Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp looked at narrative as an organic thing, using the word "morphology", in botany, meaning the study of the components of a plant. He did this through assigning functions to it's "dramatis personae", it's characters, objects etc. and categorizing them based on these functions. Through this categorization of functions, Propp believed that you can transpose any given story into any other world and still have the story work in the same way and still be coherent.

We tested this today in CS, me and my group transposed the story of Batman: Arkham Asylum into the world of My Little Pony. For lack of knowing anything about the subject, I was assured that the "dramatix personae" we transposed into the story fit somewhat accurately into the games story.