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#CoulsonLives

Paratextual Networked Selves in Fictional Universes

Matt Hudson, Eastern Florida State College
(This research has been accepted as a paper presentation to the 2022 PCA/ACA national conference)

Agent Coulson’s existence is not merely the product of writers; his life-after-death existence in the MCU depended on the intricate paratextual connections that elevated him from an unintentional tertiary character to a central figure in the MCU. He is a paragon of current discussions in philosophy that people and their identities are a networked self located within polymediated narratives. For fictional characters, these characters (these networks) are connected through subtle strands, revealing not only a character’s depth and complexity, but also the intricate complexity of how we tell stories in the MCU and in other “universes.” Traditionally, a character only existed within a story (and in the reader’s mind). However, revising character as a networked self yields several newer assertions about a character. Kathleen Wallace “You are a Network” and Tim Parks and Riccardo Manzoff, “You are the World” are a few of the many discussions that are revealing this concept of the networked self to wider popular appeal concerning how a person or character is created and develops through a variety of intricate connections across polymediated narratives as suggested by Herrmann and Herbig.

1. A networked self exists extra-textual through fan fiction and social media.
2. The characters exist in many universes, not just the MCU.
3. A networked self character cannot be written and pre-packaged to be given directly to the fans premade such as attempted with Captain Phasma in Star Wars.
4. A network is chosen for a wide variety of reasons by the fans in the network.
5. The networked self character’s continued existence relies on the writers and the fans, to in a sense, collaborate in order for the character to be elevated from a tertiary character to a supporting character, and from supporting character to main character such as with Boba Fett in Star Wars and Coulson in the MCU.

As researchers of memes have discovered, there are no clear grids or checklists for why a meme is successful, such is the same for unintentional character and these five networked-self mechanisms. While we can certainly use these five as an a posteriori examination of the rise of a tertiary character, or any character, through paratextual connections, what still alludes creators and critics alike concerns how these five interact to organically, if not digitally-organically, develop these characters from obscurity to limelight.