Can Protagonists Go Freely Between Timelines In Novels?

I grew up with a pile of dog-eared novels on one side of my bed and a stack of aloud-to-be-weird fanfics bookmarked on the other, so flipping between canon and fan works feels as natural to me as switching playlists. First, I treat canon like the spine of a bookcase — it holds the world together and gives me the characters' baseline voices and rules. When I want the comfort of familiar beats, I dive back into 'The Lord of the Rings' or 'Harry Potter' and savor the canonical lines, the original settings, and the moments that always land for me. Those moments become reference points: what felt earned, what left me wanting more, where a gap yawns open and begs for a fan-written patch. When I head into fanfiction, I put on a different hat. Fanfic is my laboratory. I look for tags — 'fix-it', 'AU', 'hurt/comfort' — to set expectations so nothing sneaks up on me. Sites like Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.net let me filter by rating, relationship, or divergence point; that helps me move freely without getting tripped up by spoilers or tonal whiplash. I also build little mental bookmarks: a scene in canon I loved, a trait I want preserved, and the loose threads I enjoy seeing reworked. Etiquette matters to me too. I try not to act like fanworks invalidate the original, and I respect creators' rights and boundaries. Sometimes I want pure canon fidelity; sometimes I crave a wild AU where a character from 'My Hero Academia' runs a bakery instead of battling villains. Letting myself be picky, curious, and playful lets me move back and forth with delight rather than guilt, and it keeps fandom fun instead of fraught.

I love how anime treats world-hopping like a secret door in a childhood blanket fort — sometimes it's whimsical, sometimes it's bureaucratic, but it's always a storytelling shortcut you can absolutely lose yourself in. In a lot of shows the mechanics fall into a few familiar camps: literal portals and gates (like the spirals in 'Spirited Away' or the gates in 'No Game No Life'), magical pacts or summoning rituals (think contracts or relics that bind someone to another realm), and sci-fi tech (virtual reality meshes in 'Sword Art Online' or time-gates in 'Steins;Gate'). Those frameworks give creators simple rules to play with: travel can be accidental, scheduled, or earnable through quests. What really hooks me is how writers layer consequences on top. Some series treat cross-world travel as free and fun, which turns it into an episodic adventure playground; others make it costly — physical tolls, identity loss, or temporal exile — which gives emotional gravity to every portal scene. I love when a show plants a small rule early on (a gate only opens under a comet, or a charm breaks after three uses) and then pays it off in a later crisis. It turns a neat mechanic into something resonant. If you like tinkering with this idea, try mixing genres: a mundane commuter accidentally stepping through a subway turnstile into a fantasy kingdom, or a scientist discovering that their lab equipment is a map to other worlds. Those collisions of tone are where memorable moments pop, and for me that's why I keep rewatching and re-reading the same conceits in fresh clothes.

Honestly, crossovers feel like the joy of seeing old friends in a reunion — and companies know that vibe sells. I’ve watched franchises nudge characters into each other’s worlds for decades, and it’s rarely random: there’s marketing muscle (new eyeballs), creative curiosity (what if X met Y?), and a license to play outside strict canon rules. When you let a character pop into 'Kingdom Hearts' or the chaos of 'Marvel vs. Capcom', you get spectacle and conversation fuel. Fans share clips, memes, theory posts, and suddenly both properties trend. From a storytelling angle, crossovers offer wiggle room. Canon can be set aside or framed as alternate timelines, dream sequences, or noncanonical events — think how 'Super Smash Bros.' treats fighters as avatars of their franchises rather than strict narrative continuations. That flexibility makes it easier for rights holders to agree to deals because the guest appearance won’t necessarily handcuff future storytelling. On the flip side, that same looseness can create weird continuity headaches if a collaboration becomes beloved and fans want it folded into the official lore. Money matters too: merchandising, DLC, seasonal events, and celebrity cameos drive revenue. But it's not just greed — creators often genuinely geek out about crossovers. I’ve read interviews where writers and designers confess it’s creatively freeing to mash up tones and mechanics. There’s risk (diluting a character, awkward tonal clashes), but done well, crossovers become cultural moments that breathe new life into older properties and make us grin like giddy fans who just spotted a rare cameo.

I get oddly excited about copyright timelines — it's like waiting for seasons to change, but for movies. In the United States the core rule for so-called 'classic' films that were published long ago is this: if a film was published before 1978 and had the regular notices and renewals, it generally gets protection for 95 years from the date of publication. That means films released in 1928 entered the public domain on January 1, 2024, 1929 on January 1, 2025, and so on. The pace feels slow because of the 1998 extension — officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act — which added 20 years to what used to be a shorter term. Fans jokingly call it the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act' for good reason: it kept a lot of early studio stuff locked up longer. But the situation isn’t that neat in practice. Some films have multiple layers of rights: the screenplay, the musical score, particular restored versions, and any trademarked characters are separate beasts. So even when the underlying film (the images and motion picture work) hits the public domain, a cleaned-up restoration could still be copyrighted, the soundtrack might remain protected, or a popular character could be protected by trademark law. Internationally it's even more varied — most of Europe uses life-of-the-author-plus-70 years, which affects authorship-credited works differently than a studio-produced film. For cinephiles and creators, that means accessibility improves incrementally, but often with caveats like patchy quality or incomplete releases. Honestly, when a favorite film finally becomes free to share, it still feels like finding a long-lost song on a dusty record shelf — thrilling, messy, and perfect in its own imperfect way.

