This article examines the reception of popular serial narratives. Starting from the assumption that this reception presents both a challenge (how to study the vast and heterogeneous readerly engagement with these texts?) and a chance (readers of such texts tend to comment profusely about the reception process), we identify the paratext as a privileged space of readerly communication on, and serial engagement with, popular storytelling. We develop the concept of “paratextual negotiation” as a means of understanding letter columns and fan forums as (now mostly) digital epitexts that shape the evolution of particularly popular—widely noticed, commercially successful, long-running—narratives, with a focus on the German science fiction pulp novel series Perry Rhodan (1961–) and additional thoughts on the US American comic book superhero Captain America (1941–). Taking the quantitative-empirical metrics of attention measurement and their public display seriously by identifying and close-reading the most popular forum threads and the most broadly recognized commentary about these narratives, we argue that the participatory element of popular culture can be reconstructed in the interplay between series text and serial paratext and can be described as a force in serial evolution that thrives on a combination of variation and redundancy and of selection and adaptation.

中文翻译：

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副文本谈判：作为流行超级英雄漫画书和科幻低俗小说系列的数字后文的粉丝论坛

本文考察了流行连续剧叙事的接受度。从假设这种接受既提出挑战（如何研究读者对这些文本的广泛和异质性参与？）和机会（此类文本的读者倾向于对接受过程发表大量评论）开始，我们将副文本确定为读者交流和连续参与流行故事的特权空间。我们开发了“副文本谈判”的概念，作为将信件专栏和粉丝论坛理解为（现在主要是）数字附加文本的一种方式，这些附加文本塑造了特别流行的——广受关注的、商业上成功的、长期运行的——叙事的演变，重点关注德国科幻低俗小说系列佩里罗丹 (1961–) 以及对美国漫画超级英雄美国队长 (1941–) 的其他思考。通过识别和仔细阅读最流行的论坛主题和关于这些叙述的最广泛认可的评论，认真对待注意力测量及其公开展示的定量经验指标，我们认为可以在相互作用中重建流行文化的参与元素介于系列文本和系列副文本之间，可以描述为系列进化中的一种力量，它在变化和冗余以及选择和适应的结合中茁壮成长。