Pinned
The nice and accurate Mary guide
I realized despite Mary having a carrrd (Mary's archive) as the story is told through Ralphs eyes i've spoke very little about her outside of what she does in the island, so I'll try to introduce her:
Ref:
Mary is a 12 year old, going to 13. Despite her hard time socializing she is loud, chatty, curious , adventurous, passionate and ambitious and without fear to stand her ground. She is considered smart for her age by adults, and while it is true that she has an understanding of societary opression, specially towards women, she however has a hard time finding the grey areas in morality usually classifying people in good or bad.
She dreams of becoming a war photoghrapher just like her mother was before having her, as she is passionate for both history and photography.
Pre island:
Mary was born under a wealthy family. Her father is a college professor and war veteran and her mother used to be a photographer for a newspaper but left the profession after getting pregnant with Mary. They both love their daughter and want her to be a well educated girl so they encourage her on her ambitious dream of building a career for herself and are more than happy that her daughter has taken a liking to literature, her mother however feels reluctant about Mary's dream.
Mary also has a little sister called Clarice (@freakyelf-ontheshelf s creation), who is around the age of 6. She travelled on the plane with Mary, but she didn't survive the crash. Clarice is the girl Mary is said to be calling during the first chapter.
Growing up Mary was a very lonely girl, she wasn't well liked in school and often mocked for her temper and weirdly "boyish" mannerism, which led the girl to seek companionship in the in the books there are at the house library. This opened her eyes to the injustice of the world and helped her develop her morality system.
In island:
Much like it is told in the "archive" she is relegated to the chores of taking care of the littluns, which she is not pleased to take on at first. But as time passes by she grows more fond of the littluns as they seem to genuinely appreciate her, unlike the bigger boys. She mainly does the job of entertaining them by telling dramaticed bedtime stories and sometimes partakes in their games.
That's not the only thing Mary does however, sometimes she manages to sneak off and enjoy some time alone, exploring the island . In one of her little walks around the forest she comes across Saoirse, a stern looking girl she could swear she had never seen before. After days or maybe weeks of talking and building trust in one another, because despite the fact Mary is british and Saoirse is irish, making them enemies, Saoirse however refuses to make contact with the other boys and mary is already outcasted, so they find themselves only having eachother to lean into, they form an unlikely friendship. And so they both spend most of their days wandering around the forest or the beach looking for the important thing Saoirse has lost, or just disscussing about their lives in general.
She does get her period on the island wich only leads to more feelings of isolation and of vunerability, as if she wasn't isolated before. During her mestruation she is sent away and after that she is forbidden from touching the food others are going to consume it after, as all Mary touches becomes dirty for some of the kids.
After chapter 10 she joins Jacks tribe, not because she agrees with him or has a sudden turn of personality, but at this point in the story she is malnourished and overall in a position of complete vulnerability. All this time she has been aware that the hunters were dangerous, but now she knows that they are capable of killing a human, and that she has a high chance of being their next target as they already don't see her as an equal. So instead of fighting them, she decides to dull down and do as the hunters wish as she thinks this will keep her safe from them. if you read her archives you'll see she is far away from safe. This decision on joining Jack's tribe upsets Saoirse and her and Mary have an argument that leads onto the end of their friendship.
Relationships with other ocs:
She does have a close friendship with Saoirse (@freakyelf-ontheshelf's oc cause they are my realest ever) by design, it happens pretty much outside of the actual story so i didn't include her in the archive but since we both basically work together in the two girls we just decided to pair them.
https://www.tumblr.com/beeari/774368923045019648/fanart-for-freakyelf-ontheshelf-amazing-oc-dont?source=share (once Leah does Saoirses intro post i'll paste it here)
Other facts:
-She is based in both the concept of the Virgin Mary and Pepa Flores (Marisol). But the main motivation to create her was to make what I considered a realistic portrayal of what an only girl in an island full of boys would be like.
-Since the very first moments I came up with her character I was sure she wasn't making it out alive, so yes, she has been doomed from the very begginning.
-The anwer for what did the hunters do to get rid of her body is left unanswered deliberately, my interpretation is that they ate her, since it would give into the hog paralelism, but I haven't given her an actual method, and it isn't discussed at any point in my canon either.
-She acts tough but she is pretty insecure towards her physical appearance, she is not considered pretty by time period beauty standards. This is the main reason why she keeps her clothes on during the entirety of the island, despite how unconfortable they are. Her insecurities also make her very defensive and not taking well feelings of being percieved as dumb.
-Her favourite book genre is adventure books, specially Jules Verne.
-Her emoji in the ribbon 🎀
-She dies in canon but an older version of her (30 Y.O) is featured in another story of mine (not at all related in any way to lotf), where she is a crime journalist who looks for her friend who has recently dissapeared. She is not the MC but does put up a challenge for the main protagonist, who is the one who made her friend disappear, so if you see her in other works you know it is her. In this one she is a biker butch in the 90s. 🏳️🌈‼️
