This paper expands recent scholarship on characters in transmedia storytelling to include musical characterisation, exploring how fictional musical identities are negotiated across related media texts. Taking the Life is Strange videogame franchise as case study, this paper explores how music is used for characterisation and fan identification both in the games and related media. With the franchise known for its representation of LGBTQ characters, the paper also expands upon existing work on queer theory and videogame music, by shifting the focus to cutscenes and ‘low-interactive’ musical moments within the narrative adventure genre.

Biography

Lindsay Carter teaches musicology at Cardiff University and has previously held teaching posts at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on media music and ideology, concentrated around two main themes: nationalism and transnationalism, and representations of identity. She has published work on Soviet, German and Polish cinema. She has been journal administrator for Twentieth-Century Music since 2020.

Screenshot from Life is Strange: True Colours (Square Enix, 2021).