#it's fine they're not supposed to be twins. they're not even the same species.

[lonepower]

i just REALIZED i never actually made you guys look at my durge so here she is. look at her 🔪🔪🔪

[quartings]

Hot Take: Under most Hollywood definitions, there's no such thing as an "Alternate Dimension Variant".

With dozens of new multiverse-themed things coming out nowadays, I'd like to look at current definitions of what a "variant" is in media, and break down how well those explanations hold up under their own logic.

Interestingly, Rick and Morty has used two different definitions. The first one being "If they have the same DNA as you, they're a variant" which sounds good on paper, but gets a bit tough under scrutiny. What if there's a universe where a character was born as identical twins? Do they both count as variants of the same non-twin character? If it's a sci-fi universe and that character gets cloned, does the clone also get lumped in as a variant of the character or does the clone have to be grouped in with a different set of "clone variants"?

Not to mention that most multiverse things love to have non-human variants, so their DNA would naturally be different from the human ones, and so that rule doesn't hold up.

The second one is that "relevant variants have the same brain patterns", which works better for Rick and Morty, but also limits what you can do with variants in a difficult way. Because it's such a loose term that instantly excludes variants with the same name, appearance, and most personality traits just because they may be a little more or a little less intelligent than other variants.

Films like Multiverse of Madness and a certain ...other popular movie I choose to not address, also establish that variants have some sort of arbitrary psychic connection between each other. Which would be somewhat fine if both films tried playing around with the concept a bit more and didn't just have the same actors playing every variant of themselves barely interacting for a chance for the protagonists to self-reflect. Because having the same actor play every version of themselves once again brings the DNA issue into contention.

Example: Let's say we're watching a multiverse movie character named Joe Schmoe played by Danny Devito. There's also a fish named Joe Schmoe from an animated fish universe, also voiced by Danny Devito. There's another human named Joe Schmoe played by Brandon Fraser with the same upbringing and personality as the first Joe. And lastly, there's another human character called Jim Schmim played by Danny Devito but with a very different personality and different upbringing. Which of the latter 3 are variants of Joe? Are all of them? And if so, why?

Bonus 1: I know it's for ease of storytelling, but I think it'd be cool if the protagonist of a multiverse story had a different name from most of their variants. Like if the main character named say, Max, was told "We have to get you to all the other alternate Jeffs!" and they'd be like "Who the hell is Jeff??"

Bonus 2: A concept I feel doesn't get explored nearly enough was "universes where a character never existed". Variants are fun and all, but sometimes what you need is for a character to have a good ol' "It's a Wonderful Life"-style slap in the face.

And honestly? My favorite take on the concept of variants actually comes from the Loki series. In that show, Loki variants range greatly between gender, race, age, species, personality, even names, etc. The only thing that defines them as variants of the same individual is the fact that they all have to play the same "role" in their lives, as dictated by He Who Remains (and on a meta level, the writing team). It's implied that all Lokis are supposed to have a troubled childhood as outcasts, a rivalry with their brother Thor, become a villain that leads the Avengers to assemble, and eventually die at the hands of Thanos. Any divergence from that puts them under persecution by the TVA. There is no such thing as a true variant on a physical, mental, psychic, or casting level. What truly ties characters together is the role they play in their own lives and their own stories.

This allows the variants to get really diverse and creative while also having a visible and interesting story reason to tie them all together. Spiderverse and No Way Home also use something similar but less explicit, with all the spider-people being tied together by the spider theme and the "with great power comes great responsibility" moral that they've learned.

[thatbeluga]

Bojack Horseman Genetics (spoilers)

I need to puzzle this out.

In Bojack Horseman, there are humans and anthropomorphic animals. They are capable of mating and having viable offspring. If one parent is a human and the other is an animal, the child could be human or animal. We know this because:

1) When Diane was pregnant with Mr. Peanutbutter, the fetus was a dog

2) Hollyhock is a horse with a horse father and human mother

3) Charlotte, a deer, had kids with a human. One kid was a deer, and the other was a human

4) The boy that Bojack mistakes for Todd has a human father and bird mother

5) Ruthie, a porcupine, has a human mother and porcupine daughter

Those are the only interspecies relationships I could think of off the top of my head. However, I still have questions

First off, what happens when two animals of different species have a child? We know that same-species animals just give birth to the same species (Princess Caroline, Bojack, most of the animal characters).

Princess Caroline is pregnant with Ralph, a mouse, but she has a miscarriage and I don't think it's ever confirmed what species the fetus was. I think it's safe to assume that it would either be a mouse or a cat.

HOWEVER

What if it was someone like Hollyhock or Penny who was having a child with an animal? Do both of them have a "human gene" that could show up? Or if they were having a child with another hybrid who also carried the human gene, could those two animals have a human child?

And what about Charlotte's human son Trip? Does he carry a "deer gene"? If he and another hybrid human had a child, could they have an animal? And if so, which animal would it be? Would the chances of having an animal be increased if Trip's partner also had a deer parent?

Or does it not work like that? Is it possible that whatever animal/human you are, is the only kind of gene you can pass on and the other gene gets "erased"? (So Hollyhock/Penny could only have a human if they had a child with a human, regardless of that human's ancestry. Or Trip could only have an animal if he had a child with an animal).

I have more questions but they're more random, so I'm gonna list them here:

- We see that birds in this universe lay eggs, despite being more or less human from the neck down. Would a bird having a human child still lay an egg, or would they only lay an egg for a bird child? Could a human bring a bird child to term in a human uterus? Or would a human giving birth to a bird child lay an egg??

- The humans in this universe have to be genetically different from humans in our world right? Obviously yes, because they're capable of having viable offspring with any species, but what are their reproductive systems like? I mean, every species in the world has to be capable of giving birth to any other kind of species. Like in season five, when Sadie gives birth to a porcupine child and seems relatively fine. Or, like I said in the previous question, would a mother's body automatically adapt to whatever animal child she was carrying? Or are all babies born the same way?

- We know that animals of the same species who have children tend to have children the same way that animals does (like when Rutabega and his wife have like seven kids at the same time). Would stuff like this apply if Rutabega was having kids with a human (and the kids were rabbits)?

- Don't even want to get into how food works in this universe.

- In the first episode of Season 6 Todd has to get black market porcupine milk for Ruthie. Is this because PC is older or because her cat milk wouldn't be compatible with Ruthie (a porcupine)?

- Could someone have fraternal twins, one animal one human? Or if it were two animals, two different species in the same womb? I assume yes, since with fraternal twin the eggs are fertilized separately. But what if each required a different type of pregnancy (like a bird and a human)?

Every question leads down a rabbit hole so I need to stop myself. Like I get the whole point of the animals is you're not supposed to think too much about it but I am thinking too much about it.