(no subject)
Aww. Our very first You-Sue. Actually, although the Sue itself was horrible, the ending is quite unconventional (i.e. non-violent).
The PotC Sue-Sporking Community, heave_ho is doing quite well. Visit it if you haven't already!
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"...Perhaps there was more [to your saving Danica]. Perhaps Artemis Entreri did not have the heart to let the woman die alone in the darkness."
Entreri shrugged as if it did not matter.
How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims would be surprised?" Jarlaxle asked, pressing the point.
"How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims deserved better than they found?"
--The notorious assassin in Servant of the Shard
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Isaiah was roused at precisely eight o’clock by a hand tapping his pillow impatiently.
"Wake up, Agent. You’ve overslept. Again."
"Unh." Isaiah fought his way into a sitting position, frantically rubbing his eyes. "Sue-Jack-Elizabeth dead-Sherlock Homes-"
Another round of taps was directed, rather painfully, at his skull.
"Ouch! Mara!" Fully awake now, Isaiah pushed her hand away and slid out of bed. "What’s so urgent? The console didn’t beep, did it?"
"Nope. I got our next assignment early, from Quen. She decided that we might need a little time to steel our nerves."
Voice still hoarse from sleep, Isaiah croaked, "We must be hardened enough against badfic, doncha think? After Shay Leigh and her horde of Sues, I think I’m ready to take on anything."
"Let’s hope you’re right. This one’s worse than all of the regular Mary Sues put together."
Isaiah shrugged the tension out of his shoulders and made his way to a tiny dresser, where he began the search for a clean uniform. "Not possible."
"It’s a Mary-You."
Isaiah’s hands grasped a shirt rather harder than he had meant to, yanking out the top drawer and nearly upending the dresser. Not heeding the sudden pile of black clothing at his feet, he sped across the room to Mara, eyes wide. "You’re not serious? It’s only our fourth mission!"
Mara looked exasperated. "Haven’t you ever had a glance at the first page of fanfiction.net? Every fifth story is a Jack/You or Will/You fic. I swear they undergo mitosis every fifteen seconds."
"It’s too bad. I kind of liked the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books when I was younger. Yet another childhood memory ruined by Suethors. I’m just glad the Mary Sue inserting herself as the Little Mermaid in a PotC crossover got deleted before we were handed that mission. So, let me guess, the One True Love is Jack?"
"I have no idea. Quen told me it was a Mary-You, that’s all. I haven’t got the nerve to look at it. Grab an energy bar and some Bleeprin-infused coffee, and let’s move."
"I’m still in my nightclothes, in case you hadn’t noticed." Isaiah shot her an irate look. "If it’s a You/Jack fic, we can’t go in by ourselves, anyway-one of us will get Sue’d," he pointed out. "And if it’s me," he added nervously, "I’d get an instant sex change."
"As interesting as that may be to see…" Isaiah gave her a good-natured shove "…I think a trip to the Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology is in order."
"Good. You go to DoSat and I’ll get dressed."
"I’m afraid not. You should know your way around Headquarters better than you do, even if you’re new. As eager as I am to see this through, I’ll wait for you." Mara promptly positioned herself outside the door.
_______________________________________
"Tess?"
Mara brusquely greeted a young woman dressed in Matrix style garb and smiling wanly at the DTE agent. "We’re here to see Agent Techno Dann, if you don’t mind."
Tess nodded. "He’s in the armory, testing phasers. Careful when you go in-there’s still too little power on them, and the beams are having a ricochet effect."
"We’ll be careful," Mara assured her, motioning for Isaiah to follow her down a flight of stairs into DoSAT.
"Gotcha!" came a muffled voice from within. "Much better, much more of an even beam."
Mara pressed the pad on the side of the door and the metal door shifted open.
"Dann?" she called. "We could use your he-"
FLASH!
A beam bounced off a target’s aquiline nose and headed toward the agents. Mara ducked, but not in time. There was the smell of singed hair as she rose, carefully inspecting her locks. She turned around and raised her eyebrows at Isaiah in a silent question.
"It’s not that bad," Isaiah supplied. "You already have black hair, so it’s not as if the damage really stands out."
The agent holding the phaser turned his attention from a titanium target shaped like Marissa Picard and looked their way, puzzled for a moment. Recognition dawned on him as he glanced at their sleeves, which were newly embossed with the official symbol of the Department of Technical Errors, the red pen.
"Well, it’s certainly a surprise seeing you here," Dann remarked, putting his phaser on a rack with several dozen of its kind. "Portal generators working all right? Weapons holding up?"
"We heard that you had developed a cure for You fics," Isaiah blurted out. Eyes darting to Mara, he amended, "At least, I heard it from Mara. Is it some sort of device that we wear, or...?"
"The dummy’s relatively new," Dann stated matter-of-factly, looking in Mara’s direction.
"Hey!" Isaiah called hotly. "I may be a new agent but I’m not--"
Dann blinked and held up a hand. "Not you," he said to Isaiah. "The PPC crash dummy." He inclined his head slightly. "Follow me, please." He led them through a corridor with several storage rooms branching off. "The dummy comes with the name ‘You’ or ‘Me.’ It’s specially designed to channel the Sueish spirit of second and first person Sues to avoid flaming the authors and Sueing the PPC agents. It’s been in high demand, and I think this one’s seams are a bit fragile. Jira and Shmuckleigh couldn’t resist giving the dummy several unnecessary whacks after its timely demise."
He handed them a soft yellow cube with the instructions, "Do not pull cord until in fic."
Isaiah grinned. "I think I’m going to enjoy this."
Two minutes and one portal later, he and Mara were disguised as pirates, and the crash dummy had taken its place at the helm. The agents winced at the name of the story.
I can never think of appropriate titles, sorry
"It’s nice how Suethors take the time to make their readers feel that they’re in capable hands, isn’t it?"
"Oh, yes. It speaks of so much thought and effort put into the story."
The PPC crash dummy began to wander the deck of the ship, savoring its good fortune at having it.
You were what most people would call a pirate, but you didn’t like thinking of yourself like that. Pirates where dirty, they stole from and killed innocent people, and that simply wasn’t you.
"Oh, so you’re a snob, then." Mara tossed her hair, and then gingerly felt over her locks. "All of the other pirates are dirty, but not you. Your kind of piracy is fine-"
"And what an interesting brand of piracy it must be," added Isaiah. "What pirate doesn’t steal from innocent people, at the very least? That’s what a pirate is-a thief on the high seas."
"Maybe she has a special detector that lets her know when people are ‘guilty’ enough to steal from," Isaiah hypothesized sarcastically, while the dummy elaborated on her past. It turned out that up until she was seventeen, she had lived in a "respectable" part of town with a highly regarded family. The "You" persona, now eighteen, had already made herself famous.
"Not only a female pirate captain, but a female pirate captain at eighteen. And a famous one. Kind of young, aren’t you?" Isaiah glared at her.
"I think we’ve established that this Sue thinks that nothing is too good for her."
In fact you where quite proud of what you had achieved.
Isaiah winced at the bad spelling.
"Why does so much Suefic not pay attention to the difference between ‘were’ and ‘where’?" Isaiah made a face. "I’ve done ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’, ‘peehole’ instead of ‘peephole’, and even a few ‘your/you’re’ mix-ups, to my everlasting shame. But I never once made that error, and this is the third Suefic I’ve come across so far that has it. Not to mention that this is the second time the Suethor’s made that mistake."
"You wrote ‘peehole’ instead of ‘peephole’? When was this?"
"I’d rather not elaborate."
"Fair enough. Oh, well done, Sue, super-size that ego!" The dummy inflated slightly as "Your" ship was deemed secondary only to the Black Pearl.
Isaiah eyed it nervously. "Hope it won’t pop."
"Greater than the Dauntless?" Mara looked skeptically at the crash dummy. "Yeah, right. Sue, here’s a little nautical lesson for you. Most pirate ships were relatively small-only the very successful pirates had large ships. I doubt that you, coming from a ‘respectable’ family and not having had anything to do with piracy until last year, would be able to come into possession of such a vessel. And even then, how would you retain it, not having had any real world experience?"
You also had a loyal, strong crew who would walk to the ends of the earth for you. You also had a hold full of treasure that your father left you when you died, so all in all you saw no reason to hurt innocent people just out of greed.
"Whoa, whoa. Stop." Isaiah put his hand to his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "Aside from the complete and utter Sue-ishness of having a crew who would go to the ends of the earth for you-when Jack’s crew didn’t, may I remind you-how could your father leave you a hold full of treasure? You just said that you came from a respectable family in a respectable town! Why did your father possess a hold full of treasure, and why would he give it to you at all if he, the respectable man that he was, knew you were breaking the law?"
"Maybe he didn’t know."
"So, what, did she just ask him for a hold full of treasure for no reason? As well-to-do as she was, she’d have had no cause to leave on her own, and no gentleman would ever let his young daughter go anywhere unescorted. Also, her father must be exceedingly rich. Even a monarch would be hard-pressed to bestow that sort of parting present on a daughter of his."
Around them, several nooses wriggled into existence, growing like vines in the air around the agents and hanging perfectly still. The space in between them shimmered, letting Mara and Isaiah know that plotholes lurked just beyond.
"Careful not to touch them, or you’ll become extremely disoriented," Mara warned, ushering Isaiah away from the closest one. "Those are logic loopholes. Extremely hazardous to stories, readers, and PPC agents."
"How wonderful that these fall under our jurisdiction," Isaiah remarked grimly. "If it weren’t for these, I’d say we could hand over this fic to the Department of Mary Sues. The grammar isn’t bad for Suefic. This ‘You’, however, smells to high heaven. Aw, how sweet. She’s temperamental, but not around her crew."
"Mm. Apparently she only dislikes other pirate captains-oh, and how lovely. Isaiah," Mara said sweetly, "do you know why she hates them? It’s because, and I quote, ‘They all seemed to think that they were above everybody else.’"
