What would you do?

[resonant]

So suppose you could do anything you liked, anything at all, and know that you couldn't do harm to anyone, including yourself, or suffer any negative consequences. (Think of it as a personal reset button, if you like.)

What would you do?




This question went around my old job for a while, and I was always very surprised at the answers I got. The Tech Goddess said, "It would involve a police car and a mall with a big glass window." The spouse said, "LSD."

Me myself, I don't have a lot of violent desires that I'm aware of, and I dream so vividly that the idea of an acid trip bores me, and I already drive as if I lived in a virtual world. Give me a reset button and I'd have a lot of sex, with a lot of variety in the areas of gender and number, and I would do a lot of nonviolent looting.

Maybe I'd throw some watermelons off of freeway overpasses.



Now: what would your favorite characters do?

(Yes, I'm bored; how did you guess?)

Comments

[vickita.livejournal.com]

*g* My answer is similar to yours. Not so much a question of what I would do, but *who*.

I have a list.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Me, too, but an embarrassing proportion of it is fictional.

[anotherslashfan.livejournal.com]

haha. it was my first thought, too - having lots and lots of sex... - orgies :)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Porny minds think alike, obviously.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Yup, sex. If there were no repercussions, I would have sex with a wide variety of people to whom I have felt attraction, some quite inappropriate. Well, also, you know, married and everything.

I might also eat cheesecake, which I love and which makes me ill. Or maybe meat, which I don't eat because I believe it hurts animals and people, but in this no-consequence world? Steak tartare.

I also sometimes fantasize about smashing people's windshields with a tire iron. Well, so, I have some violent impulses.

My favorite characters...hmmm. A lot of my favorite characters are restraining themselves from having sex, which is, I suppose, no coincidence whatever. Stephen Maturin in Patrick O'Brian's novels has several potential liasons that he doesn't--liase.

Snape is holding himself back from hitting children, and maybe from biting things.

I'd have to think about other characters I love and what they don't do.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I'm really enjoying picturing Snape just going from room to room biting things and people!

[reginagiraffe]

I would have some things to say to my boss.

And maybe I'd go stalk David Hewlett.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't even know what it would be like to speak my mind to some people. I literally have difficulty imagining it, even in this perfectly safe imaginary world I've set up for myself here.

[lcsbanana.livejournal.com]

...so if I stole a lot of money, then hit the reset button so nobody would miss it, would I get to keep it afterward? :D (I am also the kind of person who would wish for more wishes.)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I don't know how it would work. Maybe you'd better spend the money right away, and immediately enjoy whatever you've bought with it.

[carta.livejournal.com]

I'd come out, completely.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Mmm, yes. Nonvirtual total honesty.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

I would totally fuck some shit up. I'd grab a crowbar and just walk around smashing up property, it would be kickass.

And, okay, the sex thing is a good idea too :P

And, hey, I could go bungee jumping without a cord! I imagine once you've jumped off a building or two nothing else is ever quite as scary.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Want to come over and demolish my deck so I don't have to pay the builders to do it?

[norah.livejournal.com]

Sex and bank robbery, you bet. Then I would be RICH and SATISFIED. \o/

Also I would not go to work AT ALL. I am late today and I DUN WANNA.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually suspect I'd spend a lot of time just lying around, just because I could. Laziness: one of life's most reliable pleasures.

[elbomac.livejournal.com]

LSD has always been my answer to that question.

And really tell people what I think of them.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Several people have mentioned telling people off, and I've been surprised to find that I can't even imagine it -- that, like, even this scenario isn't safe enough for my imagination.

Which is a shame, because I've known some people who really needed to hear some things.

[tingler.livejournal.com]

Anything?I'm going to have to go with the sex. I suppose there would be rich food and a ridiculous number of musical instruments, as well, but really, mostly teh sex.

And ponies, of course.

But, um, not *during* the sex.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Sure, sex, but: Musical instruments! Ponies! [is charmed]

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

Personally? I'd go into space, and then I'd fly a really cool jet.
(not allowed due to eyesight and health and age reasons. forever. bleah.)

