User:Giggidy/Sandbox/Multi-Family Character
A Multi-family Character is a character who exists more-or-less unchanged across multiple continuity families.
Conceptual history
[edit]In the beginning, there was The Transformers. There were multiple branches and even significant differences between characters from one continuity to another, but there was one franchise in the west. In time, it would come to be called Generation 1. Japan, in 1987, began to introduce new franchises, starting with The Headmasters and continuing on with many more, but each subsequent franchise was related to what had gone before. They all fell under the overarching umbrella of what we of the wiki would eventually come to call a continuity family. Eventually the west adopted a similar attitude, starting with Generation 2 and continuing through Beast Wars and Beast Machines. Each of these disparate franchises shared a common lore, a lore originating in Generation 1.
In 2001, that began to change. Robots in Disguise, the English-language dub of Car Robots (itself an ambiguously-placed series, later clarified as a definitively Japanese G1 series) was changed in a number of ways that made it fundamentally incompatible with the lore that had gone before. Names reuse began in a serious way, with some applied to characters completely unlike their Generation 1 counterparts. This trend continued with the next new reboot, the Unicron Trilogy, starting with Armada. Ironhide could now be a female Mini-Con and then, in the sequel series, a different Ironhide could be a young doofus.
In response, the Wiki adopted as a useful organizational element, formalizing the idea of "continuity families". Though there are multiple distinct franchise within Generation 1 as well as within the Unicron Trilogy, they're all related in some way, all tying together in a loose overall mythology. This model continued to work well as the reboots continued, starting with Transformers Animated and the Live-action film series. Each newly rebooted "continuity family" introducing its own shared aesthetic, mythology, and theme. The concept of "continuity families" even bled into official fiction to a certain extent, though it remained primarily a wiki-defined organizational scheme, a useful model for taxonomy.
Cracks in the organizational structure began appearing with the introduction of the Aligned continuity family. Hasbro, for the first time, began trying to present a unified vision of the brand moving. The Transformers Hall of Fame bios and videos were a good example of that, with elements taken from multiple incarnations of a character. On some level, it was becoming clear, Hasbro considered Optimus Prime to be Optimus Prime to be Optimus Prime in a way that the wiki did not. Notably, the practice of name-slapping was toned down. Once a character became established, future versions of that character in new franchises were much more likely to draw from the same elements and archetypes.
Aesthetic elements, too, became more flexible. The gritty movie-inspired CGI of Transformers Prime could now coexist with the much lighter Robots in Disguise and Rescue Bots. Now, a movie design might not feel out of place in a Generation 1 universe, even as an Animated design might not look out of place in the same universe.
The fiction, too, updated to reflect this changing landscape. Ask Vector Prime would note that certain characters exist in multiple "reality clusters," the in-fiction analog to a continuity family. Other streams were noted to be on the borderline between one cluster and another, to the point where they could go either way. Some universes even existed in two clusters simultaneously, which Vector Prime indicated was rare but not unheard of.
All of which, in turn, resulted in a great increase in frequency of a character in one continuity family showing up in another virtually unchanged. Though Hasbro does not consider this to be particularly noteworthy, we of the wiki choose to track such instances as examples of Multi-family characters.
Examples of official Multi-family Characters
[edit]- Primacron, who exists in the Animated and Generation 1 continuity families.
- Hordes of Mini-Cons as Micromasters in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe.
- Arcana and Hi-Q, who have counterparts in the Unicron Trilogy
- Turtler, who has Generation 1 and TransTech incarnations
- Every character from the first Robots in Disguise cartoon, by virtue of it existing simultaneously as its own continuity family and as a part of Generation 1.
- Virtually every Kre-O toy, which exist in a brick-based world but also represent a G1, Movie, or Aligned character