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sga_flashficMary Who?
by ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
losyark
Challenge: Crossing Challenge
Rating: PG
Summary:
John was in the commissary with McKay playing a game of cut-throat winner-take-all (of the loser’s beer stash) game of chess when it happened.
The girl – woman-shaped, certainly, but with such a wide-eyed expression of confusion and such radiant freshly-minted skin that it belied her all-the-right-curves-in-all-the-right-places stature – sat down beside him.
“Hi,” he said with a little frown, because he didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t in black or grey, no uniform jacket, no tee-shirt of tell-tale blue or red. She was dressed in civvies, but it was the middle of the day, and as far as John knew, nobody had the day off on replacement-Wednesdays.
“Hi,” she said back. “Hello.”
Rodney looked up, a pawn twirling between this thumb and forefinger, and scowled. “Bonjour, salut, bon journo, konnichia wa. What?”
The girl blinked. So did John.
“What?” McKay repeated. “What do you want?”
“McKay,” John said reproachfully.
“Um. I don’t know,” the girl said. “I haven’t been given any character motivation yet.”
“Character…?” McKay repeated, setting down the chess piece. Then he groaned. “Oh, god, not another one.”
“Another…?” John prompted.
“Mary Sue,” the girl said. “I mean, that’s not my real name, of course, not the one I’ll be given, and it’s not even my author’s real name, and I won’t get a good one, and neither of us will ever admit that that’s what I am, but… that’s what I am.”
“A Mary Sue?”
“Yup.” Then she made a face, sort of crossing her violet eyes and biting on her lower lip in a move that suggested she was either constipated or trying not to be sick. John shifted out of firing range. “Sorry,” she said after a moment and a few quick breaths, “trying not to giggle coquettishly.”
McKay covered his face with his hands, and scrubbed at his eyelids with the heels. “Uhg.”
“And you know about this, McKay?”
McKay peeked up over the tops of his fingers, the rims of his eyes swollen and red from scrubbing. “We had a few at Cheyenne Mountain, one at Area 51. I was called in as a consultant with the FBI a few times for a Detective Mulder.”
The Mary Sue was idly touching the captured Queen that John had taken from Rodney, slim flingers dancing seductively up and down the shaft. She was frowning, but couldn’t seem to help the motion. John swallowed. The Mary Sue grabbed her wrist and yanked her hand down, sitting on it.
“Dave said something about one, when he was with the Toronto PD, before Dad died and he had to take over the business,” John said, the concept starting to ring bells, “And my ex, Claire, said she’d treated a few people with the condition.”
“It’s not a condition,” the Mary Sue said. “It’s a way of being.”
“That, in absolutely no way, made sense,” McKay pointed out.
The Mary Sue frowned and nodded. “Yeah, it didn’t. I think it was supposed to be pseudo philosophical. Oh god, do you think my author’s a goth?” she wailed, and it was a pretty impressive wail for such a slender throat. “She’s going to make me wax poetical about life and existence and then I’ll become a Wraith worshipper and she’ll make me fall in love with a Wraith and he’ll see the error of his ways and take Doctor Beckett’s retrovirus inoculations and become human for the love of me but he won’t be able to deny his base urges and I’ll end up giving my life for him to live when you guys shoot him up on a routine mission, and you’ll have to name the spontaneously aborted but miraculously totally human baby Todd Junior.” The Mary Sue surged across the table and grabbed McKay’s lapels and cried, “I don’t want to die in a tragic but romantic blood bath! I just want to go to Earth and open a fruit stand!”
John reached out and patted the Mary Sue’s shoulder awkwardly. “There, see?” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “That’s character motivation right there, right?”
The Mary Sue wailed again, loud enough to make John wince, and buried her face in her folded arms.
And that’s when the city-wide alert went out.
“Great!” McKay snapped. “Great! What is it? Replicator Siege? Genii usurping? Random glowing priestess of the week come to fetch back her rakish one night stand?”
John snorted. “You think I’m rakish?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” McKay snarled, pushing up to his feet and already lifting a hand to his earpiece. “This is all her fault!”
John climbed to his feet too, and waited for McKay to suss out the situation and drag him along to the ‘gate room or the lab or the conference hall, whichever will be most useful. The Mary Sue sat morosely on the uncomfortable plastic chair, freakishly beautiful even in her misery, or maybe because of it.
