ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on time as a crucial factor to understand how transmedial worlds get intertwined with our lives. Drawing on online texts, focus group sessions and a variety of interviews, the authors examine the critical time of the first encounter with the world, the further contacts and the creation of emotionally charged memories that feed the transmedial audiences’ desire to return to a world again and again. The chapter focuses on the importance of nostalgia as the main source of desire for further engagement with transmedial worlds, arguing that the attraction of transmedial worlds lies not only in the possibility of continuously expanding them to tell more stories, but also in the ability to revisit and recreate the early moments of engagement. Furthermore, the authors look at both the personal and identity-shaping potential of nostalgia, as well as its collective dimension, when transmedial worlds become agglutinant generational symbols or are passed on as worthwhile heritage to be preserved.
