That's the most typical Mary Sue scenario. Or we could do one of those ones where somebody has been poisoned, or the victim of an evil spell, and we have to go on a quest to find the antidote... possibly to the land of some creatures from a completely different fictional world.;)


As I said, I was going to propose an alternative character, based on a particularly silly Daughter-of-Evil I just found... butI think I've put quite enough work into making Alatariel Moonflower as special as she is.:Merisu:

If anyone needs inspiration, here are some excerpts from the work in question:

My thought would be that our story does indeed coincide with the Fellowship of the Ring; however, we are given a quest, ostensibly because the Ring-bearers objective will fail utterly without our considerable assistance (when in actuality, either Elrond or Galadriel, having had enough of our angst, think up a plausible scenario to get us the hell out of town). So, we are sent as far away as possible, in another direction (east, towards Erebor or Rhun), where our whining characters might redeem their insufferable insipidity (or die, which might be the preferable, but unspoken, hope of the powers-that-be).

is this THE merisu project?
 

My goodness. I did find the work you seem to be referring to.

That is the first fan fic I've read. And it horrified me. :eek:

Of course, we'll need to be careful saying that around Eönwë's character...

Sounds good to me.:cool:

Oh, they get far worse than that. It's very common for a LotR Sue to be the daughter of Sauron (or Saruman). And her mother is always an Elf, often Galadriel's uncanonical sister (or Galadriel).

Caution: it's best not to think about this too hard.

Basically, this is one is exactly like all the others... only a little bit more so. It's the quintessence of Daughter-of-Evil fics.

When she says she can barley win against Haldir, is that a drinking contest do you suppose?

I do like the way it is claimed to be authenticated by the Silmarillion... and Elrond's letter writing skills are ..awe-inspiring.

My favourite bit is when it finally dawns on the Mary Sue that Daddy Dearest wasn't... you know... all that nice.

Only took her several thousand years to work that one out...

I couldn't make it past the "preface":

Okaaaay.... So much of this makes me cringe, I shuddered to think of the train wreck that would follow. As a lover of Tolkien's works, the apparent lack of understanding of his works boggles the mind. As a fan writer, it appalls me. If I had this little comprehension of what I was writing about, I wouldn't bother. And I have been asked why I insist on posting my stuff on my own website and not in any fanfic archives. This just sorta sums it up... "But I don't have much information on them..." ...so I went and wrote this story, anyway. Don't have much information on the Eldar... yeah, right. :rolleyes:

How many shots does that preface alone get in the drinking game? :D

From what was quoted in Nerwen's earlier post, I suppose we ought to give Sauron credit for doing the right thing by Elaine and marrying her. Usually, his kids are the products of unspeakable horrors. Like him coming to personally oversee and participate in Celebrian's torture.

But note the attempt to sound knowledgeable:

Want to bet those two sentences aren't copy-pasted from Wikipedia or something similar?

Or kidnapping Mrs Thranduil and having his wicked way with her. :rolleyes: There was one where he turned out to be Legolas' father...

Take a shot if a situation damaging to any romantic relationship occurs, such as Arwen walking in on Aragorn & Legolas kissing, and the angst goes on for chapters and chapters, but is solved in one small explanation (take two shots if it's in the heat of battle) such as "I was only kissing him to save the world." Because that's such an acceptable reason, after all.

Take a shot if everyone in the fic cries of angst at least once. Even Sauron.

Take a shot if a member of the Fellowship is an evil spy. Two shots if it's not Boromir.

Excellent suggestions, Oddwen. I've seen ALL of them.

...I think I've seen too much.:eek:

Yet, as with all such dreadful drek, the story has an ardent fan (see the one 'review' of the story). It reminds me of the H.L. Mencken quote: "No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses..."

I actually read more. And I consulted a cousin who is a rabid fan of anime fan-fics. She told me yaoi scenes and such are very usual in those, so she assumed (rightly) that yaoi scenes would be present... so I went back to the site, and visited something called fanfiction.net, and to my surprise I found myself laughing at a fan-fic about Feanor and his sons trying for the nth time to escape from Mandos. Unfortunately I have cleared my private data, and cannot find the link anymore. :(

About the one fan of the fan fic in discussion, I remember a saying: If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, dazzle them with bullsh*t.