John felt his brain getting foggy in that way when he saw a hottie at a bar, or he’d drunk too much, or yet another mayor’s daughter had drugged him, only the underlying base physicality was missing; he simply was not attracted to the Mary Sue but he couldn’t help wanting to fuck her sideways.
It was… disconcerting to say the least. Because, um, he didn’t. Want to, that is. Only he did.
“Ugh,” John said, repeating McKay’s tone and eye scrubbing. Already something small and painful was building in that spot between his eyes.
The Mary Sue stood up and straightened her clothing. There was far too much taught belly showing under the hem of her tee shirt and she tried to tug it downwards, goose pimples standing out on her skin. The main areas of Atlanis were always a bit chilly, which is why most of the expedition wore their jackets.
Feeling both smugly gallant and still-in-high-school foolish, John stripped off his jacket and had it around the Mary Sue’s shoulders before Lt. Dickson, who was standing one table over, could manage to finish the maneuver.
So there, he thought, and then Oh god, I’m compromised. Make it stop!
“If you’re done, Romeo?” McKay snapped and John whipped his head around to see that McKay was waiting for him at the door.
The three of them walked to the ‘gate room, and the Mary Sue had to keep her head down and the collar of John’s jacket flipped up or else people would stop to stare at her or get dazzled and walk into walls. All in all, it was actually quite embarrassing and by the time they’d reached Woolsey’s office, McKay was red-faced and puffing with a sort of repressed rage that John hadn’t seen since Dr. Asshole had terrorized Kaleb and Madison and kidnapped Jeannie.
“What we got, Chuck?” John asked, putting a friendly hand on Chuck’s shoulder, in a strange sort of half-pat that he had never performed before. Uhg – Compromised AND touchy-feely, he groaned. Talk about OCC.
Chuck stared at the Mary Sue, licked his lips, and said directly to her: “There’s some planet trying to use really, super basic radio communications to try to get in contact with us. Their sacred priestess-princess warrior has been missing for fifteen years, kidnapped as an infant by the dastardly Kolya to be raised as his ward and forced to marry his son, thus securing Kolya rule over both their planet and the Genii when the boy was old enough to be manipulated.”
John swallowed. “Said all that did they, just like that?”
McKay pointed to Chuck’s screen, where he’s been transcribing the conversation. “…the dastardly Kolya…” he read out loud, then scrubbed his eye again.
“Kolya’s dead,” John said.
“They heard it was the Atlantian prince that did it,” Chuck relayed.
John did not blush but it was a pretty close thing. “So, we just send you back?” John asked, turning to the Mary Sue, but making certain that he didn’t make direct eye contact.
“I dunno,” the Mary Sue said. “Seems convenient and a slight bit fishy to me, do you not agree?” She made another face and growled. “ ‘Do you not agree’? For serious?”
“So it’s a trap,” McKay said. “Someone related to Kolya, a long lost relative, something, looking for revenge.” John looked up and before he could ask how McKay knew, McKay said, “Worked with Mary Sues before. They have great spidey sense.”
“So what do we do?” John asked.
“The normal way?” The Mary Sue asked, “we go in as a team, you protecting me, we aren’t duped by their wide smiles and fake castle but we relax our guard anyway and sort of maybe get convinced that I really am this long lost whatever, and then we’re drugged into sleep and maybe Rodney is raped, or I’m raped. Or, maybe all of us, and they steal our genetic tissue and they want to make clones or something, and then there’s a break out and I’m confronted with the fact that I was actually Genii but these people thought they had a right over me, but I’m not either, I’m actually a de-ascended Lantean child who’s DNA is the key to defeating the Wraith because I’m immune to their hand-suckers only I was so perfect and happy when I was created in the labs, so loved by my strange Lantean maker that I ascended immediately and the war was lost, only now I’m back because I knew that Atlantis needed help. And then we escape from the castle and return to Atlantis and Carson uses my DNA to make a bioweapon to wipe out the Wraith with absolutely no moral funk about it whatsoever and then John and Rodney fight over who gets to marry me, only I have to return to my people so I die beautifully making the last bomb go off in a Wraith hive ship and then I ascend again.”
“That’s…” John said, but he couldn’t think of a good adjective, so he didn’t finish the sentence.“And the short way?”
The Mary Sue shrugged. “Send a bomb through the gate?”
“Huh,” John said, slouching attractively against the console, aiming his slinky hips at the Mary Sue. McKay scowled and John hastily straightened back up. “I, uh, I like plan B.”
“I dunno,” McKay said. “It is a bit extreme. I mean, a bomb? No evidence?”
