Jenny Everywhere: Parallax (commentary)
Aug. 8th, 2021 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scott_sanfordParallax was my second Jenny Everywhere story and the one where I was beginning to get a grip on the kind of Jenny Everywhere I wanted to write about. (No, not ‘drunk and nauseous,’ thank you.) She’s got friends and an unspecified home environment; presumably this Jenny has a whole entourage of supporting characters, though most of them don’t get screen time in this episode.
I was ambitious with this one and even if not everything works I think the experiment was on the whole a good one.
Riffing off of the last panel of Damn Fine Hostile Takeover, I got to asking the obvious questions it raised. Who is Jenny Nowhere? What does she want, and what relationship does she have to Jenny Everywhere? (At the time, this was all I had to work with; there was an entry in the FAQ but I hadn’t seen the character used elsewhere.) In retrospect I like the explanation I came up with.
This Jenny Nowhere is not a cartoon villain or cardboard enemy – she’s an antagonist because she has a validly held belief that clashes horribly with that of our protagonist. Hence the title Parallax...
It was also a lot of fun having the different personalities of Everywhere, Nowhere, and Kim bounce off of each other.
What’s the deal with Kim anyway? Nobody asked how she levitates.
And while we’re on the subject, what about Jenny’s other friends? She came out with at least three other people, by the text apparently one other woman and at least two men, none of whom get named – what’s up with them? We leave them in the first scene and never get back to them. Was Jenny just freakishly lucky again or would things have gone pear shaped for Nowhere whoever had taken Jenny to the restroom?
Nowhere did say, “I should have expected anyone Jenny Everywhere hung out with would be special. I remember that from when I was Everywhere.”
(21 Feb 2022) I don't know if this needs to be explicitly said, but anyone who wants to use this interpretation of Jenny Nowhere is definitely welcome to do so! There are other origin stories for the character as well; authors are welcome to work off of any or none of the previous tales.
I was ambitious with this one and even if not everything works I think the experiment was on the whole a good one.
Riffing off of the last panel of Damn Fine Hostile Takeover, I got to asking the obvious questions it raised. Who is Jenny Nowhere? What does she want, and what relationship does she have to Jenny Everywhere? (At the time, this was all I had to work with; there was an entry in the FAQ but I hadn’t seen the character used elsewhere.) In retrospect I like the explanation I came up with.
This Jenny Nowhere is not a cartoon villain or cardboard enemy – she’s an antagonist because she has a validly held belief that clashes horribly with that of our protagonist. Hence the title Parallax...
It was also a lot of fun having the different personalities of Everywhere, Nowhere, and Kim bounce off of each other.
What’s the deal with Kim anyway? Nobody asked how she levitates.
And while we’re on the subject, what about Jenny’s other friends? She came out with at least three other people, by the text apparently one other woman and at least two men, none of whom get named – what’s up with them? We leave them in the first scene and never get back to them. Was Jenny just freakishly lucky again or would things have gone pear shaped for Nowhere whoever had taken Jenny to the restroom?
Nowhere did say, “I should have expected anyone Jenny Everywhere hung out with would be special. I remember that from when I was Everywhere.”
(21 Feb 2022) I don't know if this needs to be explicitly said, but anyone who wants to use this interpretation of Jenny Nowhere is definitely welcome to do so! There are other origin stories for the character as well; authors are welcome to work off of any or none of the previous tales.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-24 01:03 pm (UTC)