The first fanfic I read involved a pregnant Boromir. It would take a lot to faze me after that....

I found it again!! The fanfic that made me laugh so hard. It isn't as bad as the Merisu-ish ones. I don't even think it has a Merisu.

How many shots to that? A swim in an oak barrel of beer, if I may suggest.

I would call that a sucker bet. :D And funny, I knew that Gandalf was "an angel" well before the Silmarillion was published. References to that comment of Tolkien's showed up in at least two scholarly works that I read back when I was in college (in the early '70s). Even before that, when I first read LotR at age 11, I figured out long before the end of the book that Gandalf was something unusual, since he was not an Elf, and could not have been a Man, either, since he was nearly 2000 years old. That and other things in the story made me figure that Sauron might be a wizard gone bad -- which wasn't all that far from the truth. Robert Foster apparently didn't make that connection, nor, it seems, did the Sue writer. Sigh.

Well, since we are going for a veneer of pseudo-intellectuality, then in addition to misquoting and misinterpreting obscure Tolkienia, perhaps we should inject a little exoliterary (a word I just pompously invented) blundering as well. I am thinking specifically of the classic misunderstandings and misidentifications found in Shakespeare's pastoral plays (As You Like It, for example): He loves her, but she spurns him because she loves the other, but the other is not really a he but a disguised she who loves the first, etc.

Of course, blatant literary rip-offs on this scale must be plainly labeled as such in order to show off our pretentiousness. Maybe we can have an elf NPC named Touchstone making snide asides.

Ah well, I know of one dreadful LotR Suethor who also writes... Hamlet fanfic!

(Yes, the Prince of Denmark does have raven hair and emerald eyes. Why do you ask?)

There's another who specialises in Jane Austen-Tolkien crossovers... rewrites of Emma and Pride and Prejudice set in Minas Tirith.

Alas! Then truly, there is nothing new under the sun! Or if I may quote Umberto Eco completely and utterly out of context (which is appropo for this pompously smirking venture):

Let us then recapitulate, my Mary-Sues, for we cannot hope to get any odder than what has come before us. We are standing on the shoulders of eccentric giants, who have, unfortunately, sunk neck deep in the tar pits. Be sure to wear your play clothes, and leave your Sunday-go-to-meeting best at home. This could get dirty.

*The Dark Elf puts on his wading boots and slogs off through the muck and mire*

I like this idea very much... so let's think of an appropriate quest...

How about the 'real' Ring is actually unwittingly in the jewelry box of our dearest Mary Sue? And that Mary Sue then has the 'real' quest, and somewhere down the road meets the Fellowship, or manages to get into the Councils of Elrond or the Wise?

I think it might be a bit more amusing for the Mary Sue to THINK she has the Real Ring, but doesn't. In actuality, it's one of those "other" rings of power that were mentioned but the fate of which we know nothing about. It probably gives Mary Sue some hitherto unknown abilities that will make her the perfect guardian for the Ringbearer (and the rest of the Fellowship), able to go one-on-one with any and all of the Nazgul, Elven ringbearers, wizard, and probably Sauron himself.

Or how about she manages, by some weird fate (or "doom"), to create a perfect copy of the One Ring, or of the other elven rings? And she must show the childish girlish naivete in the grand style of those Suethors.

Elrond thinks us completely expendable (as well as annoying), so he sends us on a suicide mission with a false ring -- its properties give the appearance of the One Ring, like invisibility, but as Gandalf said, 'There are many magic rings in the world and none of them should be taken lightly'.

Thus, believing we have the One, we (the anti-fellowship) traipse off over the Misty Mountains and head eastward, get mixed up with Thranduil, then the dwarves of Erebor, and, passing to the Orocarni Mountains, we are to find the last sacred pool of Cuivienen to toss the Ring in (thus dissolving it in holy water)...

BUT!

We meet...THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!! Ummm...just kidding, actually, we meet...The BLUE WIZARDS, who are warring with each other in the East just as Gandalf and Saruman are in the West. Both Blue Wizards see the chance of using the pseudo-one ring to destroy the other, and we get mixed up in the whole mess.

