Misunderstandings (short story)

Misunderstandings
Contents
Hero(es)	Jenny Everywhere
Featuring	Kim Eric Eric's mother (mentioned) Judy (mentioned) The Prince of the Lizard Kingdoms (mentioned) David Lowe (mentioned) “Belgian reporter kid” (mentioned)
Setting	Unnamed universe
Technical Specs
Length	1,540 words
Crew
Writer(s)	Scott Sanford
Background
Dates	February the 14th, 2022 (release)
Original link	[1]
Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories
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Next →	Fragment: Nowhere Plan

Misunderstandings was a Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford in 2022. It was released on Valentine's Day.

Contents

Plot

After coming home from school, Eric drops in on Kim and Jenny Everywhere, feeling “cranky” after getting in a row with a girl in his class, Judy, which his mother didn't understand. Assuming that she is dealing with Eric's first romantic disappointment, Kim begins to try and give him advice on how to deal with rejection, disappoint or heartbreak, with questionable input from Jenny (whose past experiences include a guy she liked having turned out to be the Lost Prince of the Lizard Kingdoms and a cute Belgian kid having no awareness of her romantic overtures). When they finally let him get a word in edgewise, however, Eric makes it clear there was never anything of the sort between him and Judy, and they are simply rivals due to her wanting to do a robotics project, despite not being a “mad scientist” in the same way as Eric. Contrite, Kim promises to stay off the subject now and offers to help Eric with his maths homework.

Worldbuilding

Jenny Everywhere

• The Jenny featured in this story is the one primarily used by Scott Sanford from PROSE: Parallax onwards as his “default” Jenny. She is wearing red flannel pajamas at home; while she does have a scarf, she is not wearing her goggles.

Universes

• The story takes place in Jenny, Kim and Eric's own universe.

Other

• The book Understanding Teleportation has been sitting on Jenny and Kim's coffee table for “several weeks”: Jenny is refusing to read it.
• A “long time ago”, Kim “lived with a lot of other women”, during which time she learned that not all women were interested in relationships with other women (something she conveys through the improbable euphemism “Some women are happy to stay up late perusing a map of Tasmania – and some aren’t”).
• The Mole People invaded “last winter”, but concentrated their efforts on Jenny's apartment building. Kim reveals that this was because they were after the lizard prince that Jenny had been unwittingly dating.
• David apparently has a cautionary tale he could tell Eric about the perils of building a girlfriend for oneself, but it is “not Kim's story to tell” and something which Eric would possibly best wait until he's older before hearing about.
• Jenny once had a crush on a “Belgian reporter kid” with a “goofy cowlick”, but “got nowhere” trying to make him reciprocate or even realise her feelings, as he was “completely clueless about women”.

Continuity

• The story mentions a past acquaintance between Jenny and a character heavily implied to be Tintin. Jenny was herself compared to Tintin in the original character profile by Steven Wintle.

Behind the scenes

Background

After releasing the story on Dreamwidth in 2022, Scott Sanford appended some commentary to the story:

Happy Valentine's Day! Who better than Jenny Everywhere to give you advice on your love life? Pretty much anyone, apparently. “…the lost heir to the Lizard Kingdoms…” What? Okay, I get it that this was a problem but Lizard Kingdoms? Mole People? Jenny, what did you get yourself into this time? “Later on, look up a thing called the secretary problem.” Kim over-simplifies the situation but Eric’s smart enough to see that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem “…some women are happy to stay up late perusing a map of Tasmania…” It seems Kim listens to Amanda Palmer songs. She also uses an unusual euphemism which hopefully flew by without being understood. “…remember that European reporter kid?” Oh, yeah, him. For some reason it strikes me as hilarious to imagine Jenny Everywhere hitting on the Belgian kid with the goofy cowlick and getting nowhere. I envision her as getting progressively less subtle about her interests and him remaining clueless… I’d never be able to write it, but I like that I’m able to slip this in as a thing that happened to her already.

—Scott Sanford

Read online

The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.