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 âWeâve tapped into another parallel universe, what can we learn from itâ all leading to the, yes, raised hands in the last panel.
In âreal life,â I can see lots of long, angsty conversations. And maybe some sparring. Not nearly as interesting.
Of course, even in âreal life,â 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 âŚ
⌠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: Vishnuâs 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 âŚ
⌠Alistair: He sort of has that spetsnaz vibe some of Rustyâs friends did. Creepy. Glad Alycia never got that way. But heâs certainly devoted to Medea, so thatâs 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 â 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:
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 Jasonâs life as possible, but not identical. Where Jason kvetches about being voiced by a girl in the show, sheâd 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 Iâll pass on that.
Thatâs how I depicted them in previous strips. I canât see either of them having any angst or doubt about whatâs 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 âreal lifeâ version of this. (Part of the answer being itâs 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 âlove interestâ subplot the network insisted on putting in.
That occured to me as I wrote it. (Maybe thereâs a Council of Magi that is contactable across the universes, hidden in Everardâs 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 âŚ
I remembered that but couldnât find a link to it on the forums. Thatâs still probably there, but Brianna Quillâs CIA lover-bodyguard probably gets excised from the cartoon, to be replaced with a teenaged and frequently shirtless Karate champion named Jesse Byrne as âprotectorâ for Medea. Sheâll of course criticize him for using so much violence, but it always turns out to be the right move.
âWhat about making Amir the love interest?â one somewhat progressive exec asks, only to face a sea of frowning white faces who just say something about âour demographicsâ. So yeah, long conversations and angst probably would result from taking this plot at all seriously.
The software I have wonât do a funny-animals comic strip, nor give characters actual beards, so we wonât be seeing some of these other universes any time soon. Iâm much less of a fan of the Marvel-Zombies type concept than some, and Iâd 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 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 thatâs okay. Relationship, friendship, does not need to involve sexual attraction.
ALYCIA: Of course. Plus, by analogy, youâre sort of like a brother; thus, due to powerful societal and cultural restrictions, sexual attraction would be taboo.
SUNNY: So ⌠if Iâm like a brother to you, that must mean Summer is like a sisâ
ALYCIA: THATâS ENOUGH OUT OF YOU, MISTER.
I donât imagine that anything in this whole sequence would ever change status quo. Jasonâs awkward teenage libido aside, I imagine a feeling of taboo is part of it, but Iâd prefer to think that everyone is just happy with what they already have, and theyâre 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 âMean-agerieâ, where our teen heroes were villains instead. They canât 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 donât really know how youâd turn Harry evil, except maybe Hecate revealing the extent of his familyâs 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.
Weâd teased them assessing each otherâs fighting potential, but this is one of the few things I could think of thatâd actually make Alycia throw down. Presumably Alycia would figure out what happened pretty fast and nobody would get seriously hurt as a result.