In the alternate universe, Vin Diesel is wearing culottes.

[squeequeg]

Recently, outsidetheparty posted the "five things" meme (You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section, then I'll post the answers to all your Top 5 ideas, according to me). He got a really cool request from sanj: what five alternate-universe versions of you are doing right now.

As he pointed out, this is far too cool not to propagate (I'm paraphrasing), and I'm tagging all of you (except outsidetheparty, of course, since he's done it here already).


Some of these are more serious/plausible than others.

1. Drinking a mug of lemon tea and wondering whether she needs to track down that one footnote that's been bugging her. This is the me that decided becoming a medievalist was the best if not most profitable use of her education, and has since gone on to grad school. Her dissertation has eaten most of her brain, but in a good way. She's attempted a translation of Sir Orfeo, but having read Tolkien's is entirely too susceptible to unconsciously using his phrasing. She's happy, if stressed.

2. Catching a much-needed breather after the firefight on the second level of Umbriel's orbital station. This is the me that managed to survive the attack on IASMH, swore vengeance against the creatures that had destroyed her friends, and demanded to be trained by the squad of Neptunian troops that arrived too late to stop the attack. About the most that can be said of her is that she's shown her grandmother's aptitude for sharpshooting and has mostly grown out of her adolescent angst. She isn't well liked among the other troops and will probably not make it past sergeant. However, she does make a good pie crust. (Dude, nobody said the alternate universes had to be realistic.)

3. Changing into pajamas and curling up on the old quilt with a murder mystery she's read twice already. This is the me that became something of a drifter in the summer after her freshman year of college and, after scaring the hell out of her family by disappearing for days on end, ended up staying with her great-aunt in Virginia "so that someone could keep an eye on her." Most days she works in the vineyard. She's only just started writing again, now that she's not coming home exhausted at the end of each day. She has two tattoos, one at the base of her neck and one, much older and cruder, on her left hip. Both are of the same image, which vaguely resembles a barred spiral galaxy.

4. The watusi. You really don't want to know the story behind this one

5. Watching cable TV in her bedroom and dozing off between commercials after having taken a very long bath. This is the me that went to IU on a scholarship, partly because she felt bad about making her parents pay so much for her education. The guilt dissipated by the end of her first semester, by which time she'd gotten through Bio 101 without getting head-explody and realized she really did like it. (Bio 101, not head-explody.) The time spent doing backstage theater scut work ditched any thoughts of going pre-med, not that she minded, and she managed to get a low-level job in a biotech startup. It hasn't folded yet, and she's moved up quite a bit since then, but she doesn't know how long she can stay there without sacrificing other, possibly better, job opportunities.

6. I don't know, what's sigerson doing right now? (And does she have the Evil Goatee or not?)

Incidentally, if anyone wants me to post my top five lists of anything, go ahead and ask. It may take me a while to respond, but I will.

Comments

[outsidetheparty.livejournal.com]

The pie crust in #2 is really what makes it work. It's all about the details.

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Hope you don't mind that I kind of bastardized the meme in #2 and #4.

But really, you don't want to know the stoy behind #4.

[outsidetheparty.livejournal.com]

Do you mean, as sort-of-but-not-actually-the-originator of a meme, I get to berate people who are doing it wrong? Cool! I had no idea! Gotta start more memes!

Actually I had every intention of sending my alternate-reality me's into outer space, or nanotechnological peril, or what have you; they just refused to go along with it.


....aaaand, we know about the Watusi in these here parts. I think that there story is pret. ty. clear, missy.

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

You have never known filial embarrassment until you hear your parents singing "Wah, wah, a-watusi" with the radio. In unison.

I think the reason my alternate me agreed to go along with the Neptunians was that I half-lived in a fantasy world for a lot of high school, and almost expected something like that to happen.

[outsidetheparty.livejournal.com]

Didn't we all... I was honestly a little disappointed when something like that failed to happen. Actually I still am.

[2h2o.livejournal.com]

Top 5 Alternate sigersons.

[2h2o.livejournal.com]

Top Five Books That Don't Exist But Should.

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

I don't really feel qualified to answer this, as I don't know the turning points in her life. However, I can give you a quick and stupid answer, based on one turning point we share.

sigersons #1-3 absorbed their twins in the womb. #1 has no knowledge of this, #2 had surgery when she was five to remove the creepy lump on her left shoulder, and #3 has (unknowingly but accurately) taken to calling that snarky voice in her head "my evil twin."

sigerson #4 exists only as an encysted mass of tissue in the liver of that universe's stealthmuffin. She likes Bach. Her host doesn't.

sigerson #5 exists as an entirely separate entity from her twin, but in this universe there's only one soul per pair of twins. She's got it. This makes sibling bonding difficult.

Gruesome, isn't it?

[(Anonymous)]

Eeeeeeeyyewwwwwww.

[sigerson.livejournal.com]

That was me, and allow me to re-emphasize:

EWWWWW.

(*twitch* need a new host body!)

Also, tell me five sources of your humor, and they can't be people.

[sanj.livejournal.com]

And the Neptunian troops tell some stories about you, believe me. ;)

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

I don't know what you're talking about, since fraternization is not permitted. That one time on shore leave doesn't count. I kept my weapon belt on the entire time.

[minyan.livejournal.com]

Five characters you would like to write a story for?

Alternatively, five favorite lines of dialog?

I like the spiral galaxy tattoo. Especially that it appears twice.

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

My guess about the tattoo is that she got it during the few days she was off the map -- and not in any cool mystic way either. I suspect that she emerged from those days with a hangover, the tattoo, and a pressing need to get tested for STDs. Things have calmed down since.

Wow. It's really strange and disconcerting how easily an alternate-universe me becomes just another character to play with.

[minyan.livejournal.com]

I found it more disconcerting to try to write an alternate me who made choices I didn't make, and yet had to accept the consequences as I would. So she couldn't move to NYC after a breakup or wind up married and barefoot in Albuquerque (who knew that city had two q's in it?) even if it felt more natural to the story. If I didn't feel comfortable changing those alternate me's, making characters out of them, I'd start to worry; I like my fictions to be fictions, objective and created and honest :-)