Isaiah made a strangled noise. "As opposed to her, a pirate captain who looks down on all other pirates except her beloved crew and thinks they’re dirty because they have to steal to make a living and she doesn’t because she was lucky enough to inherit treasure. Get out of my sight, wench." He narrowed his eyes at the You Sue.
The deck beneath them groaned as a tense shift hit. Then it was back to more of the reasons why everyone loved the Mary Sue. According to her, the crew loved her because of the equal shares they received at her hands.
"Pirate ships were very democratic! ALL pirate captains would have to make sure their crew got a fair share of rations, Miss Holier-Than-Thou. Do a little research, why don’t you?" Mara, of course.
"But research takes work!" Isaiah mimicked.
Mara’s lip curled. "Not an excuse. The information on that is available on the second disc of the PotC DVD."
People usually considered you a pirate because your business was in commandeering ships. Not that you ever actually stole what you had taken.
Mara and Isaiah looked at each other, baffled.
"Not...that...she…ever…stole…my head hurts."
"So she randomly goes around stealing ships and then returning them? I…I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Besides, that’s still stealing," Mara insisted.
The crew docked in Tortuga, and the PPC dummy handed her first mate, Bill, the telescope in order to scout out a huge black ship.
"The telescope?"
The spyglass that the Sue should have been holding changed into a beautiful red telescope-not one of Hubble capacity, but one that an amateur might use.
"The tripod is a nice touch," Isaiah commented.
"I agree."
You watched Bill face change from being confused, to realisation dawning on him.
Bill lowered his gaze, and whispered, "The Black Pearl."
"Here’s where it gets messy. She makes a ruse with Bill." Mara clenched her pen hand until her knuckles turned white-no small feat for the olive-skinned agent. Bill and the Sue waited, Sue remarking on Jack’s foolish act of leaving only one guard aboard the Pearl. The rest of the pirates had left to "do other pirate things."
"Making Jack Sparrow careless and overconfident, especially after his ship’s already been wrested from him once. Causing his crew to ‘do other pirate things’, whatever the heck that means," Mara charged her. Bill then pretended to be the overbearing captain of a ship, dragging the Sue by her hair because she was supposedly a wayward crewmember.
"Attaboy, Bill," praised Isaiah. "Now, bash her head in with one of the barstools."
Mara frowned at the Words. "From what I can make out, she’s pretending to be the one guarding her ship per the order of her tyrannical captain. That way, pirates will attempt to take her ship, at which point they find the tables turned on them. Um...yeah. Why would seasoned pirates fall for that? Especially the way it’s carried out!" She gestured to the scene.
"LOOK, I ALREADY TOLD YOU, GO WATCH ME SHIP, THE BOYS ARE IN NEED OF A DAY OFF!" screamed Bill.
You started sobbing, Tim could hardly contain his laughter.
"B...But, Bill, I...I don’t like watching it on my own."
"JUST GO YOU STUPID WENCH, IF MY SHIP IS TAKEN BECAUSE YOU WERE WASTING YOUR TIME IN HERE I SWEAR I’LL FLOG YOU!"
Isaiah shrugged his shoulders. "I’m just trying to figure out how that trick worked fifteen times in the same bar. She says that Tim the barkeep has seen her work that ruse at least that number of times. Surely, someone would have noticed a pattern by-ack!" He made a choking sound and Mara pulled him back just in time to save him from suffocation by the lethal loophole. The Sue left Bill in the bar and went off on her own, as Jack watched from the corner.
Mara rolled her eyes. "Mary Sue, hatcher of the The Most Painfully Obvious Plot that Ever Existed. As if the real Captain Jack would have fallen for that in a million years, tipsy or not. Yeesh!"
For the record, Isaiah took CJS’s character reading.
[Captain Jack Sparrow. Out of Character 35.4%]
"And rising, I’ll bet," he said.
You waited back at your ship for around 15 minutes before Jack arrived.
"If this ruse is so good that it’s worked fifteen times on other pirates, why aren’t twenty other buccaneers making for the ship? Why is it just J-ACK!"
"Steady on, Isaiah. You forget to look above you when the loopholes materialize."
Isaiah rubbed his throat and eyed the Sue resentfully.
He approached you with his usual drunken swagger, and you couldn’t help noticing he was kind of, well, hot. No, you couldn’t think like that, he was a bigheaded pirate, just like the rest of them.
"And you don’t have a swelled head at all, you eighteen-year-old, thieving yet pontificating, super-cunning, universally beloved pirate captain and owner of a ship second only to the Pearl."
"Being a hypocrite and obnoxiously self-righteous," Mara jotted down, drawing from deep reserves of self-restraint to keep from wringing the Sue’s neck then and there.
Jack and Mary Sue made a deal, whereupon Jack would take the Sue along on his ship if the Sue let him take her ship.
"And..." Isaiah glanced warily above him "...why, instead of asking, wouldn’t he just toss her into the harbor and take the ship right then? I’m sure he could beat her."
"I doubt the real Jack would have stolen that ship, anyway. He already has the Pearl. But, this being a Suefic, make an absurd deal with an annoying wench it is. That and her causing Jack to say, ‘O’coarse.’"
"Will you give me anything else." You asked seductively.
Jack grinned and said huskily, "I could give you one hell of a night."
"Oh, no." Mara scrunched up her face. Jack was easily led on because the Sue, of course, was beautiful and had a comely figure. Jack started kissing the Sue fiercely as soon as she was inside the captain’s cabin.
It was quite interesting, seeing a make-out scene between Captain Jack Sparrow and a PPC crash dummy. The captain was obviously enjoying himself, crushing the dummy against him. Dann hadn’t been lying about the dummy not being durable; some of the foam began to pop out of the seams as Jack held her tightly. It was at least better than the last bedroom scene they had witnessed, which involved Elladan, Evelyn, and an ant.
Jack got "caught up in the moment," while the You-Sue lay on top of him, grabbed his weapons, and cocked her own pistol. Then she stood a couple of metres away from the bed.
"And here I thought it would be feet or yards, seeing as how you’re from an English colony and the metric system hasn’t been invented yet," Mara sneered. Her mocking expression changed to one of fury as Jack, instead of retaking his weapons, became confused, and remained confused even when several crewmembers came to "Your" call.
"I am not a stupid hormonal girl who betrays Jack...I am not a stupid hormonal girl who betrays Jack..." Isaiah intoned.
A few of "Your" crewmembers surrounded Jack, while the rest looked on, as they wouldn’t have "fitted" in the cabin. The You-Sue smiled cockily at him and Bewildered!Jack stared up at her. "You" informed the captain that this was "your" ship.
Jack looked even more confused. "Your ship?"
"Aye," was all you said before a few members of the crew carried Jack down to the brig.
"Charge-her-get…I can’t…so angry…" Mara was scrabbling at the walls, trying to find something to squeeze the life out of. Isaiah wrote down the charges almost as quickly as they arrived in the story. Then he took another reading on the captain.
[Captain Jack Sparrow. Out of character 78%]
The Sue ordered Bill to dispose of the guard and take the Pearl, while the rest of her crew prepared to sail.
"I actually got her, I got the Black Pearl." You said to yourself at the helm.
"Not for long, you pestilence." Mara’s voice was deadly calm.
"Mara…how are we going to get the ship back? All of her crew’s on there." Isaiah fiddled with his grapnel hook, wondering if he should have poisoned the barbs for this one.
Mara bit her lip. "Let’s go round up Jack’s old cronies," she said. "They’re off ‘doing pirate things’; the Mary-You has probably forgotten about them."
"Mm, not yet," Isaiah objected. He lowered his voice. "We wait for the-"
Mara glared at him.
"Oh, right, uh...we contact the canon characters at the proper time, after we’ve racked up all the charges?" he offered.
She nodded curtly.
Chapter Three opened with the Sue mentally backtracking across maps spread out on her desk. A random bit character named Ken knocked on the door.
"How’d she know it was Ken?" Isaiah wondered. "She couldn’t see him from outside the door."
"That’s the problem with second person narrative," Mara sighed. "It takes a very skilled writer to pull it off." She eyed the smug look on Ken’s face with no small amount of dislike.
"Captain, Sparrow started making a fuss when we told him that we had the Pearl."
Mara clutched her pistol. "I’ll kill them. I’ll kill-"
You had only just instructed Ken to inform Jack of this, and it was 2 weeks since you left Tortuga.
"But-the-what? WHAT?!" Isaiah was nearly apoplectic. "He didn’t figure out what had happened to his ship?"
"And he made a fuss?" Mara clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "I imagine he’d be very, dangerously quiet when you gave him that news. And saying that he’s to be called Captain Sparrow is not enough to save you, Sue."
"Aye aye Captain."
"Leaving out commas," Isaiah wrote down with gusto. "You" strode down toward a cell filled with Jacks-the result of a missing apostrophe-and saw the Captain Jacks, counting aloud.
Jack growled when he saw you; obviously he didn’t take kindly to being looked in a brig for two weeks.
"Making Jack growl." Mara growled herself as she wrote down the charge. "Captain Sparrow does not fly into rages or act like a brute."
"Now, now Captain, it’s not that bad on me fine vessel now is it? I seem to remember a couple of weeks ago that you wanted to be abroad."
"Using abroad instead of aboard..."
Isaiah gasped in horror as the Words appeared. Jack shouted that he had had no rum, and that he had lived on water for two weeks.
"LIVING ON WATER?" Mara yelled.
"FOR TWO WEEKS?" Isaiah exclaimed. "Bloody…she’s starved him!"
Presumably, the Suethor had meant that the only beverage that the captain had been able to drink was water, but the phrase "living on water for 2 weeks" caused Captain Jack to become emaciated and hollow-cheeked.
