WEBVTT 00:00:00.017 --> 00:00:07.428 Red: Hello everybody, and welcome to another very special Detail Diatribe. I don’t know why I said very special, 00:00:07.428 --> 00:00:11.060 this is pretty much on brand for the other Detail Diatribes we’ve done so far. 00:00:11.060 --> 00:00:14.776 It’s not a special holiday event or whatever. But I’m excited about this. 00:00:14.776 --> 00:00:19.740 Blue: Medium-special at best, but still very exciting! R: Moderately special, you know, 00:00:19.740 --> 00:00:26.388 in the grand calculus of the multiverse. B: Somewhere, Red and Blue are sitting down 00:00:26.388 --> 00:00:34.486 to record a Detail Diatribe that is the most special Detail Diatribe ever. But we’re not in that multiverse. 00:00:34.486 --> 00:00:39.316 R: No, we’re in this timeline instead. In case you didn’t pick up what we’re putting down, 00:00:39.316 --> 00:00:47.115 the subject of today’s Detail Diatribe is something that I have been mulling over for a while now, and I like to call it 00:00:47.115 --> 00:00:54.229 “the multiverse problem”. And to explain what exactly the multiverse problem is, I’ve prepared a handy-dandy, 00:00:54.229 --> 00:00:58.843 super efficient 40 slide slideshow- B: Yes, Yes! 00:00:59.791 --> 00:01:06.496 R: -to discuss what exactly is going on. So, to start we must define the parameters 00:01:06.496 --> 00:01:11.458 that we’re going to be operating on. What is a multiverse? Now obviously, in this specific context 00:01:11.458 --> 00:01:16.041 we are discussing fictional multiverses, not Real Multiverse Theory, none of that stuff. 00:01:16.041 --> 00:01:21.057 Not particularly interesting to me. But in fiction the concept of a multiverse is essentially a setting 00:01:21.057 --> 00:01:26.672 that contains multiple universes or timelines, and the setting that the protagonists - the main characters - 00:01:26.672 --> 00:01:31.752 are from is typically just one universe out of many. A story will often introduce the concept 00:01:31.752 --> 00:01:36.736 of a multiverse in the context of a plotline that threatens the integrity of this home universe, 00:01:36.736 --> 00:01:42.282 like a bad future timeline or a threat that’s moving across dimensions or an evil alternate version 00:01:42.282 --> 00:01:46.829 of themselves intruding, stuff like that. It’s a very, very broad concept that covers a lot of ground. 00:01:46.829 --> 00:01:52.161 A lot of that ground is just fine, some of that ground is very, very bad. So let’s talk about it! 00:01:52.161 --> 00:02:00.009 B: This is exciting, because I have passing familiarity with some multiverse stories in kids’ media, 00:02:00.009 --> 00:02:02.724 like evil Danny Phantom and stuff like that. R: Oh yeah, yeah. That’s on my list. 00:02:02.724 --> 00:02:09.332 B: Aside from a couple, you know, instances of Marvel coming into the phase four-game 00:02:09.332 --> 00:02:16.728 with multiversal nonsense, I am largely an outsider on this topic and I have some thoughts, but only some, 00:02:16.728 --> 00:02:20.715 and I don't know how strong they are. So we'll see how that develops as we go through this slideshow. 00:02:20.715 --> 00:02:25.056 R: Yeah, I'm excited for your input because there are a few examples in here that I know you've got thoughts on. 00:02:25.056 --> 00:02:30.809 But to start off, a little bit more categorization. There are, broadly speaking, two different kinds of multiverses. 00:02:30.809 --> 00:02:36.025 There are many worlds-multiverses and there are branching timeline-multiverses. Many worlds-multiverses, 00:02:36.025 --> 00:02:41.274 that's how you cover things like magical other world-stories, Narnia, Oz, you know, stuff like that. 00:02:41.274 --> 00:02:47.055 The characters travel from their world to another world. You know, it's essentially just a multiversal flavor on, like, 00:02:47.055 --> 00:02:51.468 the old sword and planet fantasy where people would be- or like Star Trek, where you've got a bunch 00:02:51.468 --> 00:02:55.868 of different inhabited planets and they're all very different but the people from them can come and hang out. 00:02:55.868 --> 00:03:01.880 B: Yeah. I believe Shakespeare's word for that was isekai. R: Yes, the Bard himself, as we all know. 00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:09.916 So that type of multiverse, that doesn't tend to be where the problems lie. The branching timeline-multiverse 00:03:09.916 --> 00:03:15.865 is a different format for these stories, where instead there is this sort of concept that these are alternate versions 00:03:15.865 --> 00:03:21.961 of our universe, so there might be alternate versions of familiar characters. It's like, if you go from Earth to Oz, 00:03:21.961 --> 00:03:27.162 you're not gonna find an Oz-version of yourself. But, like, my example on this slide is Into the Spider-Verse, 00:03:27.162 --> 00:03:31.361 where all of those universes are extremely different, but they are on some level all different versions 00:03:31.361 --> 00:03:36.476 of the same universe. There are often going to be stories that have this sort of vague ambiguity between like, 00:03:36.476 --> 00:03:41.839 is this a branching timeline, alternate, “somebody made a different choice and now you live in Toon Town”, 00:03:41.839 --> 00:03:46.576 or are these worlds with different fundamental physical laws, but also there are different versions 00:03:46.576 --> 00:03:49.032 of the same guy across all these universes for some reason? 