Abstract 

The Super Mario Bros. franchise is probably one of the most popular gaming franchises. Spanning from console games to multiple other media, the franchise has built up a massive global fandom. The fictional world of the franchise is rich in characters, settings, and multi-branching storylines and is thus ripe for fanfiction. While having received very little attention from literary scholars and stylisticians alike, beyond those with an interest in non-canonical literature, fanfiction is worthy of serious academic study, because it not only transcends the boundaries of creator and consumer but also the boundaries of narrative art and community. In the age of the Internet, fanfiction writers share their works via digital platforms that serve as virtual communities as well. Consequently, as with most communities, conventions of language use emerge within the communities, many of which also manifest as conventional ways of using language in the construction of fanfictions.

In this talk, we explore – using corpus-stylistic methods – linguistic strategies used by fanfiction writers to construct fictional narratives set in the Super Mario Bros. fictional universe, the MarioVerse. More specifically, we will explore a corpus of Horror-themed Super Mario Bros. fanfiction scraped from two major digital platforms (and virtual communities) to see how fanfiction writers use particular linguistic strategies to achieve the narrative modes of horror and terror.

It is hoped that this talk will be of interest to linguists, stylisticians, literary scholars, Super Mario fans and maybe even fanfiction writers alike.