ways_back_room | Substitute DE.

I'll choose to interpret this one as "never copied" rather than "never born." This one's pretty cut-and-dried: without a vulnerable little brother for Dot to send out of harm's way (Matrix not being vulnerable in the least), everyone in Mainframe would have been infected by Daemon, no one would have been left to snap them out of it, there would have been no further interference, and the 'Net would have been destroyed.

There's actually a neat What If? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_versions_of_Doctor_Doom#What_If.3F) story, where Victor flew with the four instead of Ben. Victor had engineered a falling out between Reed and Ben back in college and thus Victor and Reed continued to collaborate. On the infamous flight, Victor ended up with Ben's powers and went on a rampage once they crash landed.

Ben in the meantime ended up as a security guard or MP for a missile test site working with Gamma Radiation bombs. Victor's rampage ends up causing one of the missiles to explode, irradiating Ben and turning him into the Hulk.

Eventually, Reed, Johnny and Sue catch up with Victor/Thing while he is fighting Ben/Hulk and together with Ben they defeat Victor. After the fight they decide to band together to protect the Earth.

The cover still gives me chills (http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1/14661/299435-20455-122437-1-what-if-dr-doom-had_large.jpg).

Edited 2011-12-13 18:54 (UTC)

Hoo boy. Um... the Pelekai's house wouldn't have exploded, Nani would have kept her job at the luau, and- given how things were headed- Lilo would have become a ward of the state. Things weren't really looking so hot in that regard before they decided to adopt destruction incarnate as a house pet.

And Pleakley would have gone on being a pencil pusher for the Galactic Federation and would totally not have been fired and banished to a backwater planet that the majority of his civilization had never heard of. Seriously, Jumba would have been caught and jailed for SOMETHING eventually but Pleakley? Oh well. He seems happy anyway.

Edited 2011-12-13 15:44 (UTC)

Eternal darkness under Nightmare Moon's rule, resulting in all the plants dying from lack of sunlight and everypony eventually starving to death.

Yeah. Twilight is kind of important.

At least her friends wouldn't wreck the Gala?

There wouldn't be a Gala because Celestia wouldn't be there to run it. Nightmare Moon doesn't strike me as a party-throwing kind of pony.

Though, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure Discord would have eventually broken free regardless, and his struggle with Nightmare Moon would be Interesting in the Chinese-curse definition of the word.

ahahahahaha, that was actually the premise of this year's Warehouse 13 Christmas episode, only it was 'what if Pete was never born?' (Answer: SCARINESS. I'm debating using that for April Fools' next time around; Claudia is none too amused.)
W13 without Claudia... would be down several tech upgrades, for one thing. That'd leave Artie as the main techie person, and since he's more than happy to let someone else do that, things would go pretty slowly unless and until HG got debronzed.
Hard to say whether that'd still happen, though; MacPherson would need someone else to pin his 'hey look they helped me! :D' thing on. (Unless he didn't try to cover up Leena's involvement at all.)

I can't even conceive of Greek mythology without Apollo.

The Villains By Necessity 'verse, without Sam, would not exist. I'm not exaggerating; he's a key figure both in undoing what the Six Heroes did at the end of the first war and in killing Mizzamir. Even if someone else had been able to fill in on the first bit, if you don't kill Mizzamir he'll just try to do it all again until it sticks. As it was the world nearly vanished in a puff of sweetness and light.
(Of course, his mother would have been in overall happier circumstances, not just Mizzamir-induced happier circumstances (though he's kind of laughing hollowly at the thought of Mizzamir actually improving his mother's life...). But the world ultimately not existing puts a bit of a damper on that.)

Without Moist, Doc wouldn't eat right.

