If You Could Be Your Favorite Character

Hello, dear readers. Today, I've got a question to ask you: if you could trade places with any fictional character, who would it be?

Okay, so you've probably heard that question or one like it before. Am I just being unoriginal?

As Sherlock (pictured above) often says, "Boring!" There's more to my question than that. Reread it and see if you can figure it out.

Have you figured it out yet? Pay attention to the words "trade places with". If you could trade places with any fictional character, who would it be? Yes, that means that they would be where you are. So if you were reading this post and thought, "Moriarty is awesome! I'd totally want to be him!", you might want to rethink your answer. While you become London's new consulting criminal and Sherlock's archenemy, the real Moriarty is running around in your neighborhood wreaking havoc.

Okay, so maybe not a villain. But what about a hero? Hm, let's think through that. Let's say you want to be the Doctor. You find yourself in the TARDIS with your favorite companion of the Doctor's. You have to figure out to fly it (at this point, you hope River is there to teach you); meanwhile, he has no TARDIS. Some sort of disaster happens (e.g., the Daleks return, as they have a habit of doing), and you have to be the Doctor. Can you save the universe? Maybe, but don't you wish the Doctor had that role again instead of being stuck wherever you are, probably far away from the action and missing his valuable assets.

Or consider Lord of the Rings. Frodo is about to throw the ring of power into Mount Doom, and... suddenly, it's you. You don't have a ring to throw. Sauron remains in power. Meanwhile, poor Frodo is hopelessly lost and probably getting far too much publicity/abuse. Maybe he gets sent to a research center so scientists can do experiments on him. I don't know how humanity as a whole would react if a hobbit showed up. But you can bet things wouldn't go well on Earth or Middle Earth.

But what about a good character who isn't in the middle of some essential task? Let's say you trade places with Harry Potter after Voldemort is defeated. For the sake of fun, let's say you can also do magic like Harry as part of the trade. So you get to use magic, meet Harry's friends, etc. That's pretty great. But what about Harry? What happens to him? He's stuck in a world where nobody else can do magic, and all his friends are gone. That's probably not going to be a great experience for him.

Now it's time to weigh the odds. Will you decide that all that risk is worth it to trade places with the fictional character you've always wanted to be? Or will you decide to keep being yourself? I say, let those characters go on being awesome because your life is great enough as it is.