The Princess Thing

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The Princess Thing was written by Candy Goldstein (as Candy Courtnier) specifically for the Internet Gadget Archive, as parody and an exercise in defining Gadget's writing in an area she could not completely grasp.

History

Candy had a semi-malicious hobby of commenting snidely ('MiSTing') on the romance novels a friend frequently read. In college, Candy wrote a loose framework for a general parody of romance novels, then solidified it into fanfiction a few years later for the Archive. Paltiel Goldstein suggested making the story unattributed to contribute to the illusion of Gadget as the writer.

Story

In the story, Gadget inserts herself and the other Rescue Rangers into a romance novel, where she (as the heroine) moves obliviously through a typical fluff story set on a pirate ship, changing whatever she feels to be repugnant in the genre or even in history. At one point, Gadget even completely breaks character and the heroine inadvertently frets aloud over a mistake she made as the author. She half-mistakenly rejects the advances of both Chip and Dale's characters in the story and operates mostly in a work-absorbed bliss. Oddly, Gadget does write about the advances toward her character, but then her avatar rebuffs them with non-understanding, off-topic replies. This could indicate Gadget's being more conscious of Chip and Dale's attentions than she lets on, although Candy did not consciously intend this.

Unintended consequences

The story is still listed as anonymously written on almost all fan sites. This lightly skewed some of the gender-based statistics in Julie Bihn's nonfiction masterpiece, Come Along, You Belong, an analysis of Rescue Rangers fan society online.

Unknown people correctly guessed the true author of "Princess" [come on, my style is obvious. -CAG] and other parties' feeling were hurt when they thought the secret had been leaked to some privileged parties but not everyone. In truth, the information was never selectively leaked.

Trivia

Paltiel and Candy still frequent bookstores. Candy has a ritual habit of selecting a romance novel with an illustrated cover and commenting snidely on it to Paltiel. This tradition comes from the same motivation that spawned "The Princess Thing."

External links

The Princess Thing on the Internet Gadget Archive