Edited 2011-12-13 15:50 (UTC)

Felix... There's actually rather a lot that would have changed, even before the quest, without Felix. Proxians show up, trigger storm, but if Felix isn't there to slip off the dock, nobody's on the dock trying to rescue him, nobody gets knocked into the river by the boulder, nobody gets rescued/kidnapped to Prox... Saturos and Menardi probably go incite Kraden into sneaking into Sol Sanctum anyway, but without "Felix won't let us harm your sister" as a guarantee they'll have a harder time getting the Stars away from the kids... Assuming they still take Jenna and Kraden as hostages, they've still got Isaac and Garet chasing them, but the dynamics of the group are completely different. Possibly S&M could have won over Kraden, who might have been able to get Jenna to see what they're doing, but no guarantees there... Sheba, if she's rescued, does not have a protector-figure in the group, except maybe Jenna, who's still more outsider than insider... The top of the Lighthouse may still play out roughly the same, but there's no one to make sure Sheba gets to the floating island... Even if she does make it, and even if Jenna's been convinced, they lack the group's earth-mover (and canonical leader), so unless they can get to Izumo and convince one of their three Adepts to join up they're completely out of luck as far as lighting the remaining Lighthouses is concerned. If the Lighthouses aren't all lit, the world spirals down into a spiral of starvation, accelerated by the fact that two of the Lighthouses are lit, which pulls the balance all askew.

Without Fluttershy... Well, the Flight Camp race wouldn't have happened, so the rest of the Mane Six wouldn't have gotten their cutie marks the same way - a number of fics propose that they'd have different marks altogether. Applejack, at least, would probably not be in Ponyville at this point, so that's two of the canonical Element-bearers out of the picture. I imagine substitutes could be found, perhaps Big Macintosh for Honesty and Cheerilee for Kindness? Which would skew the cast in favor of earth ponies, but that's nothing new for a Pony show. Cheerilee doesn't have the Stare, though, so at the very least Dragonshy and Stare Master would turn out worse (assuming the latter happens at all), and if Discord ends up released then so long, Equestria.

Ack, mistake. It should be "Felix won't let us harm his sister, in the third sentence.

And come to think of it, some of the delay in returning to Vale for their next attempt at the Stars was due to training up Felix, so the next attempt might be as much as two, two and a half years earlier. That would throw off all sorts of things - Isaac and Garet's ability to face the monsters of the world, possibly Ivan's presence in Vault, Mia's father might be alive (or he might not; I have no idea when he may have died), Sheba might not even be in Tolbi yet, let alone being sent back to Lalivero... it could be that the eight-person group (which might not form without Felix at all) would be short not just an earthmover, but its main healer and both wind-mages.

Still waiting on the final book to discover exactly how, but canon indicates that without Moiraine, Rand al'Thor fails. Ie, the bad guys win and the world and the Wheel of Time are destroyed.

:D ?

Without Mia, Lemia would still be stuck in her tortuous memory blocking mask and likely die as a result, Nash would have no motivation to join the good guy's side, and Alex would have rotted away in a prison cell while Ghaleon became the Magic Emperor. Wow. She ended up being way more important than I thought. But let's say we could skip through some of this stuff. They still would've needed her to answer some questions in Damon's Spire, stopping their journey no matter what. No Mia would also mean no Lemina 1000 years later, leaving Hiro and his friends trapped where they would have met her with no other possibility than Leo capturing them. Assuming Leo hasn't had his change of heart, Lucia would be executed and Zophar would overtake what Ghaleon left of Lunar.

Without Lucas, the world would have gone to pot a lot faster, as the Pigmask Army's Commander would have no competition in pulling needles.

Without Shinigami, the world would already be drowning in madness and likely have more than one kishin causing trouble.

For Will a lot of it depends on the version of Robin Hood but definitely Little John wouldn't be as integrated since his friendship with Will provides a backbone of the Merry Men.

Without Sameth there would be no way to kill the Destroyer so the Old Kingdom would be lost.

Without Moist later in canon, Ankh-Morpork's Post Office would have been destroyed and then parts of the city would haven't work as well. I think Vetinari would be able to find a replacement Moist but they might not be as successful as Moist has skills.

