In the far away land of Ohio, two good friends sat at a desk, giggling into their palms and staring intently at a computer. At first glance, these people would be quite insane, but then the first, brown hair tangled from hysterical laughing fits and glasses in disarray, proved them just plain mad when she said 'You've gotta watch out for those demon spirits, they're friggin' everywhere these days,' in a very sarcastic tone. The other, blonde girl, laughed harder. They sobered up and continued reading, but this did not last long and cracked up once again. 'Oh wow, that has to be the best chapter yet! Come on, let's check the reviews.' And they pointed and laughed some more. Like I've said, they look quite insane, and are partially. These two young women, sitting in a green bedroom and laughing at the computer, go under the penname "Mary Sue hunters" and spend their time offering constructive criticism to Suethors and laughing at them the entire time. Their personal favorite, the one they were reading just now, Tales of a Vertically Challenged Elf, probably does not sound so bad, but it is. It is very bad indeed.
In this story, dubbed T.A.V.C.E by the author, Legolas' not so tall sister Yavien (who is a Maia trapped in a beautiful Elven body) is totally in love with Frodo, so she joins the Fellowship and becomes very useful because she has magic powers that let her control fire. However, the author didn't want anyone to be left out of the romantically inclined race, so she added Serenthiel and Trekinar, her friends, both Elves, who could be in love with Boromir and Legolas. Unfortunately, since Boromir dies, Serenthiel has to pick up Éomer, but Éowyn doesn't exist so nobody questions her, except to put her down for not spending enough time grieving over Boromir. Now, as their physical features are described all the freaking time, we shall help you picture them.
Treki is, although an Elf, a redhead, and completely infatuated with Legolas. In fact, they are married and have two kids, although later in the story, one dies from illnesses and Treki becomes very sad, but still helps save the day and rescues Legolas. Oh yes, and both of Elrond's sons love her, although they never physically appear in the story, she does mention it all the time and there is a flashback or two from attempted romance, but she "loves Legolas through and through". She has a long lost sister who hates her, named Seregwen, but only appears twice. It is said that her mother 'got around' a lot, so who knows how many sisters she has. Seregwen told her that although she has at least fourteen sisters, she doesn't have a single brother. Logic does not apply in this story.
Serenthiel is a completely different animal. She has dark hair, average features that don't amount to much, and was in love with Boromir, but that dying thing got in the way, so now she's in love with Éomer, but Faramir is in love with her. She scorns Faramir, but Treki and Yavien think she should be happy someone thinks she's pretty, because she's only mortal beautiful, not immortal sparkling divinely beautiful like them. She has a thing for Men, and doesn't like her ex-boyfriend, Glorfindel.
Finally, there is Raine, the non-Sue character who makes a repeated entry into the story. Raine loves children, almost as much as she loves to drink, and so she sobered up enough to raise Treki's children. She's a peasant woman, although she is an Elf, and wears a shawl and a filthy dress. Treki considers herself above Raine on many accounts, and thinks that with a bath and some new clothes she could be beautiful, but the Queen of Mirkwood decided that taking her in would be most unseemly, and therefore ignores her now.
Yavien, the star of the story and by far the most annoying character, is also the most special. She is Legolas' sister, Frodo's wife, and Pippin is completely and utterly in love with her beyond reason, and for three days, Frodo and her broke up because Pippin tried to kiss her. Elrohir is also in love with her, as well as Treki, because the author has a huge crush on Elrohir and Frodo. Yavien is sometimes possessed by demon spirits sent by Sauron, who is trying to convince her to be his bride, because they are 'connected' and thus the fire powers. She has many bad dreams, and although she lives in Mirkwood, is afraid of spiders to the point where her powers stop working when she remembers how she helped defeat Ungoliant. This chick is past, present and future, as you know later when we discover she has taught her two friends many Enya songs. Yavien later falls into Mount Doom, only to resurface from the molten lava because she used her fire powers at exactly the right time. She then decides to leave her brother and Treki, her new sister-in law, to go back to Hobbiton with Frodo, and then gets on the boat to the Grey Havens with him.
The two friends, whose names were Leela and Jocelyn, were sipping hot cocoa and talking about Tolkien "doing the funky chicken in his grave at such a huge mockery of the already delicate canon" and discussing the benefits of giving the Suethors faulty email addresses for hatemail usage when Leela, the brunette, completely changed the topic and said,
'It would be nice if there was a way for us to visit the fanon land of Middle-Earth to actually hunt Mary Sues.' Jocelyn sighed.
