Weekend Entertainment

[bjornwilde]

So another What If story time...
How would your pup be if they were born in a different country or on another planet? Is who they are more nature or their environment?

Comments

[a1enzo]

Oh, goodness. Well, I think Enzo vs. Matrix is pretty much proof that his environment and situation has a good deal of influence on him. Add to that the fact that canon shows him being impressionable as heck (trying to emulate both Dot and Bob's formats, for instance) and that I think his determination to help and protect people is due in large part to half his system blowing up when he was little... yeah, he'd probably have come out pretty different with a different upbringing. (I can't really answer how without knowing what upbringing, though, except that if nothing else urged him in one direction or other, his default career path would probably be sports.)


In other news! I need some suggestions for different kinds of system errors a Guardian might help to fix. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[bjornwilde]

I just had an interesting idea which I am sure the writers or you have already thought of, how do the different computer languages work in ReBoot? Are they like other countries or world? Or are they just another language? Or do they mean nothing when you get down to it?

As for different system errors, how about a fragmented hard drive?

[a1enzo]

Different languages were not addressed to any significant degree; there's one episode in season 1 where Dot has been making Enzo take an Ancient Languages class (COBOL and Fortran), and later such things become useful, but it's just Dot rattling off computer code, not, say, speaking in French. Also, Bob asks Phong in the first episode to repeat something "in plain DOS." So... make of that what you will. I personally think that they are at least somewhat like different languages as we would think of them, and most sprites speak at least several of the more common ones. Different OSes, on the other hand, are more like different countries/cultures.

Ooh, that sounds suitable, if not for my very next OOM. Probably fairly simple, but very time-consuming, to fix.

[bjornwilde]

So what if Ben had been born in Russia? I think a lot of him would be the same but he would be more an agent of the state rather than freelance as he is now. I think he would also be a little more thuggish; loving vodka, women and song and living the high life of being the defender of the Motherland. He would love showing off his strength much more and be less cautious. I think all of this would because he saw himself as the defender of Mother Russia and not because I see Russians this way.

What if Thalia had been German? Well that brings up the question of if she would still have Zeus as her father. If we switch pantheons, perhaps her father is Odin or Thor. Thor would match her present power set but Odin would be more in line with Zeus' influences.

If she were Odin's daughter she would be much more like Luke, using her wits instead of her anger to solve problems.

If she were Thor's daughter I don't see that she would be much different.

Both of these ideas need examining and might prove good fic fodder. = ]

[a1enzo]

Of course, if she were the child of a Norse god, I also doubt her name would be Thalia...

[bjornwilde]

This is true. If I write the fic up I'll have to look for a Thalia like name that would be German.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen would've still been a thoroughly decent kid, I think, but if she hadn't been raised in an isolated community convinced it had survived the end of the world when nothing else had, things would be very different. I don't think she'd be as concerned with making things on the surface right if she'd been raised on the surface- I mean, her father would've been raising her at Project Purity so she'd have grown up around the idea of serving the people of the Wasteland, but she wouldn't have the same level of shock and horror when she encountered some new horrific situation up there. Or the background feeling of betrayal you get from finding out the truth about the Vault Experiments and having lived in one, either.

[the_gene_genie]

Gene's very much a product of his upbringing/background in thought and method - casual violence, rough manner, no-nonsense, etc. But the fact that he's a decent bloke underneath all the flaws would remain, no matter where he came from, I believe. He had plenty of opportunity to go bad when he was younger; he chose to be a copper.

So his nature would likely be unaffected by where he came from, though some of the protectiveness, particularly towards women, is certainly also linked to environment and background.

[sky_child]

If Link were from a more modern Earth society he would pretty much be exactly the same as he is now.

[ceitfianna]

I think almost all of mine wouldn't be the same if they were from someplace else or sometime else.

Will is defined by being from Nottingham, when I put in him in the AUHogwarts, his changes were wizard but little of his personality. As he's from Nottingham and that stays true.

Charles as the base character can be manipulated a little more than the others since Marvel has done that. Who he is as the product of a safe upbringing and being a mutant is him.

Demeter is the land and I don't know how to start thinking of her as something else. Though she's quite adaptable as she's changed through the centuries but at heart she's Demeter.

Sameth is defined by his blood and how he connects to the Old Kingdom.

