Fannish Friday Five
List five characters who are best equipped to survive in alternate universes, and why.
1. Miles Vorkosigan (from the Vorkosigan series). My instant, immediate answer. The guy accidentally got his own mercenary fleet at, what, seventeen? He had to survive childhood on a planet that mostly thought he was a mutant. He's had to deal with his evil clone trying to kill him. He was trapped in a basement with a teenage werewolf. Let us not even mention the Cetagandans. I suspect Miles would find an alternate universe to be a lovely restful break from the usual things he gets up to. Plus, like many of LMB's heroes, he is dangerously competent, and I think that's really what's called for.
2. Ellen Ripley (from the Alien movies). Because, again, I think you need people whom nothing fazes, and clearly she can *deal*. If you can deal with giant aliens who want to eat you, you can do anything. I considered Starbuck from BSG, and if this meme had been a couple years ago, I might have put her instead, but these days I think she would just weep and go have fucked-up sex. She'd survive, but it would mess her up.
3. Shawn Spencer (from Psych). Not sure he'd handle it with the panache of the badasses, but he would have a *wonderful* time. Seriously. He'd track down everyone he knew and mess with their heads some, because he could, and it would be funny and then he'd crack jokes about alternate universes in every bad SF movie known to man. Plus he would use his super-special powers of observation (I joke that he is a Sentinel) and really figure out what was going on and how he'd ended up there. This is assuming it's a wacky "everyone I know is there but different" AU and not "oh noes, post-apocalyptic future" AU, in which case people (1) and (2) would do a better job and Shawn would make Mad Max jokes.
4. Benton Fraser (from Due South). Apparently I'm going to put Fraser on this meme every week. A suggestion from
lysimache, and I think it works. He already survived Chicago, and for him that was practically an alternate universe, right? Plus he coped very well when Ray Vecchio suddenly turned into someone else. Also, he has survival skills, and people listen to him. Again with the competence.
5. Londo Mollari (from Babylon 5). Given the amount of time-travel weirdness that goes on in the B5 universe, I think someone from B5 ought to make the cut. Sheridan and Sinclair and Delenn cope with pretty much everything, so in that sense they're boring answers. Marcus would just whack everyone with his Minbari fighting pike, so he's out. I think it would make Londo happy, especially if he got to be in a universe where he'd made better choices, or hadn't been there to make the choices he did make, because, jeez, he's had a pretty lousy life. I think he'd like to see how else it could have been; he didn't seem to be a big fan of his own prophesized future, to put it mildly.
1. Miles Vorkosigan (from the Vorkosigan series). My instant, immediate answer. The guy accidentally got his own mercenary fleet at, what, seventeen? He had to survive childhood on a planet that mostly thought he was a mutant. He's had to deal with his evil clone trying to kill him. He was trapped in a basement with a teenage werewolf. Let us not even mention the Cetagandans. I suspect Miles would find an alternate universe to be a lovely restful break from the usual things he gets up to. Plus, like many of LMB's heroes, he is dangerously competent, and I think that's really what's called for.
2. Ellen Ripley (from the Alien movies). Because, again, I think you need people whom nothing fazes, and clearly she can *deal*. If you can deal with giant aliens who want to eat you, you can do anything. I considered Starbuck from BSG, and if this meme had been a couple years ago, I might have put her instead, but these days I think she would just weep and go have fucked-up sex. She'd survive, but it would mess her up.
3. Shawn Spencer (from Psych). Not sure he'd handle it with the panache of the badasses, but he would have a *wonderful* time. Seriously. He'd track down everyone he knew and mess with their heads some, because he could, and it would be funny and then he'd crack jokes about alternate universes in every bad SF movie known to man. Plus he would use his super-special powers of observation (I joke that he is a Sentinel) and really figure out what was going on and how he'd ended up there. This is assuming it's a wacky "everyone I know is there but different" AU and not "oh noes, post-apocalyptic future" AU, in which case people (1) and (2) would do a better job and Shawn would make Mad Max jokes.
4. Benton Fraser (from Due South). Apparently I'm going to put Fraser on this meme every week. A suggestion from
lysimache, and I think it works. He already survived Chicago, and for him that was practically an alternate universe, right? Plus he coped very well when Ray Vecchio suddenly turned into someone else. Also, he has survival skills, and people listen to him. Again with the competence.5. Londo Mollari (from Babylon 5). Given the amount of time-travel weirdness that goes on in the B5 universe, I think someone from B5 ought to make the cut. Sheridan and Sinclair and Delenn cope with pretty much everything, so in that sense they're boring answers. Marcus would just whack everyone with his Minbari fighting pike, so he's out. I think it would make Londo happy, especially if he got to be in a universe where he'd made better choices, or hadn't been there to make the choices he did make, because, jeez, he's had a pretty lousy life. I think he'd like to see how else it could have been; he didn't seem to be a big fan of his own prophesized future, to put it mildly.
