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Comment by empressplay | Hacker News Reader

Half the fun of writing science fiction can be coming up with novel concepts or 'rules', what happens when everything of consequence in the 'Jamverse' has been built out? Will they start a new one?

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Shared fiction communities happen naturally when you have simple rules and a strong appealing grounding (visually, intellectually, ritually, or otherwise).

See: Minecraft, Sonic, MLP, SCP, even Bored Apes Yacht Club for 15 minutes

Which is me agreeing with you: this seems too hard to get; there's already 4 timelines and no faces to get attached to.

So why wouldn't I just write my own stories unrelated to this?

There are lots and lots of fun shared sci fi and fantasy universes out there, some of which were carefully designed to be a shared universe from the start. George R. R. Martin's "Wild Cards" comes to mind. Plus of course all of DC and Marvel. Every fan fiction author knows the fun of picking a ready to go universe and going "what if this guy fought/loved that guy?" Sometimes setting up a template can be a really cool way to encourage growth, like an artificial coral reef.

But this specific one does seem like a complex starting point.

I agree that there's a tension you're pointing to here. But I can imagine narrative devices to get around it, if it's ever a problem.

Maybe go one level deeper? Or maybe branching the timeline in the past, like Marvel popularized?

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