Carmen Sandiego is world-renown for her thievery abilities. Carmen, however, has to deal with her biggest challenge yet: being a mother. As it turns out, the two issues tend to clash at times, even long after she has gone straight.
Parthenogenesis
is a short fanfic based off of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?. It revolves around a retired Carmen Sandiego and her Original Character daughter Marguerite "Maggie" Vivienne Sandiego.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Dead Guy Junior: Maggie is named after Carmen's mother.
- Disappeared Dad: Carmen is a single mother who avoids discussing Maggie's father.
- Drowning My Sorrows:
- After a big fight with her mom, Maggie returns home to find her mother having drunk a good sum of a bottle of whiskey.
- It's implied that Ivy drank a lot the day Carmen went off the radar.
- Homeschooled Kids: Maggie was mostly home-schooled by Carmen, who is more than qualified to teach despite not having an actual license.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: As a teenager, Maggie has a desire to have a "normal" youth. As a result, her mother decides to settle down in San Francisco and enroll her in a public school. Maggie doesn't take to the culture clash easily.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Carmen's world revolves around her daughter. In her teenage years Maggie begins to feel suffocated by her mother's love. It's too big of a responsibility being someone's crutch.
- Mama Bear: After becoming a parent, the previously Actual Pacifist Carmen begins sleeping with a gun beside her. She does this both in order to protect her child and to keep herself alive so Maggie doesn't get put into the foster system.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password to Carmen's safe is her daughter Maggie's name but in numbers. Admittedly, the safe was hidden in her house and people don't know she has a daughter.
- Really Moves Around: Because her mother is a world renown criminal, Maggie moved around a lot growing up. They moved almost annually. She didn't think much of it until she was older.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Maggie takes after her mother, down to her eyes. This nearly gets her in trouble when she goes to ACME on a class trip, beats the previous highest score on the exam (which was her mother's in 1979), and gets personally invited to join ACME by Ivy and Zack. The two instantly notice that she is Carmen's offspring.
- The Talk: At age 12, Maggie ends up getting it from Carmen by accident. Maggie was trying to subtly find out about her father, which led to discussing sex. Maggie already knew a sum but Carmen corrects her misconceptions.
- Tell Me About My Father: Maggie has been trying to coax info about her Disappeared Dad her entire life, but Carmen won't tell her anything. The most that is learned is that Carmen became pregnant after she dealed with her father's kidnapping and that the events surrounding the pregnancy weren't pleasant.
- The Unreveal: Maggie is told about her father as an adult, but it's entirely off-screen and we only hear her thoughts on the matter.
Word of God says that her father is Lee Jordan; if you're familiar with the episodes where he appears, you might pick up on this based on the (admittedly subtle) clues scattered throughout the fic.
