EPISODE 20: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING
Episode 20: Transmedia Storytelling | 7 April 2026
Stephen and Trent achieve escape velocity to soar beyond The Worldbuilding Workshop’s pages! In this episode, the dynamic duo digs into the distinct (but critical!) topic of transmedia storytelling, including:
Similarities and differences between fictional and nonfictional storyworlds;
Remediation as a means of reaching into the past and carrying familiarity into the future;
Strategic application of diverse media to emphasize diverse themes across diverse slices of a world’s scope and sequence;
Storytelling as a biological imperative for meaning-making and long-term survival;
Capturing the human experience in language, visual arts, and sound;
How religion, legends, and day-to-day stories cohere to form the continuum of our life-worlds;
Using stories to communicate relativistic perceptions and combat solipsism;
Applying Sam Ford’s definition of “storyworld” to contemporary transmedia storytelling;
Development of transmedia stories for specific thematic purposes or no purpose at all;
Why book-to-film and other adaptations are a kind of transmedia storytelling;
“Same planet, different worlds” as a framework for interpreting perspective;
How the Fallout transmedia storyworld teaches varied sociopolitical lessons through a complex metanarrative;
The relationship between rules, laws, language, and storytelling;
Algorithmic determinism, community atomization, and how the internet corroded the social contract;
Camus' The Plague and how symbolism helps us grapple with complexity;
Using transmedia stories to rescue black-pilled nihilists from antisocial “black hole” Communities of Practice;
Worldbuilding as a mechanism for interrogating personal beliefs, enculturation, and capital-T “Truth”;
Transmedia worldbuilding to navigate nihilism, solipsism, and epiphenomenalism (physicalism vs. qualia);
Making decisions about how the world can and should work;
Deferred meaning and the competing visions of Einstein and Derrida; and
Empathizing with other humans across space and time.
Episode References:
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