Books by Jessica Seymour
Brill Publishers, 2019
This collection of papers invites the reader to look deeply at traditional and contemporary forms... more This collection of papers invites the reader to look deeply at traditional and contemporary forms of writing, their implications for teaching and pedagogy, and their use of space as a strategy and as an implied device. We explore the lives and times of great writers, how they use space and how space influenced them, and we unveil the patterns upon which writing, as an artistic act, may be influenced by the spaces experienced by the creator. Contributors are David W. Bulla, Nathan James Crane, Phil Fitzsimmons, Gail Hammill, Genevieve Jorolan-Quintero, Syeda Hajirah Junaid, Edie Lanphar, Esthir Lemi, Imogen Lesser Woods, Panagiota Mavridou, Sam Meekings, Barış Mete, Ekaterina Midgette, Sevil Nakisli, Layla Roesler, Yadigar Sanli and Shelley Smith.
This open-access volume brings together a variety of critical perspectives in the emerging field ... more This open-access volume brings together a variety of critical perspectives in the emerging field of fan studies. Fan Communities and Fandom. We have engaged with multiple disciplines and theorists in order to explore the various methods of fan production and research. Whether fans engage in the real-world, online, or define themselves by their lack of engagement, the ability of fans to participate and share their enthusiasms with one another is one of the most striking and intriguing features of the fandom phenomena. Fan communities have directed their remarkable fervour towards charitable causes, bringing television shows and book characters back from the dead, and honing their creative skills before persuing fandom-worthy material of their own. We explore fandom as a social space and constructed identity, fuelled by talented creators and enthusiastic consumers, and building on the global connectedness born from the digital age.
Originally published at Inter-Disciplinary.net, this volume contains essays from different fan scholars on topics such as celebrity fandom, pop-culture tourism, cosplay, fan activism, and YouTube fandom.
Peer-reviewed Articles by Jessica Seymour
Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature, 2024
A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (2020) by T. Kingfisher is an upper-middlegrade fantasy nove... more A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (2020) by T. Kingfisher is an upper-middlegrade fantasy novel. It opens with a young wizard discovering a corpse in her family's bakery and ends with her leading her city's defense against an army of mercenaries. This article models the application of youth theory to examine aetonormative themes in A Wizard's Guide and concludes that adults' expectations of youth behavior interact with other social norms that are used to disempower and manipulate minority groups. The intersectional nature of youth creates segments of the population that are doubly disempowered, allowing adult power-holders to break the implied promise that they will act in the youths' best interests. Essentially, adults in the narrative can hold the child to cultural expectations of disempowered adults, while simultaneously using the child's age-based powerlessness to ensure their compliance to those expectations. A Wizard's Guide models a society in which intergenerational solidarity has failed, leading young characters to be disenchanted with and traumatized by older generations.
GenderForum, 2020
In contemporary mainstream media there is a tendency to represent LGBTQ+ characters stereotypical... more In contemporary mainstream media there is a tendency to represent LGBTQ+ characters stereotypically, or even kill them off. This trope is called 'bury your gays' and it has done much to discredit and delegitimise representation. Even though the percentage of queer representation in mainstream media has improved, a viewer could be forgiven for thinking that, overall, popular culture does not think highly of the LGBTQ+ community for continuing to perpetuate these narrative arcs. The McElroy family's popular actual-play podcast The Adventure Zone (TAZ) initially portrayed queer characters in the 'bury your gays' trope by killing off a canon lesbian couple in their first season. As four self-proclaimed 'straight, cis, white dudes', the family initially performed their characters by reflecting what they had seen in mainstream fiction. After engaging with their audience and learning why this was upsetting, they changed the story to reverse the trope; unburying their gays by bringing the characters back to life. Since then, they have consistently introduced more queer characters and, in their latest season, have also introduced nonbinary characters. By tracking the introduction and development of queer representation in TAZ podcast episodes-both the game episodes and the meta-episodes bookending each season-the McElroys' education and integration of this new information into narratives is demonstrable. The representation of queer characters in TAZ shows that podcasts are not just a platform for LGBTQ+ creators to educate their audience; they can also act as a participatory storytelling medium in which creators can be educated in gender and sexuality by their audience.
