Laura Drake
Laura Drake was a woman who, like Jenny Everywhere, existed across the multiverse in a variety of incarnations, although she was incapable of shifting and many of her incarnations didn't even have any awareness of their other selves. Each universe's Laura was some form of acquaintance to her corresponding Jenny, but their relationship could land anywhere from friend to lover to mortal enemy. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell)
Although “Drake” was her most common last name, it sometimes varied between realities, whereas the name “Laura” rarely did. (PROSE: Laura in Waiting) She sometimes adopted other identities, most commonly the supervillain Doctor Draconic. (PROSE: Attack of the Rise of the Revenge of the Scheme of Doctor Draconic)
Description
Physical appearance
Although, like Jenny Everywhere's, Laura's physical appearance varied across universes, certain core traits tended to remain: she had red hair, wore glasses, and was taller than her corresponding Jenny. She often wore at least one purple article of clothing. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell) One Laura's hair was “frizzy”, and she sometimes tied it in a bun. (PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere) In at least one world, however, her relatively standard human physical appearance was a disguise and her true form was that of a gigantic Dragon; in this form, she was significantly taller than one hundred-foot-tall robot. (PROSE: Truth in Labeling)
Personality
In most of her lives, Laura Drake was a largely solitary individual but for her close association (whether it be friendship or romance) with Jenny Everywhere. She was driven, but prone to panicking in a crisis and jumping to conclusions. Her confidence in the superiority of her own goals and strategies made her largely heedless of the law and of the potential consequences of breaking it, even to a fault. (PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere)
Powers & abilities
Laura did not possess any innate shifting abilities. However, in many of her incarnations, she proved a genius inventor, capable of inventing devices that allowed her to match Jenny's dimension-travelling abilities. (PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere)
In some universes she was not merely an inventor but a fully mad scientist, able to create fantastic gizmos and armored battle suits or mecha. (Attack of the Rise of the Revenge of the Scheme of Doctor Draconic, Family Business)
She was also capable of using a sword. (PROSE: The Hermetic Garbage of Jenny Everywhere)
There were universes where she possessed supernatural abilities sufficient to act as a superhero, including one where she was actually a Dragon and had the ability to shift back and forth between a human guise and her true, gigantic form. (PROSE: Truth in Labeling)
Biography
On the Island of Barbelo
In a number of realities, Laura Drake actually began travelling across dimensions before Jenny Everywhere, and found her way to the Island of Barbelo, where Jenny was being raised in secret to hide her from her mother's enemies. She would then inspire Jenny Everywhere to become curious about the outside world and run away from home to explore. In other variations of this story across the continua, Penny Anywhere held this role in place of Anywhere. (PROSE: The Hermetic Garbage of Jenny Everywhere)
Shifting with Jenny for the first time
In one universe, Jenny Everywhere had long told her best friend and potential love interest that she could shift, but the latter had never believed her. She finally proved she had been telling the truth by taking her friend along with her on a trip to another universe. After a moment of confusion, she was delighted and laughed with Jenny. (PROSE: Somewhere)
Family life
In one universe, Jenny Everywhere and “her love” founded a family. They had at least two daughters. Jenny once played tag with the youngest, running through the trees, fondly looked upon by her spouse, who thought this behaviour a bit childish, if charming. (PROSE: Somewhere)
Loving another
In one universe, Jenny Everywhere lost “her love” to another woman. Jenny forced herself to be happy for her, despite her grief, as she watched the two kiss in the moonlight from afar. (PROSE: Somewhere)
The tragic death of a villain
In one universe, Jenny Everywhere was forced to bring down a version of “her love interest” who had become a world-threatening supervillain. This ended with the latter lying at Jenny's feet as the sky burned, with a shattered Jenny still wishing there had been another way. (PROSE: Somewhere)
Meeting Jenny at a party
In one universe, Jenny Everywhere had a social obligation to attend a dreary party. She soon caught sight of “someone else” in the crowd who “looked as uncomfortable as she was”. Though hit with a series of flashes of how her relationships with other versions of this person in other universes had gone (good and bad), Jenny decided to push it all aside, and ducked through the crowd to go and meet her, flashing her a charming smile. (PROSE: Somewhere)
Student with Jenny
- See main article: Laura Drake (The First Voyage)
In one universe, Laura Drake was Jenny Everywhere's friend, having grown up with her. Throughout their shared high school years, Jenny tried to tell her about her nature as “the Shifter”, but Laura never believed her, though she took to playing along to humour Jenny. This changed one night at a party, by a time when they were both of age. (PROSE: The First Voyage)
Lock of hair in the Museum
A lock of red hair was one of the items kept in the Jenny Everywhere Museum in the Strange and Wonderful House. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Jenny Everywhere Museum)
Treefrog
One of the residents of The Strange and Wonderful House was a short, athletic red-haired girl with freckles, known as “Treefrog”. She sometimes had adventures with her friend, the Guardian of the Ink Wells, a small brown-haired girl with goggles.
