This is not what I wanted!
Middle-earth. The beautiful fantasy world created by the great British writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, or Eru Ilúvatar as he was known in-story by the characters and peoples he had created. You would think that outside the typical battle of Good VS Evil, it would not happen so much in Arda.
...Right?
Sadly, that is horribly wrong. While Arda was given life and love from loyal fans for a long time since their Creator's passing in the Earth-year 1973 a strange sickness had also started to plague Arda over the years. The male main characters from the Hobbit book and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, even from the Silmarillion, often had to be heavy guarded and hidden away from the outside world for their own safety or risk of suffering from insanity.
The name of this sickness?
Mary-Sues. Inhuman idealized fictional characters, young or low-ranked persons who tried to save the day through unrealistic abilities and often trying to marry the male heros of Arda.
But what if a heavy dose of simple reality ensures and common sense were to cause lots of trouble for a Mary-Sue, along with indirectly saving her intended "prince charming" or husband - that is - her chosen victim of romance and Out-of-character?
This, dear reader, is a such story.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Meet our heroine (AKA the chosen Mary-Sue for this story)
Fifteen-year-old Gloria Sapphire Sakura was crying in her room. Why? Because once again, her horrible, horrible (actually, perfectly normal and hard-working) parents had been very disappointed in her academic performance at school. Why did they insist on that she had to study so much, when she was planning for her future wedding to Legolas and become Princess of Mirkwood? What use was mathematics, geography and languages when you was the smartest (ehm, actually worst) student in the whole school and planned to marry an Elf? On top of that, they had the nerve of saying that she spent far too much money on beauty articles! How could they say that, when she needed to look perfect in order to catch Legolas' love? And how could her mom say that she was too skinny for her age and tall height, when everyone knew that Elves hated short, fat girls (that is, girls with a good self-image and healthly body weight) who looked like a human version of those ugly Dwarves (the horror!) with all their repulsive body hair? Everyone knew that a Elvish princess has to be tall and slim like a super-model, with no visible body fat on her!
"Why do I have to study so much?! And how can they claim that my horrible evil witch of a sister is far better than myself!?" she wailed as perfectly formed tears fell from her sapphire-blue eyes and pushed away her pale blonde hair in classical princess corkscrew curls with a hand that showed off her perfectly manicured fingernails.
In reality, her two year older sister was a young woman with a good dose of common sense and far more mature view on life than Gloria Sapphire Sakura, planning for a perfectly normal life with work and eventually having a family of her own. While Gloria Sapphire Sakura was crazy about Legolas and how perfect he was as an Elf and all the other things with being the dream fantasy male of a fangirl who had been reading far too many romance stories about True Love (that is, slash fanfiction) while her sister's dream husband was "someone normal, hard-working guy" just like their dad and grandfather who might not be the most handsome men around but very down-to-earth and willing to work extra in order to give their children a better life than themselves.
Also, another difference between the two sisters was that they both liked the works of Tolkien, but for very different reasons. While Gloria Sapphire Sakura spent most of her days online on Tumblr for new movie images or fanfiction stories of Legolas as the central character and was a feminist (often bashing poor Arwen for being a "useless" princess who had stayed behind in Imladris and thinking that Éowyn's romance with Faramir ruined her as a action girl), her sister insisted on saying that Tolkien simply was a man of his time when he wrote his famous stories and that modern-day views on action girls did not fit his work.
"I can not stand anymore of this hell! I will head to Middle-earth, Legolas will love me for who I am, nothing like those monsters who calls themselves my family! They are not my true family, my real parents are a unknown royal couple of a kingdom that just is so far away from Mirkwood that it never has been seen on a map!"
Gloria Sapphire Sakura dressed in her favorite purple dress with faked diamonds (a very revealing thing that actually would look best on a stripper and insulting any properly dressed princess), the belonging high-heels and finished with a heavy dose of make-up before adding several jewelry so it would be seen that she was a true princess.
