“The flexible transmedia seriality of fan works becomes obvious in those which have “escaped” fan culture to become mainstream successes. Mainstream audiences often attempt to retroactively build a baseline to make sense of fan works’ narrative and aesthetic experimentation; yet, without access to the history of other fan works, they start from a much more information-light interpretative position than those within the fan community. Their interpretations are not “wrong”, as fan work itself is premised upon audience autonomy and interpretative freedom, but they lack access to the sequence of previous texts against which the fan work gains increased audience. They thereby read the climax of a serial narrative as if it were a stand-alone statement.”
Kustritz, A. M. 2014. “Seriality and Transmediality in the Fan Multiverse: Flexible and Multiple Narrative Structures in Fan Fiction, Art, and Vids.” TV/Series, No. 6, 225-261. https://doi.org/10.4000/tvseries.331.
Fanworks and Seriality