FanFiction Can Burn Part 1: The Lord of the Mood Rings

Is anyone cool is junior high? We weren’t. We really weren’t. We’d just discovered the genius of such parody specialists as Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and Cleolinda Jones. We were also entirely obsessed with the Lord of the Rings. Consequently, and almost inevitably, one laaaate night, Beatrice and V concocted the idea to create a Lord of the Rings spoof, and in one evening, the characters were born and given what were assumed to be very clever spoof-like names. The title? The Lord of the Mood Rings. Clever.

It wasn’t long before Portia was informed, and, after another evening of highly caffeinated antics, we decided to write the story. At first, it was written in script form, which may or may not be in existence by this point. After the fact, we converted it into a fan fiction story and, though it causes us to cringe now, we did post it online for the geeky masses. Believe it or not, the reviews were pretty favorable, if few.

Now, we present the story to you in two forms: a collection of unfortunate quotes harvested from the still-viewable, still cringe-worthy, and still highly embarrassing fan fiction known as The Lord of the Mood Rings: The Mood Ring Club. The second form of the story was a film version, because we were that hardcore and that obsessed with bad, home film-making, of which there is still carnage to be found somewhere in Beatrice’s house. Given that we can’t actually post the video, as it is frighteningly lost to the world somewhere, we’ll present some highlights.

And thus, The Mood Ring Club.

Just so you know…

Frodo Baggins = Dodo Flaggins

Samwise Gamgee = Spamdumb Smarty

Gandalf the Grey = Bingaling the Silvery White

Pippin Took = Mitten Look

Strider = Strydex

Bree = Debris

Prancing Pony = Stampeding Elephant

…believe me, we know.

The Scene: Gandalf/Bingaling tells Sam/Spam where to meet him in Bree/Debris.

“Okay, so what am I supposed to do again, Bingaling?" Spam was practically dying from all the walking they did…all the way down to the road from Dodo's house. Yeesh!

 Bingaling sighed. "You're to look after Dodo, you hear me? You're to accompany Dodo to the village of Debris and keep your eye on him."

 "So, I'm supposed to go to Debris and leave Dodo here?"

 "NO! You and Dodo go to Debris. Meet me at the Inn of the Stampeding Elephant."

 Spam sorted through this for a second then said, "Right. So go to Debris without Dodo and be sure to stay away from the Inn of the Stampeding Elephant."

 "Argh! NO! Both of you go to Debris…"

 "Both of us go to Debris…"

 Bingaling continued. "And meet me at the Inn of the Stampeding Elephant, not to be confused with the Prancing Pony."

 "Meet you at the Inn of the Prancing Pony."

 Bingaling was nearly at the point of strangling the little bobbit when Dodo said, "Spam, just follow me, okay?"

 Spam smiled brightly, "Oh, okay, Mr. Dodo!"

 The two set out for Debris. They passed through beautiful country and farmland, all the while with a lovely soundtrack playing in the background. Soon, while passing through a cornfield, they chanced upon a very unfortunate pile of obviously placed thorny sticks. I suppose they weren't that obviously placed though, since both Dodo and Spam tripped over them.

The Scene: Pippin/Mitten inadvertently reveals Frodo/Dodo’s identity in Bree/Debris. Barney-related havoc ensues.

Suddenly he heard Mitten's voice saying, "Yes, his name is Dodo Flaggins. He's my second cousin's aunt's nephew's third roommate's girlfriend's brother's grandson's best friend's third grade teacher's sister's son's neighbor."

 Dodo abruptly got up in alarm, rushing over to Mitten. Unfortunately he tripped over another one of those unfortunate piles of thorny sticks (funny how those keep turning up, huh?). This sudden fall caused the mood ring to fly from his hand! Upon trying to catch it, the mood ring decided that now was a good time to find out what Dodo's mood was for the day, and I can tell you that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

 Dodo suddenly entered a world filled with Teletubbies and horrible Barney videos! He screamed in terror and then he saw a vision that horrified him even more, and Barney videos are pretty horrifying already!

 It was the great Nose of the Dark, very dark, Lord Baron! It was sniffing around and it said, "I smell you!"


The Scene: Strider/Strydex grabs Frodo/Dodo after he accidentally puts on the Mood Ring in the Prancing Pony/Stampeding Elephant.

...a hand reached out and grabbed him from underneath the bench Dodo had crawled.

