A Series of Queer Events (short story)

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A Series of Queer Events was a short story written by Callum Phillpott. It was the third in Phillpott's Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series, and released in celebration of Pride Month. Par for the course for the series, it featured appearances by multiple other public-domain and open-source characters beyond the central recurring cast.

In 2024, a heavily updated version was published on the official Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe website with several new illustrations by Phillpott himself.

Contents

Plot

It's Pride Month, and the Man in Grey, with his trademark thoughtless callousness, is attempting to coordinate the Multidimensional Finders Service's pride campaign himself, rainbow-capitalism-style — including a special offer for callers to be able to find out, not only where items and people are located as usual, but also whether any people of their choice is a member of the queer community.

Work soon commences at the M.F.S. office; in addition to the usual calls for finding things, which come with their fair share of people asking fruitlessly about Jenny Everywhere, Jenny Over-There indeed starts getting calls from people asking about other people's sexualities, though she refuses to answer their questions. One of her calls, from a version of Captain Ahab who's managed to contact the M.F.S. to help him locate Moby Dick, sees the conversation devolve when Ishmael asks Ahab, within earshot of the phone, if he can go to the Multi-Reality Pride Festival with Queequeg.

At this moment, Dynamite Thor walks in, his costume subtly altered: the sticks of dynamite on his belt have been painted to depict the stripes of the ace flag. He explains that the Man in Grey asked him to decorate the office for Pride, but didn't give him any decorations, save a stock of posters with the Man in Grey's unconvincing rendition of a rainbow M.F.S. logo. Jenny agrees to go into the town with him to look for more varied items to buy. All this time, unbeknownst to Jenny, Ahab stays on the line, waiting for his directions.

Meanwhile, the Man in Grey has travelled to the doors of the Diggs estate in the Land of Oz, as he is acting for the first time as the Great Higher-Ups' appointed representative on the Interdimensional Pride Council, to whom Oscar Diggs has loaned the building. He bumps into Professor Wogglebug and announces that he has secured a number of “great sponsors” for the Interdimensional Pride Parade including DollarGraveClub, the Super Besties Justice Squad, Dibbsy, Kablamazon, and the god Dionysus. The Man in Grey leaves his briefcase full of “important grey documents” at the door of the councilchamber and walks in, unaware that a scant few moments later, Oscar Diggs walks back in to retrieve his briefcase, which he forgot to take before leaving for his holiday on the beaches of the Land of Mo. He confuses the Man in Grey's briefcase for his and makes off with it.

Back in the 925th Universe, Jenny Over-There and Thor are walking through the street, observing various Pride-themed advertisements, including the Altern Corporation “celebrating all two of their queer employees as they colour their logo with the version of the rainbow that isn’t too controversial”, Dibbsy “selling box sets of all their bad live-action remakes because they all have a combined 5 seconds of non-straight content”, and DollarGraveClub “offering a 'Bury Your Gays’ discount for LGBT people buying coffins” — all of which they find “annoying at best and upsetting at worse”. With browsing the streets proving this dispiriting, Jenny decides to use her preternatural finding abilities, which lead her and Thor to Professor Helvetius's Convenient Pride Decorations Shop.

They immediately start gathering decorations in the maze-like interior of the Shop. When Jenny hits upon the question of who will pay, Thor reveals he still has some money left over from his pre-superhero career as a mining baron, the first Jenny hears of this rather unexpected background. The two then meet Professor Helvetius herself. She tells them that all the decorations in the shop are free — but, when they ask for bags in which to carry them, reveals that the big brown bags she has available are 50 pounds apiece.

Meanwhile, Oscar Diggs, relaxing on one of the beaches of the Land of Mo, decides to fetch the book in his briefcase, only to open the Man in Grey's case instead and find documents about all the sponsorship deals from dubiously-ethical companies. Though loathe to interrupt his vacation, he makes up his mind to go warn Ozma about what she will no doubt see as a perversion of the spirit of Pride.

