The Hunger Games and Fan Paratextual Participation - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 125

of cult media texts as the “creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only
a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text.” his
hyperdiegetic space is never—and can never be—completely revealed in a
cult text, as the “endlessly deferred narrative” provides “endless interpretation
and speculation predicated upon a point of identity or closure.” 36 Star Trek 's
hyperdiegesis, for instance, is ininite. Hills has gone on to develop this idea,
writing that the hyperdiegesis can be satisied through both fan-creative
work and “oicial transmedia … brand extensions.” 37 he Hunger Games '
hyperdiegesis is overt: the world comprises 13 Districts and 1 Capitol, although
as readers and viewers we spend time in only a few. 38 Opportunities for expansive
detailing of the world exist throughout the texts. One particularly efective
way of demonstrating hyperdiegetic narrative expansion is through what Hills
has termed “afective play,” or interactions with a media text that allow fans to
experience and feel a reality within the text that applies to their own lives. 39 he
hyperdiegetic text may “reward re-reading due to its richness and depth, but its
role is … also one of stimulating creative speculation and providing a trusted
environment for afective play.” 40 By illustrating a large narrative that cannot
be experienced all at once, a hyperdiegesis invites recontextualization of key
moments in the plot.
In fact, this hyperdiegetic recontextualization is a key attribute in the way
fans ill in these gaps, focusing particularly on the relationship between
characters and audiences: “Much fan writing follows this same logic, drawing
on moments of key emotional impact in the original texts … as points of entry
into the character's larger emotional history; fans create scenes that precede or
follow these moments.” 41 Fan-made paratexts, just like professional paratexts,
“oten serve as a way for readers to access schema, critically understand themes,
construct knowledge, and engage in multimodal content creation.” 42 he fan-
made card for Battlestar Galactica I mentioned in Chapter 4 is just one example
of these fan-created paratexts. In this sense, the Hunger Games paratextual
games approach hyperdiegetic narrative in two diferent ways—by leaving
gaps and by illing in gaps—and the fan base has multiple opportunities to
expand upon and recontextualize those gaps.
he two games reveal nuanced diferences in terms of the style and content
of the hyperdiegesis between the topic and the ilm. As Mark Fisher explains in
terms of style:
he chief diference between novel and ilm is that the former has a irst-person
narrative. his leads to there being greater suspense in the ilm—the irst-person