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Abstract:

This article reports on how users step into the world of a fiction in a digital game (Shadow of the Colossus), a movie (Run Lola Run) and a novel (Monster by Walter Dean Myers). Moving into the make-believe involves invoking the subjunctive mode of wishing, hoping, expecting, fearing, etc. This article explores how this step into a fictional occurs in in the early stages of encountering stories in different media, drawing on work with twelve undergraduate interpreters of all three fictions.