Subject: Agreed.
Author:
Posted on: 2008-08-08 02:02:00 UTC
I wanted to see how you would answer the questions before saying it, Lily, but the cloning thing made me think of the Mary-Sue Factories right away. Trojie said it: it's not really the kind of thing the PPC does. I'd explain her origins another way.
~Neshomeh
My Agents are Agent Lily and Christianne, and they work in the Mary Sue Department. Christianne is a veteran, but Lily is a newbie. They go through one mission in the Harry Potter division, then get transferred to LotR.
Lily is the result of a cloning experiment on a Random Elleth. But that's odd, because the two have opposite personalities. Lily is considerably more insane and flake-y. And she worships chocolate, coffee, and the Canon. She can pull together enough of what's left of her sanity during missions, but she's Hell on wheels at HQ. Never give her a flamethrower. Or Sparkly Shiny Things(tm), because Sparkly Shiny Things bring out the Gollum-like behavior, which in turn is a prelude to more insanity. She likes giving people annoying nicknames, reading, MST-ing, and drawing. Her lust object is Frodo Baggins, and oddly, Dark Haired!Legolas.
Eye color: blue
Hair color: black
Species: Elf, Lord of the Rings type.
Canon Literacy Level (CLL): Harry Potter (ok) LotR (semi-Tolkien nut)
Christianne Shieh was recruited from Real Life. She's a snarky b*tch with sadistic tendencies, and probably the only thing to get yourself on her good side is to give her nutty dark chocolate. Surprisingly enough, she and Lily get along considerably better than other Agents. She also harbors an intense dislike for dresses, Mary Sues, and especially Mary Suvian dresses. She has no known lust object.
Christianne, as mentioned before, is a veteran of 'Sue Slaying, having worked in the HP and Naruto divisions. She was moved from Naruto to HP because her partner died, and then assigned to Lily after her partner in the HP division also died. Then, she and Lily are transferred because of a MS fic overload (poor Middle-Earth!). While working in the Naruto section, Christianne learned how to use Japanese weapons. She often tries to demand a license from Upstairs to use them regardless of which division she is in, though the answer is always NO for a good reason. Never give HER a flamethrower, either, because of her obsession with dealing cruel punishments to Mary Sues.
Eye color: green
Hair color: black
Species: Homo sapiens (Human)
CLL stat: Naruto (somewhat of a know-it-all) HP(okay) LotR (I read the Canon only ONCE just so I can kill the 'Sues)
Writing Sample
(taken from "Andi Black", the first mission)
At one o’clock, Christianne appeared back in the dorm, soaked in blood but grinning, full of job satisfaction. Lily was sitting in her four-poster bed, playing around with a French baguette. Every so often, it would emit a “prrrrp” sound and would transform into something else.
“What’s that?” asked Christianne, her curiosity piqued by the baguette, which was now a rubber duck.
Lily’s eyes widened. “What, you’ve never heard of D.O.R.K.S?”
“Dorks?”
“No, no, no!” exclaimed Lily, waving the rubber ducky, now a science textbook, in the air, causing it to turn into a table lamp and then a Harry Potter plushie. “It’s D.O.R.K.S. It stands for ‘Disguise-Outfitting Ryticular Kostume System’. Oh…and it’s the apple of Makes-Things’ eye. We better be careful with it.”
“One itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny question. Why is ‘costume’ spelled ‘Kostume’?”
“Search me.” Lily pressed something on the plushie, now a Rubik’s Cube ™. She promptly turned into the splitting image of Adalora Black. “How do I look?” she asked Christianne, who backed into another bed.
“Scary.” That was all Christianne could say.
(taken from "What, Mary Sues Can Read?", one of my LotR fanfics on FF.net)
Well…Tolkien must be rolling around in his grave so much by now that if someone harnessed the raw energy he produced, then that person could provide enough energy for an entire neighborhood for almost a year. Talk about going green. For even as he laid in his coffin, rolling around restlessly, these four aberrations of original characters were drawing dangerously close to the hidden valley where the Last Homely House lay, its occupants unaware of their existence. Canon was going on smoothly as usual, and the characters had no worries regarding these four girls. They could hardly be blamed, since the One Ring was in Imladris at that moment, and the Council was already in progress. As Gandalf got up to share his tale, about ten leagues away the four ‘Sues were riding on their equally freakish horses, laughing and talking like friends do.
So...that's my little bit. If you need more of my writings to decide on whether you should give me Permission or not, tell me.
Here's what I think Lily's origins should be now...
~
"Let go of me, you vile--" screamed Eledhwen Elerossiel as two workers at the Mary Sue Factory #1203 shoved her into a clear tube.
They laughed at her. These dimwitted factory workers did not understand Westron, but the look of sheer hatred on the elleth's face told them the message anyways.