I'm with

minkhollow, I can't imagine Greek mythology without Demeter.

Oh my, without Jane Austen, we wouldn't have so much literature and her canon wouldn't exist.

Without William to catch Ben as he escaped, the whole issue of getting Ben to the train would have changed. I don't know all the ripple effects but it'd be a major plot change. Yet without William I think the Evans' family would have been doing far worse at that point since he provided an extra pair of hands with his brother sick and his father adjusting to his false leg.

Without Tumnus to meet Lucy and explain Narnia, I think she would have been caught or possibly turn back around and not really investigate Narnia. I'm not sure but either way the plot would have changed a great amount.

I have to say that without the Pirate King, there really wouldn't be Pirates of Penzance.

Without Tess, there probably wouldn't be much difference to be honest. She does do some pretty important things, but none of which couldn't be accomplished without her.

Per canon, without Clark, everyone is happy! At least until Lex becomes President and nuclear bombs the shit out of everyone. :D

Oh, wow. That is a really interesting thing to think about, especially with someone as old and involved in the early history of a world as Amascut is.

Well, with his sister gone, Icthlarin would have been the sole grim reaper in those times. It is questionable whether he would have had the time to wander off and bring the Mahjarrat into Gielinor from the war realm Freneskae. And taking the Mahjarrat out of history is another biggie especially since one of them ascends to godhood later on by defeating/betraying the god Zaros.

Zaros and his followers would have certainly steamrolled the Kharid empire and have been able to concentrate more effort on westward expansion, where only the goddess Seren and her elves and the god Armadyl and his birdpeople where resisting. With the war between the Kharid and Zarosian empires over so quickly, the war god Bandos might not have had his attention attracted by Gielinor, so he wouldn't be breeding and cross-breeding his army of ogres, orcs, and goblins in the west either. And Saradomin, being a god of order, may be fighting for Zaros, meaning that Zaros's army of demons and Saradomin's army of angels would have been fighting on the same side.

Its difficult to say exactly how the world would have turned out, but I suspect the whole planet would have been united under Zarosian rule. And its not exactly an easy thing to say this is a good thing or a bad thing, since the game's developers have revealed so little about Zaros. His followers are mostly what would be lumped into the evil category, but a lot of them today are not evil, just morally ambiguous. His followers refer to him as The Great Power and everyone else refers to him as the Void God or Empty God, which isn't helpful. There is speculation that he may promote a sort of Zen Buddhism-like philosophy, on the other hand, his name and the name of the first-in-command could be construed as references to Zoroastrianism and Ahura Mazda.

Either way, with the Gielinor united under one empire like that, the world wouldn't be as technologically backwards as it is in canon. The Empire would be crawling with tech-mages who have already solved the problem of magic's incompatibility with metal What would help immensely is the integration of elven crystal tech and sonic weaponry. One thing is clear though, the human population wouldn't have been so large. Humanity for some reason or other became the pet project of Amascut and her family in the Menaphite/Kharid Pantheon.

Zaros as a god did not seem content with just keeping a steady number of followers and Saradomin is definitely a combined Evangelist/Old Testament smitey god. They would have not been content with one world and would have turned into a multiple reality threat eventually, possibly a rival to the Universal Union.

There is one great big unknown, and that is the DragonKin/Necrosyrte and the Stone of Jas. The Zarosian Empire might do something to piss them off, and they seem to take the same approach as Amascut when angered (BURN ALL REALITY DOWN GRAAAAR!) but the Empire may just let sleeping dragons lie. I leave out Guthix because he is the most morally ambiguous god ever and might be perfectly content to have Zaros rule over the planet he shaped. Besides, if Zaros got demons and angels working on his side in harmony, he can't be that bad of a guy, can he?

So in summary: No Amascut means a magically-technologically advanced world and humanity is a minor species.

