Transmedia Worldbuilding and Mashup Mythology in Penny Dreadful
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/imaginingtheimpossible.134455Keywords:
Penny Dreadful, transmedial worlds, transmedia characters, mythology, television, comicsAbstract
By focusing on the merged and interfigural nature of the characters and mythology in the Penny Dreadful transmedia world, this article seeks to demonstrate that transmedia characters are essential to transmedia worlds; they are anchors from which plots and mythology develop and expand. This is contrary to what is proposed by, for instance, Susana Tosca and Lisbeth Klastrup in earlier versions of their transmedial world theory, where character in their own formulation were “subsumed under the category of mythos” (Tosca & Klastrup 2020, 37). Instead, this article argues for the opposite scenario, that the construction of mythology in Penny Dreadful’s transmedia world is intricately tied to specific mythic plot structures, defining character conflicts, character narrators, and to serialized character development as well as character elaboration across media.
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