Elsewhere still, the Man in Grey runs out of the Interdimensional Pride Council meeting, a complete disaster. It turns out that Dionysus boycotted the Council when he learned that Stardust was to attend as the Super Besties' representative, only for Stardust himself to also fail to attend as he was busy making a public apology for deleting France in an ill-fated effort to stop a robbery in the Louvre. The Man in Grey's letter of recommendation from Dorian Gray also only brought him woe due to Dorian's bad history with Atlas the Traveller. As Professor Wogglebug attempts to convince him to cut his losses and drop the vampires of DollarGraveClub as well, the two are beset by Ozma arriving with great fanfare — and she's not happy.

When Jenny and Thor return to the M.F.S. building, all set to install the plethora of decorations they acquired at Helvetius's, they find the Man in Grey returning in a sulk, shredding his pride flyers. He orders them to cancel all Pride activities at the M.F.S. before heading off. This leaves Thor crushed, to a degree which surprises Jenny until he explains that this would have been his first year taking part in Pride Month, as he only recently realised he was asexual. Jenny confirms to him that she is herself aroace, and suggests that they might throw their own party outside the bounds of the M.F.S. using all the decorations they bought.

Within a week, they are indeed able to set up an interdimensional Pride-themed party, with Helvetius landing them her shop (whose interior somehow transforms itself into a roomy, empty party venue) for the purpose, with Thor ending up doing most of the decorating, while Jenny handles food and invitations. Meanwhile, the Man in Grey has gone off to sulk at “the most heterosexual bar he could find”, a “miserable area filled with miserable, one miserable superhuman,” and, as it turns out, Professor Wogglebug. He explains to the Man that, although he is now banned from the Interdimensional Pride Council, he wasn't actually punished by Ozma, who is “oddly forgiving”, unlike the Man, who's been banned from Oz itself. As they get to talking, the Wogglebug convinces the Man to go to Jenny's party, where he ends up having fun, as do the variety of odd characters attending the party, from Nyarlathotep to the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Worldbuilding

Universes

Other

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Background

In addition to the miscellaneous variants of the Paragraph required for the various open-source characters used, Callum Phillpott's author-notes read:

I hope you enjoyed my silly pride story, and I hope you had a nice pride month in general. There are scary things happening in the world right now (as always) and I just wanted to write a silly thing to make a few people smile..
—Callum Phillpott


An early version of the story featured the Lovecraftian character of Gloon in place of the role ultimately given to Dionysus. This was changed by the author upon realising that the name of Gloon was not actually in the public domain as they'd mistakenly assumed.

The updated, illustrated version published on the official Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe website on July 12th, 2024 nearly doubled the wordcount, from slightly over five thousand words to slightly under ten thousand. The most significant of these edits are:

  • The singular illustration of a badly-crafted Pride version of the M.F.S.'s logo is not only replaced with a sleeker version matching the reimagined M.F.S. logo used as part of the site's webdesign, but complemented with similar rainbow-capitalism versions of the Dibbsy and Kablamazon logos, and with a longer in-universe blurb.
  • The erroneous colours of the rainbow flag on the M.F.S. Pride logo is given a specific explanation beyond general carelessness: the Man in Grey designed it personally, staying up all night to do so, and, due to an Internet outage, was forced to try and remember the colours of the rainbow from memory — which he found very challenging.
  • The Man in Grey no longer kisses the logo after setting it up.
  • The description of Jenny as “tr[ying] to hide her rage for once” during her phonecall with Captain Ahab is excised, to be more in keeping with her definitive characterisation in subsequent stories as much less on-edge than she came across in the original drafts of the first few stories.
  • When Jenny first scries for the Man in Grey's location and notices he is in Oz, the narration specifies that this is the first Jenny learns of Oz being a real place in (or rather “adjacent to”) her home reality, a development with which she is pleased, though not extravagantly so.
  • Dynamite Thor no longer babbles about never having been to Wales in his original home reality.
  • It is specified that Mulan is not included in Dibbsy's “First Gays” box set due to “a minor controversy-related issue”, instead of no rationale (however vague) being given as in the original edition.
  • Instead of the Man in Grey and Professor Wogglebug's first scene together in the story being their first encounter in-universe, it is now stated that the two first met in the 1950s when the Man in Grey was working at a café on Earth which the Wogglebug (who was, at the time, going by the name of Sullivan) patronised with some regularity. Indeed, the two were friendly enough that Sullivan pulled some strings to allow the Man in Grey to enter the Miskatonic School of Business. Those details concur with the official Man in Grey biography which went up on the website at the same time as the revised Series of Queer Events.
  • Instead of simply being “smartly dressed”, the Wogglebug's outfit is described as “a loud, purple tailcoat which drape[s] over [the Wogglebug's] stubby abdomen” and reminds the man in Grey of “something Doctor Know would wear if he went slightly loopy”.
  • It is established that the Wogglebug's seemingly-solid, mantis-like pincers can morph at will into more human-like hands.
  • The aside about the unfortunate Munchkin who tested one of the Wogglebug's Information Pills occurs at a different point in the scene, and goes into more detail both on the mishap and on its outcome. Foreshadowing PROSE: Lawyers and Tigers and Bears, it is suggested that the Munchkin dropped their case against the Wogglebug due to finding the Wogglebug's defence lawyer in Oz too annoying to deal with.
  • More directly foreshadowing their subsequent romantic relationship, the Wogglebug offers to kiss the Man in Grey out of enthusiasm before awkwardly backtracking.
  • Carmilla is now the only DollarGraveClub representative to be explicitly mentioned, with Varney and Ruthven no longer featuring by name; Carmilla is established to have been one of the business's foudners. Their “Bury Your Gays discount” on coffins no longer generally applies to “LGBT people buying coffins” but specifically to “vampire couples”, and it is noted that, as a marketing gimmick, they have dubbed the “queer coffins” they sell, “qoffins”. (It is implied that there is nothing specifically queer about them besides the name and their usage in the marketing gimmick.)
  • The characters visit an alcove in the Diggs estate which contains a large papier-mâché head upon a table, evidently the one formerly used by Oscar Diggs as part of his “Wizard of Oz” persona, with him staring mournfully at it (and recalling how he spent a whole night making it) while pining for the good old days.
  • The list of commercial Pride ventures no longer repeats the earlier joke about Dibbsy's rerelease of queerbaity live-action remakes on DVD, instead mentioning “jagged rainbow pins” as the items sold by Dibbsy.
  • The eventual Pride party at Professor Helvetius's Convenient Pride Decorations Shop is now foreshadowed when Jenny and Peter first encounter the store thanks to the presence of a sign out front which highlights that Helvetius is also happy to rent the place out as a party venue. The sign also establishes upfront that all the items are being given away for free; this means that Thor no longer offers to pay for them.
  • Jenny and Thor's frolic through the Shop is rewritten from the ground up, including more banter and comic business
  • There is a description of Thor's “wallet”, a hollowed-out dynamite stick containing a curved checkbook.
  • When talking about his world, Peter cites generic Golden-Age-comic-book business to give a sense of the chaos that surrounded him losing track of his business responsibilities: “…there are gangs around every corner, there's a war going on, someone gave a gorilla a human brain…”. He also explains how the board ultimately ousted him because he'dbecome “a liability”.
  • Professor Helvetius now interrupts Jenny and Peter's conversation with a mystifying monologue which seems half philosophising about being stuck in a rut, and half technobabble about the nature of space-time; it serves as meta-acknowledgement of the rewrite, primarily concerning the way reality seems to change every time a story is repeated. In response, Jenny references the events of PROSE: The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There by saying she learned to stop asking questions “when Doctor Omega stole the toaster a few months back”.