“Then we have to go through and then I have to save the day.”
“Uh, that seems like a lot of uncessary work, too,” McKay pointed out. “Also? I don’t like getting raped.”
"Look," the girl said. "I'm a Mary Sue, okay? You don't like it, I don't like it, but just... let me save the day and then you can go back to being the Super Cool Space Cowboy and the Hissy Kitten Uber Geek all by yourself, all right?"
“Space Cowboy?” McKay spluttered. “How, in anyway, am I a Cowboy? Super Cool, yes, but cow—Oh. You meant him.” McKay narrowed laser eyes at John, who just lifted his eyebrows. “No, wait, hissy kitten? Me? I… how, in any way, am I a kitten?”
“Cute, good for cuddling, but gets a bottle brush tail when threatened or insulted.”
“It does fit, McKay,” John offered.
“You, quiet, and you – cuddly? Me?”
The Mary Sue blushed.
“Oh god,” Rodney groaned. “Send the bomb through!”
“Uh. Oh,” the Mary Sue said. “Okay then, I, um, I guess I’m in the wrong story then. Bye.”
She vanished in such a bright and frankly gaudy flash of light that John had to rub his eyes for the rest of the afternoon every time he looked at something too white.
Later, after dinner and a debriefing and another chess game, John checked Rodney’s King and said, “That was really weird.”
“Let’s not do that again,” McKay said, standing and packing up the chess board. “This whole twisting the universe to fit the fetish fantasies of someone else is very, very strange.”
“Yup,” John said, and leaned over to kiss McKay goodnight.
END
ETA: Now with Bonus Fully Annotated Mary Sue Checklist (to go with my icon) here!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-14 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-02-15 01:47 am (UTC)Most brilliant thing ever, all of this.
I love how Rodney talks about her like she's a cockroach: "Oh we had some at the SGC," and how bewildered and disgusted with herself the Mary Sue is whenever she does something Mary Sue-ish.
Now that I've seen this, and read most of "Slipstream," and am working on something related, I envision these infinite Mary Sues, infesting plots everywhere, some completely clueless, some grimly aware of their existence and powers. What would happen if you got more than one in a fandom?
...edited, because I felt like blathering more...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 03:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 02:15 am (UTC)I love this. Mainly because my characters are very Mary Sue and annoy me because of that. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 04:08 am (UTC)Love this.
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Date: 2009-02-15 07:02 am (UTC)Bronwyn
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Date: 2009-02-16 06:24 am (UTC)That was BRILLIANT! I sprayed tea all over the laptop at that line. Loved your Mary Sue... but ESPECIALLY loved that last line. BWAHAHA!!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 09:03 pm (UTC)I laughed out loud at this line for a very long time.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-24 02:53 am (UTC)I loved the fic, it was an absolute scream and so true. We've all written one (usually our first fic). Most of us quietly pretend it never happened and don't do it again. ^^
DragonLady
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-04 03:52 am (UTC)I could not have read this at a better time; I'd just finished my third truly awful fic when I stumbled across this. Brilliant. Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-04 04:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-04 04:45 am (UTC)I'm really happy you enjoyed it! It was pretty fun to write. It's a shame when you run into lots of awful fics.
You don't write? I always wonder about that... the ratio of writers to readers in fandom.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-04 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 12:49 am (UTC)BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
and then I’ll become a Wraith worshipper and she’ll make me fall in love with a Wraith....and you’ll have to name the spontaneously aborted but miraculously totally human baby Todd Junior.”
I believe the proper comment on that paragraph is: YOU WIN AT THE INTERNETS!!!!! Sheer genius.
“This whole twisting the universe to fit the fetish fantasies of someone else is very, very strange.”
“Yup,” John said, and leaned over to kiss McKay goodnight.
Even sheerer genius. :-D
Absolutely fabulous fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-31 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-21 09:47 pm (UTC)That is the first time though that I've been delayed in reading a fic by somebody's icon for quite so long!
I've read a few Mary Sue mocking stories before (mainly SG1) but I think this is the best use I've seen of the "proper" characters!
Rodney making fun of John for falling under Mary Sue's spell is brilliant. Loved that he encountered them before. The list of all her attributes was hilarious and well observed. As was some of the possible events.
Yes, bad fic ahoy!
The final lines though nearly made me fall off my chair laughing! Didn't see that coming in the slightest!
A little self-knowledge in any fandom is no bad thing! Loved it!