Laura Drake

Laura Drake
A.K.A.	The Shifter Johnny Everywhere
Character Information
Species	Human (usually)
Gender	Female
Residence	Everywhere
Romantic Partner(s)	Jenny Everywhere
Behind the Scenes
First seen in	PROSE: The First Voyage
Copyright	Open Source
Index	List of appearances

Laura Drake was a woman who, like Jenny Everywhere, existed across the multiverse in a variety of incarnations, although she was incapable of shifting and many of her incarnations didn't even have any awareness of their other selves. Each universe's Laura was some form of acquaintance to her corresponding Jenny, but their relationship could land anywhere from friend to lover to mortal enemy. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell)

Although “Drake” was her most common last name, it sometimes varied between realities, whereas the name “Laura” did not. (PROSE: Laura in Waiting)

Description

Physical appearance

Although, like Jenny Everywhere's, Laura's physical appearance varied across universes, certain core traits tended to remain: she had red hair, wore glasses, and was taller than her corresponding Jenny. She often wore at least one purple article of clothing. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell)

Personality

TBA

Biography

Student with Jenny

In one universe, Laura Drake was Jenny Everywhere's friend, having grown up with her. Throughout their shared high school years, Jenny tried to tell her about her nature as “the Shifter”, but Laura never believed her, though she took to playing along to humour Jenny. This changed one night at a party, by a time when they were both of age.

While Laura had taken refuge in a bathroom, wishing the interminable party would end so she and Jenny could go back home and rest, a drunken Jenny stumbled in and tried once more to tell Laura about her other selves. When Laura seemed skeptical, Jenny decided to prove herself by shifting both herself and Laura, for just a few moments, to a universe with two moons. She quickly shifted them back again, having given herself a headache by trying to shift while inebriated. (PROSE: The First Voyage)

Living with the Shifter

In one world, Laura and Jenny Everywhere were in a serious enough relationship that they eventually started living together. They seemed happy, although some time into their shared home-life, Laura had still not gotten used to how much Jenny tossed and turned in her sleep, which hindered Laura's own capacity to fall sleep. When she called her girlfriend out on it only for Jenny to joke in response that she was, after all, "the Shifter", Laura playfully threw a pillow at Jenny. (PROSE: Origin of the Shifter!)

Behind the scenes

Genesis

Laura Drake was created by Jeanne McClure, a prolific author of short Jenny Everywhere-themed short fiction on Tumblr and Ficly in the early 2010s. She was originally intended to be one member of a wider recurring cast for a never-materialised long-form Jenny project, and designed as more of a viewpoint character who would act as a contrast or "straight woman" to Jenny's antics, only for the concept to evolve into something more.

The character debuted quietly in the short story The First Voyage on June the 5th, 2012, whereupon she was released in the public domain by McClure. However, it was only on August the 28th, 2013 that they expounded on the conceit behind the character:

So Laura – she was the first and currently most developed of the supporting cast for JE I’ve been thinking up. She started out as being more of a straightforward companion character but her concept wound up being “What if Luthor had stayed Superman’s friend?” See, there’s a certain dynamic that occurs between male characters a lot of the time–characters who are enemies and embody some kind of symbolic opposition but also have this sort of intimacy between them, and they have a past background of friendship. (Which obviously includes a fair bit of shipping potential.) For example Superman and Luthor, Reed and Doom, Xavier and Magneto, the Doctor and the Master. We don’t see a lot of these kind of relationships between women, and one of the things I want to do with Jenny is to explore the kind of tropes that get applied to iconic male heroes like the Doctor. But of course the whole nature of Jenny Everywhere is that AUs and “imaginary stories” are the norm. There’s also the fact that I want magical girl tropes to be part of Jenny Everywhere too, because magical girl tropes are cool. I see her as the kind of hero who makes friends with her former or potential enemies, like Sailor Moon or Golden Age Wonder Woman. That means it’s possible to explore their relationship from any number of angles–they could be “just” friends, or they could be happily married, or they could be deadly foes, or archenemies with benefits, or what have you. Ununnilium pointed out that the ideal counterpoint to the character who’s a constant across all worlds is one whose relationship with her is always changing. Also, because everything I’ve written with her has been from her POV, I haven’t actually described what she looks like. So–she has (naturally) red hair (even in the contexts where that wouldn’t make sense–), and tends to wear glasses. I see her as significantly taller than Jenny, even though she looks up to/feels jealous of her. She is quite fond of purple. In character terms, she’s someone who can be difficult to like. She’s one of those people who tends to have strong Fixed Ideas about things and so conversations with them are full of bizarre mine fields. She can be petty and jealous and resentful and have Nice Guy tendencies. She’s not the “sociopath” that some people think she is though–she has to deal with the frustration of living in a world where most people aren’t on her level intellectually, and that means she’s built up a lot of anger and neediness and resentment, but she does have a conscience. But that can sometimes be very dangerous in and of itself, because of she is very certain about what’s right and wrong, and (as with, say, Magneto) that certainty can lead her down dangerous paths. Whereas Jenny is someone whose power is to consider things from a million perspectives at once. So why does Jenny not only put up with her but actively care about her so much, and keep getting drawn into the multiversal train wreck in world after world? Well, Laura is brilliant, for one thing. Because of her voracious imagination and intellect she can understand where Jenny is coming from in a way most other people can’t. Jenny is someone who’s very simple, but in a way that has a lot of layers–she’s coming at things from a very strange perspective, so a lot of people don’t understand what her deeper emotions are. Laura’s also very thorough and good at thinking things through–as is Jenny, but in a completely different way. Jenny is someone whose thought processes are very nonlinear and can sometimes end up in strange places, so she needs someone who can question her and stand up to her when she’s doing something that’s a spectacularly bad idea, as she sometimes does. Because Jenny is someone with a lot of wisdom and insight, but not necessarily good sense. That’s how I see things, anyway.

—McClure