On one occasion, the two decided to take a trip to the Beach using a portal located in the backyard on which the Guardian had once written “a report”. Already wearing neon-coloured bathing suits, the two made their way through the Gardens and past the giant tree until they found the backyard and were teleported to the beach. There, immediately jumping into the almost-glowing blue, breathable water, they spent an hour having fun before resurfacing them. Accidentally discovering another, hitherto-undocumented portal, they suddenly found themselves transported, cold and dripping, to the middle of the Library, (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Teleporting Beach) where they were quickly reprimanded by the Librarian. Recognising the Guardian, the Librarian addressed her as “Inkstain”, forcing an annoyed Guardian to insist to Treefrog that it wasn't her real name in the face of Treefrog being all too glad to have a less grandiloquent name than “Guardian” by which to address her friend. This naturally angered the noise-hating Librarian further and she “roared in a whisper” for the girls to be silent. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: There is No Dripping in the Library)
The First Disciple
One incarnation of Laura was known as Lora Dar-Ek. After she was given a tiny seed in the shape of a strange and wonderful house, she planted it and it grew into a temple which housed a religion started by Lora, honouring Jenny as its goddess. Thereafter, Lora was known as the “First Disciple”. Lora eventually passed peacefully of old age. (PROSE: Overgrown)
Trapped in the Oubliette
- See main article: Laura (The Oubliette)
One Laura was the companion of her version of Jenny. At a point when Laura did not fully understand the rules and limitations of Jenny's powers yet, the two were briefly trapped in the Oubliette while visiting another universe. (PROSE: The Oubliette, The Oubliette: Solution)
Living with the Shifter
In one world, Laura and Jenny Everywhere were in a serious enough relationship that they eventually started living together. They seemed happy, although some time into their shared home-life, Laura had still not gotten used to how much Jenny tossed and turned in her sleep, which hindered Laura's own capacity to fall sleep. When she called her girlfriend out on it only for Jenny to joke in response that she was, after all, "the Shifter", Laura playfully threw a pillow at Jenny. (PROSE: Origin of the Shifter!)
Mentioned by Doctor Sigma
Three versions of Laura were used as examples by Doctor Sigma during a lecture on the Multiverse to illustrate the point that any given person has “an infinity of counterparts out there… with varying degrees of similarity between them!”. All three were in the same setting and pose, standing in front of a cityscape and an Atomium-like structure while holding some kind of raygun of her own design. One of the Lauras was a normal human woman, another had green skin and hair, and the third one seemed to inhabit an entirely grayscale world. (COMIC: The Beginner's Guide to the Multiversal Theory)
Summoning Lord Grallyx
In one universe, a particularly impulsive Laura studied with Jenny, and appeared to be unaware of her multi-dimensional nature. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell) Jenny was her best friend, defending her from bullies in grade school. (PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere) She hoped to make it into an advanced science class, but was afraid of failing her final history exam. Finding an old book of demonology, she enlisted Jenny's help to summon the demon Lord Grallyx, intent on making a deal with him to ensure her success at the exam.
