Weird idea: Create open source characters with stock relationships and plot lines that anyone can use and expand on. Community owned IP, that anyone can develop and treat like their own.
It'd be neat to see a community like, for instance, Star Wars fandom, where the universe is treated like stock material that anyone and everyone can modify to their own needs, but based around designs and ideas that you can use for free.
@cjrando Like Cthulhu. (Or Tolkien.)
But YouTuber Austin McConnell is doing that with public domain superheroes. He's calling it his own cinematic universe, even if it's not all actually cinematic (I think the big thing is an upcoming book, but he's using "cinematic universe" as a short-hand term to explain what he's doing.) Interesting stuff. No idea how it's going to go, but several fun videos have come from him putting the idea together in plain sight, though.
@cjrando
Arthurian legends.
@cjrando Some of our modern legends are like that.
Bigfoot, for instance. The rights are covered in the Secrecy Laws, too, so when you use a sasquatch or a skunk ape in a story, all living cryptohominins get a royalty.