  • Doctor Omega's people are now identified by name as the Society of the Evaluators, and Helvetius refers to Omega as her “brother”, telling Jenny: “I see my brother is still working on that little spaceship of his. Do tell him he still owes the Society recompense for— well, he’ll know. Just tell him it’s owed.”. She then hands Jenny a business card for the Society, whose logo depicts a pair of weighing-scales. Jenny makes a mental note to get rid both of that card, and of the rainbow version Helvetius additionally gives her after a moment's thought.
  • The punchline of the scene, with Helvetius charging 50 pounds per bag even though the items are free, is emphasised with Helvetius seemingly confirming the earlier monologue acknowledging the reedit as diegetically real by saying: “I wasn’t too sure about this bit, but maybe it’ll be funnier in this rotation”.
  • Oscar Diggs's realisation about the switched briefcases is displaced before the Kablamazon ad rather than after it.
  • The Kablamazon ad now explicitly states that Kablamazon has just completed its purchase of, and subsequent merger with, the Kooba Cola Corporation, accounting for an apparent typo in the original which attributed the message to Kooba Cola mid-sentence despite it being introduced to and signed by Kablamazon; the plot point of the corporate merger had previously been noted in PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas, which the reedited passage now actively prequelises.
  • The Man in Grey and the Professor's conversation outside of the Interdimensional Pride Council meeting is entirely different, with the pair going over why each of their guests and sponsors were kicked out
  • The conversation is then interrupted by a direct phone call from an irate Dionysus, who is stated to be highly respected by and involved with the Council, though not formally a member. Dionysus is particularly incensed at the idea of Stardust the Super-Wizard being present, with it being clarified that Stardust isn't even known to be queer, just a (very theoretical) ally.
  • Stardust's “apology” for “deleting France” is now presented as a quote printed in a newspaper (in all-caps), rather than a cutaway to a live press conference happening in parallel to the conversation. The quote sees Stardust, who is described in narration as an “extradimensional goliath”, declare himself ”the Son of Suns, Master Manipulator of All Atomic Bodies”. His dialogue specifies that the robbery at the Louvre which he was trying to stop was, of course, an attempted theft of the Mona Lisa. It is established that he was persuaded to un-delete France by the other Super Besties, who had to threaten him with the Atom Smasher.
  • Jenny and Peter hum in unison as they decorate the M.F.S. office; when Thor expresses mild surprise that they didn't break out into song altogether, an amused Jenny replies “Eh, I’m not a singer. I’m barely a talker”.
  • The decorating scene ends on Thor accidentally stepping on the hand of the Man in Grey, still lying on the floor as he wallows about the collapse of his sponsorship plans.
  • As Thor mopes about not getting to properly throw himself into what was supposed to be his first Pride celebration as a member of the community (with him stating he only realised he was asexual shortly after moving to the 925th Universe earlier this year), he and Jenny vdiscuss Helvetius's talk of cyclical temporal rotations — which they still don't completely understand — and this prompts Jenny to phone Helvetius again to ask about renting out the Shop as a venue for a proper Pride party. The beginning of the phone call occurs on-“screen”, with Helvetius initially assuming that Jenny has phoned because she wants to join the Society of the Evaluators.
  • Professor Wogglebug is now much more heavily inebriated when the Man in Grey bumps into him at the bar; this turns out to be because he thoughtlessly paid for his drink with a large Oz emerald, and the bartender, instead of even trying to give him change, served him as many drinks as the ludicrously valuable stone would be worth, which the Wogglebug doesn't realise he isn't obliged to drink himself.
  • The party's attendees now include Doctor Know, who engages Ozma in conversation. It is also noted that Oscar Diggs attends the party in drag, in an outfit meant to resemble a campier version of the Cardinal Witches' outfits.
  • Jenny is stated to have previously heard about the Cardinal Witches of Oz in a book about Oz politics which she had “found in a bin outside the Man's office”.
  • The party is described from Jenny's perspective. She and Tetra-None Hepta-Oct end up finding each other, and, with both of them agreeing that loud, busy parties aren't their thing, they head off into the night to find a pizza place, with Tetra having been meaning to get round to trying pizza on Doctor Know's advice.
  • While Tetra is talking to Jenny, the latter briefly gets the sense that the cyclock (the term is, here, uncapitalised) was trying to establish a psychic connection with her before realising that Jenny isn't the sort of being with which such a connection can be made.
  • The number of versions of Jenny Everywhere at the party is pegged as specifically five. There is no longer a specific reference to one of them being the version from PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere, with Grandmother Ginger going unmentioned; on the other hand, another Jenny, for whose benefit Thor is seen trying to make a karaoke machine work, is described as wearing a “thick, greenish-brown button-up coat”, clearly marking her out as the recurring New Flaversham Jenny who had gone on to be confirmed in PROSE: Family Business as one of the party attendees.

Read online

A Series of Queer Events was released on Archive Of Our Own, where it is still available.

Notes & references

  1. ↑ In originally-released version, Gloon occupied the role of Dionysus.
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