Grallyx went out of control, but a more experienced Jenny covertly took over Laura's friend's body and dealt with the situation. Grallyx was eventually trapped inside Laura's own demonology book. Laura gave up on the demon-summoning plan, and the two left the cave where they'd settled for the ritual, with Jenny pledging to help Laura study for the exam. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell) This version of Laura graduated successfully and remained best friends with Jenny into early adulthood, with Jenny helping Laura land a job at the Altern Corporation, the world's leading scientific innovators. Jenny eventually revealed her multi-dimensional nature to Laura, taking her along on a shift to a universe where Jenny lived in a quiet seaside town as her first taste of interdimensional travel. From then on, Jenny always warned Laura before she left on interdimensional adventures which might keep her for a long time.
She once invented a Heat Ray which she planned to give to Jenny as a present, so that she could use it to toast bread “on the go”. One day, before Laura had gotten the chance to give her the Ray, Jenny disappeared without warning (as, that week, all of her incarnations across the Multiverse had been zapped off to a secret realm beyond Time for their own good). Panicking, Laura built an interdimensional portal to try and find her (using “borrowed” Altern resources). After catching glimpses of hundreds of Jenny's other incarnations' past exploits, she came to a halt in the Void where she joined forces with Jenny Anywhere, Hakhe and Jenny Somewhere to enter the Infinite. After they did not find any trace of Jenny Everywhere even there, they made their way to the seaside town to “mourn” Jenny, beginning to accept that she may be gone for good. There, they were attacked by the Fallen One but managed to defeat it on their own, just in time for Jenny to triumphantly return to reality, leading to celebrations. (PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere)
In the Collapsed Cosmos
After the Multiverse collapsed into a single Collapsed Cosmos, Laura was, at first, Jenny's friend and roommate in a 21st-century city. She studied quantum computing, and told Jenny to find her a book about time-crystals at the library. After returning with the book following a reality accident, Jenny began flirting with Laura and almost slept with her, but they were interrupted by Glendalf coming to recruit Jenny on an adventure. Due to the instability of reality, as Jenny became focused on the visitor and his Orc assistants, Laura vanished.
She resurfaced at a later point in Jenny's adventure, now appearing as “a woman in a sort of deep blue Napoleonic military uniform with a white cape, holding a sword at her side”. She beat Jenny, Glendalf and the Orcs to the manor of the billionaire who held the Legendary Time Crystal in her vault. Sneaking in disguised as one of the billionaire's robot servants, Laura killed her and made her way to the vault, where she took the Crystal. She intended to use it to build the Multiverse anew, but not as it was — bringing forth a new order bowed to her, so as to ensure that nothing like the collapse would happen again. Jenny, who wanted to use the Crystal to properly restore infinity, dueled Laura for the crystal; their fighting caused reality to become even more unstable, with their surroundings flashing between all the places Jenny and Laura had fought before across the Multiverse; finally, the current narrative shattered entirely, with Jenny waking up in a different time and place with not a trace of Laura. (PROSE: The Hermetic Garbage of Jenny Everywhere)
In the 38167th Universe
- See main article: Laura Drake (38167th Universe)
The version of Laura native to the same universe as the version of Jenny who often interacted with the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids (PROSE: The Winter Quests) Like her, she lived in New Flaversham, Wintlevania. She was a “highly successful mad scientist”, with a purple skyscraper to herself. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere and the Master of Monsters) Much like other versions of Laura, she liked the colour purple and had big hair which often got in her eyes when she worked. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
An alias quickly pierced
In one universe where Jenny led a parallel life as a superhero under the name of “the Shifter”, Jenny began dating her world's Laura, going as far as kissing her. Shortly thereafter, however, Laura, having discovered that Jenny and the Shifter were one and the same crafted and unveiled a secret identity of her own, the villainous “Doctor Draconic”. As the Doctor, she appeared as “a masked woman in a red and purple villain costume”, piloting a disc-shaped hovercraft and commanding an army of drones.
