Paperback Writer (short story)

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Paperback Writer was a short Jenny Everywhere story written by Mike Atherton. It was a heavily metafictional story, as well as a repeatedly NSFW one.

Jenny Everywhere has been seducing and sleeping with each of the Beatles, one by one. As she is enjoying a tryst with Ringo, however, she is abducted by a mysterious bearded man who shoots her with a tranquiliser dart. When she wakes up, she is in the back of her own car (being driven by Sizemore), tied up with her own scarf and gagged with her own goggles: since she takes whatever possessions of hers she is touching when she shifts, this clever ploy prevents her from simply shifting to another dimension to untie herself.

She tries it anyway, eight times over, but not only does she remain bound, her captor, Sizemore, keeps shifting right along with her. Eventually, they arrive at his home, where Sizemore explains to Jenny that she is fictional and that he is a writer, thus allowing him to control her life and universe at will. To demonstrate, he writes a series of brief sentences which cause Jenny's life to change abruptly. Boag, a friend of Sizemore's and apparently a fan of Jenny's, briefly drops by, observing that “the guys on Barbelith will never believe this”, but has to leave because he's got a train to catch. Growing bored, Sizemore writes one last card, writing Jenny out of existence.

The next morning, Sizemore wakes up and reads through the draft he's written, blaming Boag for “always putting dumb ideas in [his] head”.

Worldbuilding

Jenny

This story features a Jenny who is a fictional character, although she still appears to be “real” in some sense despite being an artificial being. She secretly has blond hair, but dyes it black to better resemble her iconic image.

Universes

Boag and Sizemore come from a universe where Jenny Everywhere is fictional.

Continuity

While dazed and confused, Jenny Everywhere mentions “her biplane”. Another incarnation of Jenny was seen flying a biplane in COMIC: The Late Shift.

Behind the scenes

Read online

This story was originally released on the Sizemore blog, and was later reprinted on LiveJournal. While the pages are now offline, they were recorded on the Internet Archive, allowing us to reproduce the story here:

PDF copy (open in a new tab to read).