Title: The Curious, Bizarre, and All-together Unexpected End of Mary Sue
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean, references to others (Lord of the Rings, namely)
Rating: T/PG-13
Pairings: (see Summary + Warning)
Summary: Jennifer Smith is a young Sue-author, who lives through the exploits of her character Mikaela Tavington, but when she finds herself in the world of her fandom, she's about to find out just how unlike fanfic it is.
Warning: This story is about a Sue author who is a Sue (and in denial) and is a humourous and slightly more realistic take on the modern girl sucked into a fandom story. Since Mary Sues are not everyone's cup of tea, you may wish to avoid it. But if it helps, I hate Mary Sues just as much, and this was written from an anti-Sue perspective. So she may fancy herself the girlfriend of one...or several characters, but you can probably guess whether or not the feeling is reciprocal.
Notes: I believe I boasted once that I could write a good Mary Sue fic. That was dumb. But this is the first part (Intro + ch 1). Time will tell whether or not I've done as I've boasted...
There is no creature in existence more loved and more hated than the infamous Mary Sue. She comes in many forms, and invades many fandoms, stealing beloved canon characters, saving the world, and even original work or the canon itself is not free from her clutches.
Perhaps this is where some may stand up, and courageously declare that reviled as she may be, it is wrong, and most of us are, or were at some point, guilty of the same sort of fantasies and self inserts. If we didn't commit them to paper, or type, and post them for others to see and give us feedback, maybe they were submitted in some creative writing class, or secreted to friends for their feedback. Even if never shared, that does not preclude their existence, for peoples' imaginings cannot be wholly free from their own attempts to bravely ride in (perhaps the riding in being figurative, one might've sailed in) and save the world. So long as you are so perfect and have no struggles and the love of all, you cannot deny a hint of Mary Sue there.
Whether right or wrong, many rejoice in the telling of the Mary Sue's story. Whether right or wrong, many equally despise her (or him) and mock Mary Sue's appearance. To set aside all the blame, and the intricacies, and debates on whether or not a Mary Sue must be a self insert, let us for a moment consider what happened when a self insert Mary Sue came to be true.
Our setting is the great modern day (for now), a time of unparalleled access to the world wide web (perhaps better known as 'teh internets' in the strange tongue of our protagonist) and a way to easily disseminate one's writing for feedback. A time where people can spend a weekend at the mall, perhaps with a showing of their favourite movie worked in. But once they return home, they return to their shrine to the series of tubes connecting people and countries together, and practice their bizarre rituals.
Our priestess and keeper of the shrine, a Pythia of her world, Jennifer Smith was the sort of girl that most girls are. That is, to say, that she was exceedingly complex and to try to describe her in comparison to other girls would be an insult to all womankind, to imply that they may be summed up only by comparison with other women. Nevertheless, she was much like some other girls in that she did share common interests with them. She liked boys, make-up, clothing, and gossip, but aside from those decidedly stereotypical pleasures, she found great love in the realms of fantasy. And not just any fantasy. For her the idea of princesses being rescued by princes was all fine and dandy, but the the sort she preferred to read (and preferred to read it, she did indeed, though under pressure she would admit that her insistence on the written word was inspired first by a viewing of a movie, and then moving onto the source material) were the sorts where epic was the cover word used. The more epic, the more she loved it. The more swordfights, the better. Forget diamonds, action was this girl's best friend.
She had started to come of that age, the time when younguns consider the internet fascinating, and myspace hip, around the time of the release of Lord of the Rings in theatres. Obsessed utterly with the sword slashing and hacking, and epic pwnage of the plot, she moved on to reading the books, and from there, as seems a normal next step for so many of us, moved onto looking for more about it online. Day and night, sneaking down while her family slept, and putting aside her homework for some well-deserved rest, she would haunt forums and websites, and photogalleries. Eventually she worked up the courage to register and post, and be involved in discussions. Normally, these were of quite innocent a nature, limited to who was the hotter male to portray a character, and whom, if you had to sleep with one, would you choose, and OMG isn't Orlando Bloom like a freaking Adonis! Debates will doubtless ensue regarding whether or not she is aware of who Adonis is, but for all intents and purposes, it is a way to translate into literary the meaning of her statement.
Thankfully for Tolkienites (who at best are mistrustful of new ones to their fandom especially if the movies were the route of their introduction, and at worst outwardly hostile and resorted to cursing new ones in the Black Speech)., something new and shiney caught her attention, and like a treasure obsessed pirate (as she was about to become) she went after it forgetting all about her old friends of Middle Earth.
For I speak of a subject near and dear to my heart, and to that of many others, a new film with her beloved internet and movie crush. A movie set in that near-mythic Spanish Main, during that Golden Age when a man was free to be a man and sail the seas in search of his destiny, and his own share of the gold.
