gerrig prefers "the term situation modelbecanse [. . .] the term mental model is used ambiguousìy
in the psychological literature" (6, original emphases), but both terms are commonly used inter-
changeably. See also, e.9., Herman, Story Logic on mental models; Hogan, Cognitive Science on
situation models; Werth on discourse models.

8. Of course, this does not mean that the ways we imagine a story'world based on a given narrative
work will be entirely alike, nor that they shouìd be. Still, eqnating the storyworld that a narrative
work represents with the ways individual recipients imagine it not only results in unnecessary ter-
minological problems in the context of studies of narrative meaning-making that might, for one
reason or another, want to distinguish between the two but also rather obviously runs counter to
how we usually talk about storyworlds, both as "mere" recipients and as scholars-which includes
that we are usually open to changing our convictions about what is or is not the case in a given
storyworld if we are presented with convincing reasons to do so by other recipients of the narra-
tive work in question. lt should also be noted, howevet that the proposed conceptualization of
storyworlds as intersubjective communicative constrLìcts does not at all imply that, for every given
narrative representation, there is one and only one storl.world to be constructed in an intersubjec-
tively valid manner. Rather, narrative representations across media commonly employ ambiguity
to such an extent that more than one storyworld can be intersubjectively constructed, and, at least
in some cases, there may be no way to decide (in an intersubjectively valid manner) which of these
constructs is more plausible. See, e.g., Hogans discussion of the "proJìle of ambiguity" (Narratfue
Discourse 19, original emphasis) ofnarrative rvorks across media.

9. Considering that Eder (69) also proposes to locate characters in the "third world" of Popper's
"three world theoryi'it might be worth stressing, once more, that I do not conceptualize story-
worlds as existing independently of actual meaning-making processes. Very roughl¡ storyworlds
can be conceptttalized as what competent recipients sltould imagine based on narrative represen-
tations, but they do not exist independently ofthese imaginations, and recipients are, ofcourse,
quite free to imagine something entirely different.

10. As far as the conceptualization ofstoryworlds proposed in the present article is concerned, the
reflexive and decidedly hl.pothetical reconstrlìction of authorial intentions that tends to orient
the meaning-making process primarily pertains to a given works" referential meaning" (Bordwell
8, origilal ernphasis; see also Persson 29-33). Moreover, Currie refers to a comparâtively weak
form of "hy.pothetical intentionalism" here, as drawing "pragmatic inference to' the "intended
meaníng" (16) ofa narrative work does not, under normal circumstances, entail "a forensic inves-
tigation into a person's motives that involves sifting the evidence ofdiaries, letters, and the rem-
iniscences of friends" (25). For a more detailed discussion of intentionalist-pragmatic accounts
of narrative meaning-making in the context of a transmedial narratolog¡ see Thon, Transmediøl
Narratology 5I-54.
11. Indeed, there is comparatively little controversy within (neo)structuralist narratology that what
is represented by a narrative representation generally consists ofexistents, events, and characters.
See, e.g., BaI 175-227; Chatman 43-145; Rimmon-Kenan 6-42. Contemporary narratologyt ap-
312 lan-Noël Thon

proaches to the analysis of narratively represented objects, events, or characters and their actions
have become more sophisticated than those developed by the early structuralists, but a strong
focus on space, time, and causality remains. See, e.g., Herman, Story Logic 263-99; Thon, Trans-
medial Narratology 47-49; Wolf, "'Cross the Border."'

12. Metalepsis, as "a usually intentional paradoxical transgression oi or confusion between, (onto)
logically distinct (sub)worlds and/or levels that exíst, or are referred to, within representations
of possible worlds [in the sense of represented (story)worlds]" (Wolf, "Metalepsis" 9l), is no less
transmedial a phenomenon than the representation of storyworlds. For further discussion, see,
e.g., Thon, TransmedialNarratology 64-66; Thoss; as well as the contributions in Kukkonen and
Klimeck.