 "You draw far too much attention to yourself, Mr. Baggins"

 Dodo found that the hand was attached to a very strong arm which propelled him up some stairs to a room, where he was tossed in. He turned around and got up from the ground where he had been shoved and saw that the hand and the arm were not, in fact, just floating, severed appendages, but were connected to a rather broad chest and shoulders and neck and head and legs and, well, you get the picture.

 "That is no trinket you carry!" the man exclaimed. It was the same deep and gloomy voice that had belonged to the man that had passed him the salt. He started putting out the candles, only to burn his fingers. He started to run around, screaming, and sucking on his scalded fingers.

 Once he contained himself he said, "I can avoid being seen if I want to, but to disappear entirely…" He pulled off his hood gingerly, avoiding the tips of his burnt fingers, revealing a somewhat troubled face. "…That is a rare gift," he finished.

 "What are you?" Dodo asked.

 "Don't you mean 'who' am I?" the man, who Dodo now recognized as Strydex, asked, a little puzzled.

 "No, I mean who are you, not who am I? I know who I am."

 "But you said what am I? and I assumed that you meant who am I?" Strydex explained.

 "I don't need to know who I am; I've already told you that! And I know what I am too, thank you very much!" Dodo was tiring of this man and his stupidity.

 Strydex sighed and said, "Oh, never mind. Are you frightening?"

 "I don't know, am I? I don't think I look frightening, although I might since stupid Sad threw away my spare contacts and these aren't nearly as blue as the other ones….not that I wear any…"

 "No, I mean are you frightened?" asked Strydex.

 "But you said…"

"Oh never mind. I know what it is that hunts you!" He listened at the door, thinking that he heard something...

Don’t even ask about the pile of thorny sticks --which do indeed appear sporadically throughout the story—because we actually have no recollection of how we came up with them. If we needed someone to fall on the floor, we just put a pile of thorny sticks there to trip them. I guess we were holding to the idea that obviousness is funny.

As might be expected, the filming of this went really awry, really quickly, leading to just a few mishaps and/or questionable judgement calls.

You know the Ringwraiths? They became Ringroses, also called the Nasals (instead of Nazgul). After all, they serve the dark, very dark Lord Baron, who took the shape of a giant Nose. Nasals, therefore, seemed an appropriate correlation. But the creativity didn’t stop there. They didn’t wear black, scary cloaks. Instead, there were Barbie sheets. Ballerina Barbie sheets. Because that’s increasingly more horrifying. For many different reasons. Especially as time has passed.

Other costumes choices in the movie version were either incredibly questionable or incredibly brilliant, depending on how someone looks at it. The best? We’d have to say Lady Gladbags. Thaaat’s right, we went to the effort of literally making a dress out of Glad garbage bags for our Lady Gladbags to wear as she gracefully descended the stairs in Gothlorien. To our credit, it actually came out surprisingly well. But no, we won’t post pictures.

Several actual filming mishaps occurred as well, and always, for some reason, in the most dramatic of sequences. Case in point: when Arwen attempts to ward off the Nazgul while she’s transporting Frodo to Rivendell. In our scenario, Darwin, played to perfection by the incomparable V, raised her plastic sword dramatically, brandishing it in the faces of the evil Nasals, hoping to scare them away. Unfortunately, as she pointed that sword to the sky, the tip of it, already bent after years of wear and tear by younger siblings, finally fell over, smacking with ominous finality on the face of our Dodo Flaggins. I’m pretty sure you could actually hear the laughter of the other “crew members” in the background, but our actress portraying Dodo kept her calm and pretended that her moans of pain were a result of being stabbed by a Nasal a few scenes earlier.

However, the absolute best moment took place during Boromir’s depressing death scene, shot down by an Uruk-hai. Our version? Doromir is shot by a Dork never pictured on camera. Except…the arrow shot by V from off-screen never hit Doromir. It, in fact, was a brilliantly aimed shot delivered with perfectly deadly accuracy at Sad, our version of Merry Brandybuck.

Nevertheless, our dedicated crew remained in character and, despite the realism of Sad’s injury by foam-tipped arrow, Doromir dropped to the ground as if dead. Miraculously, Sad made an instant full recovery. Doromir did not.

We could go on, but our pride can only take so much. Therefore, given that we’ve clearly put ourselves out there, ripe for insults due to this humiliating product of our junior high imaginations, we encourage you all to relate your most hilarious, albeit immature, and potentially embarrassing memory of a time you’ve had with friends. We know you have some. You can’t deceive us. We made Lord of the Mood Rings. We can’t be the only ones.