The Popular Culture Studies Journal, 2019
One of the key, driving themes of Hamilton: An American Musical is the desire for a strong legacy... more One of the key, driving themes of Hamilton: An American Musical is the desire for a strong legacy. Given the fact that the Hamilton musical is centred around an American founding-father – a man whose legacy is still felt in the political landscape of contemporary America and in history lessons across the country – the concept of legacy born from ambition is given particular weight. The purpose of this paper is to explore how different characters approach legacy, and how their approaches appear to be structured and informed by their gender. Through a text-oriented approach that focuses on musical and lyrical evidence, the author of this paper concludes that ambition and legacy are gendered within Hamilton, with the female legacies being portrayed as ultimately less toxic and more philanthropic than their male counterparts, although they are informed by the historical limitations on women at the time.
The Journal of Popular Culture, 2019
Friendship is an important theme in the Harry Potter universe. The core friend group in the Harry... more Friendship is an important theme in the Harry Potter universe. The core friend group in the Harry Potter book series is the triumvirate created by Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and the trio repeatedly risk their lives to protect one another from dangers in and beyond Hog- warts, where they go to school. The Cursed Child takes the friendship theme further by establishing the desire to protect a friend as a source of empowerment for the adolescent characters; while taking on addi- tional physical risk, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy also draw on the depth of their friendship for one another to gain additional strength and combat the various adult characters and dark creatures who threaten or seek to harm them. In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, adolescent friendships create spaces for young people to empower themselves when facing oppression and disempowerment from adult characters. The story is set in contemporary society, that is, in a society that privileges age-based power (adults are in control, children and young adults must do as they are told). The power rela- tionship between Harry Potter and his son, Albus, relies heavily on Harry’s position as a parent as the main source of his control. Through his friendship with Scorpius, Albus empowers himself, acts beyond the confines of parental disempowerment, and establishes a more equal power relationship with his father. Friendship, then, facil- itates the individual characters’ development of their own agency, which ultimately affords them more power to act.
Generally, textual analysis minimises the intention of the creator in the conclusions that the re... more Generally, textual analysis minimises the intention of the creator in the conclusions that the researcher draws in order to avoid falling into the 'intentional fallacy' (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1946), which is when a reader expects the author or creator of a text to have had a specific plan for the text's interpretation and succeeded in achieving that plan. The 'death' of the author was said to give more interpretive freedom to the viewer. In fanart, however, the intention behind the work is important because it arguably establishes a point of reference for the viewer to understand the image. The intention of this paper is to propose and model an interpretive methodology for fanart that reflects whether a text falls into one of three categories: homage, collaboration, or intervention. By modelling this method, it is the researcher's hope that other scholars may use and develop it, as well as start a conversation in the scholarly community about how certain fanart works are created, inspired, and received depending on their relationship to the originary text. This paper argues that in order to properly analyse fanart, a recognition of the author's intention and where it stands in the community is necessary.
The Dungeons & Dragons-inspired podcast, The Adventure Zone (TAZ) (2014-present), which is run by... more The Dungeons & Dragons-inspired podcast, The Adventure Zone (TAZ) (2014-present), which is run by the McElroy family, is an ongoing narrative about three adventurers who work to find and destroy seven powerful Grand Relics. The narrative incorporates several different genres, themes, and both player and non-player characters. During the podcast, the youngest brother, Griffin, explains settings and story elements so that his two brothers, Justin and Travis, and his father, Clint, can react to them while playing characters that they have created. This paper argues that TAZ models a storytelling approach that incorporates and streamlines radio drama storytelling, chance, and roleplay into an organic, collaborative narrative. I examine TAZ’s audio gameplay, the discussions amongst the players between scenes (metagaming), and the metatextual discussions in the Lunar Interludes and other metaepisodes, in order to track the progression of the story and explore how the storytelling methods contribute to an engaging narrative.