After starting the the Fellowship of the Ring-DVD so a portal would be open, she also took her bow with belonging arrows and swords. Thanks to pushing fowards, she was quicky at the scene where Legolas arrived in Imladris.
"Legolas-honey, here I come to you, my true love!"
And she jumped into the portal to Middle-earth, ignoring all the distress and pain she would cause her biological family by either be kidnapped from her room or running away by her selfish wish for True Love. In the end after several difficult years of slowly losing more and more hope of finding their youngest daughter alive, they would accept the bitter reality that she probably was dead since a long time back and held a private funeral where some of her personal possessions were buried in her place as her parents and sister had no body to bury.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
There is several things that Mary-Sues seem to suffer from. Let's take them in order: Lesson nr 1. Landing in a random spot close to Imladris/the Shire/the travel path for the Fellowship without any sort of injury. Another cliché is that the Mary-Sue charm everyone she meets
However, what Gloria Sapphire Sakura had failed to remember when she opened the one-way portal, was that not-so-small little thing called gravity. She fell pretty literally from the sky, and was so busy panicing that she did not notice that the ground far below her did not look like the northern part of Middle-earth.
"OMG, OMG, OMG! I AM TOO YOUNG TO DIEEEEEEEE! LEGOLAS, SAVE MEEEEEEE!"
Her fall came to a sudden end, in the shape of several raised tent cloths that have been set on tall wooden sticks to create shadow against the hot desert sun, which Gloria Sapphire Sakura ripped apart with her body, leaving body-shaped holes in them as she continued to fall downwards towards the ground. And landing softly in a huge pile of freshly washed laundry. Only that, many of the clothes flew into the dirty wash water as a result of her landing and the washing women got the same water tossed on them.
"Ne oldu!?"
"Bir şey gökten düştü!"
The washing women got their answer quickly, as Gloria Sapphire Sakura rolled out from the laundry pile. She was dizzy from the fall, and was almost unconscious thanks to that her whole body was hurting after the sudden landing. Her powers as a Mary-Sue might had saved her from dying, but some reality had still managed to sneak inside.
"Who...are...you? You do not...look like Elves…"
However, the sound of her English, the poorly-chosen clothing and her whole appearance, were enough to send the washing women into panic. Blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin was a sign of those demon people from the far north, those immortal ones who was said to slay a man like a shadow without being seen. Unlike what Gloria Sapphire Sakura foolishly believed, not all Second-borns in Middle-earth was fond of Elves.
"Kuzeyden gelen bu şeytanların biri!"
"Muhafızlar! Muhafızlar!"
The horrified screaming of the washing women about a demon from the north as they ran out from the wash-house and not even fully dressed outside the hair-veils they had worn to protect their hair during work, drew the attention of the city guards.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Lessons for Mary-Sues, nr 2; Westron and other human languages in Middle-earth are NOT English. Also, your manner of dressing is far from likely to make someone fall in love with on the spot.
Only now, when she tried to run away from the guards, did Gloria Sapphire Sakura realize her mistake in skipping PE classes at school. It did not take long, before she found out that high heels are not the best shoes to walk or run in, especially if they are new and have not been used before. Also, the street was not of cement or flat stones. It was cobbled stones, which complicated it even more for her to move without tripping over her own feet.
"W-what is going on?! What are you doing with me? Let go!"
Gloria Sapphire Sakura protested and tried to get free when several hands grabbed hold of her, but the city guards were quick in chaining her hands together and made a confiscation of her weapons. At seeing how she was dressed, a simple tunic was forced upon her because she, by the customs here in Rhun, was dressed in such a way that she either must be a sex worker who had escaped from a brothel somewhere in the city or a slave who had attempted to escape from being sold on the slave market.
"Bir kız? O tüm bu kuzey şeytanların biri gibi görünmüyor…"
Now Gloria Sapphire Sakura started to be angry. Was it nobody here who spoke English? Had she somehow landed in the Middle-East instead of Middle-earth? If that was true, it would be a hell to get to Middle-earth, as Gloria Sapphire Sakura seriously doubted that the Lord of the Rings-movies was as popular there.
