Attack of the Rise of the Revenge of the Scheme of Doctor Draconic (short story)
Attack of the Rise of the Revenge of the Scheme of Doctor Draconic was a standalone prose story written by Delilah H. Smith. The story debuted Laura Drake's over-the-top supervillain persona of “Doctor Draconic”, which was released into the public domain in its own right.
Contents
Plot
Jenny Everywhere, in a universe where she appears to be some sort of superhero, confronts a new, masked supervillain on a rooftop. Introducing herself as “Doctor Draconic”, the evildoer begins to gloat about their army of armed drones only for Jenny to recognize the culprit as her romantic interest Laura Drake. A reluctant Laura admits that she picked the fairly transparent Drake/Draconic alias precisely because it was obvious, in the hope that Jenny would miss it anyway and Laura could then taunt her with its obviousness once she did reveal herself. In the end, the conversation gets awkward enough that “Doctor Draconic” puts an end to it by insisting that Jenny “get over here and thwart [her]!”. Jenny smiles as she complies.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The story Jenny Everywhere is not physically described; she displays an awareness of her other selves, being aware that other Jennies and Lauras have been enemies in the past. She appears to act as a superhero under the title of “Shifter”.
Laura Drake
- The version of Laura in the story, also nicknamed “Laur”, met Jenny in circumstances unrelated to their respective super-activities, with the two of them even kissing, prior to the events of this story, where she unveils her supervillain alias of “Doctor Draconic” only to be instantly found out by Jenny. As Doctor Draconic, she appears as “a masked woman in a red and purple villain costume” piloting a disc-shaped hovercraft.
Continuity
- Many subsequent stories featured other versions of Laura Drake using the “Doctor Draconic” alias, including:
- the 38167th Universe's Laura Drake in PROSE: Family Business;
- an unidentified incarnation dreamt about by Jenny Cornelius in PROSE: A Morning In;
- an unidentified incarnation in PROSE: Games in the Woods.
- Additionally, in PROSE: Extradimensional Experiments, a fantasy version of Laura was shown to go by the title of the Draconic Sorceress.
Behind the scenes
Background
The author also included this note:
I created this story mostly to introduce the concept of “Doctor Draconic” as a “Doc Ock” kind of villain-name for Laura. There are no real fixed details about Doctor Draconic (notwithstanding the details which are fixed about Laura to begin with), except that she’s unquestionably an antagonist to Jenny’s heroics, and that “Laura Drake” is a civilian identity which she tries to keep secret. This particular interpretation is sort of like Doctor Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog; I think they must've started dating before Jenny started thwarting, and you just know that when Laura figured out that it was Jenny who was fighting against her, she had exactly the same kind of brief internal freakout that Jenny did at the beginning. I kind of feel like, when Laura's being the bad guy, Jenny's going to have to be the voice of reason/“straight man”-even-though-she’s-neither to Laura’s antics. |
—Delilah H. Smith |
Read online
The entire story is available for free on the author's Tumblr blog.