About

What is Project Marblearth?

Project Marblearth is an independently community-organized initiative to expand the fictional narrative universe of Jelle’s Marble Runs, a YouTube channel that creates “marble sports” series such as the Marble League, Marble Rally, and Marbula One. The Project operates under a volunteer system of contributors and is a nonprofit, fully remote, and global organization. Our WordPress site, which hosts our blog articles, visual content, and other creations, is run without any monetization and exists to provide the community with one place on the Internet to access every release.

The purposes of Project Marblearth are:

• To collaborate creatively within the online marble sports community
• To bring fictional stories to life about how marble athletes get into sports and become the best versions of themselves through their training

The organization of Project Marblearth shall operate under these principles: 

• Project Marblearth will exist as a safe space for fans to share community creations
• Project Marblearth will remain independent of organizational influence from Jelle’s Marble Runs

What is the JMR Expanded Universe?

The stories explored through the work of Project Marblearth exist within the “JMR Expanded Universe,” a fictional narrative universe that expands upon the stories of the marble sports series showcased in Jelle’s Marble Runs. The world of Marblearth, where the events of the JMR Expanded Universe occur, is set in a separate universe where human history did not happen and does not exist. Instead, marbles are treated as “living” organisms that perform the same basic functions as humans in the real world. They train to compete in marble sports, with the tournaments of Jelle’s Marble Runs considered Marblearth’s most contentious, and its championships the most decorated.

The overall goal of Project Marblearth is to build the JMR Expanded Universe through a series of interconnected narratives as a community, creating a story that complements the events of Jelle’s Marble Runs as they continue to progress.

What is the current goal of Project Marblearth?

Project Marblearth operates under a system of “phases”, which focus on developing specific areas of lore at a time.

The goal of Phase 1 was to update every existing RetRollSpective up to the 2021 Marble League Qualifiers. We achieved this goal on 21 December 2021 with the help of 25 contributors and our amazing fans.

The goal of Phase 2 was to continue building on the lore developed in Phase 1 through a series of short-form reports and traditionally longer articles. As part of our former association with Jelle’s Marble Runs, we updated the histories of teams actively participating in JMR since the Marble League 2021 Qualifiers. On the Project Marblearth Blog, we committed to releasing RetRollSpectives for remaining teams, including those that formerly competed in the Hubelino Tournament, Marble League, and Marble ManiaX as well as those who entered JMR as expansion teams for Marble League 2022. We also developed Marble Memos as a series of short-form post-event reports chronicling the stories that developed during Marble League 2022, Marble Rally Season 6, and Marbula One Season 4, and began working on the Choose Your Marble series to detail the narratives of individual marble athletes. We achieved this goal on 3 October 2023 with the help of 30 contributors and our amazing fans.

The goal of Phase 3 was to document and represent the lore of the Marble Rally athletes by publishing the first articles of the Choose Your Marble series. While working through the first Choose Your Marbles, we released Marble Memos to cover the stories surrounding Marble League 2023, Marble Rally Season 7, Marbula One Season 5, and Marble League 2024, and explored the tales of each athlete eliminated from Marble Survival 100 in a new series, Out of the Rolling.

The goal of Phase 4, nicknamed “The Bridge,” is to revamp the existing team articles. RetRollSpectives will be split into multiple articles to facilitate future updates, with each addendum becoming a separate article. Each team will receive a Team History article that focuses on lore in a more condensed way and a Landing Page with all relevant articles linked for easy navigation and access.

Is Project Marblearth officially associated with JMR?

Project Marblearth is open to individual collaborations with entities such as Jelle’s Marble Runs, however, Project Marblearth will remain independent of organizational influence from Jelle’s Marble Runs. The narratives of the JMR Expanded Universe are designed to complement, not supplement, the events of JMR videos. Any formal questions about Project Marblearth should be directed to projectmarblearth@gmail.com or within the Marblearth Discord.