The "You"-Sue told off Ken harshly, probably trying to ingratiate herself with the captain ["Even though she’s just stolen his bloody ship!" Mara pointed out angrily], and took away Ken’s rum privileges for four weeks.
Ken looked extremely nervous, and Jack had momentarily forgotten his ship to watch you.
"HE MOMENTARILY WHAT?!"
Mara’s voice boomed across the brig. Ken and the Sue stopped talking. The agent didn’t care; she shoved aside a dangling noose and flew at the Sue in a tackle, beaning her on the head with her bag at the same time.
"You...made...Captain...Sparrow...forget...about...his...ship...you...pathetic..." The crash dummy made choking noises as Mara throttled her. Ken flew to the Sue’s rescue, his sword in his hand. Isaiah, who hadn’t made himself noticed, twirled his grapnel hook and caught Ken’s weapon hand, sending him forward to the floor. He wrapped his pirate headscarf around his hand, grabbed the sizzlingly hot Canon Analysis Device, and hit Ken with it. His grapnel snaked over Mara’s shoulder and forced her to loosen her chokehold on the Sue. Since Ken was supposed to get shoved into the brig at this time anyway, Isaiah dragged the unconscious bit back a little, grabbed Mara’s other shoulder, and said, "Get him out. Now. NOW!"
Mara’s fury subsided, and she dragged Ken into the next cell by the boots. The dummy recovered from her shock and rushed at Isaiah. He stood still until the last instant, then immediately swerved to the right.
The Sue plunged headfirst into her own loophole.
Isaiah’s hook was at work again before she had slipped all the way through. He didn’t fancy collecting her at this time; they hadn’t gotten all of the charges yet. When she reappeared, blinking, it was obvious that she had no recollection of what had just transpired. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to do her any damage, either, so getting rid of her that way later on was out of the question. A minute later, Isaiah and Mara were again invisible pirates, Ken reeling against the cell doors as the PPC agents sighted their prey over a large storage barrel at the end of the row of cells. The Sue, to show that she was a good-hearted snobbish ship-thief, unlocked Sparrow and put Ken inside.
What are you doing luv? Why ain’t I still in the brig."
"I’ve a better question." Mara narrowed her eyes at the Sue. "Why hasn’t the good captain caught you, pinned you to the bulkhead, taken your weapons and held you hostage to negotiate the return of his ship? You’ve only been a pirate for a year; he’s been a swashbuckler for a good part of his life. Even if he’s starving, I bet he could make you pay for taking the Pearl."
Isaiah looked worriedly at the group of nooses that had formed since they had started PPCing. "Maybe we should stop pointing out problems with the story for a while-at least until the Sue is gone," he said. "Much more of this, and we’ll get ourselves hanged before we can get rid of her."
"It’s not our fault that the plot is about as tightly woven as old cheesecloth," Mara countered. "The loopholes were here all the time. We just brought them out of hiding. Don’t you know, Isaiah? In mediocre or sub-par stories, a perceptive audience is always at a disadvantage. A good writer will leave allusions and subtle humor for the more astute readers; a bad or careless one will leave an audience unable to fully enter the world the writer has created, held back by little things like logic and common sense."
Jack sat on the bed happily guzzling rum, while you carried on studying your maps.
"Causing Jack to guzzle rum on an empty stomach-after two weeks, no less."
It was well into the night when you finally decided to go to sleep; you got up, locked the door then sat in your chair, tilting your hat over your eyes.
"I love how this Sue is so original."
"Hey, Sues have been bad and trite before, but at least they haven’t tried to take his ship. His SHIP, DAMN IT!"
Isaiah took a step backwards. "You aren’t going to go berserk on me, are you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her. She shook her head emphatically.
"Nope. I’m being enraged now so that I don’t lose my sanity later."
"That makes sense...I guess."
Jack wanted to know why the Sue was sleeping in a chair. She replied that he was taking her bed, so there was no place for her to sleep. The captain suggested a solution: they could both sleep in the bed.
"There’s ‘O’coarse’ again. Oh, well. I can’t see how she could possibly agree-she’s his enemy!"
"Promise you won’t try anything?"
"Aye."
Sighing you proceeded to climb into the bed after taking off your boots.
Mara heaved a much deeper sigh and began to write. "Being stupid enough to take the word of a pirate captain whom you’ve locked in the brig and deprived of food for two weeks. As soon as you were asleep, any buccaneer worth his salt would kill you and try to escape or capture you and parley his way off the ship."
Lady Contrivance appeared beside the bed, her knees bending backwards at she looked at Jack and the Sue.
"She always appears when Jack and the Sue share a bed for no good reason," Mara explained.
"So...that would be every other PotC fanfic, then?"
The Sue and Jack fell asleep, Jack telling the Sue not to call him captain. Isaiah and Mara both clenched their weapons.
There was no space to tell where the story left off and where the author’s note began. Consequently, the author’s note got jammed in with the fanfic.
AN: Well that’s it, review and tell me what you think!
Mara opened her mouth, but Isaiah shook his head.
"You know the PPC doesn’t approve of flaming."
"I won’t flame," Mara promised him. "I’ll give concrit, as we always do, and see what the author says. Anything of note in the beginning of the next chapter, Isaiah?"
The male agent snorted. "Look at this hideous author’s note."
"As hideous as that of Irish Pride?"
"Not as vulgar, but sillier."
AN: Hello again, I’m sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up, but with the new story I’ve been writing with my friend Sebrina we didn’t realise you can’t put author’s notes separate to chapters, so I couldn’t post any chapters until Sunday, which totally sucks, since I’ve been busy all day Sunday, what with having to go see Secret Window again, getting a new pencil case for my exams, and then going back to the cinema to see Van Helsing, so unless I got up pretty early I wouldn’t be able to post this until Monday, and in the evening as well because of stupid school, god life sucks sometimes.
"We’re here for a pirate story, not a Suethor diary entry. Get on with it," Mara upbraided.
The Sue and Jack were getting to know each other, the Sue praising him about the fact that he had behaved himself more than the other captains she had kidnapped. Jack was in character enough to display constant anxiety over the Pearl, and tried to get the Sue drunk on one occasion. The agents winced at the comma splice.
, little did he know you had filled your bottles with water, since you knew all the tricks in the book.
"Knowing all the tricks in the book after a single year of piracy," Isaiah charged.
You were glad you had replaced your rum with water, because this little non-fact made Jacks respect for you grow.
"A non-fact?" Isaiah laughed.
Meanwhile, the missing apostrophe, wreaking havoc as always, caused half a dozen Captain Jacks to appear, all with sickening expressions of respect on their faces.
"Ewwww. It’s bad enough seeing him like that once!" Mara gritted her teeth but didn’t cover her eyes. Instead, she nearly burned a hole through her clipboard adding charges to the list.
The stupid Sue then allowed the captain to wander about the ship freely. The captain, after two weeks of being stuck on board the Sue’s ship, had given up on getting the Pearl back, despite the fact that he had not given up on her for the ten years that she had been in Barbossa’s hands. The CAD gave out a garbled reading before shorting out and going cold. Isaiah wondered idly if he should just toss it overboard, now that the captain was wandering on deck. He thought better of it; it might be counted as cultural contamination.
You were now at least 4 weeks away from Tortuga, and it was with a heavy heart that you watched your crew setting up the Pearl and transporting their things back onto the (think of ship name soon).
The agents’ expressions went from murderous rage to incredulous laughter as they looked over the side of the ship. The title "(Think Of Ship Name Soon)", parentheses included, was painted onto the hull of the Sue’s ship in prominent block lettering.
"I tell you, this fic sets a new low in terms of lack of preparation and forethought. Ugh!"
Jack was confused, yet again. He was angry at the Sue’s crew for leaving the Pearl, thinking that they were simply going to abandon her.
"Because all pirates go through the trouble of taking ships and then just leave them randomly floating in the ocean." Mara shook her head.
"Don’t be stupid Jack, were merely giving the Pearl back to you."
"Stupid Jack" wandered sillily over in the agents’ direction. There came the sound of teeth grinding.
"Liberal abuse of the Common Comma," Mara wrote. The Sue then explained that she was letting him have the Pearl back because her business was not to commandeer ships and keep them. Rather, she went around teaching captains that they weren’t any better than anyone else and inconveniencing them. Then she told Jack that he could sail the Pearl back to Tortuga all by himself, which was, as Jack had mentioned in the movie in regards to the much smaller Interceptor, impossible.
There was silence while the agents digested this.
Mara, predictably, was the first to explode. "She takes ships to teach pirates a lesson? Who the Huehueteotl would sail under her colors? What twisted deity gave her the right to play Supreme Goddess of the Caribbean?" She spat on the deck of the (Think of Ship Name Soon). "I’ve seen enough. Portal?"
"Aye." Isaiah grabbed his grapnel hook. "Let’s go."
They opened a portal to Tortuga and the Faithful Bride. They found Gibbs immediately, wandering around the bar, looking like he knew he was supposed to be somewhere else but wasn’t sure where. It took a little more time to find Anamaria; she apparently had more resilience to the uncanon spell, and had spent her time trying to round up a hopelessly OOC canon crew. She had gotten about half of them back in their right minds, according to the conversation Isaiah heard while snooping down a side street. He had jogged ahead, making sure not to bump into any Tortugans, and appeared in front of her as she and three crewmembers turned the corner.
"Excuse me, ma’am," Isaiah said, not knowing quite what else to say.
Anamaria fixed him with a glare. Apparently, she had not had a good day. "Out of my way. I have business with these men."
"I know where Captain Jack is," Isaiah said at once.
For a moment, Anamaria stared at him. Then she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.
"Where?" she demanded. Isaiah gulped.
"On the ship of an annoying lady pirate, who took the Pearl with her," he answered. Then his heart rate shot up as he remembered that the "You" Sue had neither a proper name nor a proper title for her ship.