"Kızım yürü!"
A harsh tug on the chain forced Gloria Sapphire Sakura to start walking. She was qickly brought to a older man, who was an expect on the different symbols for slave owners in the city. After allowing his own slave girls strip and examine Gloria Sapphire Sakura, he spoke:
"Onu sahibinin kim söyleyebilir köle işareti bakın…"
That changed the whole situation. If she was no escaped slave that a owner would miss, then it was allowed to sell her to a new owner as female slaves was far more likely to get in trouble in the streets by less than honest men. As Gloria Sapphire Sakura continued to protest loudly in English that she was an American citizen, and that they had no right to treat her like this, she was forced out from the room.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Lessons for Mary-Sues, nr 3: Check up customs and traditions at the place you plan to travel to. The Medieval Ages is a very different place than the 21th century. Also, try to find out who is in change, showing disrespect will only get you in deep trouble.
After a humiliating waiting for a buyer at the slave market, where her powers as a Mary-Sue and notable thin body despite being gifted with an very well-formed bosom (a D-cup, despite that size logically being impossible with a such thin body) failed royally to charm nearly everyone of the buyers thanks to a very different beauty standard than back home in America, Gloria Sapphire Sakura was finally given away to a buyer who was the local ruler and brought into a house that was bigger than most of the other houses around. In fact, it actually looked like a palace straight out of Thousand and One Nights.
"For the last time, I demands to be brought to the American ambassador! I am a American citizen…ah!"
She got a harsh push in her back and nearly tripped forwards. The wooden door behind her was closed, a faint sound revealing that a key was used to lock her inside. Looking around, the luxurious room looked like a royal harem in the Middle-East.
"Yeni bir kız mı?" one of the women, who had stopped in their sewing at seeing Gloria Sapphire Sakura get pushed inside, asked. Another one, dressed in turquoise clothes, said in an arrogant tone:
"Sanki o yatak odanızdaki usta çekmek olabilir. Ona göğüsleri çok büyük kesinlikle sopa, hiçbir kadın formlar olarak sıska ve bak!"
That comment caused several of them to laugh in agreement to what the woman in turquoise had said.
"Hatta ben satıldı Rohan gelen bu kadınlar, bu kız çok daha kadınsı görünüyordu!"
Gloria Sapphire Sakura boiled with anger at the mocking laugher. How dared they laugh at her! Although she did not understand a word of what they said, it was clear that they insulted her. Those ugly old hags, all looking like they were at least somewhere between twenty and thirty years old. And several of them had small children or babies playing around them!
If there was something that Gloria Sapphire Sakura really hated it was very small children. She had once been forced (in reality requested) to babysit her horrible little devils (twin baby cousins actually) as punishment once (actually because her aunt had needed help), and quickly come to the conclusion that she did not want children at all if she ever was to marry her beloved Legolas. They were loudly, messy and uncontrollable, only giving grown-ups some short rest when they were sleeping, before needing attention again. And Elves was immortal, so there was no need for children in a "Happy Ever After"-ending.
One of the servant girls, maybe only a couple of years older than herself, took some pity on Gloria Sapphire Sakura in the middle of all the laughing and offered her a goblet with some low-alcolhol red wine. However, Gloria Sapphire Sakura was still angry over being mocked and hit the goblet from the hands of a servant. Only for the red wine to end up straight on the dress of the most powerful woman in the royal harem, the mother of the current ruler. The Lady Mother gave Gloria Sapphire Sakura a hard, icy glance that reminded her about how she could be viewed by those pious old women at the local church back home when they saw her dressed in clothes that "made her look like a street walker" as they saw it. Finally, the woman spoke in a voice that promised hell for the freedom-loving and also rather lazy Gloria Sapphire Sakura:
"Eğer yatakta odasında oğlum için sunulabilir önce, görgü ve uygun davranışları öğretti gerekiyor gibi görünüyor."