13. While metalepsis may be understood as a form of metareference, the latter entails a considerably
broader range of strategies that more or less expìicitly foreground a narrative representationt
status as a representation (and not al1 ofwhich necessarily "disrupt" or even just particularly com-
plicate the intersubjective stor).world construction). Many of the narrative works across media
that current transmedial narratology is concerned with can be located within a "metareferential
turn ' in contemporary media culture. See, e.g., Woll "ls There a Metarefe¡ential Turn'; "Metaref-
erence"; as well asThon, Transmedial Narratology 56-66, for further discussion ofhow these kinds
of narratively complex and often metaleptic or otherwise metareferential narrative works across
media relate to what scholars such as Alber or Richardson, Unnatural Narraúive, conceptualize as
"unnatural" narrative(s). See also note 17.

14. Walton, to whose seminal Mimesis as Make-Believe I wilì return below, has proposed a sophisti-
cationofRyan'sprincipleofminimaldepartureintheform of therealityprincipleandThemutual
belief principle. While Ryan developed her principle of minimal departure considerably earlier
than Possible Worlds, Artifcial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory was published (see Ryan, "Fic-
tion'), Walton is certainly right in noting that the reality principle, which describes the "strategy
[. . .] of making fictional worlds as much like the real one as the core of primary fictional truths
permits" (144-45), and the mutual beliefprinciple, which refers to "the real world not as it ac-
tually is but as it is or was mutually believed to be in the artistt society" (152), both "have been
proposed (in various formulations) and discussed fairly extensivel¡ especially in connection with
literary representations" (144). See, e.g., Lewis; Rabinowitz; Wolterstorfl. It should also be noted
that, while I primarily focr-rs on the multimodal representation and intersubjective construction of
local sit¡¡ations in the following, the principle of minimal departr-rre, the reality principle, and the
mutual beliefprinciple evidently (if, perhaps, less saliently) also apply to the global storyworld as
a whole.

15. Admittedly, there are quite a few cases in which the mutual belief principle seems more appropri-
ate than the reality principle and/or the principle of minimal departure, and in which it may, in
fact, be quite problematic to assume that the character in question has the kind ofphysiological
and, more importantl¡ psychological make-up we would expect from 2lst-century human be-
ings. And, ofcourse, there are countless cases such as the Directort Cú of Bhde Runner (Ridley
Scon, 1992), Frank Miller and Dave Gibbon's Give MeLiberty comics series (1990-91), or Namco's
role-playing gam e Tales of the Abyss (2005), where what initially appear to be living human beings
ultimately turn out to be not.

16. Part of the appeal of series such as Tre Unwritten and Alan Wake is that we might still find out
about the presence or absence of the birthmark in future works revisiting the established sto-
ry.world(s). Still, some 'þaps" will always remain. This aìso holds with regard to the characters
and storl'worlds represented by more encompassing transmedial entertainment franchises such
as 71rc Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Batman, or Tomb Raider, though these franchises
certainly make it even more challenging to determine whether an answer to a specific question
such as "Does character X have a birthmark on his or her back?" is available-after all, "fllling
in the gaps" of a previously established stor;'world is one ofthe core functions that the addition
of new works to an ongoing series and/or a transmedial entertainment franchise may fulfill. For
lurthcr discussion of the intersubjective construction of work-specific stor)rworlds, transmedial
 Transmedial Narrøtology Revisited 313

storyworlds, and transmedial universes in the context ofthese kinds ofever expanding transme-
dial franchises, see also Thon, "Converging Worlds."