Seeing Anamaria and Co. looking unconvinced and slightly irritated by his interruption, Isaiah hurriedly said, "She claims that she owns a ship second only to the Pearl! Her crew randomly goes around the Caribbean without stealing or killing anyone!"
Understanding dawned on Anamaria’s face. "That wench?" she said in disbelief. "That arrogant slattern’s not a day over eighteen."
"Seems to think she’s outwitted the captain and his crew," Isaiah said. "Gibbs is waiting for you in the Faithful Bride," he said helpfully. "Oh, and we know that she’s going to make him sail to Tortuga by himself."
Anamaria let loose a series of swears.
"Fortunately," Isaiah finished, "my partner and I can get you there in the blink of an eye."
He held up his portal generator. "If you’d let us accompany you and get rid of her."
She looked at him suspiciously. Suddenly she snatched the generator from his hand and examined it. After a few moments, she handed it back to Isaiah. "I’ll talk to Gibbs."
Isaiah met up with Mara, who was making a similar deal with Gibbs. As soon as she spotted him, accompanied by Anamaria and two other crewmen, Isaiah gave her the thumbs up.
"This might actually turn out all right," Mara grinned. "Now we just have to-"
All of a sudden, the universe gave a terrific lurch. The story began to shake tremendously.
When the tremors ceased, the agents looked around them. Gibbs was in the same place as he had been when Mara encountered him and Anamaria was nowhere to be seen. Otherwise, it was the same scene that they had spied on before, but it looked different. Clearer. Almost as if...
"Mara, look!" Isaiah pointed to one of the shimmering loopholes.
The female agent turned to where he was pointing. The noose seemed to be growing dimmer. Gradually, it shrank and wriggled into oblivion. The same thing happened with two, three, four, five of the logic loopholes that had surrounded the fic. It was still rough going, but it was no longer treacherous.
"What happened?" Isaiah wondered, while Mara shook her head.
"I don’t understand," she said. "Nothing’s been edited or changed in any way, with the exception of the title and the name of the ship. But the story seems to make more sense, somehow."
All of a sudden she straightened. "It’s time to portal, Isaiah. I have the feeling that we won’t find our answers here. Let’s go two chapters ahead."
The Sue’s piratical lifestyle was explained with the advent of a flashback involving her abusive father, who apparently was not so respectable behind the scenes as he was ostentatiously. Predictably, it was a tragic past, but at least it explained why her father didn’t much care that his daughter was out pillaging and plundering. She had stolen his ship, which explained how she had gotten access to it.
"Wow," said Isaiah, pleased in spite of himself. "We actually have some exposition. But why did we have to wait until chapter eight to hear all of this?"
"Simple," answered Mara. She held up a piece of paper between her fingers. "It wasn’t part of the storyline before. A memo’s recently come in."
Rebs0825: First I want to say bloody hell!!! Excuse my language, but that was the longest review I’ve ever seen! It must of taken ages! I’m honoured you’d spend your time writing all that. Well after reading through your review and my story again I think you are completely right. I’m not totally giving up and saying that none of it makes sense because it will take on a better form in later chapters (hopefully), but I completely see your point, and respect you a lot for being able to tell me all that without making it sound like a flame too much. If it was meant to be a flame I’m sorry just it sounded more like constructive criticism, which I completely welcome! Anyways, you make a lot of good points, the fact that the treasure would slow down the ship was just something I didn’t think about, which was stupid of me I know, but I am only 13 and writing this fan fiction was only supposed to be a bit of fun. I totally agree I was thoughtless to put that in without thinking about it. I think your points are completely right but I can’t really go back and change the whole of my story, because not only would it muck it up but also I have other reviewers who don’t seem to mind too much that a lot of it isn’t correct. So in later chapters I will try hard to develop your character and especially try hard to put Jack back into character. Also I never actually knew that they didn’t have metres back then, I’ll be sure to make sure I don’t do it again. Thank you a lot for the long review, it took me ages to read and was very interesting in all the points it made. I hope if you have anything else to add that you will review again. Thanks!!! P.S. I know in my last reply to you I said your dad didn’t know that you were a pirate, but I decided to change that a bit in this chapter, mostly because that’s what fitted in.
There was silence.
"Well," said Mara at length. "Didn’t think it would end that way. I wonder if the author will make further changes?"
"Only one way to find out," said Isaiah, who was, against his better nature, feeling a bit regretful that they hadn’t gotten to penalize the Sue yet. He tried his hand at the generator.
Enter the Sue. She was not swaying gracefully, or stomping pompously over the deck of the ship. She was wallowing in depression at the bar. She even admitted that it was implausible that she was the captain of a great ship. Her tragic past went even deeper when her flashbacks started. A couple of moody reminisces later and she was staggering, drunk and disoriented, back to her ship, all the while having much angst.
She tottered in to the room. Immediately, a pistol muzzle was pointed at her.
Isaiah and his partner stared at each other in disbelief.
"Is it possible?" the male agent asked faintly. "She’s reformed?"
"Ello luv," Jack greeted the Sue.
Mara’s smile nearly split her face. "Looks like."
Jack grinned, showing off his gold teeth. It wasn’t the usual friendly smile you were used to. It was a cunning smile, a smile you didn’t like too much.
"That’s better..."
The Sue had fallen in Jack Sparrow’s trap from the very beginning. Anamaria had had her boat stolen by the Sue six months previous, and the female pirate had informed Jack about Sue’s antics. Bill had lured her with a promise of treasure. Mara was of the opinion that Anamaria was a bit too smart to be outwitted by a Sue. Then again, she didn’t have a great record for holding onto her boats.
You looked down guiltily, you hadn’t been keen on Anamaria and you knew full well you hadn’t treated her as well as you should have, in fact you had been totally rude to her.
"Correct."
Jack had bribed crewmembers to sign onto the Sue’s ship and pretend to adore her. The ship was now in Jack’s hands. It turned out that Jack also wanted Anamaria’s trust back, which made sense. Sue then unwisely brought up the subject of the mutiny against Jack.
"Sticks and stones luv, ye don’t seem to understand I’m the one with the gun, therefore you should be licking my boots. You just keep thinking ye can outsmart me luv, you’re stupider than I thought ye were, why do you insist on trying to outsmart me?"
Mara laughed outright at that. "Why, indeed."
Jack ordered that the Sue be taken to the brig. The Sue tried to make the pirates feel guilty for abandoning her, but it didn’t succeed. Funny, that.
‘Please someone help me,’ was all you could think as Gibbs dragged you kicking and screaming from the cabin, Jacks laughter ringing in your ears.
"Yes! Yes! YESSS!" Isaiah pumped his fist up and down in the air. "Why aren’t all Suethors this responsive?"
"It looks like Jack’s getting a bit OOC the other way-he’s being vilified way too much-but he’s cunning! And he had a plan all along, even though he was taken hostage! And he got the better of the Mary-You!"
[Jack Sparrow. Canon. Male. Out of character 21 % and falling. Sealing of Character Rupture in process.]
"It’s too bad we had to do all that PPC work for nothing."
"The PPC doesn’t have an intelligence officer in the PotC fandom," Mara pointed out. "We don’t have the luxury of scouting out fics before the PPCing. The most we can do is offer criticism in the process and deal out mild punishments when the Sue merits leniency."
"And in this case?" Isaiah wondered.
"Ahhhh..." Mara smiled. "In this case, I say we give her a warning-and then leave her alone. What this fic needs is a proofreader and a bit more forethought. It won’t be great literature, but it’s not godawful, not anymore."
Looking at the despondent Sue in the brig, Mara walked methodically towards her. She stopped in front of the "You" crash dummy, got out her clipboard, and nodded at Isaiah, who got his scroll out. Together, they showed her the charge lists.
"We are here to warn you, Sue," she said, "that if you revert back to your canon-killing self beyond this point, you can expect no mercy. You’ve stolen Jack’s ship and deprived him of his crew. You have been a brigand and a hypocrite. However...as you are no longer pretending to be a spotless heroine, and are both repentant and paying in full for your abuse of Captain Sparrow, our orders for assassination are hereby rescinded. In other words, you’re off the hook." She turned up the corners of her lips in what passed for a smile as far as Sues were concerned. "I’ll leave you to Jack’s tender mercies. You’d do well to make him a little less harsh. He’s not a villain, you know."
With that, she tapped the crash dummy on the head, gripped Isaiah by the shoulder and activated the portal generator just as the "You" spirit began to pour back into the story.
"Ow! Mara, not again!"
"Again?"
"The first time we met, you nearly dislocated my shoulder."
"Serves you right, swinging your grapnel hook at me," Mara said irritably.
"It was necessary." Isaiah stopped and faced Mara. "Don’t do that again. All right?"
"There was no danger," said Mara unconvincingly. "Jack was in the cell." Seeing his look, "All right, all right. I’ll rein in my temper. Most of the time." She made a lopsided grin. "Lunch?"
"I had almost forgotten food existed."
The End
Continue to Mission 7
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Araeph’s Addendum: Well, how about that, eh? A Suethor who is willing to listen to constructive criticism. Congratulations to wheres-the-rum-gone-2004 for her acceptance-and even encouragement-of non-adulatory feedback. You have been the DTE’s first non-victim. We salute you.
This PPCing was started before fanfiction.net made it absolutely clear that second person fics were no longer tolerated. Some in the PPC fear that this might be the end of the use of the "You" crash dummy. I for one maintain that since a good third to a fifth of the Pirates of the Caribbean stories were "You" fics, fanfiction.net won’t be able to weed out all of them in one go. If you see one, tell me about. Then report it. The fewer "You" OCs around, the better.
Huehueteotl is often called the Old God. He is the god of fire, and is often seen with a brazier on his head.
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And now, for something a little different: Araeph's just posted a brand-new PotC fic at fanfiction.net. Scheherezade Much Captain Jack and subtle Sue-mocking ensues. Hee hee.