00:03:49.032 --> 00:03:55.129 B: Just imagining, like, Edison didn't get the patent for the motion picture and then therefore 150 years later 00:03:55.129 --> 00:03:58.612 we live in Toon Town. R: Yeah, yeah. Obviously that's the only logical explanation 00:03:58.612 --> 00:04:00.529 for how Spider-Pig happened. B: Yeah. 00:04:00.529 --> 00:04:04.013 R: So these universes will either strongly or superficially resemble each other. You know, 00:04:04.013 --> 00:04:08.946 this is where you start getting things like the time plot where it's like, “Ohh, I'm you from an alternate universe 00:04:08.946 --> 00:04:12.628 or from an alternate future or whatever”. Those ones tend to be a little bit more fast and loose. 00:04:12.628 --> 00:04:18.659 And the branching timeline-multiverse is where the problems begin. Now, multiverses disrupt the story 00:04:18.659 --> 00:04:24.208 that they're introduced into to varying degrees, because of course, the basic premise of a multiverse of 00:04:24.208 --> 00:04:28.089 “Hey, there's multiple universes, yours is just one of them” is usually accompanied by the concept 00:04:28.089 --> 00:04:33.221 “And your universe is under threat”, and that is the disruption. So essentially the introduction 00:04:33.221 --> 00:04:38.702 of the multiverse can either disrupt the story a little bit, or it can disrupt the story a whole bunch. 00:04:38.702 --> 00:04:45.229 Low disruption stories are like the standard multiverse travel isekai-things. The character travels from one world 00:04:45.229 --> 00:04:49.811 to another, but the consequences of their actions tend to be limited to whatever world they're in at the time. 00:04:49.811 --> 00:04:56.476 B: It’s more of a personal journey thing, and it affects how the character comes back rather than anything tangible, 00:04:56.476 --> 00:04:59.242 world level-stuff. R: it serves, in the hero’s journey cycle 00:04:59.242 --> 00:05:05.146 as "this is what happens after you cross the threshold", and then when you come back the world is unchanged 00:05:05.146 --> 00:05:11.313 behind you. There might be sort of a large-scale general existential “Ohh, the multiverse is under threat! 00:05:11.313 --> 00:05:14.728 If we fix things in this world though, that won't be a problem. We'll be fine actually”. 00:05:14.728 --> 00:05:16.007 You know, Spider-Verse style. 00:05:16.007 --> 00:05:20.337 This tends to be pretty much fine. This doesn't really disrupt the audience's ability to get invested. 00:05:20.337 --> 00:05:24.205 It's just like, “Oh, there's a looming threat and we have some fun new characters to play with for this arc”. 00:05:24.205 --> 00:05:29.853 Medium disruption is when you have multiverse stories where alternate timelines and futures are visited, 00:05:29.853 --> 00:05:35.401 but they're usually treated as sort of compartmentalized object lessons, like, you go to the bad future 00:05:35.401 --> 00:05:40.055 where someone died or someone turned evil and the world is being dominated by an evil emperor 00:05:40.055 --> 00:05:44.699 who might be your best friend. And that's bad, but the general goal for the heroes is “get back to the past 00:05:44.699 --> 00:05:50.748 and prevent that from happening”. So the idea is, like, this isn't going to disrupt the main timeline, 00:05:50.748 --> 00:05:56.063 they're not gonna go back farther and mess up their own history. They're just gonna go back to their original timeline, 00:05:56.063 --> 00:06:00.411 beat the bad guy, and then everything will be sunshine and roses from then on. So a lot of time plots 00:06:00.411 --> 00:06:05.409 tend to follow this format. Evil characters from the future usually show up in this version. 00:06:05.409 --> 00:06:09.378 There might be a bit of a scare where it's like “Oh no, they’re winning, the dark future is assured!” 