'Yeah, it would be nice if we could show Yavien how things really work. You'd think a Maia could figure that out.'
'You know, I think the whole Valar would be surprised how many daughters they have if they just logged on to you know?' Leela laughed at the image of Middle-Earth deities reading fanfiction. Suddenly there was a soft whirring and a loud thump coming from Leela's bedroom.
'It's probably just the cat.' Leela said in an assuring manner as she made her way upstairs. The cat, Perpugilliam, was very stupid. She got on top of things and then actually stepped off the edge, landing on other things that are far more painful. For a cat, she was not agile at all. You see, Leela was old enough so that she lived in her own home and had pets, and legally changed her name to suit her needs.
Leela was a nerd of the classic variety, enjoying Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and occasionally Eragon, so most of the things in her home were named after characters of some fandom or another. There was a large black dog in the living room named Sirius, the cat Perpugilliam, and matching ferrets named Arya and Arwen. Leela was pretty sure Arya was actually a guy, but if she was, Leela still wouldn't change the name.
Leela, to put it lightly, was a fangirl of a higher nature. She has picked a target from all her fandoms, the most in Lord of the Rings, and the least in Eragon. She can't list them all on her fingers. But you'll see her and Jocelyn arguing later, and most of them will come into light. Obviously, Sirius is on the list, since her dog is named after him, but if the dog was brown it would've been named Remus. Jocelyn was a year younger than Leela, and as soon as she got her own home had begged for Sirius. Leela was firm about not letting Sirius go. So Jocelyn got a ginger colored cat and named it Turlough, although Jocelyn didn't really like Vislor Turlough much. Leela had been tempted, but said no to the beautiful feline, and got a brown cat, which she planned to name Hermione or Crookshanks, but as soon as she discovered how stupid the cat was, she debated naming it Mel or Perpugilliam. The latter obviously won.
When Leela and Jocelyn got into Leela's pale green bedroom, they discovered that it wasn't in fact the cat, because the cat had just fallen down the stairs, but a strange sparkly pink wardrobe with the words 'Middleearth' written on it in purple glitter gel pen. They recognized the name as the fabled land of Sueness, different from Middle-Earth mostly because most fanwriters that wrote Sues spelled it like this, which helped the Canon Valar group it together. Occasionally they let Slash in there, just to bug everyone, like Legolas, who got the most Sues by far, and the most slash stories about him, right above Frodo and Sam. The two young women turned to face each other and jumped up and down, squealing happily and waving their arms around.
'Maybe we'll see Elrohir and Elladan!!' Leela cried. Jocelyn rolled her eyes.
'Oh whatever. We all know you want to talk to Gimli.' Jocelyn attempted to punch Leela in the arm, but Leela had already jumped into the wardrobe. When Jocelyn discovered this, she ran in after her, cursing the fact that Leela didn't give her a chance to change out of her skirt.
'No! Wait a second, we must get the correct devices for exorcising the evil Sue spirits.' Leela hopped out of the wardrobe, leaving the doors open so it wouldn't dematerialize without her, and grabbed her hardcover copy of the Lord of the Rings, a bottle of Mountain Dew, and packed two backpacks with clothing and lots of bottles of water from downstairs. Next, she took out Sirius' leash. She always knew he would make a good bloodhound for Sues. With her doggie friend and supplies in check, she resumed her place in the wardrobe, shut the doors, and hoped really hard that they wouldn't land in Mordor.
A/N: By the way, Tales of A Vertically Challenged Elf does exist. I made it long ago, when I did not know what a Mary Sue was. I'm not giving any links out though. Sorry, you'll have to find other reasons to mock me. Oh yes, and if there are any strange gaps in the story, it's where I hadn't gone over names with 'Jocelyn', and we were still debating Jocelyn, Freema, Gina, Mel and others. She really didn't want Mel. And references, if you don't know who V. Turlough is, he is a very redheaded alien boy form the British TV series Doctor Who, and Peri, Mel, and Leela are all from the same show. Leela is basically what happens when the author doesn't want to try and create an original name, so takes a Doctor Who name and tags a lame excuse on the end.