The PotC Sue-Sporking Community, heave_ho is doing quite well. Visit it if you haven't already!
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"...Perhaps there was more [to your saving Danica]. Perhaps Artemis Entreri did not have the heart to let the woman die alone in the darkness."
Entreri shrugged as if it did not matter.
How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims would be surprised?" Jarlaxle asked, pressing the point.
"How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims deserved better than they found?"
--The notorious assassin in Servant of the Shard
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isaiah was roused at precisely eight o’clock by a hand tapping his pillow impatiently.
"Wake up, Agent. You’ve overslept. Again."
"Unh." Isaiah fought his way into a sitting position, frantically rubbing his eyes. "Sue-Jack-Elizabeth dead-Sherlock Homes-"
Another round of taps was directed, rather painfully, at his skull.
"Ouch! Mara!" Fully awake now, Isaiah pushed her hand away and slid out of bed. "What’s so urgent? The console didn’t beep, did it?"
"Nope. I got our next assignment early, from Quen. She decided that we might need a little time to steel our nerves."
Voice still hoarse from sleep, Isaiah croaked, "We must be hardened enough against badfic, doncha think? After Shay Leigh and her horde of Sues, I think I’m ready to take on anything."
"Let’s hope you’re right. This one’s worse than all of the regular Mary Sues put together."
Isaiah shrugged the tension out of his shoulders and made his way to a tiny dresser, where he began the search for a clean uniform. "Not possible."
"It’s a Mary-You."
Isaiah’s hands grasped a shirt rather harder than he had meant to, yanking out the top drawer and nearly upending the dresser. Not heeding the sudden pile of black clothing at his feet, he sped across the room to Mara, eyes wide. "You’re not serious? It’s only our fourth mission!"
Mara looked exasperated. "Haven’t you ever had a glance at the first page of fanfiction.net? Every fifth story is a Jack/You or Will/You fic. I swear they undergo mitosis every fifteen seconds."
"It’s too bad. I kind of liked the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books when I was younger. Yet another childhood memory ruined by Suethors. I’m just glad the Mary Sue inserting herself as the Little Mermaid in a PotC crossover got deleted before we were handed that mission. So, let me guess, the One True Love is Jack?"
"I have no idea. Quen told me it was a Mary-You, that’s all. I haven’t got the nerve to look at it. Grab an energy bar and some Bleeprin-infused coffee, and let’s move."
"I’m still in my nightclothes, in case you hadn’t noticed." Isaiah shot her an irate look. "If it’s a You/Jack fic, we can’t go in by ourselves, anyway-one of us will get Sue’d," he pointed out. "And if it’s me," he added nervously, "I’d get an instant sex change."
"As interesting as that may be to see…" Isaiah gave her a good-natured shove "…I think a trip to the Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology is in order."
"Good. You go to DoSat and I’ll get dressed."
"I’m afraid not. You should know your way around Headquarters better than you do, even if you’re new. As eager as I am to see this through, I’ll wait for you." Mara promptly positioned herself outside the door.
_______________________________________
"Tess?"
Mara brusquely greeted a young woman dressed in Matrix style garb and smiling wanly at the DTE agent. "We’re here to see Agent Techno Dann, if you don’t mind."
Tess nodded. "He’s in the armory, testing phasers. Careful when you go in-there’s still too little power on them, and the beams are having a ricochet effect."
"We’ll be careful," Mara assured her, motioning for Isaiah to follow her down a flight of stairs into DoSAT.
"Gotcha!" came a muffled voice from within. "Much better, much more of an even beam."
Mara pressed the pad on the side of the door and the metal door shifted open.
"Dann?" she called. "We could use your he-"
FLASH!
A beam bounced off a target’s aquiline nose and headed toward the agents. Mara ducked, but not in time. There was the smell of singed hair as she rose, carefully inspecting her locks. She turned around and raised her eyebrows at Isaiah in a silent question.
"It’s not that bad," Isaiah supplied. "You already have black hair, so it’s not as if the damage really stands out."
The agent holding the phaser turned his attention from a titanium target shaped like Marissa Picard and looked their way, puzzled for a moment. Recognition dawned on him as he glanced at their sleeves, which were newly embossed with the official symbol of the Department of Technical Errors, the red pen.
"Well, it’s certainly a surprise seeing you here," Dann remarked, putting his phaser on a rack with several dozen of its kind. "Portal generators working all right? Weapons holding up?"
"We heard that you had developed a cure for You fics," Isaiah blurted out. Eyes darting to Mara, he amended, "At least, I heard it from Mara. Is it some sort of device that we wear, or...?"
"The dummy’s relatively new," Dann stated matter-of-factly, looking in Mara’s direction.
"Hey!" Isaiah called hotly. "I may be a new agent but I’m not--"
Dann blinked and held up a hand. "Not you," he said to Isaiah. "The PPC crash dummy." He inclined his head slightly. "Follow me, please." He led them through a corridor with several storage rooms branching off. "The dummy comes with the name ‘You’ or ‘Me.’ It’s specially designed to channel the Sueish spirit of second and first person Sues to avoid flaming the authors and Sueing the PPC agents. It’s been in high demand, and I think this one’s seams are a bit fragile. Jira and Shmuckleigh couldn’t resist giving the dummy several unnecessary whacks after its timely demise."
He handed them a soft yellow cube with the instructions, "Do not pull cord until in fic."
Isaiah grinned. "I think I’m going to enjoy this."
Two minutes and one portal later, he and Mara were disguised as pirates, and the crash dummy had taken its place at the helm. The agents winced at the name of the story.
I can never think of appropriate titles, sorry
"It’s nice how Suethors take the time to make their readers feel that they’re in capable hands, isn’t it?"
"Oh, yes. It speaks of so much thought and effort put into the story."
The PPC crash dummy began to wander the deck of the ship, savoring its good fortune at having it.
You were what most people would call a pirate, but you didn’t like thinking of yourself like that. Pirates where dirty, they stole from and killed innocent people, and that simply wasn’t you.
"Oh, so you’re a snob, then." Mara tossed her hair, and then gingerly felt over her locks. "All of the other pirates are dirty, but not you. Your kind of piracy is fine-"
"And what an interesting brand of piracy it must be," added Isaiah. "What pirate doesn’t steal from innocent people, at the very least? That’s what a pirate is-a thief on the high seas."
"Maybe she has a special detector that lets her know when people are ‘guilty’ enough to steal from," Isaiah hypothesized sarcastically, while the dummy elaborated on her past. It turned out that up until she was seventeen, she had lived in a "respectable" part of town with a highly regarded family. The "You" persona, now eighteen, had already made herself famous.
"Not only a female pirate captain, but a female pirate captain at eighteen. And a famous one. Kind of young, aren’t you?" Isaiah glared at her.
"I think we’ve established that this Sue thinks that nothing is too good for her."
In fact you where quite proud of what you had achieved.
Isaiah winced at the bad spelling.
"Why does so much Suefic not pay attention to the difference between ‘were’ and ‘where’?" Isaiah made a face. "I’ve done ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’, ‘peehole’ instead of ‘peephole’, and even a few ‘your/you’re’ mix-ups, to my everlasting shame. But I never once made that error, and this is the third Suefic I’ve come across so far that has it. Not to mention that this is the second time the Suethor’s made that mistake."
"You wrote ‘peehole’ instead of ‘peephole’? When was this?"
"I’d rather not elaborate."
"Fair enough. Oh, well done, Sue, super-size that ego!" The dummy inflated slightly as "Your" ship was deemed secondary only to the Black Pearl.
Isaiah eyed it nervously. "Hope it won’t pop."
"Greater than the Dauntless?" Mara looked skeptically at the crash dummy. "Yeah, right. Sue, here’s a little nautical lesson for you. Most pirate ships were relatively small-only the very successful pirates had large ships. I doubt that you, coming from a ‘respectable’ family and not having had anything to do with piracy until last year, would be able to come into possession of such a vessel. And even then, how would you retain it, not having had any real world experience?"
You also had a loyal, strong crew who would walk to the ends of the earth for you. You also had a hold full of treasure that your father left you when you died, so all in all you saw no reason to hurt innocent people just out of greed.
"Whoa, whoa. Stop." Isaiah put his hand to his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "Aside from the complete and utter Sue-ishness of having a crew who would go to the ends of the earth for you-when Jack’s crew didn’t, may I remind you-how could your father leave you a hold full of treasure? You just said that you came from a respectable family in a respectable town! Why did your father possess a hold full of treasure, and why would he give it to you at all if he, the respectable man that he was, knew you were breaking the law?"
"Maybe he didn’t know."
"So, what, did she just ask him for a hold full of treasure for no reason? As well-to-do as she was, she’d have had no cause to leave on her own, and no gentleman would ever let his young daughter go anywhere unescorted. Also, her father must be exceedingly rich. Even a monarch would be hard-pressed to bestow that sort of parting present on a daughter of his."
Around them, several nooses wriggled into existence, growing like vines in the air around the agents and hanging perfectly still. The space in between them shimmered, letting Mara and Isaiah know that plotholes lurked just beyond.
"Careful not to touch them, or you’ll become extremely disoriented," Mara warned, ushering Isaiah away from the closest one. "Those are logic loopholes. Extremely hazardous to stories, readers, and PPC agents."
"How wonderful that these fall under our jurisdiction," Isaiah remarked grimly. "If it weren’t for these, I’d say we could hand over this fic to the Department of Mary Sues. The grammar isn’t bad for Suefic. This ‘You’, however, smells to high heaven. Aw, how sweet. She’s temperamental, but not around her crew."
"Mm. Apparently she only dislikes other pirate captains-oh, and how lovely. Isaiah," Mara said sweetly, "do you know why she hates them? It’s because, and I quote, ‘They all seemed to think that they were above everybody else.’"