00:06:09.378 --> 00:06:13.224 But then they'll lose in the end. It'll be great. Your Danny Fantom example was very serendipitous 00:06:13.224 --> 00:06:15.842 because that's exactly what this is. B: One brain cell. 00:06:15.842 --> 00:06:20.929 R: One brain cell. Then you start getting into high disruption multiverse stories, 00:06:20.929 --> 00:06:24.963 which is where there are shenanigans that are typically but not always of the time variety 00:06:24.963 --> 00:06:31.041 that alter the hero’s home timeline dramatically. Usually these alterations are fixed, but often 00:06:31.041 --> 00:06:37.490 there are little bits leftover that are sort of still changed. So if a bad guy goes back in time and takes over the world 00:06:37.490 --> 00:06:43.105 in the mid-1900s - just to pull an example out of absolutely nowhere - and then in the present the heroes 00:06:43.105 --> 00:06:47.519 are dealing with some weird changed alternate reality where everything sucks and then they have to go back 00:06:47.519 --> 00:06:52.001 and fix that, that's technically high disruption, but it does usually get mostly repaired, 00:06:52.001 --> 00:06:57.283 although sometimes characters, relationships will be slightly changed. Somebody might have died in the past 00:06:57.283 --> 00:07:03.964 or something like that can happen. This is a little bit of a danger zone because, well, we'll get to it. But basically, 00:07:03.964 --> 00:07:08.726 if you introduce anything that retcons things that the characters and the audience have already 00:07:08.726 --> 00:07:15.809 gotten invested in, you're flirting with danger. And that's when we reach the maximum level of disruption, 00:07:15.809 --> 00:07:20.442 which is where characters' multiversal travel or alterations to the timeline are permanent. 00:07:20.442 --> 00:07:26.022 Whatever they do irrevocably changes their universe or their timeline. Maybe the characters leave their universe 00:07:26.022 --> 00:07:31.462 of origin and they never return, or that universe is permanently changed. There's basically no concept 00:07:31.462 --> 00:07:38.956 of a true timeline in this setting. Continuity is completely flexible by multiverse fuckery. There are many examples 00:07:38.956 --> 00:07:44.921 of this, we will discuss all of the ones I have listed later in the slide show. But basically this is where I believe 00:07:44.921 --> 00:07:50.536 the multiverse problem begins to rear its ugly head, and it is why, when you have an established story 00:07:50.536 --> 00:07:55.435 where there's one main universe, one timeline that we've been following, and then the writer introduces 00:07:55.435 --> 00:08:02.315 a multiverse into the mix, that can be a harbinger of doom. Now, the thing is, when a writer wants to shake up 00:08:02.315 --> 00:08:06.830 the status quo in a big way, a multiverse can be a fun way to do it. You know, you bring in new characters, 00:08:06.830 --> 00:08:13.499 you bring in a threat, not just to the world, but to the very fabric of reality, it's a reasonable escalation of stakes 00:08:13.499 --> 00:08:18.810 from the standard “save the world”-plot line. But there are other reasons a writer might want to introduce 00:08:18.810 --> 00:08:24.306 a multiverse. And oftentimes when the concept is introduced, it signals that the main universe 00:08:24.306 --> 00:08:29.656 that we've been following is about to get rewritten, overwritten, or otherwise fundamentally changed. 00:08:29.656 --> 00:08:35.083 Because there is no easier way to do that, narratively speaking, than introducing “There are many worlds, 00:08:35.083 --> 00:08:40.436 many universes, many timelines. Things can happen that change everything fundamentally from the ground up, 00:08:40.436 --> 00:08:45.086 and it's totally fine!” This basically means that the cannon that we, the audience, have gotten invested in 00:08:45.086 --> 00:08:50.799 can very suddenly and thoroughly be changed with very little justification other than “There's a multiverse now! 00:08:50.799 --> 00:08:54.669 All kinds of crazy stuff can happen in the multiverse!” And a lot of writers like doing this 00:08:54.669 --> 00:08:59.963 when they don't want to “yes, and” their own continuity anymore and they want to start retconning things 00:08:59.963 --> 00:09:04.780 because that'll make things easier for them. B: There is a certain point of writing long form media 00:09:04.780 --> 00:09:12.709 where you find that you've either written yourself into a corner or you choose to write that that wasn't actually 00:09:12.709 --> 00:09:19.643 a corner, that was an open doorway to a whole bunch of other stuff. And I think there's a reason that this problem 00:09:19.643 --> 00:09:27.005 gets highlighted in the realm of comic books and other hyper-serialized, decades long - 00:09:27.005 --> 00:09:32.142 approaching century long - continuities that keep building and building and building, and eventually 00:09:32.142 --> 00:09:37.415 some author somewhere is like “Ah shit, wait