Monday, June 04, 2007

Fantasy Heroine Baseball (Plus)

Jeanette and I were driving down from my sister's new house in Syracuse (the almost idyllic village of Fayetteville, actually) yesterday and, on hour 6 about, we started playing car games. We played two: fantasy heroine baseball and cartoon home teachers. Weigh in: who do you think won?

Fantasy Heroine Baseball
Choose a baseball team of nine (we weren't sure how many people are supposed to be on a baseball team, but we thought we could handle nine) entirely comprised of heroines (female characters) from literature.

Jeanette's Team
  1. Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables
  2. Main character from Their Eyes Were Watching God
  3. Tonks from Harry Potter
  4. Nancy Drew
  5. Emma from Emma
  6. Jael from the Bible (Admittedly we stretched the category a little bit for this one, but the Bible is literature, too, and Jeanette couldn't pass up the power of this kind of woman.)
  7. The third daughter (the one who stays in Africa) from The Poisonwood Bible
  8. The sister-in-law from The Jungle
  9. The mother from The Good Earth
Sarah's Team

  1. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice
  2. "Hetty" (the sporty daughter, whatever her name was) from All-of-a-Kind Family
  3. Hermione from Harry Potter
  4. Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing (We're guessing she would be the MVP.)
  5. Turtle's mom (whatever her name was) from The Bean Trees
  6. Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged
  7. Raskolnikov's sister from Crime and Punishment
  8. Laura Ingalls Wilder from Little House on the Prairie
  9. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle from Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (would definitely play catcher)
Three things of note:
1. This was actually pretty hard. After Anne of Green Gables and the Austen books, we had to push ourselves to think of other female characters. Oh! I just thought of a great one! Petra from The Ender's Game. She would be the BEST!

2. We discussed but both rejected Scarlett O'Hara as an option. She does have tenacity, but neither Jeanette nor I wanted her brand of fierceness on the team. Would be bad for morale, we thought.

3. #2 was especially true when we revisited our lists to see whom we would want to work with. Nancy Drew didn't make the cut there. Too nosy, we decided. Or maybe kind of a time-waster. But I'd pick Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle again in a heartbeat. I picked her for my visiting teacher (companion: Elizabeth Bennet). Jeanette, on the other hand, picked Tonks for everything. Everything. Visiting teacher, visiting teachee, best friend, mentor. Jeanette = wants to be Tonks.

. . . . .

We also played cartoon home teachers, but I think we both won this one. Who would you choose?

Cartoon Home Teachers
Choose two cartoon characters (must be nominally male) to serve as your home teachers.

Jeanette's Home Teachers
1. The Donny Osmond character from Mulan
2. The monster from Monsters, Inc.

Sarah's Home Teachers
1. John Smith from Pocahontas (Was I the only one who loved that movie? John Smith--seriously, what a good-looking cartoon.)
2. Merlin from Sword and the Stone