User blog:Serene Girl/Memories of iCarly Fanfics (That No Longer Exist) - Part 1

Just recently, I was looking through a few long files of notes and reviews I had made regarding various Harry Potter and iCarly fan fiction stories that I'd read over the past few years. These included a few stories that, for various reasons, no longer exist on the Internet (or, in some cases, never existed).

I just wanted to share a few random memories I have of these stories, which, unfortunately, aren't likely to ever see the light of day again ...

1. iHave Had Enough

There are probably no more than a dozen people who ever saw this story, which was posted on a small blog near the beginning of iCarly's third season (around the time of iThink They Kissed).

The blog no longer exists, and for some reason (that I've never really understood), the author no longer wishes for this story to be shared with anybody. However, she consented to let me post two short quotes from it (which I always thought were quite striking), and a general description of its plotline.

The first quote is from a rather heated argument between Carly and Freddie.

(In the previous chapter, Carly had accompanied Freddie to a Benson family function - Freddie's cousin had just gotten engaged. The evening went very well at first, and Carly and Freddie were having a good time, and then ... Let's just say that things came horribly derailed when Mrs. Benson stood up to speak.)

'''"I'm sorry that my mother embarrassed you ... and I'm also sorry that the idea of marrying me some day repulsed you so much."

- Freddie, to his about-to-be-former-best-friend, Carly (Chapter 3, "iHave Had Enough")'''

This was the trigger for a storyline in which an angry Freddie ends his friendship with Carly (who isn't exactly jumping at the hope of reconciliation herself). It wasn't really because of this argument, or what happened the previous night. That was just the straw that broke the camel's back, and Freddie's bitter resentment of Carly's repeated rejections (built up over four years' time) finally saw release.

Over the next several chapters, Carly and Freddie both refuse to budge, despite all of Sam's angry threats, and Spencer's more civilized attempts to reason with them. Eventually, the story climaxed in a confrontation between Carly and Freddie, during which Carly finally gave voice to emotions that she had kept bottled up for years.

What I am going to quote here is just Carly's dialogue. You'll notice that there are a lot of ellipses (...) in this speech. Many of these were places where the author provided descriptive text of Carly becoming increasingly emotional, and Freddie looking stunned and stricken by what she was saying to him.

"And how do you think it made me feel? I rejected you all those times because I didn't want to be your girlfriend, but did you ... Did you think that I didn't want to want to? That maybe, just maybe, I wished that I could feel the same way about you, because it would have made both of us so happy! ...

'Do you think I liked'' having to reject you over and over again, day after day, for the past four years? I told you a thousand times that I only wanted to be friends with you, but you ... You never stopped. Never thought about the guilt you were making me feel ...'''

'... Did you ever once stop to think about what you were putting me'' through? Of course not, Freddie. You were too wrapped up in your own self-righteous pain to ever think about the hurt I was feeling ...'''

'''Freddie, you want me to respect your feelings, as a person and as a friend. Well, then, you'd damn well better start respecting mine!"'''

- A tearful Carly, opening the floodgates of four years' worth of pent-up anger (Chapter 9, "iHave Had Enough")

This scene was basically inspired by Freddie's line from iPilot :

"I'm in love with you, you just want to be friends, and I'm totally cool living with that constant pain!"

Oh, he was cool with it, sure ... but was Carly?

One thing I've always liked about fan fiction is that the writers have the freedom to explore ideas and scenarios that the actual books or television shows can't or won't. iCarly has always depicted Carly as being amused or flattered by Freddie's persistent crush on her, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I liked how this fan fiction writer chose to explore a different possible consequence of Freddie's refusal to accept Carly's repeated rejections. It's easy to sympathize with a person feeling the pain of unrequited love ... but, often, I think, people don't realize that the guilt that comes of being unable to return somebody's romantic affection can be just as hard to live with.

In this story, Carly was not only struggling to live with that guilt, but also harboring a great deal of resentment of the fact that Freddie kept putting her into this position of having to reject him. Carly had been hiding those emotions because she didn't want to hurt Freddie's feelings, but after four years, she had finally grown tired of placing his happiness ahead of her own.

This fanfic had a very touching ending. Carly and Freddie finally understood each other, the emotions that they'd been hiding for so long now out in the open. They would never be anything more than friends, but now that it was so much more honest, their friendship had grown much stronger.

2. iMissed My Chance

I would like to share with you a little passage from a story that, despite never having been completed and never even having been posted anywhere, remains one of my favorite iCarly fanfics. (To the author of this story, who knows who he is - This is for you! )

'''"Sam insulted me every chance she got," said Melanie quietly. "She made fun of my clothes, my hair, my voice. She mocked just about everyone I hung out with, everything I liked, everything I said or did. She ridiculed everything I was ever proud of."'''

Melanie paused for just a moment, gazing wistfully at the window.

'''"But you know what?" she went on. "I didn't mind. Because I knew that that was how Sam expressed affection for the people she was close to. It may sound strange, but that was just how my sister was wired. It was okay with me, because I knew ... Sam never abused anybody she didn't like."'''

Freddie let out a hollow laugh

"Well, then," he said dryly, "she must have loved me."

A moment later, Freddie felt Melanie's hand gently squeezing his shoulder.

"She did," said Melanie softly.

As you can probably tell, Sam was dead, and Freddie was a great deal more torn up with grief than he was letting on.

This fanfic used a long series of flashbacks (of Freddie's memories of Sam, both happy and painful) to detail how he had slowly fallen in love with her. Freddie, however, had been unwilling to acknowledge his feelings for Sam, even to himself, because he had grown increasingly bitter about all of Sam's verbal (and occasionally physical) abuse.

With a great deal of prodding, encouragement, and a few threats, from Carly, Freddie had finally reached the point where he was willing to profess his love for Sam. Unfortunately, just as he was working up the resolve to do so, Sam was killed in a car accident (caused by her mother's recklessness).

As the months passed since Sam's death, Freddie was coming to terms with his grief ... and, at the same time, he was slowly learning that it wasn't disrespectful to Sam's memory for him to simply tell the truth, that he had always harbored a lot of anger and resentment over the way Sam treated him while she was still alive, and that if she had shown him just a little more respect and caring, then he might not have retreated so deeply from his emotions that it took him such a long time to acknowledge them. Freddie might have been able to tell Sam that he loved her, just once, before her death.

In the final chapters of the story, Carly helped Freddie work through his grief and learn to forgive Sam for the hurt she caused him, and to forgive himself for missing his chance to tell her how he felt.

It was, obviously, a very sad story, but in my opinion, a very touching one. However, although it was heavily drafted, the story was never actually finished, and never posted anywhere. And now, unfortunately, for reasons that are personal to its author, it isn't likely to ever be.

[To Be Continued]