This paper examines the representation of toxic masculinity in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and how... more This paper examines the representation of toxic masculinity in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and how the development of a ‘care circle’ around the male characters supports their progression into less destructive gender performances. ‘Masculinity’ as a concept in Western culture refers to a set of assumptions projected onto people who identify as male, and these behaviours can become toxic without criticism or intervention. By examining the character arcs of the male lead, Max Rockatansky, and the War Boy, Nux, this paper examines how masculinity is critiqued and broken down through the narrative of Fury Road.
This paper uses Game Theory as a theoretical framework to analyse the war strategies of Albus Dum... more This paper uses Game Theory as a theoretical framework to analyse the war strategies of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter during the Harry Potter series (Rowling 1997–2007). Over the course of the series, Dumbledore’s Prisoner’s Dilemma creates a zero-sum Game that relies on the ignorance of the people his Game is built around; namely, Harry Potter. Harry’s knowledge of himself is deliberately limited by Dumbledore, which establishes Harry as the embodiment of Dumbledore’s equilibria rather than as an active player with agency. Harry Potter reclaims his agency and personhood after his death and subsequent return to life, and he does this by adopting a Stag Hunt Game strategy, which empowers both himself and his opponent, Lord Voldemort. This paper argues that the Harry Potter series constructs the limitation of agency and the ignorance of young characters negatively, regardless of the potential good it could serve society. By contrast, Harry Potter’s cooperative Game strategy is empowering both to society and to other people because it provides them with the means to make informed decisions and exercise productive agency.
When future researchers look back on this generation seeking to understand our culture and societ... more When future researchers look back on this generation seeking to understand our culture and society, the internet will be a rich source of archival study. We as a culture have begun to digitise not only our records and our history, but also ourselves. Contemporary internet users construct digital ‘bodies’ through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – performing their personalities in order to participate in the online culture – while tracking bots and cookies monitor our use of the online space in order to predict which advertisements will be most effective. It is through this combination of deliberate construction and the (somewhat neutral) reflections of man-made, coded interpreters that our online ‘selves’ form. The purpose of this creative work is to explore identity-constructing practices in the online space, to reflect on the ways that the online archive can be read, and to develop an experimental non-fiction work using the internet as a base medium. The work takes the form of a travel memoir, told through a combination of my social media outputs and internet history between November 18, 2015, and March 1, 2016. I have selectively compiled posts and archived pages in order to produce what I consider to be an authentic representation of my experience, constructing a narrative of myself born from my deliberate social media posts and my internet history of that time, which gives the reader a glimpse into my mental state while I was travelling
Fanfiction is the realm of young people – usually young women. It offers a space for them to expl... more Fanfiction is the realm of young people – usually young women. It offers a space for them to explore sexuality, relationship dynamics, notions of power, and agency in a safe space with recognisable characters and situations. Fanfiction tropes have occasionally found their way into published works, and some contemporary published authors began their careers as young fanfiction writers, but the fanfiction writing community has often drawn derision in popular culture. This paper examines the representation of fanfiction tropes and authors in the works of Rainbow Rowell, and argues that Rowell’s books Fangirl and Carry On model a more positive and inclusive approach to representing fanfiction. While Fangirl celebrates the work of fanfiction authors by exploring the positive effects of fanfiction writing practice, the supportive community which surrounds these authors, and the socio-cultural benefits to exploring sexuality and relationship dynamics through vicarious experience, Carry On offers a practical demonstration and model of fanfiction in action. Rowell’s works offer a metatextual encounter with fanfiction writing and community which celebrates the practice rather than condemning it.