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Lessons for Mary-Sues, nr 4: Do not act as you want or used to act like in a foreign place. There is a huge risk that your behaviour only will end up getting you punished for something. Also, try and not challenge someone of higher rank. You will only make it worse for yourself.
True to what the Lady Mother had spoken, Gloria Sapphire Sakura was not spared from long lessons in how to behave in the harem. Because of how lazy she had been in school thanks to daydreaming about Legolas and since she also was almost too stupid to understand that no-one spoke English here, the poor harem tutors had very difficult to teach her anything useful. Much to the absolute horror of Gloria Sapphire Sakura (since Mary-Sues are obsessed with how to use their body for seduction of a chosen target), she was also forced to eat a lot of rich food that made her gain weight.
The servants had gotten orders to prevent Gloria Sapphire Sakura from trying to train like mad as soon as she noticed that she had started to gain weight from all the especially cooked rich food (not that her untrained body could last long) that she was given, and also to get her out of the eating disorder of anorexia that she had used to make herself thin before she entered the portal.
"I hate you all! You are ruining my life! Legolas will never love me if I looks fat!"
Because of how Gloria Sapphire Sakura never had bothered to think about her actions before, she was often punished with either helping the servants in their tasks during daily work or be force-fed more food that would help her gain a healthy weight. It was a hard task for her to get any respect here thanks to that she did not know anything that a woman was supposed to know in this time period, and Gloria Sapphire Sakura's power as a Mary-Sue was useless against those women who had witnessed and survived similar girls many times in their lives.
"My life sucks even more than before I got here! Why can't I be allowed to go and marry Legolas!?"
Her endless complaints, along with her selfish behaviour revealed how childish and immature Gloria Sapphire Sakura really was for her age. It also showed how unprepared a teenage girl from the 21th century actually was for the reality of living in Middle-earth. She used a desperate daydream of being saved by Legolas to be able to stand out everytime she woke up and discovered that she still was not anywhere near Imladris or Mirkwood where she hoped to find Legolas and win his love. Slowly, she also started to realize just how much she missed her parents and sister, for all the different versions of unpleasant people she once had seen them as when they simply could not understand her teenage fantasy of being in love with an Elf.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Lesson for Mary-Sues, nr 5: Do not expect mortal men to look like handsome Elves; there is a huge difference between the Eldar and the Second-born. If you have managed to catch the eye of a good-looking and wealthy man, be prepared on having to fight to keep his attention.
It took one whole, long and hard year before the Lady Mother finally had mercy and gave Gloria Sapphire Sakura a change to be allowed into her son's bed chamber. Perhaps the foolish girl finally would mature a bit by becoming a mother to a child of her own, sometimes a bigger responsibility might help in such matters.
"Oğlum bu gece itaat edin ve onun yatakta sadece tek bir zamanda daha sık onun dikkatini alabilirsiniz."
All women in a royal harem like this was chosen for their beauty, but a sharp brain and an actual personality was the winning card along with giving birth to a child of the ruler. For all of her stunning beauty as a Mary-Sue, so was Gloria Sapphire Sakura horribly bland in personality and actually made the poor ruler, kind and gentle to his young concubines as he was otherwise, bored out of his mind when all she could do was to blabbering about Legolas and showing indirect disrespect to him, her facial expressions telling him that she clearly found him distasteful though he was still a rather handsome man now in middle age.
"Ben onun güzelliği için köle pazarında onu seçti zaman gerçekten sarhoş olmuş olmalı."
How he managed to bed her when she was so boring in personality for him and the ruler was not a man who would take a woman by force, is better not told here. But he did manage in making Gloria Sapphire Sakura pregnant from that single night that they spent together, as the ruler was a very fertile man and already had fathered no less than twenty surviving children long before she came to his harem.
However, the pregnancy did little in better the personality of Gloria Sapphire Sakura. Once she realized that she actually was pregnant and it was not some extra food-caused weight again, the now 16-year-old Mary-Sue switched between throwing childish temper tantrums and being a drama-queen over that her dream to marry Legolas was destroyed.
