The Taming of the Sue

Disclaimer: Do not own. If I was making money off this I would get my cat a decent hair-shed machine. As I don't my black pants are now white with Snowflake's (my cat's) fur. Oh, dearie. Just a note, "BAMF" belongs to Kurt Wagner, otherwise known as Nightcrawler. Go Kurt!

Chapter Two: Reality, Canon, and the Anti-Canon: Maryus Suesicicanus

"A Mary Sue? What on Earth is that?"

"Middle-Earth," the girl corrected absently, rubbing a temple that was just now beginning to twinge in anticipation of a(nother) migraine.

                  "Very well then. I suppose I will have to start at the beginning of the, well, beginning." The girl paused for a split-second, as if waiting for more of the gracefully confused comments from Lindserial. However, when (surprise surprise!) none of the aforementioned comments was offered, she began a quasi-long story, a story that began and ended at this very place…

~~~~

Not so very long ago in geological and normal time periods, a wonderful invention was, well, invented. They called it the "internet," a place that would help bring information to all walks of life. However, what they did not realize was that this gift, like so many others (notably the Trojan Horse) had a fatal flaw…

Before this invention, fan-girls everywhere had wild fantasies of a chance where they would be *magically* transported to Middle-Earth, fall in love with Legolas, the agreed upon Most Hot Single Elf of the Third Age (The Immortal Inquirer, Edition 3, Volume 2, pages 4-21, including a fold-out poster that you could rip out and paste on your wall), all without ruining the picture-perfect perm that they "luckily" had received the day before their magical appearance into said location. However, these "stories" (in most cases not suitable for people younger than 17) had only been spread by word of mouth and the amazing and fantastical sameness of every single story.

---

[Here Lindserial interrupted. "Like, how are they alike?"

                  "They all include 17 to 18 year old 'normal' teenagers who are absolutely beautiful, perfect, and great warriors. The Mary-Sue will inevitably steal the plotline and the Ring, taking it to its doom in Mt. Doom without showing any strain. The Mary-Sue can talk to everything, can shape-shift, and some include wings. Now, if you will excuse me, we are getting off the subject."

                  "Oh, right. Sorry."

                  "No matter."]

---

Unfortunately, to the dismay of canon-loving Tolkienites worldwide, as soon as the internet and the "homepage" creation sites were founded, fan-sites devoted to these fantasies popped up like a bad case of acne, only, try as the AMSA and other noble organizations might, the disease spread like a dirty email forward. Sporting no plot, total disrespect for canon, not so ill-disguised self-insertation, and almost no recognizable grammar and/or place-names such as "River Dell" or "Moth.Lorian," these abominations of hard drive memory became the basis for what was bound to be the worst case of bad writing that the hard-working authors of great fanfiction everywhere dubbed "The Plague of All Things Pink, Flowery, and Non-Canon." Maryus suesicicanus. The Mary-Sue.

In response to this growing threat to Tolkienites and book-verse characters alike, Canon, the place where all fics begin and should end at, decided to take matters into its own (very capable) figurative hands. Instead of meting out justice and canon-pure information to the source of this infestation, they decided to treat this plague like any other new and possibly fatal disease whose cure and vaccination is unknown: by treating the symptoms. By treating the symptoms, Canon hoped to find a cure and a preventative for Maryus suesicicanus and bring all things into their proper balance in its plane of being.

 The treatment of the symptoms included finding a Mary-Sue, reforming her, researching her, and using her help to scour the stain in fanfiction.

~~~~

With this the girl's story came to a stop. Flustered (and to the girl's pleasure, not very graceful about it), Lindserial had her hands on her lap and fiddled them nervously.

They both sat in silence for a moment.

The not-so-companionable silence was broken by Lindserial, speaking in a small, timid voice that sounded nothing like her Mary-Sue voice.

"What must I do?"

"You must learn to not be perfect. Then we will send you into the multi-verse, where you will seek and fix the errors in both Canon and fanfiction."

Lindserial paused. "What is this 'cannon' you speak of?"

Wincing, the girl's face assumed a face of ill-disguised exasperation. "Not 'cannon,' Canon. C-A-N-O-N. The true order of things. The natural balance. Some even argue that Canon has its own sentience. However, it is also a plane. Canon is, at all times, a person, a destiny and a plane of reality. It spawned the Multi-verse."

"Multi-verse?"

"Fanfiction involves many planes of reality. Each fanfic is a plane, its own place of existence, so they are collectively known as the Multi-verse."

"So, if Canon is both a place and a 'universe,' and it spawned the Multi-verse, is the Multi-verse part of Canon or wholly separate?"

"Ah, you catch on quick. Quicker than I ever would have expected." The girl smiled. "Canon and the Multi-verse are connected in all the planes where Canon is followed and the plotline is true to what Tolkien wrote it as. The farthest realms of the Multi-verse are where the Maryus suesicicanus planes exist. Some of the Canon fanfiction authors call this 'The Outer Zone,' the place where Elrond is married to Galadriel and Arwen has another sister who is madly in love with Aragorn, etc. etc."

"This is getting confusing."

"Tell me about it. I live here. I'm the reason 'Ara-Advil, the best for Middle-Earth migraines! ' (©®) stocks are booming."

"So where exactly is here?"

"Here? Here is the point where the three main planes of reality converge."

Lindserial's face tilted to one side in a universal symbol of confusion.

"The three planes, you know, Reality, Canon, and the Multi-verse."

"Oh."

"Why do I not get the feeling that you have any idea why they only converge at one point."

"I'm not very good at visualizing things."

"Let me draw it for you." With this she clapped once, and a chalkboard appeared. The girl spun it around three times, though not so fast that Lindserial couldn't make out the title "Magi-Chalk: Your One Stop Chalk Source!"

When the chalkboard stopped, Lindserial could make out one plane, laying horizontally. The girl clapped once, and another plane, this one vertical, lay perpendicular to the first plane.

"Alright, you can see where the two planes intersect, Canon and Reality, a line appears. But, if you add the third plane," At this she stomped her foot, and another appeared, laying at an angle to the others, "You can see that they only all intersect at one point. This point is where we are now. We call it the Manifest.

"So, to summarize, there is only one place where the three planes converge, and that is here, in Manifest. The center of Fandom is here."

Silence reigned for a brief moment while the girl nodded and the chalkboard disappeared with a "BAMF" of imploding air.

"Ma'am?"

"Yes, Lindserial."

"What's your name?"

The girl tossed her short hair distractedly.

"I'm Canon."