Honestly, I get a little giddy when a sequel lets a character walk away — it feels human, messy, and alive. I like to think authors do it because stories are mirrors of choices, and letting characters 'go' (physically or emotionally) makes the narrative breathe. Freed characters create new room for conflict and growth: a departure can seed guilt, mystery, or a fresh perspective that forces the remaining cast to recalibrate. In 'Harry Potter' terms, even secondary departures ripple into the main arc; in other works like 'The Last of Us' or 'Mass Effect' style narratives, choices and their consequences are the whole point. There are practical reasons too. Sequels often aim for surprise or raise the stakes by removing a familiar anchor. Sometimes creators want to prevent repetition — keeping someone around can turn a sequel into a retread. Letting them go also opens doors to side stories, spin-offs, or new protagonists. And yes, sometimes it’s about realism: people move on in real life, so fiction that mirrors that feels truer. I also enjoy when an author trusts the audience enough to accept a character’s absence without spoon-feeding closure; it encourages imagination, fan theories, and unruly late-night forums where we speculate like crazy. In short, those departures can be painful, but they often make the world feel larger and worth revisiting with fresh curiosity.

I get a little giddy thinking about the chaos and craft behind music licensing, but here’s the plain deal: studios usually let the same track float across multiple soundtracks only when the rights situation is permissive. That can mean the studio or label owns both the composition and the master recording outright, or the composer explicitly licensed the piece non-exclusively. In practice that happens a few ways: music created in-house or under a 'work-for-hire' agreement can be reused across films, games, and trailers without extra permission; classical or traditional pieces that are in the public domain can be recorded and reused freely; and stock or library music licensed non-exclusively is intentionally meant to appear everywhere. I’ve seen this up close when I was cobbling together a fan montage and discovered a gorgeous string cue available on a royalty-free service—one license, multiple projects. Studios also allow reuse internally across a franchise because it helps branding: think motifs that recur in sequels or TV spin-offs. On the flip side, if a famous pop song is involved, you’re dealing with two separate beasts—publishing (songwriting) and master (recording) rights—and those are often licensed narrowly and expensively, so you’ll rarely see those freed to show up on every soundtrack unless the owner wants cross-promotion. If you’re making something and want music that travels freely, look for non-exclusive synchronization licenses, Creative Commons (with commercial permissions), or library tracks that clearly state blanket usage. It’s boring legal stuff, but knowing the type of rights attached to a track completely changes whether it can hop between soundtracks or stays locked down under exclusivity.

Man, this is one of those behind-the-scenes things that sounds mysterious until you peel it back — and then it’s mostly contracts, sound booths, and a dash of fan demand. At the simplest level, anime dubs appear on streaming platforms because whoever owns the show’s rights (often a Japanese production committee or a local licensor) licenses language tracks to a streamer. That license can include video, subtitle tracks, and separate audio tracks. The licensor either delivers an existing dub, or the streaming service (or a partner studio) commissions one: hiring translators, script adapters, directors, and voice actors, then recording and mixing the audio. There are layers to that deal: territory rights (what countries get that dub), timing (simulcasts vs delayed dubs), exclusivity, and whether the dub is union or non-union. Simul-dubs try to get episodes dubbed within days of the original broadcast, which costs more and needs tight coordination. Sometimes a show gets a dub free-to-watch because the platform lumped audio rights into a broader, already-paid-for license, or because the licensor hopes a dub will boost global popularity and merchandising. Technically, it’s also about delivery: the finished dub has to be QC’d, synced, and encoded as a separate audio track and tagged in the platform’s player so users can switch languages. If you ever toggled between English and Japanese on a Netflix anime and the timing or audio levels were weird, that was probably a QC quirk. There are also fan dubs out there, but only officially licensed and produced dubs are allowed on platforms — everything else risks takedowns. Honestly, once you know the steps — legal, creative, and technical — the process feels a lot like a relay race where timing and money decide whether the English track will make it to your watchlist.

Honestly, there’s a whole culture built around tinkering with movies — and that culture explains a lot of why fan edits keep circulating despite strict distribution rules. I cut my teeth doing late-night edits of scenes from 'Star Wars' and 'Blade Runner' for practice, and what I noticed early on is that most fan edits aren’t trying to defy studios so much as operate in the gaps: they’re framed as transformative works, shared without profit, and often routed through community channels that expect and respect takedown norms. On the technical side, people change enough to claim a new creative work — reordering scenes, swapping out soundtracks, doing color grading, trimming credits, or overlaying commentary. That ‘transformative’ angle sometimes leans on fair use rhetoric (criticism, parody, education), though it’s legally fuzzy. Practically speaking, uploads on big platforms can trigger automated systems like Content ID and get removed, so many editors start on smaller venues — passworded files on community boards, private trackers, Discord groups, or fan forums — where moderators ask members to be discreet and non-commercial. That doesn’t make them legal; it just makes them less visible. I try to be careful: I credit source material, avoid monetization, and take down my edits if a rights holder objects. The reality is rights holders vary — some tolerate passionate fans, others enforce takedowns immediately. If you love an edit, the kindest move is to stream or download it only when the creator says it’s okay and to support the original work in official ways if you can. That keeps the scene alive without inviting legal trouble or losing a favorite creator’s work to a DMCA strike.