William's could work if you changed place and time but kept the story the same. So much of what makes him who he is comes from caring for his sick brother and conflict with his father.

Moist's personality is all about not being who he is and being from the Disc. I think some things could shift for him if you had him in another world, his journey would be different but him, not as much.

Jane is completely a product of her time and place, it would be quite hard to see her as herself and from somewhere else.

Tumnus is another that is defined by where he's from. It probably could be done but I don't know where to start with it.

The Pirate King is weird for this as his canon is odd to start off and his identity comes a lot from who he's made himself. Who he was and is in his past is important but not as much as being the Pirate King.

[gorgonfondness]

Mia would probably be bookish and shy at first no matter what. But a lot of her insecurities growing up stem from being the daughter of one (possibly two?) of the Four Heroes. If her mother doesn't have the same sort of status in another world, then it might change her a little bit. She might be more accepting of her own accomplishments earlier on.

Lucas is very much a product of his environment. If he was born somewhere besides Tazmily, he would probably act more his age. Assuming his parents are still a loving couple, he would still be a sweet kid. But he might not be as naive.

Shinigami, being a grim reaper, is kind of always going to be the grim reaper.

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut is very much a product of her planet's history. Had she been (born?) on a planet with gods and religions less concerned with establishing continent spanning monotheistic empires, she might have remained a much more mundane Death goddess. Though, if binary philosophies such as life is good, death is bad aren't nipped in the bud by less antagonistic philosophies that life and death are necessary to each other, a mystery (to use the religious term for it) that her brother and her were supposed to represent, she would still very much be playing the role of a misunderstood goddess with a scary cult following.

She was born into a pantheon, though. But the rest of the world outside the Kharid and the gods outside the pantheon did not see polytheism as a good thing. Well, maybe not Guthix and his followers, but they were always sort of monolatrists. As it is, Gielinor, the world Amascut comes from and the game Runescape is set in, is mostly monolatrist, with the religions following Saradomin and Zamorak being the two major ones and highly antagonistic of eachother. Well, at least on the continent the game takes place on.

[ask_the_right_questions]

Erik in a different country? Well, he's a scientist, they're kind of universal.
He'd probably have got different opportunities, though, so he'd have had a different career, but it wouldn't fundamentally change who he is.

Jack, on the other hand, is at least partly defined by his being both counterpointed against 'violent Americans'.
His upbringing let him see what his Father is like, and then he consciously decides to not be like that. So, I suspect that he'd actually be a worse public servant if he hadn't had the upbringing he canonically had.

[gavin62truck]

Tommy is definitely a product of his family -- three generations of proud Irish-American New Yorkers -- so you'd have to uproot and transplant his whole lineage, which is kind of hard to do even hypothetically. Unless the Gavins were miraculously devoid of their gruffness, aggression, and emotional issues just because they took root someplace different, then sure, Tommy would be different as well.

Depending on the environment, perhaps there wouldn't be a legacy of firefighting in the family, but still maybe an equivalent macho, danger-filled occupation. And if there wasn't, maybe one version of Tommy's parents wouldn't have thought it necessary to "toughen him up" as a young boy. Tommy's father was a firefighter, and his father before him, so being tough for the sake of it was ingrained, if not taught, and in any case he took to it and it suited his nature. Completely remove the prerequisite for toughness and aggressiveness? Tommy would probably be a lot more well-rounded, maybe more like his cousin Jimmy, who grew up in the same exact environment as Tommy but in a different family.

So yeah, I sort of blame the Gavin bloodline for Tommy's issues. No matter what country or planet, if Tommy's grandfather was a space pirate or a heroic monster hunter or whatever, Tommy would still end up an asshole.

[inlovewithwords]

While Lois as written today is very much a product of her upbringing, some of that got modified over the years, but she remained essentially Lois (ignore the Silver Age crazy). Born in another time or place or whatever, not an army brat, she'd be somewhat different. But driven, curious, and dedicated to doing the right thing, protecting what she loves, nosy, reckless, and a distinctly alpha personality? Hells yes. She's still Lois Lane.

Tavi, on the other hand... you can't take Alera out of him. Outside of it, he might retain a lot of the personality--brilliant, devious, charismatic, a leader and thinker, ethical but not always moral, etc., but for all that? He's not really Tavi anymore, just a character very very like him. If that makes sense.