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The intercutting (or whatever the camera/editing techniques are called) between multiverses looked very clever, the way the matrix slo-mo looked very clever in 1999. I’m guessing there was a lot of process innovation there that I’m not film-literate enough to grok
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I like how multiverse fiction is getting a distinct identity different from time travel fiction. Rick and Morty even played that for a macabre laugh in S4E8 redo button episode, though that particular plot device imo was pioneered by The Prestige.
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Multiverses where they occur as adjuncts to ordinarily time travel plots tend to be dull, basic counterfactuals like in Doctor Who. R&M, MCU, and EEAAO all future something more like an uncollapsed superpositions/wave functions of timelines with more interesting logics
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This is the multiverse-as-version-control origin theory. There’s also the quantum mechanics origin story. I suspect game trees, choose your own adventures, also played a role. I’d tag Groundhog Day as a transitional story (1 step backtrack time travel was quite clever)
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Replying to @vgr
i wonder if its a result of the comic book format where there is a ton of incentive to have reboots of popular characters. Then you have multiple versions of spider man or whatever, one dude decides to have a crossover episode, and then suddenly you've got a new convention
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I saw one article arguing that Wizard of Oz should be considered a multiverse but I think that’s just 2 distinct universes with vague rhyming. Not a counterfactuals tree.
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Replying to
Distinct advantages over quantum mechanics or version control source metaphors. To some extent EEAAO utilizes an ML type mental model since characters can learn across timelines. But I think it’s not deliberate. Haven’t seen a proper ML-multiverse yet. Explore latent space etc.
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Surprisingly, the blockchain isn’t that fertile a metaphor for multiverses. But it’s an excellent metaphor for the liminal adjacent possible (a sort of epsilon-delta perturbation-deviation band of pseudo-realities that didn’t happen, like near misses band)
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