In 2012, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries aired as a web series adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Pr... more In 2012, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries aired as a web series adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The series of YouTube videos was supplemented by various social media platforms, including Twitter, Tumblr and Google+, and was awarded an Emmy for Best Original Interactive Program in 2013. Since then, there has been a swift rise in classic novels adapted through social media platforms online. These webseries have made use of multi-platform storytelling strategies with varying degrees of success. As a relatively new method of storytelling, transmedia narratives have yet to invite the equivalent academic scrutiny of traditional media like novels, television shows and films. Creative producers employ strategies that create an illusion of reality, or a Cartesian dream, which facilitates an ‘engagement aesthetic’ and allows viewers to immerse themselves in the narrative. Viewers approach characters and situations on the internet as if they are ‘real’ because, in the online space, ‘reality’ is a construction of the user.
The CBS series Elementary extends and transforms the Sherlock Holmes canon by feminising major ch... more The CBS series Elementary extends and transforms the Sherlock Holmes canon by feminising major characters to engage interesting interpersonal dynamics with gender discourses. In Elementary, Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as a former consultant for Scotland Yard who moves to New York City after becoming addicted to heroin. At the opening of the series, Holmes escapes rehab and moves in with his new 'sober companion', Dr Watson, to begin working criminal cases for the NYPD. Both Dr Watson and Holmes's nemesis Moriarty are genderbent, following the popular fanfiction trope where male characters are reimagined into female characters in order to explore and critique the traditional gender expectations at work in the original (and, in this case, subsequent adaptations). This paper will examine the narrative effect of genderbending characters in Elementary, and argues that by feminizing supporting male characters, the narrative becomes a significantly richer engagement with gender normativity and representation in contemporary mainstream media.
This paper proposes a ‘Youth Theory’ of analysis which constructs youth as a site of transition, ... more This paper proposes a ‘Youth Theory’ of analysis which constructs youth as a site of transition, rather than an ‘other’ figure, and examines the relationship that young people have with the dominant social discourse (adulthood). The theory is similar to Marxist theory, except instead of focusing on arbitrary class barriers, it focuses on a culturally determined age-based power hierarchy. Fiction for young readers is unusual in the publishing discourse because the target audience of the genre does not (usually) produce the texts they consume. Instead, Children’s and Young Adult fiction (YA) is produced by adult authors. This exclusion of the young readers’ voice can marginalise and (eventually) colonise young adults as readers because it privileges the voice of the ‘powerholders’, or adults. Young readers differ from other marginalised groups, such as women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ people, because there is no youth-specific theory of textual analysis in the way that there is Feminism, Post-colonialism, and Queer theory. This paper addresses this gap in critical practice; it models the use of Youth Theory by analysing contemporary fiction for young readers through an age-based interpretive framework. It examines how aetonormativity is portrayed in fiction, and how young characters are shown reacting to it.
The following review article is a collaborative autoethnographic exploration of Australasian Youn... more The following review article is a collaborative autoethnographic exploration of Australasian Young Adult writing compiled by the contributors of the ‘Why YA?: Researching, writing and publishing YA fiction in Australasia’ TEXT Special issue. The contributors to the special issue were asked to produce a brief review of what they considered an important Australasian YA text, and why. While the range of narratives examined in this article (and the special issue as a whole) demonstrates the valuable variety of the field, this review article also serves to demonstrate the personal pleasure which each of the contributors takes in the genre. Australasian YA is as exciting as it is critically dense, as rewarding as it is progressive, and as enjoyable as it is diverse.
Young adult (YA) dystopia, a genre which is led almost exclusively by young female protagonists, ... more Young adult (YA) dystopia, a genre which is led almost exclusively by young female protagonists, has gained much scholarly attention in recent years. While most of the academic discussions focus, rightly, on portrayals of female characters and gender performance, portrayals of masculinity have failed to elicit the same scholarly response. This article argues that YA dystopia has begun to model a more inclusive, broader approach to masculine behavior by portraying male characters in nurturing positions and forming care relationships with other characters in the narrative. These relationships form a “care circle” of dependent characters, which guides how male characters approach the performance of masculinity.