Unwittingly, of course, we have steeled the hearts of both Thranduil and the dwarves (who had no intentions of fighting before we came), and we prevent the great legions of the Blue Wizard Alatar (the bad blue wizard of course) from marching into Rhun and then to Mirkwood at the behest of Sauron (because, naturally, there was another unaccounted for Palantir). Without the legions of Alatar, Sauron's armies are limited against Erebor, Dale and Mirkwood, and thus they are eventually defeated, and Rivendell and Eriador are not overrun.

There. How's that?

Verily I am stunned into silence.

You're stunned? Just think how I feel, I had to write it!

But.... (it feels weird to be saying this) ....that almost sounds like too good a plot for a truly awful Sue. Where are the cute guys for the Sue to adore (or for the Stu to become bestest buddies with)? Okay, there's Thranduil, who is okay because he's Leggy's dad, but a bunch of dwarves and elves and wizards and men that nobody's ever heard of (well, they didn't make it into the movies, so they didn't really exist, did they???)... Oh, the horror, not enough of the Right People for the Sues to ogle or impress with their miraculous and splendiferous skills and beauty...!

(time to go scrape residual crud off the roof of my brain... ;))

Well, Alatar could have a daughter and Pallando a son, who of course are in love with each other...and since, ubiquitously, they've obviously been forbidden to even meet, though they regularly have secret midnight meetings a couple of times a fortnight, they could be easily swayed by any passing fancypants.

Or a tribe of Amazon-Sues are in the employ of one of the wizards. Of course, they must be dazzled by even the least of well-choreographed Suecraft.

You know, I had thought about that. Having personally written extensive fan-fic taking place in the far east of Middle-earth (and not a Mary-Sue character anywhere, mind you!), I considered the possibility that this plot might be too...ummm....credible. However, I had to weigh the readability factor of the piece, as well as take into consideration we the writers.

My concern is that if it is too idiotic, then it will quickly loose any cohesion and will not maintain any readership; likewise, if the writing isn't clever, how soon shall the contributors grow bored of the exercise? A farce or satire is only as good as its premise. If the story we write has an internal logic and a credible storyline, the abuses to canon and the distraught nature of the romances will be apparent but acceptable because a suspension of disbelief has hopefully occurred.

Anyone can mock bad Tolkien fan-fic (this thread is a testament to that), but most bad fan-fic is not readable after the first page. As soon as the first violet-eyed, silver-haired Elfess comes prancing out mourining the loss of her lover Legolas, the literate readers roll their eyes, laugh for a moment, copy pertinently abysmal passages, then post them elsewhere on threads like these for other posters to heap their derision on. I know, I've done it before.

Traveling eastward opens up some new dimensions of banality:

1. Falling in love with a Beorning and bearing his cub (great for the skinchanger crowd)

2. The tragic King Brand, who is to fall before Erebor. Who knew he had the sodomitical proclivities of Edward II?

3. Legolas' other brother Orophelas (or sister Thrandulasse?) is forbidden to leave Mirkwood (because, of course, one prince is all that can leave at a time). He/she might consider disobeying her/his tyrannical father (a la Luthien/Thingol) to go with her/his lover into great danger.

4. The Blue wizards are much more...ummm...passionate in an earthy sense than Saruman or Gandalf. Who knows? We can have a part 2 based on the son or daughter of the Blue Wizard trying to dominate the world after Sauron's fall.

5. Jesus Christ lives in Dorwinion (or perhaps its John the Baptist).

6. The Arkenstone is really a Silmaril (I got that from this forum), and with the combined force of the Silmaril and the Ring, one of the anti-Fellowship's power becomes too great and he/she betrays us and must be destroyed.

7. One of the characters in the anti-Fellowship is actually a Black Numenorean mole, and the son of the Mouth of Sauron, who has been sent to infiltrate and destroy the anti-Fellowship (stupidly mistaking us for the actual Fellowship).

*shrugs*

I don't know. Thoughts?

Other than I think we should keep Jesus (and indeed his cousin) out of it .... some splendid ideas there

Actually, I was joking; but I have seen Tolkien fan-fic so overtly religious that there were indeed churches and sacerdotal paraphernalia so profuse, one would think they were at the Vatican.

