A Series of Queer Events (short story)
A Series of Queer Events was a short story written by Callum Phillpott. It was the third in Phillpott's Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series, and released in celebration of Pride Month. Par for the course for the series, it featured appearances by multiple other public-domain and open-source characters beyond the central recurring cast.
Contents
Plot
It's Pride Month, and the Man in Grey, with his trademark thoughtless callousness, is attempting to coordinate the Multidimensional Finders Service's pride campaign himself, rainbow-capitalism-style — including a special offer for callers to be able to find out, not only where items and people are located as usual, but also whether any people of their choice is a member of the queer community.
Work soon commences at the M.F.S. office; in addition to the usual calls for finding things, which come with their fair share of people asking fruitlessly about Jenny Everywhere, Jenny Over-There indeed starts getting calls from people asking about other people's sexualities, though she refuses to answer their questions. One of her calls, from a version of Captain Ahab who's managed to contact the M.F.S. to help him locate Moby Dick, sees the conversation devolve when Ishmael asks Ahab, within earshot of the phone, if he can go to the Multi-Reality Pride Festival with Queequeg.
At this moment, Dynamite Thor walks in, his costume subtly altered: the sticks of dynamite on his belt have been painted to depict the stripes of the ace flag. He explains that the Man in Grey asked him to decorate the office for Pride, but didn't give him any decorations, save a stock of posters with the Man in Grey's unconvincing rendition of a rainbow M.F.S. logo. Jenny agrees to go into the town with him to look for more varied items to buy. All this time, unbeknownst to Jenny, Ahab stays on the line, waiting for his directions.
Meanwhile, the Man in Grey has travelled to the doors of the Diggs estate in the Land of Oz, as he is acting for the first time as the Great Higher-Ups' appointed representative on the Interdimensional Pride Council, to whom Oscar Diggs has loaned the building. He bumps into Professor Wogglebug and announces that he has secured a number of “great sponsors” for the Interdimensional Pride Parade including DollarGraveClub, the Super Besties Justice Squad, Dibbsy, Kablamazon, and the god Dionysus. The Man in Grey leaves his briefcase full of “important grey documents” at the door of the councilchamber and walks in, unaware that a scant few moments later, Oscar Diggs walks back in to retrieve his briefcase, which he forgot to take before leaving for his holiday on the beaches of the Land of Mo. He confuses the Man in Grey's briefcase for his and makes off with it.
Back in the 925th Universe, Jenny Over-There and Thor are walking through the street, observing various Pride-themed advertisements, including the Altern Corporation “celebrating all two of their queer employees as they colour their logo with the version of the rainbow that isn’t too controversial”, Dibbsy “selling box sets of all their bad live-action remakes because they all have a combined 5 seconds of non-straight content”, and DollarGraveClub “offering a 'Bury Your Gays’ discount for LGBT people buying coffins” — all of which they find “annoying at best and upsetting at worse”. With browsing the streets proving this dispiriting, Jenny decides to use her preternatural finding abilities, which lead her and Thor to Professor Helvetius's Convenient Pride Decorations Shop.
They immediately start gathering decorations in the maze-like interior of the Shop. When Jenny hits upon the question of who will pay, Thor reveals he still has some money left over from his pre-superhero career as a mining baron, the first Jenny hears of this rather unexpected background. The two then meet Professor Helvetius herself. She tells them that all the decorations in the shop are free — but, when they ask for bags in which to carry them, reveals that the big brown bags she has available are 50 pounds apiece.
Meanwhile, Oscar Diggs, relaxing on one of the beaches of the Land of Mo, decides to fetch the book in his briefcase, only to open the Man in Grey's case instead and find documents about all the sponsorship deals from dubiously-ethical companies. Though loathe to interrupt his vacation, he makes up his mind to go warn Ozma about what she will no doubt see as a perversion of the spirit of Pride.
Elsewhere still, the Man in Grey runs out of the Interdimensional Pride Council meeting, a complete disaster. It turns out that Dionysus boycotted the Council when he learned that Stardust was to attend as the Super Besties' representative, only for Stardust himself to also fail to attend as he was busy making a public apology for deleting France in an ill-fated effort to stop a robbery in the Louvre. The Man in Grey's letter of recommendation from Dorian Gray also only brought him woe due to Dorian's bad history with Atlas the Traveller. As Professor Wogglebug attempts to convince him to cut his losses and drop the vampires of DollarGraveClub as well, the two are beset by Ozma arriving with great fanfare — and she's not happy.
