u/Shari0212

Sometimes a story wraps up with a genuinely satisfying ending, but there's still all this unexplored stuff side characters you wanted more of, corners of the world that got mentioned once and never touched again, plot threads that quietly got dropped. In that situation, what do you actually want as a reader? A proper sequel continuing the main story? A side story following a different character in the same world? A completely separate story that just happens to share the setting? Or does going back to it usually just water down what made the original good in the first place?

Not saying the MC was necessarily bad or anything. Sometimes it's just that the rival, the mentor, the crafter, some random side character you weren't even supposed to care about, they end up in a way more interesting situation than the person the story's actually about. If a finished series got one extra story, would you actually want to see what happens next for the original MC, or would you rather follow someone else in that same world instead? And what actually makes a side character interesting enough to carry their own story? Is it their situation, their personality, the fact that you don't already know everything about them?