17 . Tlte argurrtertl [ha[ recipients of films, comics, and video games will generally try to exhaust ev-
ery possible alternative explanation before attempting to imagine logically or even just physically
impossible storyworlds is not necessarily at odds with recent works in unnatural narratology that
tend to focus on what Brian Richardson calls "antimimetic texts"-texts, that is, in which "the
concept of representation is ambiguous or irrelevant" ("What Is Unnatural Narrative Theory?"
36; see also, once again, Richardson, Unnatural Narrative, for lurlher discussion ofthe differences
between "mimeticl' "non-mimeticl' and "anti-mimetic texts"). While this is considerably more
common in the kind of postmodernist literary texts that most unnatural narratologists focus
on than it is in contemporary films, comics, and video gamcs, I do not wont to dcny that somc
narrative works "beyond the literary text" may be best described as "antimimetic" in the sense
that they are not representing an intersubjectively constructable storyworld so much as they are
"destabilizing the ontology of this projected world and simultaneously laying bare the process
of world construction" (McHale 101). However, it would seem that identifying a (supposedly)
narrative work in any medium as "antimimetic" will, in and of itsell provide a rather powerful
external explanation for what may initially appear as logical or even just physical impossibilities or
othe¡ kinds ofinconsistencies. One way or another, the examples discussed in the present article
still seem to primarily invite "naturalizing" (see Culler 134-60), "narrativizing" (see Fludernik,
Towards a "Natural" Narratology 22-25), or plausibilizing (see Thon, Transmedial Narratology
62-64) strategies of narrative comprehension. For fi¡rther discussion of a range of such strategies
beyond the admittedly cursory examples presented here and in the following sections, see also,
e.g., Alber 48-54; Phelan 25-29;Yacobi.

18. Depending on one's conceptualization of the term "medium" (see note 3), describing the distinc-
tion between ve¡bal and pictorial representation as applying across media (and, hence, as related
to transmedial rather than medium-specific representational conventions) may seem counterin-
tuitive at first glance. However, the use ofverbal representation is evidently not limited to exclu-
sively verbal media forms such as (certain) literary texts, just as the use ofpictorial representation
is evidentÌy not limited to exclusiveÌy pictorial media forms such as (certain) paintings. lnstead,
multimodal media such as films, television series, comics, theatrical performances, and video
games can all use verbal as well as pictorial representation, which does, indeed, render verbal and
pictorial representation arguably the two most salient semiotic modes in contemporary media
culture. For fi¡rther discussion ofthe concept (or, rather, different conceptualizations) of(semi-
otic) multimodalit¡ see also, e.g., Bateman; Elleström; Gibbons; as welì as the contributions in
Sachs-Hombach and Thon.

t9. One of the consequences of a conceptualization of mediâ as conventionally rather than merely
"semiotically" and/or "technologically" distinct is that these representational conventions are
prototypical, but neither necessary for nor exclusive to the mediality offilms. Rather, they are,
for example, quite obviously employed byvarious forms of television storytelling (see also, e.g.,
Carroll I-74). Against this background (and because this observation also appìies, albeit perhaps
less obviousl¡ to the representational conventions employed by comics and video games), I would
like to emphasize that the distinction between transmediality and medium specificity is best con-
ceptualized rlot as a binary oppt-rsiliul bul ralher as the two poles of a gracìed scale. While the fol-
Iowing discussion of films, comics, and video games will allow me to foreground the diferences in
their narrative affordances and limitations, here and in the following, "medium-speciltc" should
always be taken to mean comparatíreþ medium-specific (just as "transmedial" should always be
taken to meãn comparatively r.ransmedial).

20. The attdiovisual representation characteristic for contemporary feature films is, indeed, audio-
visual. lust as the absence of"diegetic" sound in large parts ofthe audiovisual representation of
The Artist does not imply that the represented storyworld is largely devoid of sound, though,
the presence of'diegetic" sounds does not imply a conflation ofrepresentation-by-use and rep-
resentation-by-origin any more readily than it does in the case ofthe pictorial representation of
314 Ian-NoëI Thon

storyworld space. See, e.g., Chion; Flückiger; Gorbman, on various forms and functions of sound
(and music) in film.

2I. A good example of a mainstream film that humorously plays with this well-established repre-
sentational conventions would be Steven SoderbergHs Ocean's Twelve (2004), in which Danny
Ocean's wife Tess, who is played by Julia Roberts, poses as a pregnant Julia Robert as part ofan
elaborate plot to steal the Fabergé Imperial Coronation Egg. Since the frctional Julia Robert in the
storl'world of Ocean\ Twelye is also played by the actual actress Julia Roberts, the team members'
extensive discussion about the extent ofthe likeness between Tess and the fictional Julia Robert
takes on a decidedly metareferential quality that may not be as disruptive as the unusual casting
decision in That Obscure Object of Desire, but still emphasizes the film-specifrc "gap'between
representation-by-origin (actors) and representation-by-use (characters).