My favorite character? Well, Miles Vorkosigan would get a stepstool at the Winterfair Reception, and every single female member of his fleet would come by and kiss him while his wife looked on approvingly and made comments. And maybe backup-kissed a few of them. Like Taura.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

<3 "back up kissed." Heh. Yeah.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's a fascinating question. I'm fifty and I'm not the violent sort. Three decades ago I already did the LSD thing (once, and I'm glad to have had that experience, but that was enough) and I already did the sex thing (men, women, threesomes, orgies, pretty much anything else you can think of; I'm glad to have had those experiences, too). In fact, I've pretty much leapt off all the really tempting cliffs, over the course of my life; only a couple of them proved to be really stupid.

At this point the only thing I can think of is that I'd pick up the phone and call Bruce McDonald (director of Hard Core Logo and a lot of other things I like a great deal) and see if he'd be willing to talk to me for a while.

What I'd really like is a big honkin' reset button that would take me back eleven years so that I could not get married. Ah, well. So it goes.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it would be great to be able to change the past.

I'll bet Bruce McDonald would talk to you. I learned in journalism school not to be scared to make the call, and even now that I have no connection to any publication whatsoever, I'm always amazed at how people will talk to you if you just ask them politely.

[fullygoldy.livejournal.com]

Hey, isn't it funny how if you put this question out to a bunch of slash fans, you get a lot of "sex" answers? LOL, so predictable! But that's exactly where my brain went first (specifically blowjobs. for people I wouldn't normally get to do ::blush:: and without those nasty condoms)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, the community is founded on smut, so I suppose it's not surprising.

[china_shop]

I'd travel around and meet all my favourite fangirls. Health stuff and life obligations and deeply embedded roots (and, to a lesser extent, finances) stop me from doing this for real. And I mean, I love my life how it is. But if I could go a-wanderin' without harm to myself and then hit a reset button, then yes please.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's pretty neat -- that's a much broader way of looking at things than I was using. Like, you could take a year off to travel and then come back the same day.

Or, like, work a shrimp boat and do all that stuff that looks so cool in the author bio later.

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

I'd go back in time and plant 2-3 BIG OAK TREES on this lot and make sure nobody ever cut 'em down--and then I'd tear this house down and build one I like. I love being in Canada, but I can't stand this house or the treeless back yard. (Well, there are now 3 baby fruit trees and a linden--but I'll never live long enough to see 'em taller than the house. I need TREEEES!)

Or, easier, jiggle time around so we had more than 2 days to househunt, in off season.

Actually... I'd eliminate corporate lobbying in government and make it impossible for women to get pregnant unless both partners were willing. And set a shut-off so nobody would have more than 5 kids, tops. Those Fundy breeders scare teh shit out of me.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hee! Trees! Default birth control! Good plan! I could go back in time and exchange our two giant sycamores (lovely trees, except that they're dropping something ugly on the lawn every week of the year) for two other, neater kinds of trees.

Don't go too far back with your shut-off, though; my father was ninth of eleven!

[singingscience.livejournal.com]

I'd steal money, cars, jewelry....stuff...lots of STUFF. I know that money and possessions aren't really supposed to make you happier, but I'd like the chance to find out.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yes! This is me. I'd just be walking into stores and grabbing stuff off the shelves.

Also, now that I think of it, I'd compel some competent clothing designer to design a swimsuit just precisely for me, to my (eccentric) measurements and (insanely specific) specifications, and then make me about ten of them in various colors. Cleavage! Belly control! No halter tops!

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Get my hands on enough money so I wouldn't have to work afterwards and have madsex with Adrian Pasdar.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Everyone you know goes to sleep knowing you as a person who works for a living, and wakes up knowing you as a person who's been independently wealthy since she invented that amazing whatever-it-was at the age of sixteen, and they never know the difference.

