Tweetstorm (short story)
Tweetstorm was a Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford in 2008, but whose release was withheld until 2021, when it was run as interlude in-between installments of Paying It Forward. It was notable for being written in the first person from the point of view of Jenny herself in the form of a series of Tweets.
Contents
Plot
Just getting home from another adventure, Jenny Everywhere is called back into action to defeat some giant squids attacking the city's waterfront. She defeats them using road salt, and heads by biplane to a secret island base previously employed by several other supervillains (such as Captain Iguanodon) which is currently being used by Doctor Shiokara, the mad scientist who created the artificial giant squids.
She attempts to use a secret passageway she discovered on one of her previous adventures, but has been live-tweeting the whole thing, not realising that Shiokara reads her Twitter feed, and she is soon apprehended by his “witless minions”. She then uses this to her advantage, however, tweeting for people to come free her from the pit where he trapped her, when she's actually already escaped it. When Jenny tweets again, it is to announce that she's taken control of the laboratory; “the minions ran away as soon as the squid tank exploded, but Shiokara has escaped by rocket kite”.
With the runway unusable due to being covered in giant squid parts, Jenny cannot fly back to the mainland immediately, so she decides to explore the island in the meantime. She discovers that, on the opposite side of the island from the supervillainous lair, a luxury beach resort has been opened; Jenny decides to take an impromptu vacation there and warns her Twitter followers “not to wait up” for her return to the mainland!
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The Jenny featured in this story is similar to the one introduced in PROSE: Parallax, but updates Twitter more. She lives in a seaside town and frequently defeats various supervillains.
Universes
- The story takes place in the home universe of the story's main Jenny from start to finish.
Other
- A month before the events of the story, Jenny battled some giant slugs.
Continuity
- Scott Sanford cited Jenny Everywhere's Twitter as an inspiration for the format of the story.
Behind the scenes
Background
When releasing the story on Dreamwidth in 2021, Scott Sanford appended some commentary looking back at the story:
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Back in 2008, when I was doing the previous stories, I also made a lot of notes that didn’t turn into anything. One of them was seeing the Jenny Everywhere Twitter and wondering if that format could be used to tell a story. My original idea was going to be ‘a week in the life of Jenny Everywhere,’ as she went about her ordinary day to day activities… or normal for her, anyway. As it turned out I got through one day and decided that this wasn’t a format I really liked. The draft has been gathering cyber-dust ever since. I don’t think my default Jenny ever got this verbal on Twitter but continuity is rarely a problem for Jenny Everywhere stories. I’m open to feedback on the best title for this. Sunday’s Tweets? Tweetstorm? |
| —Scott Sanford |
Read online
The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.