22. Just as spectators will usually not speculate about how a character in a film "really looks" or
"reaìly
sounds" despite the fact that at leâst some aspects of the representation will evidently be based on
the actor who plays the role (or, for that mattet assume that the character is a two-dimensional
entity only existing within the ever-changing rectangular space that the film's pictures show at any
given point), it is often dificult or, indeed, impossible to clearly distinguish between presentation-
al and representational aspects of the pictures in comics due to what Martin Schüwer describes
as the latters'"inextricable interrelation ofmateriality and semiotic content ofthe pictorial form"
(23, my translation from the German: "untrennbaren Ineinander von Materialität und Zeichenge-
halt grafischer Formen"). Not entirely dissimilar to Walton's discussion of Shakespeare's Otlrello,
Schüwer goes on to ask: "should one attribute the caricaturesque style of Charles M. Schulz's
Peanuts exclusively to the discourse and imagine that Cha¡lie Brown and Lucy look entirely dif-
ferent within the narrated world?" (23, original emphasis, my translation from the German: "Soll
man den karikaturhafÍen Stil von Charles M. Schulz' Peanuts einzig dem Diskurs zurechnen und
sich vorstellen, dass Charly Isic!] Brown und Lucy im Rahmen der erzählten Welt eigentlich ganz
anders aussehen?"). While Schùwer would most likely answer the question in the negative, it
would seem that the main reason against imagining characters that are represented in particularly
cartoonesque or caricaturesque drawing styles as looking partially or even entirely different on
the level of the storyworld would be that readers of comics such as Peanuts ( 1950-2000) usttally
do not have an alternative "means ofaccess" beyond the verbal-pictorial representation. However,
most readers of, sa¡ Neil Gaimanì comics series The Sandman (1989-2015) will understand that
it would be pointless to ask why the outer appearance ofthe main character, Dream, has "changed
so muchi' when what actually changes are the drawing styles of the various artists with whom
Gaiman has collaborated over the course of the comics series. See also, e.g., McCloud 24-59;
Schüwer 343-56; Wilde, for further discussion ofdifferent degrees ofabstraction in the context of
comics-specific forms of pictorial representational correspondence.

23. Within (neo)classical narratolog¡ the representation of ontologically disconnected situations is

usually described via reference to Gérard Genettet work on "narrative" or, rather,'diegetic ìevels"
(see Genette, Na rrative Discourse 227-43;Narrative Discourse Revisited 84-95), though I prefer to
follow Mieke Bal @3-75) and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (87-106) in speaking of ftl,podiegetic in-
stead of metadiegetic 'diegetic levels" and, moreover, combine Genette's (modified) terminology
with a more neutral description of the diegetic hierarchy of subworlds that is as indebted to Wolf
Schmid (32-33, 67-68) as it is to Genette, distinguishing between diegetic primary storyworlds,
hypodiegetic secondary storl.worlds, hypo-hlpodiegetic tertiâry storyworlds, and so on. For fur-
ther discussion, see Thon, Transmedial Narratologt 49-50.

24. See also the other examples of similar (if perhaps less explicit) "metareferential jokes" given in
note 21 (on Steven Soderbergh's 2004 frlm Ocean\ Twelve) and note 28 (on EasyGameStationt
2007 act\on role-playing garrre Recettear: An Item Shop\ Tale). Across conventionally distinct
media, the function ofsuch "metareferential jokes" is not just to evoke an amused reaction, but
also to "render visible" representational conventions that we usually take for granted. Indeed,
tlrese kinds of "metareferential jokes" only work because they foreground "paradoxes, anomalies,
 Trønsmediøl Narratology Revisíted 315

apparent contradictions" that are "not to be taken seriously" or "even notice[d]" (Walton 176) in
most other (less metareferentially foregrounded) instances in which they occur.