As the Shifter and Doctor Draconic had their first face-off on a rooftop, Jenny readily recognised “Doctor Draconic” as Laura, leading to a moment of awkwardness between them as Laura admitted that she had made the alias obvious in the hope that Jenny would still miss the connection, so that she could then taunt her with how obvious it had been once she did choose to reveal herself. Laura ended up feeling so moritifed that she ended the conversation by urging Jenny to get on with “thwarting” her. PROSE: Attack of the Rise of the Revenge of the Scheme of Doctor Draconic)
Team-up with Nowhere
- See main article: Laura Drake (Jenny Everywhere and the Nowhere Spiral)
One reality's version of Laura was the ex of Jenny Everywhere of Jenny Everywhere who was dating Jimmy Wherever and was crushed on by her archnemesis Jenny Nowhere. She had the standard Laura Drake appearance and engineering talents. Although she was not known to use the “Doctor Draconic” alias, she wore copper-coloured underwear with a dragon pattern printed on them. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Nowhere Spiral)
Lorad-rak
When she visited the fantasy world of Ecord, another universe's Jenny Everywhere heard Tyse, an Ecordian warrior, swear by “the three bosoms of Lorad-rak”. Interestingly, Tyse was, on the other hand, not familiar with the names “Jenny Everywhere” and “the Shifter” before this extradimensional Jenny introduced herself to him. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Eye of Argon)
Lauren Ipsum Drake
- See main article: Lauren Ipsum Drake
In one universe where superheroes were commonplace, Laura Drake was actually a Dragon who had taken human form, adopting the alias “Lauren Ipsum Drake”. Her human form was a red-haired woman, who sometimes wore dresses. She maintained this civilian identity but also a superhero identity in which she made no secret of her ability to “shapeshift into” a huge draconic form. She was friends with the Shifter, who was also active as a superhero. (PROSE: Truth in Labeling)
The Draconic Sorceress
In one universe where Jenny was “Gwenivar, Wanderer in Everywhere”, her archenemy was “the Draconic Sorceress”. Their relationship semmed to be the typical mix of rivalry and romantic entanglement, with Gwenivar openly discussing how the Sorceress “always call[ed] off her dark enchantments in time to challenge [Gwenivar] to a bout of intimate swordplay”. On one occasion, after the Sorceress had sent the Creeping Shadow after Gwenivar, the two were accidentally transported to another universe by another Jenny. With the Sorceress unable to call off the Shadow before it did true damage, it fell to this Jenny, Gwenivar, and the local Laura Drake to defeat the Shadow, using a broken photon-freezer to turn it into a mass of soap bubbles. As she prepared to return home with the “Creeping Mess of Soap”, Gwenivar claimed that she would relish the chance to “regale [the Sorceress] with my mighty tale over a calming bout of swordplay”. (PROSE: Extradimensional Experiments)
At the Neptunian Orbital University
In one universe, Laura was born in an era where humanity was expanding into the rest of the Solar System, under the aegis of the ludicrously influential Altern Corporation. Laura was a precocious child, and, when she was two, her grandmother read her old comics like Asterix, also teaching her the word “grawlix”. She also gave Laura a plush alligator with a factory defect giving it extra eyes and arms, which the girl decided to name “Grawlix”, misspelling it as “Grallyx”. Her family also kept a pet SmartFerret.