"THIS CANN'T BE! MY LIFE IS RUINED! NOW LEGOLAS WILL NEVER WANT ME AS HIS BRIDE, I AM DEFILED FOREVER!"
This behaviour only annoyed the other concubines and the Lady Mother even more. In fact, Gloria Sapphire Sakura easily drove the ruler back into the arms of his older, far more well-known and mature concubines with that kind of behaviour. He had brought her in hope of adding a new flower in the bouquet that was his beloved harem concubines, and this was the result he was thanked with by the girl?
"En kısa sürede o doğuştan kurtarıldı olarak onu satmak. Burada cariye bu tür olmaz."
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Lesson for Mary-Sues, nr 6: If you have failed to keep the interest of the weathly man, you might have to face a much more difficult life without his protection.
The pains she suffered while giving birth, despite the herb-based painkillers and having access to the most educated midwives in the city, only made Gloria Sapphire Sakura even more entrenched in her old conviction that she never wanted to have children. To add even more insult into her face, her weakened Mary-Sue powers made the baby almost look like a human version of Legolas.
"Bebeğe bak…!"
The sight of the pale-skinned, blond and blue-eyed baby girl and knowning their lord to be a tanned, black-haired man, caused the older concubines to to be convinced that she must have been unfaithful to their ruler in some way behind his back, despite how well-guarded the royal palace and harem was. The ruler felt deeply insulted by the child's lack of appearance to him and ordered that both mother and child were to be sold.
"Bunları ayrı ayrı satmak."
Within two hours, Gloria Sapphire Sakura and her daughter was gone from the royal harem, any sign of their presence removed as they never had been there. As much as Gloria Sapphire Sakura disliked children, she became horrified at seeing her baby girl be sold to another slave owner while she herself was being forced into a long chain of other female slaves that was to be sold on the slave market in another city.
"What are you people doing!? Let me go! I want to go to Imladris and make Legolas fall in love with me! I have already lost nearly two years of my life here in this hell! I want to marry Legolas!"
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Lessons for Mary-Sues, nr 7: You can not remain a young teenager forever. If you are mortal, sooner or later the worst enemy of all Mary-Sues, the thing known as Time, will catch you.
Gloria Sapphire Sakura was quick to learn the difference between the luxury she had managed to enjoy somehow in the ruler's harem once she was sold to a new slave owner. Once in the hands of her new owner, she was quickly sent sent away to a distant farm that he owned. There, she had to work as a house slave among many others. The chance of becoming free was pretty much non-existing, for they were always locked inside during night-time to prevent any escape attempts.
"Why did this happened to me…"
A attempt to start a short relationship with a male slave in her own age, only for a couple of planned one-night stands to make her stop being so lonely and home-sick, was quickly found out by the overseers and Gloria Sapphire Sakura was punished with becoming pregnant as a warning to do anything like that again, while the male slave was sold to someone else. By this point, she was forced to give up the daydream of being saved by Legolas from this horrible life. In real life, no prince charming would come to her rescue and make her his bride.
Perhaps as a extra cruelty from the Valar or Eru Ilúvatar Himself as punishment for being a Mary-Sue who did not belong in Middle-earth at all, Gloria Sapphire Sakura ended up giving birth to no less than ten slave children with different male slaves as the many fathers during the twenty-five years she was living there under her new owner.
"Legolas…"
For the other slaves, she was forever known as a crazy lunatic, someone who never had managed to teach herself their language and who once had been a stunning beautiful teenage girl but transformed into a worn-out, prematurely aged woman as she grew older and without any access to the beauty articles that she once had been able to use in the 21th century.