25. Interactivityinparticulariscommonlythoughtofasa"silìyandabusedterm"(Aarseth,"Genre
Trouble" 52) or an unhappily "entrenched notion in studies ofdigital media" (Bogost 40), but the
concept still appropriately captures the fact that video games are, at their prototypical core, inter-
active cultural artifacts. See also Aarseth, Cybertext, on video games' 'ergodicity"; Bogost on video
games' "procedurality"; and Thon, Transmedial Narratology 104-22 for additional discussion of
interactivity and nonlinearity in the context ofthe intersubjective construction ofvideo game
storyworlds.

26. This is not to say that intersubjectively constructed stor¡vorlds play similarly important roles in
all video games and video game genres. On the one hand, this obviousìy applies to video games
such as Atari's Pong (1972) or PopCap Games' Bejeweled (2001), which arguably do not possess
a suficient degree of narrativity for players to intersubjectively construct a storyworld. On the
other hand, and more importantl¡ the experience of the "persistent worlds" offered by massively
multiplayer online role-playing games such as Blizzard's World of Warcrafi (2004-) or BioWare's
Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011-) as well as, arguabl¡ action role-playing games with a multi-
player component such as Blizzardt Diablo III Reaper of Souls (2014) or Grinding Gears Games'
Path of Exile: Atlas of Worlds (2016) will certainly be enriched by players' knowledge about the
respective games'storyworlds, but should not be conflated with them. For further discussion of
less intersubjectively stable forms of storlworld construction, see also Thon, "Game Studies."

27. Perhaps most saliently, the quest structure that is characteristic for role-playing games such as
Dragon Age: Origins (Bioware, 2009) or TIrc Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (CD Projekt, 2011)
leads to a more decidedly non-linear arrangement of predetermined narrative representations
ofevents. Video games with this kind ofnonlinear narrative structure allow players to actualize
signiflcantly different representations during subsequent pla¡hroughs. Accordingl¡ these games
may represent not just one but several different courses ofaction and, hence, different storyworlds
depending on the player's performance, the playert choices, and similar parameters. Against this
background, it seems best to think ofthe narrativity ofvideo games such as Dragon Age: Origins
or The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in terms of an arrangement of "r'irtual storyworldsi' only one
of which can be actualized in any given playthrough (see also Thon, Transmedial Narratology
117-2O,for an analysis of Dragon Age: Origins as well as Thon, "Game Studies," for additional
discussion of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings).

28. Similar to the page ftom Deadpool discussed in the previous section, video games may also jok-
ingly provide internal explanations for this. In EasyGameStationt action role-playing game Ãe-
cettear: An Item Shop\ Tale (2007), for example, the player controls a shopkeeper who hires heroes
to get her new items to sell in her shop from various dungeons and, at one point, the shopkeepert
fairy companion/debt collector remarks that these (randomly generated) dungeons "rearrange"
themselves overnight. While perhaps not quite as explicitly metareferential as the example from
Deadpool, this internal explanation still appears to be the exception that all but reinforces the
general rr"rle that "random dungeons" are not meant to be part ofvideo games'storyworlds.

29. While I cannot discuss this in any detail here, it may be worth noting that similar forms of "rep-
resentational reasoning" can also be applied to resolve inconsistencies between the rule-governed
interactive simulation ofthe gamepìay and the predetermined narrative representations that usu-
ally take the form of cut-scenes or scripted events. Since, cut-scenes and other forms of more
prototypically narrative representations tend to possess a higher degree of "intersubjective sta-
bility" than the rule-governed interactive simulation that makes up most of the gameplay, in-
consistencies between them tend to be resolved in favor of the former, but there are also cases
of inconsistencies that either do not allow for a resolution (and, hence, do not provide specific
information on what is or is not the case in the storl.world) or even suggest a resolution in favor of
the interactive gameplay (for additional discussion, see also Schröter and Thon; Thon, "Narrative
Comprehension').
316 Jan-Noël Thon

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