The Hunger Games and Fan Paratextual Participation - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 122

to simply experiencing emotional satisfaction. Fan activity can be incredibly
transformative, but it can also be highly replicative. And although this binary
of transformative/replicative is handy (as I discuss later in this chapter), it
is also reductive in terms of its analysis of actual fan activity, which is oten
a combination of both. For example, Hills describes “mimetic fandom” which
“begins to deconstruct the binary of fan productions that either transform or
imitate mainstream media content, just as textual/material productivities can
also blur together, thereby complicating scholarly narratives seeking to clearly
separate out these tendencies.” 22 Mimetic fandom is the desire to replicate what
is in the media text, but as Hills notes, such imitative processes also oten lead
to transformational details. To attempt to elaborate upon one particular type
of fandom might mean shutting other fans out of the process. Fans are a group
marked by emotional connection to a media text, but that connection can
manifest in multiple ways.
Similarly, participation is a more complex proposition than just “doing
things” with the media—as Amazon.com's 2013 drive to monetize fan iction
through Kindle Worlds illustrates. When Amazon announced that a range of
popular media series, including Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries , would become
available for authorized fan iction to be sold on the website, fan reaction was
mixed. 23 On the one hand, fans could collect royalties on their stories. On the
other hand, Kindle Worlds limited the authorized fan iction to speciic types
(“no porn” … “doesn't violate laws or copyright …” “no crossovers,” etc.), turning
“participation” into a directly modulated and regulated activity. 24
Relevant to paratextual board games in general, and the Hunger Games games
in particular, this dichotomy between media fandom as participatory and media
fandom as consumptive reveals diferent models of paratextuality. Paratextual
board games link participatory culture and fandom in unique and culturally
applicable ways. hey allow individuals to feel as though they are an integral
part of the textual world—even contributing to the development of narrative
outcomes—all the while remaining tethered to the original text. For example, in
the E.T.: he Extra-Terrestrial board game, released in 1982 by Parker Brothers,
players take on the role of the eponymous alien as he attempts to build the pieces
of his machine to “phone home.” hat the players of the game help him on this
quest not only mirrors elements from the ilm, but also allows the players to play,
however briely, as E.T., to imaginatively inhabit the character through ludic
manipulations. he same inhabitation occurs in Star Trek: Expeditions as players
are encouraged to identify with the Star Fleet oicer they play as.