One could probably leave him in as a rumored figure. That rather reminds me of some of the old sandal epics in which Jesus was never seen, but there were plenty of rumors. :)

Morthoron, I suspect I've seen some of your work -- very few fan writers even know of the existence of the Blue Wizards, and if they do, there is often little connection between them and any kind of Tolkienian reality. I agree that farce or parody is the only route to go, since I have a feeling that those discussing this project are either writers or readers of fanfic whose computers would slag if they attempted to write a "real" MS. :D

The idea of Legolas' siblings is so common in Suedom, it certainly deserves a nod -- as do siblings of Aragorn, descendants of the hobbits who went off on adventures and never returned, relatives of Gimli, the rejected or runaway daughter of Denethor... you get the idea. I can't imagine a "serious" Sue writer wanting to "abandon" their beloved characters -- since it's the love of a particular character (usually because of the actor who portrayed him) that gets a lot of their juices going (at least from what I've seen). But to go to the aid and rescue of their kith and kin (who can be imagined and portrayed in all manner of wonderfully gorgeous ways...!)... That I can see, since so many Sues are long-lost friends and relatives, anyway.

I thought you probably were but while I would hope not to regard myself as being particularly timorous I don't want to go there remotely. From experience can, open, worms everywhere so at the risk of seeming it have a sense of humour bypass I'll leave that rock right there and move some of the others..

Alright, enough of this maundering blather; it's time to commit our blathering to paper (in a cyber sense) and maunder indelicately through the fair fields of Eriador (or the mirk and mire of Rhovanion).

I've decided it's best to put our story (and its requisite commentary thread) in the mirth section, where our flippancy will be better accorded (after all, there's a perennial werewolf thread there already).

Any additions or comments 'ere we begin our hazardous trek?

Sorry I've been out of the loop on this.
I am loving the 'Go East' theme.
My own Sharpairien, and her camp chum Daemian, will be ready to roll characterwise soon. Of course, there will be half-sibling rivalry (we already have some other daughters of Elrond, don't we?). And campness.

I think we MUST have the Arken-Sil in there somewhere. Perhaps the pseudo-Ring is a kind of homing device to it? Like one of those things that locate your lost car-keys...
Oh and what about a lost tribe of Moriquendi, just boys, who haven't seen an elven-lass in, oh, Ages?

I've just found this thread. :cool:

The first page was like browsing the Fantasy section in Waterstones. What does that signify?! :eek:

Mithalwen, please, please, please provide us with a pwinceth. ;)

How about a working title, pompously rendered, such as:

The Ancillarion: Of the Silmarkenstone Conspiracy and the Incidental Fellowship -- Their Trials, Tribulations, Loves Lost and Found, and Their Salvation of Middle-earth (as utterly unlikely as that may seem)

P.S. I believe the story should start at the Painted Pony (because don't all fan-fics start in Bree?).

I have to confess that I very rarely read fan-fiction, so to limber up I had a quick scan of the Daughter of Sauron thing.
I love the following:
1. That mother and daughter spend 500 years living in cosy domesticity with Daddy Sauron, in the heart of Mordor.
2. That dear old Durthren or whatever her name is, is so sanguine about Daddy murdering Mummy. "he took care of her, she could never hate him.."
3. That Elrond is her grandfather. Why? How?

Yes– Hiss! Spit!:mad:

We also need the obligatory scene in Rivendell where the Anti-Fellowship are sent on their perilous quest.

As well as having a mole in the Fellowship, how about them being hunted by a Tenth Nazgûl? They're quite popular with the more Gothically-inclined fanbrat.


That's nothing. There's one where Frodo is Galadriel's son... and there's a Ringwraith named Miguel... and the Mary Sue is a TV-obsessed American teenager who reforms Sauron through the power of lurv (he was just misunderstood, anyway– had an unhappy childhood).

I could go on... You won't believe the things these kids come up with.

Morthoron is right– we need a coherent plot, even at the risk of improving on our models. You can't write something more ridiculous than what already exists

Is this true? Did someone really write that? :eek:

Incidentally, are you going to have a Fourth Age female wizard in this too? One who lives in the woods and looks for herbs to heal people with? ;)

Yes dear somebody did write that. I posted a URL to that, if you want to be horrified more. :D

Don't you think quasi-feminism will work too? I've seen enough fan fic to last me a lifetime now, and almost everything has a heroin, erm, heroine.