The Strange Comfort of Fictional Worlds Colliding

I don’t really know where to start this, so I’ll just say it: sometimes I get too invested in fake worlds. Not in the dangerous way, I think… more like, when everything in the real world feels like it’s spinning or breaking, there’s something kinda grounding about revisiting universes where everything is… well, not simpler, but more structured, maybe? More poetic. Or at least more dramatic in a way that makes your own life feel oddly manageable.

That’s kinda what pulled me back to multiverse stuff in the first place. You know, the whole idea that there’s not just one timeline, one story, but infinite ones. Like how Batman shows up in a Scooby-Doo episode or when some random Marvel villain appears in a totally different arc, completely out of nowhere but somehow it works. Or DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths — god, what a mess, but also brilliant. It’s chaos, but it’s intentional chaos. It’s like the writers know exactly what they’re doing… even when they don’t.

I remember digging through forums in the early 2000s (RIP old-school message boards) trying to trace how one character from one comic got retconned into another arc. Someone even built an entire timeline graphic using like, MS Paint. It was janky and beautiful and honestly more memorable than most corporate wiki pages today.

That’s why I kind of fell in love with what this site is supposed to be. Multiverse-DB, if I can get a bit dramatic here, feels like a little sanctuary for stories that refuse to be boxed in. It’s messy, yeah. Some stuff contradicts itself, timelines get wonky, characters die and come back and die again. But in a weird way, isn’t that just like us? Flawed, inconsistent, trying to be the hero in our own mess of a timeline.

I’m not sure if anyone really reads through these entries the way I do. Maybe someone just lands here by accident while Googling something else. Or maybe there’s a small, tired tribe of people like me who still care about cross-universe continuity and care enough to read old crossover issues that are half forgotten. Either way, I think there’s something kind of sacred about preserving this stuff.

And sure, maybe most people won’t understand the appeal. They’ll call it “nerdy” or “a waste of time” or whatever, but… honestly, that’s fine. There are worse things to lose yourself in than fictional universes that dare to overlap and contradict and twist around themselves like a Möbius strip. It makes you feel small in a good way — like you’re part of something big, even if it’s just imaginary.

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks. I don’t really know what this post is supposed to be. A reflection? A ramble? A digital note to no one? Doesn’t matter. All I know is: I’ll keep digging through these multiverses, probably long after I should’ve gone to sleep. And if you’re doing the same — welcome. You’re not alone here.