I speculate a single origin point for all SOTM timelines, where the timelines were shattered just after the first Virtuoso of the Void defeated Akash Bhuta (universes where AB successfully destroy humanity on her first attempt, or where the shadow parasites destroyed her or were defeated without her, are the only possibilities really excluded by this theory). In line with this, the Animalverse can’t just be a universe where a bunch of animals evolved in place of people, so here’s my explanation of how it happens instead.
Sorry to leave you hanging, five viewers from two hours ago; gotta work around my schedule for the day. Here’s the actual theory.
So Akash Bhuta gets defeated for the first time ever, and then a Virtuoso from the last days of humanity contacts the first VotV, who sets up the part of CON that needs to exist in every reality from then forward (which would have been one reality if not for OA shattering time into multiple lines). The second Virtuoso (of any consequence, there might have been torchbearers in between who allowed centuries to pass but never had an AB to fight) is then trained, and AB wakes up and tries again to get rid of humanity.
But this time, instead of trying to kill us all, she thinks “whoa, those upjumped monkeys can actually fight back, that’s a mess I don’t want to deal with”, and figures the right answer is just to turn back the clock on their evolution and make them mindless primates again. So she casts what amounts to a spell that makes them all apes again, and in most universes, the second VotV counters that spell. In one reality, however, instead of stopping it, that Virtuoso twists the spell. Instead of turning all humans into nonsentient primates, it now turns them into non-primate sentients! And thus an Animalverse is born.
This is an interesting idea, but I don’t think it aligns particularly well with the multiverse as it’s been presented. For a start, I’m pretty sure that there are several listed universes in which Akash’Bhuta never became Akash’Bhuta, and thus never had a fight with a Virtuoso of the Void in the first place. For a second, it’s pretty explicit that the timelines existed before Oblivaeon shattered them; he just made it easier to travel between them. La Capitan was timeline-hopping before Oblivaeon started his plan in earnest, because him starting his plan in earnest is what made her discover that she suddenly couldn’t go past a certain point any more.
It also means that you can’t have any universal breaking points earlier than Sumer, which runs against a number of universes in which various aliens who are much older than 6,000 years are very different people. You can’t have alternate Jansa vi Derros, for example, because the Enclave should be well-established long before Akash’Bhuta fights the first Virtuoso, but we’ve seen several alternate Jansas around with very different goals and natures.
Okay, I’m happy to run with the Animalverse, because that very much lines up with all those fake comics publishers that ripped Sentinel Comics off. So that one’s totally real … I draw the fricken line at Akash’Gourda and the Plantiverse, that’s taking the joke too gosh-durn far, I do not accept that as canon. (Ditto for the Meativerse. Sometimes a dumb joke doesn’t need to be taken for anything more.)
I’ll admit, it’s a funny joke. But that’s all it is to me.
(I’d be more likely to accept the Vegetable of the Void as a mocking nickname some thug hurls at Anthony Drake after being subdued in the course of Vengeance or something.)
On a very real level, the reason to have joke universes is to underline the idea that the Sentinels multiverse is the style in which anything is possible. That some artist drew up a meatverse at one point, and it was done as a goof, but it was also done because there are infinite universes with infinite options and infinite possibilities.
It’s like having a Paintverse in the MCU Dr. Strange multiverse movie. Everyone there is paint, because you want to do something so weird and silly that you get that idea across.
Gee, I just scanned that as a reference to What Dreams May Come.
I personally don’t like the interpretation that there are infinite universes, both in general and for this game. In general, it means there are infinite stupid and crappy and miserable and hateful universes where everyone suffers and nothing means anything… I would go Owlman if I thought that. To me endless universes means the possibility of anything happening, but only if there’s some good reason why it should, some lesson being taught or virtue being rewarded or something, where the human and/or the divine are selecting these possibilities instead of the others. The potential is literally without limit; the actualized number of realities is merely uncountably immense, well into the billions at the bare minimum, but only figuratively “infinite”.
And specifically to SOTM, there’s only one OblivAeon, and there’s no stakes to beating OblivAeon if the infinite universes he destroys still leaves infinite other universes… he’s focused on our one timeline with Scion Voss and the sandwich bag and so forth, therefore the number of other universes has to relate to that point of singularity. OblivAeon takes a certain amount of time destroying San Alonzo and Freedom Tower and the entire Telenovelaverse; if he existed simultaneously in twenty seven googleplex other universes at the same time, that would be a lot harder to make sense of. You can’t destroy infinite universes unless you have infinite destruction power, and OblivAeon is beatable, so he can’t be infinite.
Also the Plantverse actually started in the Fanatic episode with Fernatic, which is even more absurd and silly than Asquash. Fanatic is one of the least silly of all characters, so taking the joke seriously is perhaps never less appropriate than in this case. It’s a gag, let’s not shove it down anyone’s throat and make them choke on it.