Lovie Dovie Stuff (short story)
Lovie Dovie Stuff was a short story written by Callum Phillpott. It was the seventh in Phillpott's Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series, and released around the time of Valentine's Day. 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 Valentine's Day, and the Multidimensional Finders Service is inundated with calls from people asking where to “find love”, a request with Jenny Over-There flatly refuses to dignify with an answer, hanging up every time. When Peter “Dynamite” Thor brings her her coffee, however, she is surprised to find that he's all dressed up; he explains that he's going on a date with his girlfriend Glenda Sif, but asks for advice on a touchy point: he has yet to tell her about his secret identity as Dynamite Thor — though Jenny is skeptical that Glenda hasn't figured it out herself (what with Thor's uncommonly incompetent approach to secrecy), she stays silent, not wanting to hurt her friend's feelings. Their conversation is interrupted by yet another caller asking for help finding love, causing Jenny to barge into the Man in Grey's office, demanding that he ban such calls from coming through.
The Man, however, is uncharacteristically distracted, appearing to be lost in thought — and, after he refuses to explain why, Jenny leaves him to those thoughts, which turn out to concern Professor Wogglebug and the Man in Grey's improbable development of romantic feelings for the educated insect following their chance meeting at the Interdimensional Pride Parade fiasco. He makes his mind to phone the bug for the first time since Pride (though they've exchanged emails in the intervening time), and the two agree to meet up for a restaurant date, though mutually insisting that it's purely platonic.
In the evening, Jenny is listlessly snacking on cheap Valentine's-Day boxed chocolate when she receives from a phone call from Thor, who picks up the earlier thread of conversation and asks for he help in keeping his secret identity a secret from Glenda, keeping the phone line open as he greets Glenda (coincidentally, on the sidewalk right under Jenny's window). It quickly becomes agonisingly clear that Glenda not only knows Peter is Dynamite Thor, but has been trying to politely make him understand as much for some time, obviously without success. Jenny tries to explain this to Thor, who laughs off the notion.
At the restaurant, the Man in Grey and Wogglebug make meaningless conversation for a while until they finally, awkwardly broach the subjecting burning at the forefront both of their minds: whether they harbour romantic feelings for one another and what it means if they do. They wind up agreeing that they do, frustratingly enough, and discuss various things that they have in common beneath the surface, mainly a feeling of alienation in their respective worlds. Their reflections are interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, from whom they flatly order “Grey Stuff” and crickets respectively.
Meanwhile, Glenda has taken Thor back to her well-furnished apartment. She is once again endeavouring to get him to admit to being Dynamite Thor, and has taken dire precautions to ensure that he will not hear of a crime mid-date and reluctantly but irrepressibly run off with a flimsy excuse — dire precautions which go as far as hiding her TV remote in the freezer. Still desperate to check the news for crimes he might feel a duty to foil, he leaves Glenda alone in the living room as he goes check on the day's newspaper, which she left in the kitchen.
In his absence, Glenda impulsively picks up the earpiece he was conspicuously using to keep in touch with Jenny, coincidentally set on asking Jenny if she'll help with getting Thor to confess to his dual identity. After Jenny recounts Thor's ravings about putting Glenda in danger to her, Glenda comes up with a hare-brained scheme to have Jenny pose as a supervillain and abduct her to the Abandoned, Possibly Haunted SatNav Factory.
Meanwhile, the Professor and the Man in Grey have embarked on a purportedly-scientific “study” of what love is to solve their quandary, beginning with the watching of a randomly-selected romance movie (an appalling Christmas rom-com entitled Christmas for Christmas). After shutting off the movie thirty minutes in, they bond over a shared dislike of the sorry thing, but, going over their observations, eventually come to the conclusion that they are indeed in love, and bashfully agree to be one another's Valentines.
At the SatNav Factory, Jenny has reluctantly dressed up as a supervillain and tied Glenda to a chair. As they go over the plan again, Glenda explains that her hope is that if she demonstrates that she's in danger of being kidnapped by villains regardless, Thor's objections will vanish and he'll bring himself to tell her. After Peter Thor finally shows up (not having had the time to change out of his civilian clothes but expecting to be accepted as the completely separate Dynamite Thor regardless), Jenny introduces herself as the villainous “Lovebomber” and unveils her rather lackluster plan: to blow Glenda up using a single stick of dynamite with an extremely long fuse, which she lights with a lighter helpfully supplied by Thor before leaving as she doesn't “wish to be responsible for anything that might happen beyond this point”. Indeed Thor entirely fails to untie Glenda from the chair — grievously overthinking the reason the ropes don't seem to actually be tied properly, which is in fact down to Jenny not being any good at knots — but this works out for the best, as his decision to use his superhumanly resistant body to shield Glenda from the explosion forces him to confess his identity as Dynamite Thor. After this “heroic rescue”, Glenda kisses him and assures him that contrary to his fears she will not be breaking up with him over this “shocking revelation”.
Elsewhere, the Man and Wogglebug finish sorting out what their shift in relationship means, sealing their new status as partners with a mutual agreement on pet names, and kisses on their respective cheeks.
Jenny finally makes it back home, content to put her brief stint as “the Lovebomber” behind her for good (to the mild disappointment of Glenda, who'd missed her days as a damsel-in-distress), and she unpauses the movie she was watching when Thor first called her, settling back in for a cozy evening by herself.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- Glenda Sif is aware that Dynamite Thor is acquainted with both Jenny Everywhere and Jenny Nowhere.
Jenny Nowhere
- Glenda Sif is aware that Dynamite Thor is acquainted with both Jenny Everywhere and Jenny Nowhere.
Universes
- This story takes place in the home universe of Jenny Over-There.
