Twin Edit

Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)	fanon twin
Related tropes/genres	Sibling, Doppelganger, Evil Twin
See also	Twincest
Related articles on Fanlore.

Fans sometimes give characters a non-canonical twin in fanworks. This twin can be good or evil and may or may not be shipped with the canon character. Technically a subset of the sibling fic trope wherein fans write in a non-canon sibling, the twin trope is especially popular in Tumblr fan edits because fans can combine photographs of the same celebrity (mostly actors and musicians) to create an image of twins.

Twin edits have proliferated in several fandoms active on Tumblr, especially One Direction and Teen Wolf. One-off twin edits of other celebrities also show up on Tumblr. Where twin edits are concentrated enough, fans often develop the fanon twin's characterization and agree on a name, usually the middle name of the canon character or real-life celebrity. Examples include Edward Styles (Harry Styles's twin) and Jerry Jonas (Nick Jonas's twin).

Memes

In 1D fandom, Harry Styles twin gifs and manips were posted as early as May 20, 2012, but the meme began in earnest in early July 2012. The first few posts in the 1d twins tag are comments on the meme already having started. See also styles twins, which predates all the other individual 1D members' twin meme tags. Every 1D member was given a twin. Very quickly, fans added triplets, and in one case sextuplets, to the meme.

Twin edits later appeared in RPF fandoms related to 1D, such as 5SOS and Little Mix.

In Teen Wolf fandom, the Stilinski Twins meme generated a lot of activity in October 2013, though twin gifs and fanfic existed previously. This meme differed slightly in that the twin's name was not the actor or the canon character's middle name (which are unknown), but taken from a film role by the same actor. However, it is not a true example of Same-Actor Crossover because the fanon twin is not meant to be the character from the film.

One of the ways that fans used to identify the fanon twin in both Teen Wolf and 1D memes was to give him glasses. Many manips relied on the existence of photographs of them actually wearing glasses, so it is unclear whether this trend happened in other fandoms.

Examples

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  Twin edit of a young Harry Styles, posted during the height of the meme's popularity. "Edward" is the one wearing glasses. In this example, the glasses are not photoshopped. (July 2012)

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  Popular Horan Twin gif, posted a year after the start of the 1D meme. This gif was created by cropping and merging material from two video clips into the same frame. (June 2013)

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  Gif from a Stilinski Twins AU gifset. This gif borrows footage from a Teen Wolf episode and the film The Internship to create the illusion of two people reacting to one another with the shot countershot film technique, but the images are not superimposed onto the same frame. (October 2013)