I think that the way canon addresses such things aside, very, very few people are irreplaceable on a macro scale. Just as we saw Capt. Picard was not crucial to Starfleet history in "Tapestry," I really think that someone else would have filled Jim Kirk's boots in his day. I really believe that some other vigilante would have come forward instead of The Question. The Teen Titans would have managed without Cyborg, though it might not have been as much fun. And as much as I love Gibbs and Knox, they are far from essential pieces of their worlds.

Which oddly leaves Howard Stark. The events of Captain America might have been the same without him around. But he clearly becomes an industrial titan and visionary in the years and decades to come. Yes, there were others who could have and no doubt did found companies as vast as Stark Industries. And SHIELD probably would have gotten going purely from the force of Nick Fury's will. But the total effect of Howard's life is such that I think had he not existed, his reality would have suffered in small and large ways. The least of which is that the era of heroes currently unfolding might have been very different without Iron Man to lead the way.

Hmm... without Karkat his planet probably would have got along just fine but never had a chance to create a new universe. The entire Sgrub chain of events would be unravelled and leave his originally-peaceful planet as barren, cosmically speaken. Two universes would not have been destroyed--well, two other universes would probably have to be, because of other paradoxes pre-existing, but it wouldn't have been theirs.

Oh, and our universe would never have existed.

Hmmmmm.

In canon, Meg's main role is to be the mother of the main character, and since he needs psychic abilities inherited from her side of the family, so she's at least critical for that. She actually plays a fairly minor role in the unfolding of events, though, and someone else could probably have handled her parts.

Anna . . . honestly, since most of the problems Anna solves are problems Anna in some way caused, her disappearance probably wouldn't change canon that significantly at all. She contributes some to Castiel's slow semi-Fall from Grace, but not nearly so much as Dean does, and she serves as Exposition Girl once or twice, but that's mostly narrative convenience. In theory, she introduces the angel-banishing sigil to Sam and Dean, but we never see them use it till after Castiel does, so even that isn't all that essential. Even when she goes all "Glenn Close" and manages to kill Sam, her work is all undone by the end of the episode.

After some thought, I've come to the conclusion that for the most part, my pups are fairly expendable (much as I love them all).

Mary Bennet is such a canonical non-entity that I think I read somewhere that they had originally planned not to include her in the 2005 movie at all and just give the Bennets four daughters. Luna? Aside from helping find the Ravenclaw diadem, I'm not sure her not being there would have derailed anything.

Parker? Most of Season 3 of Veronica Mars would have gone on quite swimmingly without her.....but then she did save Veronica's ass at the end of the campus rapist arc.

That leaves Castiel. Presumably, without him, another angel would have been assigned to save Dean and then ride herd on him. But would a different angel have followed Castiel's path? *ponders*

Luna though was one of those people who helped Harry see that he wasn't crazy and explained the Thestrals. She was a friend when he needed it and her father explained the Deathly Hallows. And without the Threstrals the whole scene in the Ministry of Secrets wouldn't have been possible.

Ako is probably not going to result in a dramatic bad end if she's missing. Not that we always not what species a student is in canon, but there you go.

Robo keeps the weirdness level of his world down to the point where history is recognisable. That said there were humans who did that too before Tesladyne and there will be humans who do it after probably. Less advanced robot mechanics though, probably some backsliding on prothetics too.

Jerry, or any of his friends, being removed from existence results in the whole of Earth being eaten by aliens who posses gods (No I'm not making this up.) when the US military nukes the alien foothold in Chicago.

Tyler probably doesn't control the fate of nations. That's for PCs and immortal NPCs. Not the guy who can discover the supernatural from bail records.

Janet is, well, it's a Marvel canon, so there's probably some one who steps up. Pretty sure Hank doesn't go Avengering in the first wave of heros and he probably wouldn't have Giant-man/Ant-man powers either. Maybe more work in the robotics side of things, maybe with conventional microfabrication and swarm intelligence. So, yes rampaging robots from Pym will probably happen. Way to go Hank, way to go.

