Mary-Sue and the Bombastic Booty

And so, with the sound of approximately four-score and seven hits, Part I has concluded with the sound of MSBB readers all 'round the globe getting sick in front of their computers.

Chapter 6!

TIME: 1/11/2002
PLACE: The Windy City...

mdunham2 scratches his head.
He is sitting in a cubicle on the forth floor of the Campus Development offices of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown Chicago, 259 E. Erie St., at which he is a temp worker.

'How can I let the readers know,' our young hero wonders, 'how this story was written, and why it's so weird?'

It is a grave problem, and one he has been considering for many days. Ever since he started work on Mary-Sue and the Bombastic Booty, a central question was how to communicate the tight rigor of a plot with so many requirements.

Requirements such as fulfilling, in the story, each and every Harry Potter Fan-Fiction pet peeve on the Sugarquill thread http://pub40.ezboard.com/fsugarquillfrm4.showMessage?topicID=675.topic...

Or creating a Mary-Sue who would be guilty on every point on the Harry Potter Mary Sue litmus test posted at www.theninemuses.net/hp/work/marysue.html...

How about finding a ship for all of the characters listed on the Fiction Alley Park T-Shirt advertised on http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/store.aspx?storeid=fictionalley?

And last but not least, keeping his own promise made on the OBHWF post http://fictionalley.sectorlink.org/fictionalleypark/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=1801&perpage=40&pagenumber=1...

"Will anyone realize the beautiful yet strict intricacy of my magnum opus?" mdunham asks aloud, pompously, which is not to say unpretentiously, scratching his clouded yet arrogant, would-be-famous-neo-avant-garde-author's head.
"Nope," he concludes.

'Hmmm...' he thinks, bending over the screen.
The new chapter doesn't seem to be progressing too quickly.
'I need to stall,' he thinks. 'Buy myself some time...'

Awkward silence.

Sweating angst thick enough to stain the carpet, our hero cries out:
"Will it never be finished? Will I never be free?"

He realizes he must consult his MSBB spreadsheet... looking over the list of pet peeves for the six-hundred-and-sixty-second time he sees several he is completely unable to fulfill.

For example... "Author note insertion." How is he going to do that?

A/N: How am I going to do that?

Or... "Author cameos, friends, etc."

A/N: How am I going to do that?

Suddenly, the streets fill with noise as a giant helicopter, which has just made a roundabout trip from Great Britain, to Texas, to Slovakia, and back over to Chicago, lands on the roof of the hospital.

Silence.

Silence.

Awkward silence.

'Ding!' says the elevator, and clamors and yells gush into the halls, spilling into the cubicle where mdunham2 is not working. It's quite a crowd!

All of mdunham2's Harry Potter fanfic friends are there: jepetta (his henpecked girlfriend), Helen Vader, roccrose, RonRox, Lady Rhianna, Arabella, P.J. Babington, Neppi Weasley, Calypso8604, Ennia, MiowMiow, PhoenixAtlantis, delcj, and White Dormouse.

So are all the people who've reviewed the first five chapters of MSBB, or heck, who've reviewed mdunham2 at all: Eliza Snape, iscripticus, aylapascal, Lady Lupin, Magikos Grl, Oi, RJ Anderson, and magickrissy.

There are probably some other people too (it's a really really really big group), and they all squeeze into mdunham2's cubicle (Elizabeth, who just got back from a meeting across the hall says "eep!" with surprise, before deciding to join the throng).

RonRox plugs in a colorwheel, MiowMiow the strobe, Neppi the black light, and Ennia distributes peaches.

That's because they're Hufflepuffs.

"Let's party!" cries roccrose, pointing to her five boyfriends, and on cue everyone starts dancing.
There is music. Beautiful music, and it's being sung by none other than Alan Rickman!!!
Calypso8604 and Lady Rhianna scream in delight (crazy Slytherins) and the floor begins to shake under the percussive pressure of a hundred stomping feet.

Jepetta, however, looks annoyed, and she slips over to the corner from whence the mdunham2, the writer-God, surveys the chaos.
"Why," she asks, perturbed, "didn't you let me beta-read this?"
"Because," he answers, smugly, "you'd never let me submit it."
"Besides," he adds, "when are you going to submit that Draco slash you wrote?"
"Great," she sighs. "Now they all know."

The song is over, Alan bows his way out of the room, though half of the girls chase him down the hall to the elevator.

"What now?" asks RonRox.

The phone rings.

Everyone is quiet... in curious... in penitential awe.

mdunham2 picks up the phone.

"Who is it?" squeaks Neppi.

"It's J.K.R." says mdunham2. "Mmmm... mmmm... Okay. Bye."

He hangs up the phone, sits down at the computer, and resumes typing.

"Welllll?" asks roccrose.

"Oh. She just said she's going to have Justin Finch-Fletchley rule the world after all. But now if you don't mind, I have to write chapter seven. I think I'll get back to the plot this time..."