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Stephen
Ratliff is the creator of many pieces of fanfiction,
including the famed Marrissa stories, and
...
What? Who is 'Marrissa'?
Well, back in 1991, an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
titled "Disaster" aired. In this episode, the Enterprise is struck by a pair of quantum
filaments, knocking out many of the main systems. The main
characters are scattered throughout the ship, and must deal with
the resulting problems. In one subplot, the Captain is trapped in
a turbolift with three youngsters he
had been leading on a tour of the ship, their reward for winning a
science fair competition. In an effort to calm them, he makes the
children his 'crew', and leads them out of the turbolift.
The eldest of the children is named Marissa (played by young
actress Erika Flores), and after this episode, she never again
appears on the series.
Flash forward to November 14, 1993 when a student at Radford University decides to begin writing Star Trek fanfiction. In his first story, he brings
back twelve year-old "Marrissa" Flores. In the story, she is placed in
command of the Enterprise while the major characters are on a
mission. She and her crew of pre-teens single-handedly defeat a threat
to the Federation. Unfortunately, her parents perished during the
other mission, so Jean-Luc Picard
adopts her, raising her as his daughter. Later, she discovers her
father was crown prince of an alien world, making her a Princess.
Of course, as she continues to save the Federation, Star Fleet decides
to place her on the command fast track, placing her into command
of her own starship at the ripe old age of sixteen.
After that, things get a bit wacky.
While all of this is going on, a group of MiSTies,
fans of the TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000", stumbled
across the aforementioned stories. Like fans of other series, MiSTies write fanfiction.
However, their fanfiction, which they
call MiSTings, take the form of treating a
piece of text as if it was the bad movie inflicted on the show's
main characters and having them make
fun of the text. It was soon decided the Marrissa
stories were ideal misting material, and Stephen was gracious
enough to allow his work to be publicly ripped to shreds.. As Stephen turned out more and
more stories featuring Marrissa and
her Kids' Crew, more and more MiSTings
of these stories were written, until it became apparent there
needed to be a central archive for these mistings.
This is that archive.
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