When Jenny and Thor return to the M.F.S. building, all set to install the plethora of decorations they acquired at Helvetius's, they find the Man in Grey returning in a sulk, shredding his pride flyers. He orders them to cancel all Pride activities at the M.F.S. before heading off. This leaves Thor crushed, to a degree which surprises Jenny until he explains that this would have been his first year taking part in Pride Month, as he only recently realised he was asexual. Jenny confirms to him that she is herself aroace, and suggests that they might throw their own party outside the bounds of the M.F.S. using all the decorations they bought.
Within a week, they are indeed able to set up an interdimensional Pride-themed party, with Helvetius landing them her shop (whose interior somehow transforms itself into a roomy, empty party venue) for the purpose, with Thor ending up doing most of the decorating, while Jenny handles food and invitations. Meanwhile, the Man in Grey has gone off to sulk at “the most heterosexual bar he could find”, a “miserable area filled with miserable, one miserable superhuman,” and, as it turns out, Professor Wogglebug. He explains to the Man that, although he is now banned from the Interdimensional Pride Council, he wasn't actually punished by Ozma, who is “oddly forgiving”, unlike the Man, who's been banned from Oz itself. As they get to talking, the Wogglebug convinces the Man to go to Jenny's party, where he ends up having fun, as do the variety of odd characters attending the party, from Nyarlathotep to the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place in the home universe of Jenny Over-There.
- Dynamite Thor makes an offhand comment referring to the fact that he was originally from another reality, where, he confesses, he never travelled to Wales.
- Professor Helvetius's Convenient Pride Decorations Shop and the M.F.S. office both exist in multiple realities at once.
Other
- The Man in Grey mistakenly uses the euphemism “friends of Alice” for members of the LGTBQ community, instead of “friends of Dorothy”.
- Dibbsy movies include Beauty and the Beast (featuring a subtextual gay character in the form of Henribald), Super Besties: Assemble (which was sponsored by the real Super Besties Justice Squad and introduced the character of General Loki, later vaguely implied to be queer), an animated adaption of War of the Worlds featuring a 0.5-second-long background sapphic kiss, and Mulan. The latter is, to apparent audience disappointment, not included in Dibbsy's box set of “First Gays”, featuring “all the movies we made with first gay characters, gay kisses, gay subtexts, and a rainbow pin of Mammon Mouse”.
- Wogglebugs are described as “a green insect which looks similar to a mantis, except they have hands”.
- Oscar Z. Diggs was once the Wizard of Oz, residing in Ozma's Emerald Palace in the centre of the Land of Oz.
- Professor Wogglebug has been working on some Information Pills. During an early test, one Munchkin volunteer's head combusted from the stream of information and had to be replaced with a balloon.
- Kablamazon runs a backhanded Pride statement from the Kooba Cola Corporation.
- Jenny Over-There works in “the south-east south-west left left right centre office” within the M.F.S. building.
- Among the guests at Jenny's party are “the four cardinal witches of Oz”.
Continuity
- 0000-8888888 is featured as a member of the Scottish division of the M.F.S., as established in PROSE: Open Sourcing.
- One Jenny Everywhere at the party is the version from PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere, attending alongside Grandmother Ginger.
- PROSE: Family Business referenced the party, establishing that the 38167th Universe's Jenny Everywhere was one of the incarnations of Jenny in attendance.
- PROSE: Workplace Reunion ended on the Man in Grey announcing that the Great Higher-Ups were belatedly addressing the damage to the M.F.S.'s reputation caused by the Man in Grey's own incompetence during this story, hence calling in the Repairer of Reputations.
Behind the scenes
Background
In addition to the miscellaneous variants of the Paragraph required for the various open-source characters used, Callum Phillpott's author-notes read:
| I hope you enjoyed my silly pride story, and I hope you had a nice pride month in general. There are scary things happening in the world right now (as always) and I just wanted to write a silly thing to make a few people smile.. |
| —Callum Phillpott |
An early version of the story featured the Lovecraftian character of Gloon in place of the role ultimately given to Dionysus. This was changed by the author upon realising that the name of Gloon was not actually in the public domain as they'd mistakenly assumed.
Read online
A Series of Queer Events was released on Archive Of Our Own, where it is still available.
