Rule #1: Don't fall there in the first place. It sucks here. Every day, it'll feel like your heart is getting torn out of your chest and stomped on because you miss your family. Not to mention the food is bad.
—Priscilla, chapter 13
How to Survive in Middle Earth When You're a Teenaged Girl
, by Peppery Mints, dumps a modern girl into the setting of The Lord of the Rings. It happens by accident, when Priscilla of Texas falls down a well. This is one of the more realistic stories in its genre, as Priscilla deals with the Language Barrier, homesickness, and being a Fish out of Temporal Water. It was last updated in August 2014.
Peppery Mints also wrote "Doodles In The Margin" as side material.
How to Survive in Middle Earth When You're a Teenaged Girl provides examples of:
- Alternate Universe Fic: This story diverges with the insertion of Priscilla. It diverges faster than most stories about girls falling into Middle-earth, and has a different Council of Elrond.
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Bonus Material: "Doodles In The Margin" contain alternate events that fit not into the main story. The main story is already an Alternate Universe Fic, so these doodles are alternate universes of an alternate universe. - Call-Back: In "Doodles" chapter 2, Elrohir calls back to the main story, book 1, chapter 14. From his own memory, Elrohir repeats his lesson to Priscilla. He says the same lines and makes the same motions. Priscilla says, "You remembered."
- Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: For a moment in book 1, chapter 13, Priscilla speaks English to prove that she is a foreigner. The characters of The Lord of the Rings have no knowledge of English."I'm from a different world, y'all," I said flatly. "If you don't like it, that sucks for you. I'm also the only person who knows right now that everything's going wrong, and I'm the only person who can fix it. So you better start liking me real quick before I decide I've had enough and go off on my own."
- Language Barrier: Peppery Mints is one of the few authors to remember that Westron is not English. When Priscilla arrives in Middle-earth, she cannot talk to anyone.
- Mundane Luxury: Priscilla Henders wishes for potato chips and Twinkies in chapter 5, and popcorn in chapter 6. She also endures her period without Midol.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Priscilla Henders changes her name to Cilla, so others can say it. Priscilla is from Texas, and her name is foreign to Middle-earth.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Priscilla is the "Teenaged Girl" of seventeen years from a cattle ranch near Magnolia, Texas. The story did not show Priscilla in school, but it was summer, when most schools have summer break.
- Sailor Earth: Any new members of the Fellowship of the Ring would count for this trope. However, the story diverged so far from canon that the Fellowship forms in different circumstances, with a few changes to the list of members.
- Soft Water: When Priscilla falls down the well, and enters another world, she splashes down somewhere in Middle-earth. "From that height, I should have spontaneously flattened against the surface of the river, thin as a pancake, and then slowly disintegrated." She survived, but not without pain.
- Trapped in Another World: Priscilla, girl from Texas, falls into Middle-earth.
