Things that never happened to me

[raven]

me_ves_y_sufres did an absolutely fab meme, where you give your own life the "five things that didn't happen" treatment. I said it was particularly wonderful because it tells you so much about what did happen as well as what didn't. Whilst I might try the version that involves my becoming a published author and part of an international spy ring at age fourteen, I think I'll stick with the old-fashioned, could-have-happened canon divergence type AUs. Because they are interesting, and there are quite a few interesting could-have-gone-either-way points in my life. In third person, because it's easier, five four things that never happened to Raven:

1. Despite having been born in Liverpool on a snowy day in 1987, she never gets that coveted British citizenship. Instead, her parents give up on the grey skies and go home after three years. She has a fairly quiet childhood as the only daughter of two practising doctors, living in a white house close to the south bank of the Yamuna. As a teenager, she goes to the same school her parents went to, and by the time she's eighteen, she speaks fluent Hindi and Bengali and almost-perfect English, and is ready to look into trying to apply to Oxford as an overseas student. On her first day in the West, she hears her own name pronounced correctly for the first time.

2. Something happens when she's thirteen. For some reason, there's a book she never reads and a day when she never turns the television on at the right moment. Fandom never happens. She's thirteen, and she thinks she has friends. She's fourteen, and she thinks it with a little less conviction. She's sixteen, and she's so unhappy, she doesn't even know she is. She's eighteen, and she's never really done much of anything.

3. She's born much, much earlier than she should have been. But she doesn't beat odds and hang on; she dies without having lived at all.

4. The grades don't quite happen. She ends up in Bristol, which is nice enough, with a very old friend from school, which is better than nice enough, and together they have to get up at seven thirty and walk forty-five minutes to get to lectures and giggle and bitch about their anatomy professors. She's happier than she thought she'd be, and the future starts to look sensible. When more old friends invite her up to Oxford during Michaelmas, she doesn't go.

I am now going to the library, and doing some actual work, because I am crap.

Comments

[me-ves-y-sufres.livejournal.com]

Woah, 2 gives me chills. Life without fandom? Too scary to contemplate.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I've said before that fandom changed my life at a time that it needed changing. Looking back, I'm so glad it came along when it did.

[kismeteve.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit too scared to contemplate five alternate lives for myself. Eek.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm with you there. *g* I'm a little chilled myself.

[elyim.livejournal.com]

That is really rather scary.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. It wasn't supposed to come out like this, but it did regardless. That worries me a little.

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

It takes...a certainty within life to be able to do that meme! I liked it very much.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Certainty within life? *g* Explain.

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

Hmm...well, I couldn't ever do that meme because I'm 95% unsatisfied with my life, 100% uncomfortable and not certain about anything at all.

You, you know where you are. You're smart as hell and a PPEist at Oxford. You have the DocSoc and slashy lecturers. Maybe it's experience, age, or situations, but you have a very strong self-identity. You KNOW who you are.

Thus, certainty!

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

*hugs*
I'm so glad you're you, here, now.
I don't think I'm even going to contemplate doing this meme. ;)

[kuteki.livejournal.com]

Oh god this is so depressing, it's weird how easily things could have turned out differently.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

...this is an extraordinarily depressing meme. I commend you for having the courage to do it. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It really is. I think you need to be in a certain mood to do it, because it's not something that's easy to think about during daylight.

[manynames.livejournal.com]

That meme is actually really fascinating and depressing. I might have to give this one a try!