The Hunger Games and Fan Paratextual Participation - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 124

While District 12 ills in gaps without leaving openings for other fans to
explore, Training Days provides multiple opportunities for players to cocreate
a narrative within the gaps of the Hunger Games book by ofering open-ended
characterizations that players can populate with their own imaginative play.
Training Days provides a set of character attributes that players may interpret
as ancillary to those provided by the novel. hat is, by providing a structured
open-endedness, Training Days mirrors the experience of participatory fans by
illing in the existing gaps as well as providing additional gaps. I will look irst at
the ways this recontextualization manifests in the two games through the lens of
character attributes, and then at the way each game allows (or does not allow)
players to make choices throughout the gaming experience.
With any type of media fandom, multiple ways to participate manifest in
audience reception practices. 28 As I stated earlier, obsession_inc outlined two
major themes to fan participation: airmational fandom and transformational
fandom (although, she notes both are more similar than diferent). 29 Some
fans experience airmational attachment through a close watching, reading,
or rereading of their favored media text. Some fans may discuss it with others,
in person or online. 30 Still others may attend conventions to meet stars and/or
creators, listen or participate on panels, or socialize with other fans. 31 Some media
fans may collect merchandise or DVDs of their favored text. 32 Transformational
fans may be more involved in writing fan iction, creating fan videos, or using
social media to role-play. 33 Some may do many of these activities; others may
ind their fandom stemming from a more personal place that they rarely think
about, but still feel nevertheless. Fandom can be expressed in multiple ways; it is
as varied as the human experience.
As Henry Jenkins established early in the history of fan studies, one of the
key characteristics of a fan culture is the way that fans “attempt to build their
culture within the gaps and margins of commercially circulating texts.” his
“illing in the gaps” metaphor becomes one of the major fan strategies that
Jenkins uses to understand the relationship between mainstream popular
media and the acts of interpretation, appropriation, and reconstruction of
fan-textual work (or “poaching”). 34 here are many ways to ill in the gaps of
a media text—Jenkins lists ten of them—and although not all fans participate
in media fandom in this manner, it remains a central focus of the fan studies
discipline. 35
One of the reasons these sorts of gaps exist is the narrative hyperdiegesis.
In the last chapter I cited Matt Hills' description of the hyperdiegetic narrative