At the age of just forty-two, looking at least twenty years older than her actual age and worn out by the harsh life as a slave in Rhun's not very gentle climate, and pretty much gone a very long way from her teenage fantasy of marrying Legolas and becoming Princess of Mirkword, Gloria Sapphire Sakura ended up dying in childbirth as she gave birth to the third set of twins that she had borne, mourned and missed by no one in the household except the children she had birthed.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
As one can understand, her death in Middle-earth turned out to be the only way of returning to the 21th century. But Gloria Sapphire Sakura was hit with a very painful dose of reality when she returned to her home city and tried to find her birth family. Both her mom and dad had died of high age or a heart attack just a few years before she came back, still in the horrible belief that their youngest daughter was dead. Her older sister, now a married woman and mother of five children on forty-four years, refused to believe that this unkept, unhealthly-looking and prematurely aged woman really was her younger sister.
"My sister is dead! She was lost to us over 27 years ago, when she either ran away or was kidnapped! How dare you come here and claim that you are her! Get out of my house and away from my family! Do not dare showing yourself around here again!" the older sister shouted before slamming the door in her face. Perhaps for the first time in a otherwise childish attempt to hope that she would be welcomed back home with open arms and just needing to apologize to her family before everything would be like before in her childhood again, Gloria Sapphire Sakura truly realized just how much she had hurted her parents and sister that time, so many years back in time, by going to Middle-earth. Thanks to her selfish actions, she would be unable to ever show them what a fool she had been as a fifteen-year-old girl.
"I am so sorry...I am really sorry..."
In the end, Gloria Sapphire Sakura ended up living the life of a homeless person on the streets, as she was unable to show any papers needed for a job or anything to help her prove that she really was the same Gloria Sapphire Sakura who had gone missing so many years back. And with that, she blended into the mass of people who had lost a identity somehow, vanishing once more from the life of the only person who maybe could have understood that she was not lying. The same 15-year-old who once had daydreamed of being a Princess of Mirkwood by marriage to Legolas.
This proved just how unwelcome Mary-Sues actually were in Middle-earth, because of how those fan-made female characters disturbed the canon events and their mere presence in-story was a deep sign of unknown disrespect for all the time that Tolkien had spent during his whole life in order to create Arda.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author's note; I did choose Turkish for the story, so what they says in order is;
Ne oldu = What was that
Bir şey gökten düştü = Something fell from the sky
Kuzeyden gelen bu şeytanların biri = One of those demons from the north
Muhafızlar! Muhafızlar! = Guards! Guards!
Bir kız? O tüm bu kuzey şeytanların biri gibi görünmüyor = A girl? She doesn't look like one of those northern demons at all
Kızım yürü! = Walk on, girl!
Onu sahibinin kim söyleyebilir köle işareti bakın = I see no slave mark that tell who her owner is
Yeni bir kız mı = A new girl
Sanki o yatak odanızdaki usta çekmek olabilir. Ona göğüsleri çok büyük kesinlikle sopa, hiçbir kadın formlar olarak sıska ve bak = As if she could attract our master in the bedroom. Look at her, skinny as a stick, no female forms, and certainly too big at her breasts!
Hatta ben satıldı Rohan gelen bu kadınlar, bu kız çok daha kadınsı görünüyordu = Even those women from Rohan which I was sold with, looked far more feminine than this girl!
Eğer yatakta odasında oğlum için sunulabilir önce, görgü ve uygun davranışları öğretti gerekiyor gibi görünüyor = It looks like you needs to be taught manners and proper behaviour, before you can be presented for my son in the bed chamber
Oğlum bu gece itaat edin ve onun yatakta sadece tek bir zamanda daha sık onun dikkatini alabilirsiniz = Obey my son tonight and you might get his attention more often than just one single time in his bed.
Ben onun güzelliği için köle pazarında onu seçti zaman gerçekten sarhoş olmuş olmalı = I must have been really drunk when I chose her at the slave market for her beauty.
En kısa sürede o doğuştan kurtarıldı olarak onu satmak = Sell her as soon as she has recovered from birth
Burada cariye bu tür olmaz = I will not have that kind of concubine here
Bebeğe bak = Look at the baby
Bunları ayrı ayrı satmak = Sell them separately