Bernie Su and Hank Green’s online adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (1813), the Lizzi... more Bernie Su and Hank Green’s online adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (1813), the Lizzie Bennett Diaries (2012), offers a new authorship device and a potential way to negotiate the current tensions engendered by struggles over cultural production and reproduction on the Internet. A great part of the LBD’s success, confirmed by the many awards the series received, was its complication of authorial power and textual ownership. Fans occupied the same space as characters to become characters themselves; producers became viewers who carefully followed fan responses and incorporated them into the storyline; fans’ vlogs and texts developed character arcs, deepen understanding of characters themselves, and moved the narrative as a whole; and producers entered fan spaces to discuss narrative developments. However, while the LBD does offer some possibilities going forward, it also illuminates the tensions between existing and emergent production paradigms created by an increase in Internet participatory culture that remain to be overcome.
This paper explores and analyses the phenomenon in which readers interpret words by privileging t... more This paper explores and analyses the phenomenon in which readers interpret words by privileging their previous experience of them; even when that experience directly contradicts the word's use in a narrative. The imposition of alternative meanings onto words which are used within a specific narrative discourse often leads to fallacious conclusions about the ideological and spiritual themes in the text. This paper offers an exploratory, evidence-based critique of the interpretive practices of Harry Potter critics who base their examinations of the narratives on contexts outside of the narratives themselves. After briefly outlining the critical conclusions which focus on spiritual and mythological signifiers in Harry Potter, this paper offers an alternative analysis of those signifiers; with specific reference to the usage of these words in the narratives. When a word's usage in a narrative is privileged over its accepted meaning in real-world discourses, critics gain a clearer understanding of the narrative as a whole.
The Encounters: Place, Situation, Context Papers—The Refereed Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, Deakin University, 25-27 November , 2013
Steampunk is a genre which lends itself particularly well to young adult fiction. There is a sens... more Steampunk is a genre which lends itself particularly well to young adult fiction. There is a sense of optimism present in the pages of a steampunk novel, and a particular aesthetic which accompanies the impossibility of futuristic technology in the pre-1900 era. That's where the 'steam' element comes from; steam power was the most predominant form of power available at the time. The 'punk' element is representative of the genre's tendency to fly in the face of convention, to question prevailing ideologies and disregard those elements of societal order which don't suit it. It is interesting, then, to explore the position of women in a steampunk novel. Identities slip and slide in steampunk, depending on what a person represents of what they are rebelling against. Women are particularly representative of the 'punk' element because of the societal pressures on them which did not extend to men during that era. Women must fight for their opportunities, often expressing their identity in unusual ways in order to escape the oppressive force of their culture. Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series is a popular steampunk/young adult series set in the years leading up to World War 1. He uses three female steampunk archetypes: the lady boffin or scientist, the girl rebel or engineer, and the girl dressed as a boy in order to take the freedoms which were denied to her in skirts and corsets. These fictional women not only disturb the status quo of their situational context, they provide a textual representation and expression of the identity issues felt by adolescent readers who are almost in a position where their own place in society will need to be determined. This paper will analyse how Westerfeld's fictional women turn societal constraints into opportunities and build their own subversive identities against the gendered assumptions present in their time period.
Uploads
Books by Jessica Seymour
Originally published at Inter-Disciplinary.net, this volume contains essays from different fan scholars on topics such as celebrity fandom, pop-culture tourism, cosplay, fan activism, and YouTube fandom.
Peer-reviewed Articles by Jessica Seymour
Originally published at Inter-Disciplinary.net, this volume contains essays from different fan scholars on topics such as celebrity fandom, pop-culture tourism, cosplay, fan activism, and YouTube fandom.
The texts depict the values instilled in Tris, Four and Peter as being paramount to their personal identities; when their position in the Chicago experiment is made known to them, they react by trying to re-evaluate their values and re-position their identities accordingly. In Peter’s case, the decisions he makes in the beginning of the series are rendered moot; triggering an introspective period which results in his eventual desire for self-annihilation. While Four’s attempt to continue defining himself by his genetic identity proves destructive, Tris’s response to the new knowledge is to value what she knows to be true, and to liberate those who remain under the influence of the Evil Demon. This ultimately proves more fruitful from a textual perspective – and the characters are able to live meaningful lives by breaking away from their Cartesian dreams and re-evaluating their arbitrary values through their new knowledge and understanding of the world outside the experiment.
