Two things that I like a lot are Doctor Who and the Mother video game series. Beyond these, there are very many other things, but I wanted to focus on these two for a comparison. With Doctor Who the TV series started in 1963 and in the many decades that followed, there have been countless episodes, books, audio dramas, comics and more created. I may consume a lot of Doctor Who media, but it’s unlikely that I’ll ever have consumed it all. Mother on the other hand, is just three video games (with the characters making cameos in other things occasionally.) I have played them all.
One the one hand, I’m sad that there’ll never be more Mother for me to play; on the other, I’m sad that I’ll never get to enjoy every Doctor Who story. It’s hard for me to decide what the ideal size is for a body of work. There’s something about a fictional universe made up of very many stories that appeals to me a lot. On the other hand, having just a small number of pieces of the highest quality also helps a fictional universe to have a high level of integrity. I’m sure some people would call it quality over quantity, but a body of work made up of very many things could still have a lot of top notch stuff, even if some bad stuff gets in too.
I flip flop on what I prefer. I know that by making all of my own writing interconnected, I am definitely leaning on the side of a very large body of work, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily think that’s best. I really like knowing everything there is to know about something and that’s easier to do with a smaller body of work, but then I also like to regularly enjoy new things and with a larger body of work I can enjoy the same thing in new ways over and over. It’s interesting to contrast and compare the two approaches.