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I imagine Snape would hex somepeople and murder others. Then he'd kick Remus in the shins and tell Dumbledore what he thinks of him because he's still too nervous around him to do much worse, and then lock his door and get wasted while his mark burnt his sitting room down around him.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

But Remus is probably full of violent fantasies. Maybe he and Snape would wind up in a giant fistfight, rolling around in the dirt and pulling out hair by the handful. I also think that if Remus could be brought to insult somebody, all his insults would be really juvenile: "You -- you -- you poopyhead!"

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

I'd do the kind of horse riding I'm afraid to do in real life in case I get badly hurt.

Neat question!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow. The things I'm afraid to do in real life, I'd be afraid to do in fantasy, too!

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

Daniel Jackson would conduct some of his anthropological experiments, be an aggressive flirt and an even bigger pain in the ass.

Sam's would involve guns.

Rodney's would involve Atlantis contraband, robots, and shocking the physics world to it's core. And like Daniel, he would have something to say to certain poweful people.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Surely whatever Rodney has to say, he's already said it. Repeatedly. Maybe his fantasy would involve getting some of Lucius' admire-me drug and administering it to anyone who doesn't show the proper deference!

I like to imagine Sam and her guns.

[dunv-i.livejournal.com]

I'm a little disturbed. I imagine either sleeping for more than 7 hours, loudly and angrily telling some of my teachers exactly what I think of them (especially for the ones I love except for one or two things about them), and then working in a ceramics lab for as long as I please.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hee! It would be nice to have the cool stuff all to yourself for a while.

[moonpupy.livejournal.com]

There would be sex, drugs and violence. And food. Not necessarily in any order.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

No rock 'n' roll?

I'd like to sing backup in a folkish sort of band. Just do harmony for Tim O'Brien or somebody.

from SB

[(Anonymous)]

Myself, I would find some way to exit the re-set independently wealthy, then buy a big house in Hamilton and adopt lots more kids (we're up to three since last I mentioned--the kiddo now has two little brothers-- and we need to stop there if we want to house and educate them all).

Hmmm . . . Jeffrey Spender is almost as repressed as I am. I think he'd decide to find his father and tell him off, but then not do it. And he might (at least as I wrote him) tell Alex he loves him.

Alex Krycek would simply . . . disappear. Experience in some metaphysical way what it's like not to exist. Then decide whether it's worth coming back.

-Skinner Box

p.s. About the little dudes--they're identical twins, born Xmas eve, so our adopting them saved them a lifetime of ruined birthdays. They are cute as heck and have recently discovered their (and each other's) feet (best toys ever!). The kiddo was Not Amused for the first month or so, but now finds them kinda fun.

Re: from SB

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Well, congrats on the new additions to your family! How old is the kiddo now? Does she boss her brothers around unbearably? Our kidlet has given up on asking for brothers and sisters, and is now begging for small animals.

Alex Krycek would simply . . . disappear. Experience in some metaphysical way what it's like not to exist. Then decide whether it's worth coming back.

Weirdly, I can kind of see the appeal. Nonexistence might be restful. On the other hand, if you can experience it, it's not really nonexistence; possibly the philosophical paradox would prevent anyone from actually trying it.

[tigerblak.livejournal.com]

I would go back to my senior year of high school and start over from that year forward.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could stand to live over that time from day to day, though I wouldn't mind having the opportunity to go back in time and have some serious talks with myself. Or put some important books in my way so I could discover them a little earlier.

[panisdead.livejournal.com]

SEX GALORE. And then dancing in public! It seems so fun, and yet the mere idea makes me want to puke. (Actually, this seems like one of those "too scary even for fantasy" ideas, but let's pretend I also get new brain chemistry too).

Also I can think of a million places I'd like to travel that are too "orphans preferred" for me right now.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Funny -- I can't even imagine telling people off, but, lumpy as I am, I can dance in public. Not well, mind you, but.

I didn't think of traveling. It would be cool to be able to take this power and travel to someplace that's iffy for women travelers, so you'd be able to just quietly castrate anybody who bugged you.