"Labo vi Orodruin," Eledhwen spat as they closed the glass door and started pressing random buttons. Then the bumbling fools stood to the side and cackled appreciatively. They would soon have another Mary Sue bearing the likeness of the foul-mouthed elleth standing in the tube.
Little did they know that they pressed a wrong button. When pressing the buttons for the clone's personality, they had pressed all the personality buttons contradictory to those of Eledhwen's persona. But of course, these were people with an IQ so low they made orcs look smart. They could only look on in surprise as a spitting image of Eledhwen Elerossiel emerged, but this elleth seemed to be more...happy?
The new elleth laughed a rather insane-sounding laugh before exclaiming, "I'm alive! And so are the Fuzzy Pink Bunnies!"
Eledhwen Elerossiel is the name of an elleth in my story "Tales of a Nightmare Come True". She hates Mary Sues with a fierce passion ever since the 'Sue in the story "Never Leave Fanfiction Lying Around" (Crazyroninchic's creation, so my story is a spin off of it) had her be a servant to the vile, disgusting, and overall sordid excuse for an original character.
What if Eledhwen somehow escaped to the PPC from the Factory? I mean, if I were yanked from my home and subjected to experiments resulting in an insanely happy, fuzzy-pink-bunny-loving photocopy of myself, I'd seriously want vengeance. Talk about motivation for becoming an agent! And the escape would be an interesting story in itself. Think of the implications: a chance for HQ to find and shut down one of the Factories.
I'm sorry to say this, but as a character, the clone doesn't interest me half so much. The hard truth is that it sounds too much like a Middle-earth bamf!Sue. If you want to write a Tolkien elf, that's cool. If you want to write an insane girl who likes fuzzy pink things, that's cool, too (though most agents would rather mutilate the fuzzy pink things, really). I just don't think the two mix very well.
Keep working on it.
~Neshomeh
Maybe I should switch Eledhwen and Lily's roles around. Eledhwen escapes to HQ, Lily gets killed on her mission as a bit char? That might be an interesting twist.
But Christianne has already gotten ready to accept Lily's partnership...
thank you for the idea! I'll see if I can switch around the roles and change it a little.
First, why a cloning experiment? Conducted by whom? And why should the experiment result in a female elf with the personality and tastes of a teenage human girl? Why not simply write a teenage human girl with Liv Tyler- or Cate Blanchett-like features?
Second, a couple of things to watch out for from the writing samples:
- You want "spitting image," not "splitting image." That would be like double vision.
- "as he lay," not "laid."
~Neshomeh
Thanks for pointing out the problems...I shall fix them!
And HQ works in mysterious ways, do they not? I suspect with the understaffing problems, they have to resort to the theory of duplicating people's genes. My theory goes to think that something went wrong while they were duplicating the personality of the victim. I'm inclined to think that some mad scientists or maybe an apprentice or assistant of sorts for Makes-Things (Though I have a slight feeling he does not need apprentices or assistants) got the whole idea to create a cloning machine and botches it all up.
Besides (though this sounds very weak...), I like elves. I think they do need a little insanity amongst their ranks, too. (as if the "Tra-la-la-lally" song isn't undignified enough...)
Hi Lily, me again. I don't mean to sound over-picky, but it seems to me that the understaffing problem is not really bad enough to warrant cloning, especially since Agents recruit bit characters, replacements and dead canons reasonably frequently, not to mention breeding their own little Agents (ah, the pitter-patter of tiny feet in huge combat boots). If she's a clone, it probably didn't happen in the PPC, put it that way :). Cloning experiments are the kind of thing that the Mary Sue Factories do ... not us.
Other than that, she sounds pretty cool as a character.
Who's really not to say that some crazy person from a MS factory infiltrated HQ? Just wondering.
But if that's out of the question, then I think that the MS factory people abducted the Random Elleth and cloned her. Something went wrong with the machine, and there is a personality change in the clone. Said clone gets a new (un-Elvish, of course) name...Lily. The factory then try to send her through a portal, but the bumbling nincompoops that work in this factory bungle up the whole thing and accidentally open a portal to HQ.
Or if that's not that convincing, then maybe they send her in as a bit character and the PPC recruit her because she only had one line or something as minor.
I wanted to see how you would answer the questions before saying it, Lily, but the cloning thing made me think of the Mary-Sue Factories right away. Trojie said it: it's not really the kind of thing the PPC does. I'd explain her origins another way.
~Neshomeh
They've taken over for M-T since his death in the macrovirus crisis. Techno-Dann is one of them. But I can't see DoSAT doing cloning experiments. That might be more the style of the Department of Mary-Sue Experiments.
There are also some rogues, like my Agent April and her ex-partner Van Lew, who have advanced scientific knowledge but don't get along with DoSAT or DMSE.
Or she could be the product of a botched crossover between, say, Star Wars and LOTR.
I'm more inclined to think now that she was cloned at a MS factory, and then sent in as a LotR bit character, and then recruited.
... what's an Elleth?