a second”. R: No, yeah, exactly. Essentially, 00:09:37.415 --> 00:09:43.215 when you really want to basically excise a part of the cannon that you don't wanna deal with anymore, 00:09:43.215 --> 00:09:47.380 especially if you are working on a long form project that a ton of other people have been building up - 00:09:47.380 --> 00:09:53.128 like for example comic books - there's very easy ways to internally justify doing that. The problem is 00:09:53.128 --> 00:09:59.793 when you use a multiverse for this, it creates a canonical in-universe mechanism to retcon the plot. 00:09:59.793 --> 00:10:06.740 Once that concept is introduced into the setting, it can't be unintroduced. You know, you can't put that toothpaste 00:10:06.740 --> 00:10:13.138 back in the tube. The writer and every writer that comes after them now has permanent access to a reset button. 00:10:13.138 --> 00:10:17.668 And the audience therefore knows that nothing in cannon is set in stone anymore. 00:10:17.668 --> 00:10:24.217 B: Yeah. Once you introduce what's essentially Checkov’s gatling gun of retcons, there's no way to undo that. 00:10:24.217 --> 00:10:29.749 R: Yeah. So basically, when you introduce a multiverse specifically for the purpose of completely changing 00:10:29.749 --> 00:10:34.532 the main timeline without having to actually go back and do the heavy lifting of telling that story, you're just like, 00:10:34.532 --> 00:10:38.479 “Oh, things are changed. Now, that thing that happened in the 70s? It’s different! We don't need to worry 00:10:38.479 --> 00:10:43.544 about it anymore!” Now the audience basically knows that you can just reach back in the plot, in the timeline, 00:10:43.544 --> 00:10:48.759 into wherever, and say “This is different now because of multiverse stuff”. And in this context, basically, 00:10:48.759 --> 00:10:54.791 “multiverse” is being used as, like, “Because I said so”. But once the multiverse is introduced, 00:10:54.791 --> 00:10:59.706 it can be very easily used this way. And the biggest problem is one that I think a lot of writers 00:10:59.706 --> 00:11:04.453 don't actually think about. Because when you are the writer, your concept of the world and the story 00:11:04.453 --> 00:11:09.951 you're telling is already extremely flexible, because you are constantly considering possibilities and angles 00:11:09.951 --> 00:11:14.871 and things that you might introduce or that you might not do, or you aim to do one thing, but then 00:11:14.871 --> 00:11:19.153 the way it comes out on the paper, it's different. That's just a fact of how writing works. But for the audience, 00:11:19.153 --> 00:11:25.048 the plot is rigid, unchanging. It is set down, and then those are the axioms that they operate in 00:11:25.048 --> 00:11:30.383 when they are fans of this work. So I think for a writer, it can be easier mentally to be like “It's actually fine 00:11:30.383 --> 00:11:34.199 if I go back and tweak this thing because I was already thinking of doing it that way anyway, so it wouldn't be 00:11:34.199 --> 00:11:39.146 that different”. But for an audience, that's like shaking the very foundations of this world you've created. 00:11:39.146 --> 00:11:44.878 Where a writer's perspective on their world is by definition creatively fluid, the audience's perspective tends 00:11:44.878 --> 00:11:51.504 to be a little bit more like this is a foundational structure. It's solid. And when the audience sees the writer 00:11:51.504 --> 00:11:55.102 essentially reach back and be like “Just kidding, this is different now!”, it shakes their investment. 00:11:55.102 --> 00:11:59.734 A writer cannot predict what specific parts of the story the audience will be very strongly invested in. 00:11:59.734 --> 00:12:04.305 In a typical story without multiverse fuckery, there are tons of things an audience can get invested in. 00:12:04.305 --> 00:12:07.804 They can like the heroes, the villains, the supporting characters, the romantic subplots 00:12:07.804 --> 00:12:12.680 with the supporting characters, just the background characters sometimes. They might really like the setting, 00:12:12.680 --> 00:12:17.545 the worldbuilding, the magic system, the weird little quirks of “Oh, I introduced this one fun character 00:12:17.545 --> 00:12:22.026 who hints at a much broader universe behind them. That's pretty cool”. They might like that guy. 00:12:22.026 --> 00:12:26.592 But if you're the writer, you can't predict what parts of the story are going to completely resonate with your audience. 00:12:26.592 --> 00:12:32.106 And when you go back and you change things, it's entirely possible that you're going to rip the tablecloth out 00:12:32.106 --> 00:12:35.374 from under a part of the story that your audience really, really liked.