Isaiah made a strangled noise. "As opposed to her, a pirate captain who looks down on all other pirates except her beloved crew and thinks they’re dirty because they have to steal to make a living and she doesn’t because she was lucky enough to inherit treasure. Get out of my sight, wench." He narrowed his eyes at the You Sue.
The deck beneath them groaned as a tense shift hit. Then it was back to more of the reasons why everyone loved the Mary Sue. According to her, the crew loved her because of the equal shares they received at her hands.
"Pirate ships were very democratic! ALL pirate captains would have to make sure their crew got a fair share of rations, Miss Holier-Than-Thou. Do a little research, why don’t you?" Mara, of course.
"But research takes work!" Isaiah mimicked.
Mara’s lip curled. "Not an excuse. The information on that is available on the second disc of the PotC DVD."
People usually considered you a pirate because your business was in commandeering ships. Not that you ever actually stole what you had taken.
Mara and Isaiah looked at each other, baffled.
"Not...that...she…ever…stole…my head hurts."
"So she randomly goes around stealing ships and then returning them? I…I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Besides, that’s still stealing," Mara insisted.
The crew docked in Tortuga, and the PPC dummy handed her first mate, Bill, the telescope in order to scout out a huge black ship.
"The telescope?"
The spyglass that the Sue should have been holding changed into a beautiful red telescope-not one of Hubble capacity, but one that an amateur might use.
"The tripod is a nice touch," Isaiah commented.
"I agree."
You watched Bill face change from being confused, to realisation dawning on him.
Bill lowered his gaze, and whispered, "The Black Pearl."
"Here’s where it gets messy. She makes a ruse with Bill." Mara clenched her pen hand until her knuckles turned white-no small feat for the olive-skinned agent. Bill and the Sue waited, Sue remarking on Jack’s foolish act of leaving only one guard aboard the Pearl. The rest of the pirates had left to "do other pirate things."
"Making Jack Sparrow careless and overconfident, especially after his ship’s already been wrested from him once. Causing his crew to ‘do other pirate things’, whatever the heck that means," Mara charged her. Bill then pretended to be the overbearing captain of a ship, dragging the Sue by her hair because she was supposedly a wayward crewmember.
"Attaboy, Bill," praised Isaiah. "Now, bash her head in with one of the barstools."
Mara frowned at the Words. "From what I can make out, she’s pretending to be the one guarding her ship per the order of her tyrannical captain. That way, pirates will attempt to take her ship, at which point they find the tables turned on them. Um...yeah. Why would seasoned pirates fall for that? Especially the way it’s carried out!" She gestured to the scene.
"LOOK, I ALREADY TOLD YOU, GO WATCH ME SHIP, THE BOYS ARE IN NEED OF A DAY OFF!" screamed Bill.
You started sobbing, Tim could hardly contain his laughter.
"B...But, Bill, I...I don’t like watching it on my own."
"JUST GO YOU STUPID WENCH, IF MY SHIP IS TAKEN BECAUSE YOU WERE WASTING YOUR TIME IN HERE I SWEAR I’LL FLOG YOU!"
Isaiah shrugged his shoulders. "I’m just trying to figure out how that trick worked fifteen times in the same bar. She says that Tim the barkeep has seen her work that ruse at least that number of times. Surely, someone would have noticed a pattern by-ack!" He made a choking sound and Mara pulled him back just in time to save him from suffocation by the lethal loophole. The Sue left Bill in the bar and went off on her own, as Jack watched from the corner.
Mara rolled her eyes. "Mary Sue, hatcher of the The Most Painfully Obvious Plot that Ever Existed. As if the real Captain Jack would have fallen for that in a million years, tipsy or not. Yeesh!"
For the record, Isaiah took CJS’s character reading.
[Captain Jack Sparrow. Out of Character 35.4%]
"And rising, I’ll bet," he said.
You waited back at your ship for around 15 minutes before Jack arrived.
"If this ruse is so good that it’s worked fifteen times on other pirates, why aren’t twenty other buccaneers making for the ship? Why is it just J-ACK!"
"Steady on, Isaiah. You forget to look above you when the loopholes materialize."
Isaiah rubbed his throat and eyed the Sue resentfully.
He approached you with his usual drunken swagger, and you couldn’t help noticing he was kind of, well, hot. No, you couldn’t think like that, he was a bigheaded pirate, just like the rest of them.
"And you don’t have a swelled head at all, you eighteen-year-old, thieving yet pontificating, super-cunning, universally beloved pirate captain and owner of a ship second only to the Pearl."
"Being a hypocrite and obnoxiously self-righteous," Mara jotted down, drawing from deep reserves of self-restraint to keep from wringing the Sue’s neck then and there.
Jack and Mary Sue made a deal, whereupon Jack would take the Sue along on his ship if the Sue let him take her ship.
"And..." Isaiah glanced warily above him "...why, instead of asking, wouldn’t he just toss her into the harbor and take the ship right then? I’m sure he could beat her."
"I doubt the real Jack would have stolen that ship, anyway. He already has the Pearl. But, this being a Suefic, make an absurd deal with an annoying wench it is. That and her causing Jack to say, ‘O’coarse.’"
"Will you give me anything else." You asked seductively.
Jack grinned and said huskily, "I could give you one hell of a night."
"Oh, no." Mara scrunched up her face. Jack was easily led on because the Sue, of course, was beautiful and had a comely figure. Jack started kissing the Sue fiercely as soon as she was inside the captain’s cabin.
It was quite interesting, seeing a make-out scene between Captain Jack Sparrow and a PPC crash dummy. The captain was obviously enjoying himself, crushing the dummy against him. Dann hadn’t been lying about the dummy not being durable; some of the foam began to pop out of the seams as Jack held her tightly. It was at least better than the last bedroom scene they had witnessed, which involved Elladan, Evelyn, and an ant.
Jack got "caught up in the moment," while the You-Sue lay on top of him, grabbed his weapons, and cocked her own pistol. Then she stood a couple of metres away from the bed.
"And here I thought it would be feet or yards, seeing as how you’re from an English colony and the metric system hasn’t been invented yet," Mara sneered. Her mocking expression changed to one of fury as Jack, instead of retaking his weapons, became confused, and remained confused even when several crewmembers came to "Your" call.
"I am not a stupid hormonal girl who betrays Jack...I am not a stupid hormonal girl who betrays Jack..." Isaiah intoned.
A few of "Your" crewmembers surrounded Jack, while the rest looked on, as they wouldn’t have "fitted" in the cabin. The You-Sue smiled cockily at him and Bewildered!Jack stared up at her. "You" informed the captain that this was "your" ship.
Jack looked even more confused. "Your ship?"
"Aye," was all you said before a few members of the crew carried Jack down to the brig.
"Charge-her-get…I can’t…so angry…" Mara was scrabbling at the walls, trying to find something to squeeze the life out of. Isaiah wrote down the charges almost as quickly as they arrived in the story. Then he took another reading on the captain.
[Captain Jack Sparrow. Out of character 78%]
The Sue ordered Bill to dispose of the guard and take the Pearl, while the rest of her crew prepared to sail.
"I actually got her, I got the Black Pearl." You said to yourself at the helm.
"Not for long, you pestilence." Mara’s voice was deadly calm.
"Mara…how are we going to get the ship back? All of her crew’s on there." Isaiah fiddled with his grapnel hook, wondering if he should have poisoned the barbs for this one.
Mara bit her lip. "Let’s go round up Jack’s old cronies," she said. "They’re off ‘doing pirate things’; the Mary-You has probably forgotten about them."
"Mm, not yet," Isaiah objected. He lowered his voice. "We wait for the-"
Mara glared at him.
"Oh, right, uh...we contact the canon characters at the proper time, after we’ve racked up all the charges?" he offered.
She nodded curtly.
Chapter Three opened with the Sue mentally backtracking across maps spread out on her desk. A random bit character named Ken knocked on the door.
"How’d she know it was Ken?" Isaiah wondered. "She couldn’t see him from outside the door."
"That’s the problem with second person narrative," Mara sighed. "It takes a very skilled writer to pull it off." She eyed the smug look on Ken’s face with no small amount of dislike.
"Captain, Sparrow started making a fuss when we told him that we had the Pearl."
Mara clutched her pistol. "I’ll kill them. I’ll kill-"
You had only just instructed Ken to inform Jack of this, and it was 2 weeks since you left Tortuga.
"But-the-what? WHAT?!" Isaiah was nearly apoplectic. "He didn’t figure out what had happened to his ship?"
"And he made a fuss?" Mara clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "I imagine he’d be very, dangerously quiet when you gave him that news. And saying that he’s to be called Captain Sparrow is not enough to save you, Sue."
"Aye aye Captain."
"Leaving out commas," Isaiah wrote down with gusto. "You" strode down toward a cell filled with Jacks-the result of a missing apostrophe-and saw the Captain Jacks, counting aloud.
Jack growled when he saw you; obviously he didn’t take kindly to being looked in a brig for two weeks.
"Making Jack growl." Mara growled herself as she wrote down the charge. "Captain Sparrow does not fly into rages or act like a brute."
"Now, now Captain, it’s not that bad on me fine vessel now is it? I seem to remember a couple of weeks ago that you wanted to be abroad."
"Using abroad instead of aboard..."
Isaiah gasped in horror as the Words appeared. Jack shouted that he had had no rum, and that he had lived on water for two weeks.
"LIVING ON WATER?" Mara yelled.
"FOR TWO WEEKS?" Isaiah exclaimed. "Bloody…she’s starved him!"
Presumably, the Suethor had meant that the only beverage that the captain had been able to drink was water, but the phrase "living on water for 2 weeks" caused Captain Jack to become emaciated and hollow-cheeked.