Eventually, Laura became a physics engineering major at the prestigious Neptunian Orbital University. She struggled with self-confidence issues, being unable to work to specifications and instead doing all her best works on eccentric side-projects like the cloud solidifier, the turbo-toasting ray and the photon phonograph. One day, while she was trying to get a photon-freezer to work, she was visited by a history major she barely knew (though they had neuroseismology together), Jennifer “Jenny” Everstar. Jenny quickly showed her that over the last few weeks, she'd developed the ability to spontaneously summon objects from other realities, and the two began investigating her gift in secret. When a failed attempt to scan Jenny instead gave increased power to her summonings, the two had to deal with the Creeping Shadow, a monster from another reality, with the help of an alternative Jenny. Laura's “failed” photon-freezer, and the specific ways in which she'd built it “wrong”, proved key to defeating the monster, together with her Jenny's encouragements. After saying goodbye to the other Jenny, Laura and Jennifer stayed up looking at the stars, already bonding. It was then that Jenny discovered she also had the ability to teleport herself to other worlds. (PROSE: Extradimensional Experiments)
Trip to the Himalayas
- See main article: Laura Drake (Comedy Skits)
One world's version of Laura wound up spending several month in jail after following Jenny Everywhere on an ill-conceived trip to the Himalayas. (PROSE: Comedy Skits)
Working for the Intelligence Taskforce
- See main article: Laura Drake (with Jenny Cornelius)
In the 1960s London of the universe of Jenny Cornelius, “Miss Laura Drake” worked in the P.R. office of the Intelligence Taskforce. Jenny often went through her when trying to get in touch with the Taskforce, causing Laura unlikely headaches such as phoning ahead of time to warn her that something extremely outrageous was about to happen and the Taskforce had better stand ready to “deny any involvement”. Jenny managed to talk Laura into going on actual dates with her on multiple occasions, although, owing to the time period, they had to be discreet about it. (PROSE: The Folly of Men)
Jenny and Laura had another date in Soho on Epiphany which was interrupted by the appearance of another Jenny. Despite Laura's confusion at the situation, and their vagueness about how they were related, her good manners got the better of her and she asked the other Jenny if she'd like to join their outing. (PROSE: Watch the Skies)
Laura's superiors later sent her to Slough to investigate some cultists, on the patronising notion that a young woman would be “inconspicuous”. Jenny Cornelius was also nosing about, and Laura unsuccessfully tried to convince Jenny to stay out of Slough. After finding the right building in Slough, Laura was captured and tied up in a storeroom. Jenny showed up when Laura was halfway through getting out of her bindings by herself, as the building had caught fire. Despite apparently being trapped in a burning building, Jenny was able to extract them by means that she chose to keep implausibly deniable. (PROSE: Birds and Snakes)
One day at work she had a mysterious visitor who dropped in on her unannounced and asked about Jenny Cornelius. When asked how she and Cornelius had met, Laura couldn't exactly recall, explaining that they “must have run into each other at something, early on” and had subsequently “[seen] each other off and on for a while”. Eventually, around 1958, she suggested they go somewhere together out of the blue. After Laura declined “a marathon ride on the Tube”, driving through the countryside in Jenny's Mini, or travelling to “far-away, fantastical lands, wondrous imaginary places only found in the wildest fantasies? Neverland! Tir na Nog! Oz! France!”, Cornelius settled on an idea without telling her what it was, and drove her at insane speeds to Liverpool to see “some silly teenage boys who had a band.” The significance of the Quarrymen was lost on Laura until later. (PROSE: How Jenny First Met…)
On Mystepolia
- See main article: Laura Drake (775th Universe)
The 775th Universe's version of Laura Drake was native to the politically-independent island of Mystepolia alongside her girlfriend Jenny Everywhere. (COMIC: The Demon and the Butterfly)
In the 925th Universe
- See main article: Laura Drake (925th Universe)
A reckless gadgeteer version of Laura existed in the 925th Universe and was present at the Dibbsy Store on December 24th, 2022 alongside Jenny Everywhere, Jenny Nowhere, Jenny Somewhere and a few other notable individuals. (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas)
Inventing the Shifting Chamber
- See main article: Laura Drake (A Day at the Beach)
In one universe, Laura invented the Shifting Chamber, a device to allow ordinary people to shift like Jenny. However, she miscalculated, and accidentally erased Bastian from existence. (PROSE: A Day at the Beach)
Other references
When interviewing one universe's Jenny as part of a long series of interviews of her other selves, Jennifer Dao Chu asked her about her thoughts on Laura. However, Jenny replied that she had yet to encounter a Laura Drake native to her universe. (PROSE: So You're Jenny Everywhere) This same Jenny, who sometimes read stories written about her in other worlds, also knew that writers kept pairing her up with “tall redheads” and was unsure of the source of the trend. (PROSE: Fragment: Fanfic Critique)
Behind the scenes
Genesis
Laura Drake was created by Jeanne Morningstar, a prolific author of short Jenny Everywhere-themed short fiction on Tumblr and Ficly in the early 2010s. She was originally intended to be one member of a wider recurring cast for a never-materialised long-form Jenny project, and designed as more of a viewpoint character who would act as a contrast or "straight woman" to Jenny's antics, only for the concept to evolve into something more.[1]
After the basic idea of a character with whom Jenny had a wide variety of relationships across universes was introduced in Somewhere, and a conspicuous lock of red hair appearing two days later in The Jenny Everywhere Museum in a collection of more obviously noteworthy items related to Jenny, the named character of Laura debuted quietly in the short story The First Voyage on June the 5th, 2012, whereupon she was released in the public domain by Morningstar. However, it was only on August the 28th, 2013 that they expounded on the conceit behind the character:
| So Laura – she was the first and currently most developed of the supporting cast for JE I’ve been thinking up. She started out as being more of a straightforward companion character but her concept wound up being “What if Luthor had stayed Superman’s friend?”
