That was awesome (both the comic and going back and reading the inspiration). I don’t know if we ever fully nailed the teenager dynamic, but looking back on it we certainly had the fever-dream relationship-speculation OMG-the-insecurity part down solid.
Okay, now I’m laughing at the comic ever harder.
And, yes, the rest of the series is triffic fun as well. Or maybe that’s just because I enjoy seeing Jason and Alycia both being trolled in their own way (and in a well-meaning and hilarious fashion).
To absolutely nobody’s surprise.
On that note, any thoughts on how Jason, Medea, Alycia, or Alistair would react to the “experiment”, and were the findings presented inaccurate or surprising in any way? 
Within the context of this light-hearted anime about our characters? Nope. Some possible bluster from Alycia about dignity and experimenting with live human beings and misfocus on such petty concerns when the basic issue of “We’ve tapped into another parallel universe, what can we learn from it” all leading to the, yes, raised hands in the last panel.
In “real life,” I can see lots of long, angsty conversations. And maybe some sparring. Not nearly as interesting.
Of course, even in “real life,” a substantial part of the game was subtitled, Who Leo and Jason Are Really Into, so you caught that spirit well.
Hmmmm. Without going back to the individual strips (or even the original notes) to see if any of the following got touched on, one last evaluation off the top of my head:
Alicia on …
… Medea: Smart, proud, clever, outspoken, and with the advantage of being less testosterone-driven. Not nearly as sexy as Jason, but maybe a more effective person to go on a mission with.
… Alistair: Vishnu’s left eyeball, am I always that moody? I hope Medea gets him some therapy before he snaps. Unless she is his therapy. Which is kind of gutsy on her part.
Jason on …
… Alistair: He sort of has that spetsnaz vibe some of Rusty’s friends did. Creepy. Glad Alycia never got that way. But he’s certainly devoted to Medea, so that’s cool.
… Medea: Huh. Girl me is … kinda hot. That is highly disturbing, and not something to mention to Alycia, and certainly not something to think about any more.. I mean it.
I could see them having some really great, productive talks. Plus dessert with the Jordans.
Those two would have so much fun just hanging out together. Or running together. Nothing weird (well, mostly, because still teenagers), but a chance to share tricks, run full-out with someone else, and experiment with chips from around the world.
Tea and coffee and guarded conversation – but also a promise to continue to correspond in the future (which, given their current power levels, they could).
I had to look up the original graphic because of color and size, though I could read a couple of the levels:
Alycia and Alistair are wiser than I gave them credit for.
Along with Aria (who studies this for personal reasons), Alycia or any other interested party might figure out a lot about how perceptions of gender inform our own gender identities. For example, I wrote the Medea situation as being as close to Jason’s life as possible, but not identical. Where Jason kvetches about being voiced by a girl in the show, she’d kvetch about being treated as only a girl - not allowed to be shown doing the things she actually did. And as one strip depicts, part of her connection to Alistair is that he acknowledges her for that. Aside from that, there might be some science behind why some people are male in one universe and female in another, but I’ll pass on that. 
That’s how I depicted them in previous strips. I can’t see either of them having any angst or doubt about what’s going on, just being glad to have a kindred spirit to talk to.
The Magus power may have been how the Pidgeverse characters come to visit to begin with, in this little bubble of pseudo-canon.
Yup. That would definitely be a thread in the “real life” version of this. (Part of the answer being it’s difficult to tell because the selection of which two universes were involved in the cross-over might itself have prejudiced the result.)
I recall she was also irritated by the “love interest” subplot the network insisted on putting in.
That occured to me as I wrote it. (Maybe there’s a Council of Magi that is contactable across the universes, hidden in Everard’s full-length dressing room mirror, and this first contact was with the Pidgeverse, vs. the Zombieverse or the Anthropomorphicverse or the Jason-with-a-beard-verse …
I remembered that but couldn’t find a link to it on the forums. That’s still probably there, but Brianna Quill’s CIA lover-bodyguard probably gets excised from the cartoon, to be replaced with a teenaged and frequently shirtless Karate champion named Jesse Byrne as “protector” for Medea. She’ll of course criticize him for using so much violence, but it always turns out to be the right move.
“What about making Amir the love interest?” one somewhat progressive exec asks, only to face a sea of frowning white faces who just say something about “our demographics”. So yeah, long conversations and angst probably would result from taking this plot at all seriously.
The software I have won’t do a funny-animals comic strip, nor give characters actual beards, so we won’t be seeing some of these other universes any time soon. I’m much less of a fan of the Marvel-Zombies type concept than some, and I’d already done a bit of short fiction about a high-fantasy version of the Menagerie (complete with Leo as wizard, creating golems from his own soul).
I think it was in or around the forum post I linked to above (which was what reminded me). 
Jason’s rather complicated conscience explains a lot about him. (At least they don’t look like his dad.)
And even if it was all a setup for Alycia’s punchline, it’s still perfect.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the dimensional barrier.
Aftermath. It looks like Alycia isn’t interested in a male Summer after all, but it was still rough to find out.
I think this fits into the middle of the sequence there (between SUMMER07_007 and _008)
ALYCIA: (Cocks head, looks Sunny up and down)
SUNNY: (Smiling)
ALYCIA: Nope. Nada.
SUNNY: And that’s okay. Relationship, friendship, does not need to involve sexual attraction.
ALYCIA: Of course. Plus, by analogy, you’re sort of like a brother; thus, due to powerful societal and cultural restrictions, sexual attraction would be taboo.
SUNNY: So … if I’m like a brother to you, that must mean Summer is like a sis–
ALYCIA: THAT’S ENOUGH OUT OF YOU, MISTER.
Baby steps, Alycia.
I don’t imagine that anything in this whole sequence would ever change status quo. Jason’s awkward teenage libido aside, I imagine a feeling of taboo is part of it, but I’d prefer to think that everyone is just happy with what they already have, and they’re mostly doing this to goof around and figure themselves out a little better.
The other universe I could do in comic form would be something like the “Mean-agerie”, where our teen heroes were villains instead. They can’t be the sort of world-dominating villains that some of their powers or background might indicate - you sort of have to be able to laugh at them, so I can imagine them doing petty or amusing things rather than (say) mass murder or mind-wiping. I don’t really know how you’d turn Harry evil, except maybe Hecate revealing the extent of his family’s involvement in morally shady affairs and then using that weakness to put a whammy on him, but I can easily see a villain trajectory for everyone else that still keeps them part of a (sort-of) team.