The "You"-Sue told off Ken harshly, probably trying to ingratiate herself with the captain ["Even though she’s just stolen his bloody ship!" Mara pointed out angrily], and took away Ken’s rum privileges for four weeks.
Ken looked extremely nervous, and Jack had momentarily forgotten his ship to watch you.
"HE MOMENTARILY WHAT?!"
Mara’s voice boomed across the brig. Ken and the Sue stopped talking. The agent didn’t care; she shoved aside a dangling noose and flew at the Sue in a tackle, beaning her on the head with her bag at the same time.
"You...made...Captain...Sparrow...forget...about...his...ship...you...pathetic..." The crash dummy made choking noises as Mara throttled her. Ken flew to the Sue’s rescue, his sword in his hand. Isaiah, who hadn’t made himself noticed, twirled his grapnel hook and caught Ken’s weapon hand, sending him forward to the floor. He wrapped his pirate headscarf around his hand, grabbed the sizzlingly hot Canon Analysis Device, and hit Ken with it. His grapnel snaked over Mara’s shoulder and forced her to loosen her chokehold on the Sue. Since Ken was supposed to get shoved into the brig at this time anyway, Isaiah dragged the unconscious bit back a little, grabbed Mara’s other shoulder, and said, "Get him out. Now. NOW!"
Mara’s fury subsided, and she dragged Ken into the next cell by the boots. The dummy recovered from her shock and rushed at Isaiah. He stood still until the last instant, then immediately swerved to the right.
The Sue plunged headfirst into her own loophole.
Isaiah’s hook was at work again before she had slipped all the way through. He didn’t fancy collecting her at this time; they hadn’t gotten all of the charges yet. When she reappeared, blinking, it was obvious that she had no recollection of what had just transpired. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to do her any damage, either, so getting rid of her that way later on was out of the question. A minute later, Isaiah and Mara were again invisible pirates, Ken reeling against the cell doors as the PPC agents sighted their prey over a large storage barrel at the end of the row of cells. The Sue, to show that she was a good-hearted snobbish ship-thief, unlocked Sparrow and put Ken inside.
What are you doing luv? Why ain’t I still in the brig."
"I’ve a better question." Mara narrowed her eyes at the Sue. "Why hasn’t the good captain caught you, pinned you to the bulkhead, taken your weapons and held you hostage to negotiate the return of his ship? You’ve only been a pirate for a year; he’s been a swashbuckler for a good part of his life. Even if he’s starving, I bet he could make you pay for taking the Pearl."
Isaiah looked worriedly at the group of nooses that had formed since they had started PPCing. "Maybe we should stop pointing out problems with the story for a while-at least until the Sue is gone," he said. "Much more of this, and we’ll get ourselves hanged before we can get rid of her."
"It’s not our fault that the plot is about as tightly woven as old cheesecloth," Mara countered. "The loopholes were here all the time. We just brought them out of hiding. Don’t you know, Isaiah? In mediocre or sub-par stories, a perceptive audience is always at a disadvantage. A good writer will leave allusions and subtle humor for the more astute readers; a bad or careless one will leave an audience unable to fully enter the world the writer has created, held back by little things like logic and common sense."
Jack sat on the bed happily guzzling rum, while you carried on studying your maps.
"Causing Jack to guzzle rum on an empty stomach-after two weeks, no less."
It was well into the night when you finally decided to go to sleep; you got up, locked the door then sat in your chair, tilting your hat over your eyes.
"I love how this Sue is so original."
"Hey, Sues have been bad and trite before, but at least they haven’t tried to take his ship. His SHIP, DAMN IT!"
Isaiah took a step backwards. "You aren’t going to go berserk on me, are you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her. She shook her head emphatically.
"Nope. I’m being enraged now so that I don’t lose my sanity later."
"That makes sense...I guess."
Jack wanted to know why the Sue was sleeping in a chair. She replied that he was taking her bed, so there was no place for her to sleep. The captain suggested a solution: they could both sleep in the bed.
"There’s ‘O’coarse’ again. Oh, well. I can’t see how she could possibly agree-she’s his enemy!"
"Promise you won’t try anything?"
"Aye."
Sighing you proceeded to climb into the bed after taking off your boots.
Mara heaved a much deeper sigh and began to write. "Being stupid enough to take the word of a pirate captain whom you’ve locked in the brig and deprived of food for two weeks. As soon as you were asleep, any buccaneer worth his salt would kill you and try to escape or capture you and parley his way off the ship."
Lady Contrivance appeared beside the bed, her knees bending backwards at she looked at Jack and the Sue.
"She always appears when Jack and the Sue share a bed for no good reason," Mara explained.
"So...that would be every other PotC fanfic, then?"
The Sue and Jack fell asleep, Jack telling the Sue not to call him captain. Isaiah and Mara both clenched their weapons.
There was no space to tell where the story left off and where the author’s note began. Consequently, the author’s note got jammed in with the fanfic.
AN: Well that’s it, review and tell me what you think!
Mara opened her mouth, but Isaiah shook his head.
"You know the PPC doesn’t approve of flaming."
"I won’t flame," Mara promised him. "I’ll give concrit, as we always do, and see what the author says. Anything of note in the beginning of the next chapter, Isaiah?"
The male agent snorted. "Look at this hideous author’s note."
"As hideous as that of Irish Pride?"
"Not as vulgar, but sillier."
AN: Hello again, I’m sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up, but with the new story I’ve been writing with my friend Sebrina we didn’t realise you can’t put author’s notes separate to chapters, so I couldn’t post any chapters until Sunday, which totally sucks, since I’ve been busy all day Sunday, what with having to go see Secret Window again, getting a new pencil case for my exams, and then going back to the cinema to see Van Helsing, so unless I got up pretty early I wouldn’t be able to post this until Monday, and in the evening as well because of stupid school, god life sucks sometimes.
"We’re here for a pirate story, not a Suethor diary entry. Get on with it," Mara upbraided.
The Sue and Jack were getting to know each other, the Sue praising him about the fact that he had behaved himself more than the other captains she had kidnapped. Jack was in character enough to display constant anxiety over the Pearl, and tried to get the Sue drunk on one occasion. The agents winced at the comma splice.
, little did he know you had filled your bottles with water, since you knew all the tricks in the book.
"Knowing all the tricks in the book after a single year of piracy," Isaiah charged.
You were glad you had replaced your rum with water, because this little non-fact made Jacks respect for you grow.
"A non-fact?" Isaiah laughed.
Meanwhile, the missing apostrophe, wreaking havoc as always, caused half a dozen Captain Jacks to appear, all with sickening expressions of respect on their faces.
"Ewwww. It’s bad enough seeing him like that once!" Mara gritted her teeth but didn’t cover her eyes. Instead, she nearly burned a hole through her clipboard adding charges to the list.
The stupid Sue then allowed the captain to wander about the ship freely. The captain, after two weeks of being stuck on board the Sue’s ship, had given up on getting the Pearl back, despite the fact that he had not given up on her for the ten years that she had been in Barbossa’s hands. The CAD gave out a garbled reading before shorting out and going cold. Isaiah wondered idly if he should just toss it overboard, now that the captain was wandering on deck. He thought better of it; it might be counted as cultural contamination.
You were now at least 4 weeks away from Tortuga, and it was with a heavy heart that you watched your crew setting up the Pearl and transporting their things back onto the (think of ship name soon).
The agents’ expressions went from murderous rage to incredulous laughter as they looked over the side of the ship. The title "(Think Of Ship Name Soon)", parentheses included, was painted onto the hull of the Sue’s ship in prominent block lettering.
"I tell you, this fic sets a new low in terms of lack of preparation and forethought. Ugh!"
Jack was confused, yet again. He was angry at the Sue’s crew for leaving the Pearl, thinking that they were simply going to abandon her.
"Because all pirates go through the trouble of taking ships and then just leave them randomly floating in the ocean." Mara shook her head.
"Don’t be stupid Jack, were merely giving the Pearl back to you."
"Stupid Jack" wandered sillily over in the agents’ direction. There came the sound of teeth grinding.
"Liberal abuse of the Common Comma," Mara wrote. The Sue then explained that she was letting him have the Pearl back because her business was not to commandeer ships and keep them. Rather, she went around teaching captains that they weren’t any better than anyone else and inconveniencing them. Then she told Jack that he could sail the Pearl back to Tortuga all by himself, which was, as Jack had mentioned in the movie in regards to the much smaller Interceptor, impossible.
There was silence while the agents digested this.
Mara, predictably, was the first to explode. "She takes ships to teach pirates a lesson? Who the Huehueteotl would sail under her colors? What twisted deity gave her the right to play Supreme Goddess of the Caribbean?" She spat on the deck of the (Think of Ship Name Soon). "I’ve seen enough. Portal?"
"Aye." Isaiah grabbed his grapnel hook. "Let’s go."
They opened a portal to Tortuga and the Faithful Bride. They found Gibbs immediately, wandering around the bar, looking like he knew he was supposed to be somewhere else but wasn’t sure where. It took a little more time to find Anamaria; she apparently had more resilience to the uncanon spell, and had spent her time trying to round up a hopelessly OOC canon crew. She had gotten about half of them back in their right minds, according to the conversation Isaiah heard while snooping down a side street. He had jogged ahead, making sure not to bump into any Tortugans, and appeared in front of her as she and three crewmembers turned the corner.
"Excuse me, ma’am," Isaiah said, not knowing quite what else to say.
Anamaria fixed him with a glare. Apparently, she had not had a good day. "Out of my way. I have business with these men."
"I know where Captain Jack is," Isaiah said at once.
For a moment, Anamaria stared at him. Then she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.
"Where?" she demanded. Isaiah gulped.
"On the ship of an annoying lady pirate, who took the Pearl with her," he answered. Then his heart rate shot up as he remembered that the "You" Sue had neither a proper name nor a proper title for her ship.