To recount in detail the events of her involvement with the fandom and her love for it would doubtless invoke less than pleasant sensations for many of our stomachs, so I leave it out for you to fill in however you will (sketches of ink or graphite, word processor and , or simply imagination) she eventually moved onto the pursuit of reviews on her own adventures in their world.
Little is it known that such worlds of fantasy do truly exist, and those who mock stories for putting a modern character back in their time and world are verily foolish. There is a way to go there, and experience such, but most do not know how, and were it to be said how such happened, these worlds would face an influx of individuals so great, the entire balance of the worlds and universe would be in peril. Being as that is, I am honour-bound not to reveal it, but what I can reveal is what happened to our great heroine when she found herself in the world she desired above all else.
From now on, I shall cease with my words and interpretations, and tell things all as they occurred. I swear my life upon this, that my words are all true, and no grain of embellishment of fiction may be found within, save for the method by which she found herself in Port Royale. After all, how can you disprove it?
Thunderstorms are the best, though Jennifer, sitting in the passenger seat of the minivan as her mother drove her and her friends back from their after school activities. It was that part of spring towards the end of the term where it feels more like summer, and all would call it such were it not for the audacity of the solstice to occur much later.
The way the lightning could eerily light up everything for a brief second and leave a burnt image on the eyes as it, suddenly as it appeared, disappeared, seemed like the perfect backdrop for the most wonderful fantasy. She wished she had her notebook with her, so that she might scribble down a note about the storm, and a way to work it into her fanfic. She was on her tenth chapter already, about the adventures of the young noble Lady turned Piratess Mikaela "Mike" Guinevere Tavington. She would not have been so far, had it not been for the many loyal reviewers. After that awful Named_Si had left that hateful and hurtful comment about her character, and how dare they call her a Mary Sue?!? She had just about called it quits. Thankfully piratequeen33120 and DameSparrow had been great friends through it, and reported that hack so they had their account suspended. She could now post without fear of the hateful drivel mucking up her review pages.
She sighed softly as her mother next to her droned on about her sister Delia, and how "Delia made the cheerleading team" or how "Delia was on honours," and all this stuff. She honestly could not care about her sister. Her sister used to be nice, they used to play together. Delia was the princess, and Jennifer the young female warrior who helped her, but for some inexplicable reason, Delia always got the prince. She had explained to her in what had sounded like a mature monologue for a then-eight year old, that princes like princesses who wear dresses and pink. They didn't like girls who used swords or weren't noble born.
Jennifer rolled her eyes. In fact, Delia served as the inspiration for Elizabeth in her Pirates fanfic, down to the pink and princess attitude and all. She was the foil (and Jennifer loved that word, ever since they had learned what a foil character was, and how she could use it in her author comments to sound so very intelligent) to Mikaela. Where Elizabeth was pink and so girly-girly, Mikaela wore all black and deep crimson. Jennifer spent hours thinking up the outfit, taking her inspiration from her favourite store, Hot Topic for the dresses and corsets (that unlike that pansy Elizabeth, Mikaela never fainted from wearing her corsets). She even tried a sketch or two herself and posted it, and was delighted when some of her fans sent her their own drawings of how they thought her character dressed.
The whole truth of the online thing was that the people who reviewed her stories, who she spoke with, they got her. They understood her completely. They weren't like her silly family, she thought. Her friends knew what was important.
She looked up from her nails she'd been studying the past few minutes while her mind wandered to discover that their minivan was approaching a stopped car ahead of them with alarming speed.
"Oh sh--"
Colours flashed around her, she could have sworn it turned dark, at least if she had been forced into writing what happened she felt that all that was a far better description than what did actually happen. There was this sudden sensation of flying forward and smashing hard into something hard and gritty. A bit sandy actually.
She opened her eyes, or at least she thought she did, and couldn't see much, it was dark and her nose was pressed into something. It took her a few minutes, because she was dazed, or perhaps just altogether not that bright, to realise that she was lying on here front and that was why there was something on her nose, and front and could not move her arms nor legs forward.
She put her palms against the ground, and pushed, raising her head up at the same time, and the sight that greeted her was more unexpected, and more hoped for than anything in the world. She saw a sandy beach which she was laying on, that stretched out to a dock area where there were wooden platforms over the water, and ships, and behind them many small buildings, with people moving about.
"Oh my god," she breathed, "it's Port Royal!" she said, practically squeeing, making a mental leap of extraordinary proportions.
"I've gone back into Pirates of the Caribbean!"
As delightful as it would be, in a purely schadenfreude way, for Miss Smith to find that she was wrong, and instead of finding herself in Pirates of the Caribbean she found herself staring at some mirage which masked a horrible and horrific world, she was technically correct. Technically only. But even a seemingly welcome fantasy world may not be as welcoming as you naively assume it to be.
TBC...