Without Yrael to tip the balance at the last moment, the Destroyer wins. Everyone dies.

Without Sunshine, human race continues to decline for another century, and then the vampires take over and begin ranching humans for blood. Daybreakers happens.

Withoug Zelgadiss... well... it's hard to say, but things would've been much different.

Try as I might, I can't find a way for LotR to have happened without Elrond since the sundered line sort of necessitates his brother not being an only child.

Let's see ---

Without Edward, all of Twilight canon pretty much never happens. Both present and past. I really don't believe the Cullen's would have started without the first domino, even if he can't see himself as it. So at least Esme, Rose, Emmett, and Bella would all be dead.

Without Esme, The Cullen's wouldn't be the same kind of accepting family. (....but I believe Edward would have had a very different next eighty years. Circa games like Life Time's Prelude.)

Without Jean, the X-Men and Charles would have been very differently balanced. A whole planet would still be alive. A whole lot of other people dead. Her family members never would have died.

Without Peeta, I don't believe Katniss ever would have found her balance, or been able to lie to a camera once, or felt any uncontrollable need to be The Face of the Revolution, and the revolution crumbles from there in ways, too.

Without Marian, a whole lot of canon is suddenly borked. Which is exactly what her show did. Not bitter at all. Um. Except not born. I think Nottingham and Robin are completely different worlds and a person without her. She's the light and promise of both.

Star refuses to play. She says there's never been a time completely without hope or promise.

Have I forgotten other people? I can't remember right now.

I'm pretty sure we get a wholly different story if Lily never existed. If there's no Lily, no mother to step in front of Voldemort (because even if Voldemort had gone after Neville instead, there's no reason to assume Snape would have fallen in love with Alice Longbottom and asked for her to be spared, as he did with Lily, nor is there any reason to assume he would have turned spy).

And then there's no 1981 defeat of Voldemort, no Boy Who Lived, no Chosen One, no protection born of the sacrifice, etc., and just about all of the events of the books change.

For better or worse? I don't know, but my guess is worse. She stopped Voldemort's initial rise to power and played a pretty big role in stopping the second one. I suppose Voldemort could have been defeated by some other means, but there's no knowing how long that would take, how bad it would get before it happened, or if the person who ultimately defeated him would be better or worse than he was.

*Looks at Havelock*

Ahahahahaha.

Yes indeed.

Ankh-Morpork without Lord Vetinari? Not a nice place.

I like to think that without Mike the brothers green would not stay together nearly as well. Leo would go off in search of perfection, Don would never leave his lab, and Raph would be dead in a ditch somewhere.

Raph agrees with me.

Raph also agrees with me that his family would probably have been better off without him. Mike chimes in to say that without Raph's...inspiration Leo wouldn't have nearly the drive he does, Don wouldn't have nearly any spare parts to tinker with if Raph didn't continually break things, and that Mike himself would have a bigger bedroom.

Wait no, that last one was totally a joke.

A turtle universe without Splinter is a turtle universe without turtles.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what would have happened to the Avatar universe if Aang hadn't run away. I'm pretty sure the Fire Nation would have easily just up and killed him, knocking that world permanently out of balance. And anyone other than Aang being the reincarnation of the Avatar Spirit might not have run off the way he did...thus saving the world in his own way.

I like to believe, based on the fact that Gyatso was found at the Southern Air Temple, that the attack on the Air Nomads happened with in a day of Aang running off. If more time had passed I don't believe Gyatso would have been at the temple. I think he'd have been off searching the world for Aang. But that's really neither here nor there.

I don't know that Willy Wonka would have worked without Loompas.

Since we see canon without Clementine, we know nothing much changes :p. Possibly Jones and Williams would have stayed together.

Brisco would've gone on to go through many, many ladies.

Shawn and Gus would clearly be together if Jules didn't exist.

Substitute DE.

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