Seeing Anamaria and Co. looking unconvinced and slightly irritated by his interruption, Isaiah hurriedly said, "She claims that she owns a ship second only to the Pearl! Her crew randomly goes around the Caribbean without stealing or killing anyone!"
Understanding dawned on Anamaria’s face. "That wench?" she said in disbelief. "That arrogant slattern’s not a day over eighteen."
"Seems to think she’s outwitted the captain and his crew," Isaiah said. "Gibbs is waiting for you in the Faithful Bride," he said helpfully. "Oh, and we know that she’s going to make him sail to Tortuga by himself."
Anamaria let loose a series of swears.
"Fortunately," Isaiah finished, "my partner and I can get you there in the blink of an eye."
He held up his portal generator. "If you’d let us accompany you and get rid of her."
She looked at him suspiciously. Suddenly she snatched the generator from his hand and examined it. After a few moments, she handed it back to Isaiah. "I’ll talk to Gibbs."
Isaiah met up with Mara, who was making a similar deal with Gibbs. As soon as she spotted him, accompanied by Anamaria and two other crewmen, Isaiah gave her the thumbs up.
"This might actually turn out all right," Mara grinned. "Now we just have to-"
All of a sudden, the universe gave a terrific lurch. The story began to shake tremendously.
When the tremors ceased, the agents looked around them. Gibbs was in the same place as he had been when Mara encountered him and Anamaria was nowhere to be seen. Otherwise, it was the same scene that they had spied on before, but it looked different. Clearer. Almost as if...
"Mara, look!" Isaiah pointed to one of the shimmering loopholes.
The female agent turned to where he was pointing. The noose seemed to be growing dimmer. Gradually, it shrank and wriggled into oblivion. The same thing happened with two, three, four, five of the logic loopholes that had surrounded the fic. It was still rough going, but it was no longer treacherous.
"What happened?" Isaiah wondered, while Mara shook her head.
"I don’t understand," she said. "Nothing’s been edited or changed in any way, with the exception of the title and the name of the ship. But the story seems to make more sense, somehow."
All of a sudden she straightened. "It’s time to portal, Isaiah. I have the feeling that we won’t find our answers here. Let’s go two chapters ahead."
The Sue’s piratical lifestyle was explained with the advent of a flashback involving her abusive father, who apparently was not so respectable behind the scenes as he was ostentatiously. Predictably, it was a tragic past, but at least it explained why her father didn’t much care that his daughter was out pillaging and plundering. She had stolen his ship, which explained how she had gotten access to it.
"Wow," said Isaiah, pleased in spite of himself. "We actually have some exposition. But why did we have to wait until chapter eight to hear all of this?"
"Simple," answered Mara. She held up a piece of paper between her fingers. "It wasn’t part of the storyline before. A memo’s recently come in."
Rebs0825: First I want to say bloody hell!!! Excuse my language, but that was the longest review I’ve ever seen! It must of taken ages! I’m honoured you’d spend your time writing all that. Well after reading through your review and my story again I think you are completely right. I’m not totally giving up and saying that none of it makes sense because it will take on a better form in later chapters (hopefully), but I completely see your point, and respect you a lot for being able to tell me all that without making it sound like a flame too much. If it was meant to be a flame I’m sorry just it sounded more like constructive criticism, which I completely welcome! Anyways, you make a lot of good points, the fact that the treasure would slow down the ship was just something I didn’t think about, which was stupid of me I know, but I am only 13 and writing this fan fiction was only supposed to be a bit of fun. I totally agree I was thoughtless to put that in without thinking about it. I think your points are completely right but I can’t really go back and change the whole of my story, because not only would it muck it up but also I have other reviewers who don’t seem to mind too much that a lot of it isn’t correct. So in later chapters I will try hard to develop your character and especially try hard to put Jack back into character. Also I never actually knew that they didn’t have metres back then, I’ll be sure to make sure I don’t do it again. Thank you a lot for the long review, it took me ages to read and was very interesting in all the points it made. I hope if you have anything else to add that you will review again. Thanks!!! P.S. I know in my last reply to you I said your dad didn’t know that you were a pirate, but I decided to change that a bit in this chapter, mostly because that’s what fitted in.
There was silence.
"Well," said Mara at length. "Didn’t think it would end that way. I wonder if the author will make further changes?"
"Only one way to find out," said Isaiah, who was, against his better nature, feeling a bit regretful that they hadn’t gotten to penalize the Sue yet. He tried his hand at the generator.
Enter the Sue. She was not swaying gracefully, or stomping pompously over the deck of the ship. She was wallowing in depression at the bar. She even admitted that it was implausible that she was the captain of a great ship. Her tragic past went even deeper when her flashbacks started. A couple of moody reminisces later and she was staggering, drunk and disoriented, back to her ship, all the while having much angst.
She tottered in to the room. Immediately, a pistol muzzle was pointed at her.
Isaiah and his partner stared at each other in disbelief.
"Is it possible?" the male agent asked faintly. "She’s reformed?"
"Ello luv," Jack greeted the Sue.
Mara’s smile nearly split her face. "Looks like."
Jack grinned, showing off his gold teeth. It wasn’t the usual friendly smile you were used to. It was a cunning smile, a smile you didn’t like too much.
"That’s better..."
The Sue had fallen in Jack Sparrow’s trap from the very beginning. Anamaria had had her boat stolen by the Sue six months previous, and the female pirate had informed Jack about Sue’s antics. Bill had lured her with a promise of treasure. Mara was of the opinion that Anamaria was a bit too smart to be outwitted by a Sue. Then again, she didn’t have a great record for holding onto her boats.
You looked down guiltily, you hadn’t been keen on Anamaria and you knew full well you hadn’t treated her as well as you should have, in fact you had been totally rude to her.
"Correct."
Jack had bribed crewmembers to sign onto the Sue’s ship and pretend to adore her. The ship was now in Jack’s hands. It turned out that Jack also wanted Anamaria’s trust back, which made sense. Sue then unwisely brought up the subject of the mutiny against Jack.
"Sticks and stones luv, ye don’t seem to understand I’m the one with the gun, therefore you should be licking my boots. You just keep thinking ye can outsmart me luv, you’re stupider than I thought ye were, why do you insist on trying to outsmart me?"
Mara laughed outright at that. "Why, indeed."
Jack ordered that the Sue be taken to the brig. The Sue tried to make the pirates feel guilty for abandoning her, but it didn’t succeed. Funny, that.
‘Please someone help me,’ was all you could think as Gibbs dragged you kicking and screaming from the cabin, Jacks laughter ringing in your ears.
"Yes! Yes! YESSS!" Isaiah pumped his fist up and down in the air. "Why aren’t all Suethors this responsive?"
"It looks like Jack’s getting a bit OOC the other way-he’s being vilified way too much-but he’s cunning! And he had a plan all along, even though he was taken hostage! And he got the better of the Mary-You!"
[Jack Sparrow. Canon. Male. Out of character 21 % and falling. Sealing of Character Rupture in process.]
"It’s too bad we had to do all that PPC work for nothing."
"The PPC doesn’t have an intelligence officer in the PotC fandom," Mara pointed out. "We don’t have the luxury of scouting out fics before the PPCing. The most we can do is offer criticism in the process and deal out mild punishments when the Sue merits leniency."
"And in this case?" Isaiah wondered.
"Ahhhh..." Mara smiled. "In this case, I say we give her a warning-and then leave her alone. What this fic needs is a proofreader and a bit more forethought. It won’t be great literature, but it’s not godawful, not anymore."
Looking at the despondent Sue in the brig, Mara walked methodically towards her. She stopped in front of the "You" crash dummy, got out her clipboard, and nodded at Isaiah, who got his scroll out. Together, they showed her the charge lists.
"We are here to warn you, Sue," she said, "that if you revert back to your canon-killing self beyond this point, you can expect no mercy. You’ve stolen Jack’s ship and deprived him of his crew. You have been a brigand and a hypocrite. However...as you are no longer pretending to be a spotless heroine, and are both repentant and paying in full for your abuse of Captain Sparrow, our orders for assassination are hereby rescinded. In other words, you’re off the hook." She turned up the corners of her lips in what passed for a smile as far as Sues were concerned. "I’ll leave you to Jack’s tender mercies. You’d do well to make him a little less harsh. He’s not a villain, you know."
With that, she tapped the crash dummy on the head, gripped Isaiah by the shoulder and activated the portal generator just as the "You" spirit began to pour back into the story.
"Ow! Mara, not again!"
"Again?"
"The first time we met, you nearly dislocated my shoulder."
"Serves you right, swinging your grapnel hook at me," Mara said irritably.
"It was necessary." Isaiah stopped and faced Mara. "Don’t do that again. All right?"
"There was no danger," said Mara unconvincingly. "Jack was in the cell." Seeing his look, "All right, all right. I’ll rein in my temper. Most of the time." She made a lopsided grin. "Lunch?"
"I had almost forgotten food existed."
The End
Continue to Mission 7
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Araeph’s Addendum: Well, how about that, eh? A Suethor who is willing to listen to constructive criticism. Congratulations to wheres-the-rum-gone-2004 for her acceptance-and even encouragement-of non-adulatory feedback. You have been the DTE’s first non-victim. We salute you.
This PPCing was started before fanfiction.net made it absolutely clear that second person fics were no longer tolerated. Some in the PPC fear that this might be the end of the use of the "You" crash dummy. I for one maintain that since a good third to a fifth of the Pirates of the Caribbean stories were "You" fics, fanfiction.net won’t be able to weed out all of them in one go. If you see one, tell me about. Then report it. The fewer "You" OCs around, the better.
Huehueteotl is often called the Old God. He is the god of fire, and is often seen with a brazier on his head.
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And now, for something a little different: Araeph's just posted a brand-new PotC fic at fanfiction.net. Scheherezade Much Captain Jack and subtle Sue-mocking ensues. Hee hee.