When Tris, Four and Peter learn that their reality – their factions and belief systems – is a simulated experiment, it disrupts their sense of identity because their identities are entrenched in what they have been taught to value. To see their families fall apart as a result of the faction system, only to discover that it is a construction designed to facilitate genetic development, is a harsh blow to the characters and their understanding of their own place in their world. Peter’s cut-throat approach to Dauntless initiation, when contextualised through the Chicago experiment, is rendered particularly heinous. Through a comparative analysis of the reactions of Tris, Four and Peter to their Cartesian Dream and the Evil Demon controlling it, this essay will analyse how the narrative portrays the value in having values, and what happens to a character when their value system is stripped away.
There are real-world equivalents to the serums employed by the leaders in Divergent; particularly the Amity peace serum which calms the faction population and improves their moods. Young people in the real-world are routinely medicated for ‘behavioural disorders’ which do not comply with adult ideals of ‘normal’ behaviour in young people. This provides the reader with a point of comparison for the methods of oppression engaged with by the power-holders in Divergent. Using a comparative analysis of the representations of serum in the Divergent series and real-world methods of institutional control, this essay argues that the violation of rights and bodily agency portrayed in Divergent renders the victims incapable of embodying traits which are undesirable, and thus rendering them chemically complicit in their own disempowerment.
Storytelling is a way for people to examine and critique their own anxieties. Disempowerment and institutional control is a real concern for many young people; particularly those who have been forced to submit to medication to quell those impulses and behaviours which are deemed ‘divergent’ from the cultural norm. As the divergent characters in the narrative become more powerful, their ability to resist the serum becomes symbolic of their ability to resist the corrupt power structure which relies on their disempowerment. The serum-resistance of divergent characters creates an opportunity for the young reader to vicariously empower themselves through a text which acknowledges and alleviates their anxieties.
When discussing the concept of nature, there is a tendency among scholars, critics, and even Tolkien himself to privilege the elvish and hobbitish love of growing things. This essay argues that the dwarvish connection to mining and stone represents a celebration of the natural world, and an alternative ideal of beauty which privileges practicality along with aesthetics. This examination will be driven by a textual analysis of the dwarves’ relationship with geology in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. While Tolkien paints a mostly positive picture of dwarves throughout his works, there remains a thematic connection between the dwarvish love of gold, jewels and stone, and the negative traits of materialism and greed; but there is a multi-dimensionality to the natural world and the beauty to be found within it. Like their creator Aulë, the dwarves see the potential of their natural environment, and interact with it in a uniquely utilitarian but nonetheless beautiful manner.
This paper argues that New Adult is, in fact, a genre that directly connects to the anxiety and insecurity of readers who ‘graduated’ from YA fiction in the 2010s but did not connect with the ‘adult’ fiction available. The New Adult genre is arguably an inevitable result of the social terrain that they have had to negotiate: the rate at which adolescents become ‘adults’ has changed, while former markers of adulthood (marriage, children, homeownership) are being delayed later and later, or reimagined altogether. It therefore makes sense that there a genre of books has developed that explores a new concept of ‘adulthood’ for readers whose tastes in narrative, character, and plot were trained by contemporary YA fiction.
Context is deeply important to understanding and analysing remix works. Remix culture allows and encourages derivative works that combine, supplement, or edit existing material into a new product. By understanding the choices being made by creators, their limitations, and their cultural context, a scholar can more effectively analyse the final product. Oral stories were usually built out of the formulaic phrases that storytellers learned as apprentices and knew by heart, which allowed them to adapt their works according to the needs of their audiences (shortening, elaborating, and editing as they went). However, contemporary remix creators are often preoccupied with ownership – that is, it is good etiquette to credit the original creator of a text when remixing for new audiences. With oral texts, original ownership is more difficult to track, and scholars therefore have to make different choices when analysing the texts.
