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In this paper, I’ll begin by tracing the historical context for world building as enactment of fandom, primarily by constructing an arc between the golden age of cinephilia and the current state of transmediaphilia. How do both of these taste ideologies depend on the acquisition of a certain kind of media literacy, subcultural affiliation, and modes of both accessing and reconfiguring popular archives made up of the accumulation of textual universes formerly considered to be disposable entertainment? Once I’ve established the most productive points of contact, I’ll focus on the impact of portable digital devices as breeder-reactors of world building due the inherently transmediated nature of the devices themselves and the play-listing mentality of the popular archivists who use them. Keywords: Transmediation; World building; Digital devices; Individual fan; Digital subjectivity Within the past decade, narratives universes as different as Marvel superheroes and Jane Austen have become worlds that you do something with , functioning not just as especially satisfying fictional realms that offer a unique set of delights but as instigations for further expansion and extension. One could argue this was anticipated by the intertextuality that was such a prominent feature of the postmodern narratives of the 1980s that made it so abundantly clear that the edges of textual universes were far more permeable than previously imagined and escaping those strictures generated a new kind of entertainment value. While the generic hybridity of films such as Blade Runner , Blue Velvet , and Near Dark may have been fueled by an exuberant determination to appropriate and extend narrative universes, it was conducted by pedigreed creative artists like Ridley Scott, David Lynch, and Kathryn Bigelow. There was Blade Runner but no BladeRunnerland that was extended in carefully coordinated and equally robust uncoordinated ways. The appropriation franchise, as it were has been extended to conglomerates, as well as amateur fans, and a whole spectrum of world builders in between. Just as the extravagant intertextuality of postmodern narratives of the 1980s signaled a new phase in the history of popular storytelling that seemed to call out for media theory that could account for that expanded narrativity, the frenetic narrative world building of contemporary popular culture needs to be accounted for by new forms of media theory that might get a handle on the interplay between textuality and digital technology, and between curatorship and subjectivity.
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