See, there’s a certain dynamic that occurs between male characters a lot of the time–characters who are enemies and embody some kind of symbolic opposition but also have this sort of intimacy between them, and they have a past background of friendship. (Which obviously includes a fair bit of shipping potential.) For example Superman and Luthor, Reed and Doom, Xavier and Magneto, the Doctor and the Master. We don’t see a lot of these kind of relationships between women, and one of the things I want to do with Jenny is to explore the kind of tropes that get applied to iconic male heroes like the Doctor. But of course the whole nature of Jenny Everywhere is that AUs and “imaginary stories” are the norm. There’s also the fact that I want magical girl tropes to be part of Jenny Everywhere too, because magical girl tropes are cool. I see her as the kind of hero who makes friends with her former or potential enemies, like Sailor Moon or Golden Age Wonder Woman. That means it’s possible to explore their relationship from any number of angles–they could be “just” friends, or they could be happily married, or they could be deadly foes, or archenemies with benefits, or what have you. Ununnilium pointed out that the ideal counterpoint to the character who’s a constant across all worlds is one whose relationship with her is always changing. Also, because everything I’ve written with her has been from her POV, I haven’t actually described what she looks like. So–she has (naturally) red hair (even in the contexts where that wouldn’t make sense–), and tends to wear glasses. I see her as significantly taller than Jenny, even though she looks up to/feels jealous of her. She is quite fond of purple. In character terms, she’s someone who can be difficult to like. She’s one of those people who tends to have strong Fixed Ideas about things and so conversations with them are full of bizarre mine fields. She can be petty and jealous and resentful and have Nice Guy tendencies. She’s not the “sociopath” that some people think she is though–she has to deal with the frustration of living in a world where most people aren’t on her level intellectually, and that means she’s built up a lot of anger and neediness and resentment, but she does have a conscience. But that can sometimes be very dangerous in and of itself, because of she is very certain about what’s right and wrong, and (as with, say, Magneto) that certainty can lead her down dangerous paths. Whereas Jenny is someone whose power is to consider things from a million perspectives at once. So why does Jenny not only put up with her but actively care about her so much, and keep getting drawn into the multiversal train wreck in world after world? Well, Laura is brilliant, for one thing. Because of her voracious imagination and intellect she can understand where Jenny is coming from in a way most other people can’t. Jenny is someone who’s very simple, but in a way that has a lot of layers–she’s coming at things from a very strange perspective, so a lot of people don’t understand what her deeper emotions are. Laura’s also very thorough and good at thinking things through–as is Jenny, but in a completely different way. Jenny is someone whose thought processes are very nonlinear and can sometimes end up in strange places, so she needs someone who can question her and stand up to her when she’s doing something that’s a spectacularly bad idea, as she sometimes does. Because Jenny is someone with a lot of wisdom and insight, but not necessarily good sense. That’s how I see things, anyway. |
| —Jeanne Morningstar |
Notes & References
| Open-source elements making up the core Jenny Everywhere mythos | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Incarnations of Laura Drake | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