Meanwhile, as writing and other publishing technologies became more widespread, the remixing creators were able to introduce more creative appropriations of originary texts. Translating originary texts from one culture to another allows and often requires the new creator to make decisions regarding form, meaning, and emphasis. These choices necessarily change the text but they also require a stronger analysis of the creator’s social and cultural context in order to understand the significance of these changes.
This paper offers a critical discourse analysis of the first season of the Black Butler anime with particular emphasis on how the Queen’s characterisation interplays with the aesthetics of NeoVictorianism. The anime is the focus of this paper because the Queen’s characterisation is significantly different from her characterisation in the manga, and the anime is arguably more well-known and engaged with than the manga. Her characterisation in the anime, therefore, is the characterisation that she tends to be associated with by the majority of the audience. The Queen’s position in the anime’s narrative serves as an opportunity to examine the NeoVictorian values of national duty and individual relevance by exploring the perspective of one of her most loyal subjects.
The purpose of this paper is to explore how magic and the supernatural allows characters in the Raven Cycle to confront and mitigate problems in their real lives rather than escape from them. Importantly, the fantastical often does not act as the primary way that characters in the series deal with their issues – in the case of Adam Parrish, for example, the fantastical abilities he gains during the first book in the series do not help him to leave his abusive home or escape from poverty. These are issues that he must face without magical aid. Similarly, the series represents some issues, such as sexual identity (through the characters Ronan Lynch and Blue Sargent) as being actively limited in their exploration thanks to magic and supernatural, and these characters must work around the fantastical elements of the narrative to achieve real-world results.
By allowing characters in the series to engage with and explore fantasy elements such as magic and the supernatural, the Raven Cycle creates a useful, ongoing metaphor through which readers can view the very real issues of poverty, neglect, and sexuality. The fantastical does not mitigate the severity of these issues; instead, it creates an opportunity for readers to recognise potential real-world avenues for understanding and working around problems, with the eventual conclusion being that fantasy cannot and should not be used to solve real-world problems.
– Justin McElroy, The ‘The Adventure Zone’ Zone – MaxFunDrive, March 30 2017.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the narrative strategies involved in the Dungeons and Dragons-inspired podcast The Adventure Zone (2014-present), which is run by the McElroy family. The Adventure Zone is an ongoing podcast narrative about three adventurers who work to find and destroy seven extremely powerful Grand Relics. The narrative incorporates several different genres, themes, and both player and non-player characters.
During the podcasts, the youngest brother, Griffin, explains settings and story elements so that his two brothers, Justin and Travis, and his father, Clint, can react to them while portraying characters that they have created. The podcast is entirely improvised, and although Griffin acts as DM (Dungeon Master), he must change his plans if the other players go in a direction that he was not expecting. This means that the overall narrative arc and intended ending of the campaign may change at any time. Character backstory is introduced as needed, and the players keep track of magical items and experience that they gain as they move through each of the story arcs.
This paper argues that The Adventure Zone’s co-operative, improvisational story-telling style is successful precisely because it is performed in an organic way that is true to character motivation. Storytellers may be tempted to force the narrative towards a desired conclusion, but when working with four collaborators – three of whom are not aware of the intended conclusion – then the narrative can change at any moment. Griffin McElroy’s flexibility as DM and the innovative character creation of the three players contributes to an overall-stronger narrative as the podcast continues.
The purpose of this creative work is to explore identity-constructing practices in the online space, to reflect on the ways that the online archive can be read, and to develop an experimental non-fiction work using the internet as a base medium. The work takes the form of a travel memoir, told through a combination of my social media outputs and internet history between November 18, 2015, and March 1, 2016. I have selectively compiled posts and archived pages in order to produce what I consider to be an authentic representation of my experience, constructing a narrative of myself through the glimpses and ambiguous realities of the online world.
Part 1: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2018/5/5/the-state-of-fandom-studies-2018-jessica-seymour-mlanie-bourdaa-pt-1
Part 2: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2018/5/5/the-state-of-fandom-studies-2018-jessica-seymour-mlanie-bourdaa-pt-2
They were wrong.