- Dynamite Thor references originally having resided in the Fox universe as established in PROSE: A Series of Queer Events — here referred to as the Foxverse instead. It is established that his girlfriend Glenda also lived there originally, but has now moved to the 925th Universe alongside Thor.
Other
- The Esoteric Order of Advertising created a possible logo for a M.F.S. Valentine's Day campaign, but the Man in Grey was uncomfortable with the concept and rejected their offer.
- The Man in Grey's robe has “many concealed pockets”.
- The Man in Grey seems uncertain about his own anatomy, mentally referring to one of his aforementioned pockets as being “the one closest to where he assumed his heart was” and later hesitating: “or hearts, he never checked how many he had”. Indeed, he admits that he “doesn't remember who or what [he] is”: “Am I human? Am I mortal? I swear my robes were a lot darker than this… when did they even become grey? Do I even have a name or am I just going to be ‘the Man in Grey’ for the rest of my life? It’s on my driver’s licence. I don’t even drive a car!”. He later notes that he's pretty sure he's not human, at least.
- After one of Professor Wogglebug's Brain Pill test subjects had an aneurysm, Wogglebug gave them death surgery, turning them into an undead being who's “dead and well” by the standards of their new species. Wogglebug is confident that this will be sufficient to clear him of any liability, as he has “a good lawyer”.
- At one point, Jenny's television set is seen displaying some old werewolf movie from the 80s”.
- When trying to make conversation about irrelevant topics, the Man in Grey recalls an occasion when he tried to get the Great Higher-Ups to understand that he was “unable to accept Glarded funds because [his] bank account [was] in a Tax Clode”, only for the Higher-Ups to keep sending him such funds anyway. The Man in Grey states that this caused him to “wonder if they knew anything about Necronomics”. Meanwhile, Wogglebug talks about how “one [unfortunate] consequence of Oz's chrono-stasis, besides all the other problematica that has arisen from this decision, is that [he] was sort of excited by the prospect of the Hammerheads dying one day”, and also discusses the fact that, due to the legacy of the Cardinal Witches, a “whole generation” of Ozians are unable to correctly tell West from East.
- The Man in Grey recalls beholding the true forms of the Great Higher-Ups, who looked scary even to him, much moreso than the giant wogglebug.
- Glenda is well-off, having inherited the sizable “Sif family fortune”.
- Glenda recalls having been in damsel-in-distress situations plenty of time back when she was dating Grant. She has been dating Dynamite Thor for five years.
- Professor Wogglebug swears “Heavens to Lurline”.
- The Man in Grey is unsure of “what Gods [are] actually in control of this realm”.
- The Man in Grey's face is described as “angular, wrinkled [and] not conventionally attractive”.
- Describing the mating practices of ordinary, non-sapient, non-magnified wogglebugs, the Professor explains that they “tend to cuddle, maybe bite a bit, and then, when the time is right, the female of the species decapitates the male so that her young can feast on their remains”.
- The Professor also alludes to an incident where he briefly attempted to date a non-sentient shop-window dummy while on holiday.
- Jenny Over-There is described as walking with “a slight slouch similar to filmed footage of Bigfoot”.
Continuity
- Glenda, whose full name is here given as Glenda Sif, was previously referenced as Dynamite Thor's girlfriend in PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas; Thor explains that he helped her move in from the Foxverse “just before last Christmas”.
- The events of PROSE: A Series of Queer Events, including the Man in Grey's banishment from Oz, are prominently referenced.
- The Man in Grey discusses necronomics, presumably the topic of Necronomics for Dummies, a book which was a plot point in PROSE: Open Sourcing and Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division.
- In a Fourth Wall-adjacent gag, The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids is referenced by Thor when he refers to “Copper Cupid, the legally distinct superhero who’s a British police officer by day and Cupid-themed superhero by night”. Whether Thor is familiar with an in-universe version of the Copper-Colored Cupids series, or has had some multiversal run-in with the actual Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, is not clarified; at any rate, Glenda is confused at his usage of the “legally distinct” qualifier, suggesting that, unlike Thor, she has no knowledge of the series or group.
Behind the scenes
Background
Incorporating the miscellaneous variants of the Paragraph required for the various open-source characters used, Callum Phillpott's author-notes read:
| Before the required paragraphs, I'd like to issue some apologies; sorry, Lyman Frank Baum, for treating the Wogglebug character in this way. I didn't particularly want to do this either, but I wanted to limit it to a character who has already been introduced, and the only other option who has talked to the Man in Grey is Santa Claus… that one felt worse to me for some reason. I'd also like to apologise to A. Twain and L. Evezan for inextricably linking their creations to law enforcement. In my defence, I thought it was a good pun. Peter "Dynamite" Thor, Glenda, and Professor Wogglebug are in the public domain. Feel free to utilise any elements I've added to these characters (such as physical descriptions, history, or surnames) in your own work. The Man in Grey can be utilised without a paragraph or permission. The same can be said about the legally distinct superhero "Copper Cupid", but don't blame me if you find yourself facing harsh legal/physical consequences from a group of winged robots with bows. (…) And to those like Jenny and I who, for whatever reason, end up alone today, remember to be kind to yourself. Maybe keep an eye out for cheap chocolate. |
| —Callum Phillpott |
At one point, the Man in Grey talks about being “unable to accept Glarded funds because [his] bank account is in a Tax Clode”. These nonsense-words originate in the scambaiting videos of YouTuber Atomic Shrimp, specifically Paying By Bitcoin (How To Don't) (February 26th, 2021) and A Little Nonsense Now & Then (March 19th, 2021).
Read online
Lovie Dovie Stuff was released on Archive Of Our Own, where it is still available.
