Camera Shy (short story)
Camera Shy was the third and final Jenny Everywhere short story published by Scott Sanford in 2008 (although a fourth was completed and only released a decade later). It was notable for being written in the first person from the point of view of Jenny herself. With a prologue written in 2008 but originally discarded being eventually published in September of 2022, it is also technically the Jenny Everywhere whose release spanned the longest length of time.
Contents
Plot
Prologue
Jenny Everywhere and her friends Fiona and Kim are mounting an attack on the lair of the Vampire King. Jenny, the only human, uses a detonator to blow open the doors and join her friends, already inside. She is unsurprised to find the King's two revenants already slain, with Fiona's sword still lodged in one's ribcage.
Moving further in, Jenny finds Fiona (in quadrupedal form) and Kim fighting the King head-on. With the King batting Fiona aside, it is soon down to the good vampire versus the bad, with each of them armed with a wooden stake. Jenny shouts for Kim to get clear, and waits for her to move away from the King while Fiona charges at him again. Only then does fire her shotgun at the King's chest, also hitting Fiona. The bullets she used are made of hardwood and technically count as stakes, meaning that after a few shots to ensure she reaches his heart, the King quickly crumbles into dust.
As the dust literally clears, Fiona informs the other two women that she smells that there's still another “living” vampire in the lair. They briefly become worried, but he turns out to be a man shackled in a cell in the King's dungeon, who was ostensibly turned into a vampire spawn as a form of torture. Jenny recognises him as “Ulysses something, (…) a musician wannabe in one of the local garage bands”, and informs Kim that he's now her problem.
Main plot
Sixth month later, while in bed, Jenny Everywhere gets a harried phone call from Ulysses Dumas, a musician she rescued from the Vampire King some time before, who says he needs her help with something and makes her an appointment at the Faux Fur End next evening, when the band Umlaut will be playing.
There, she quickly guesses that Dumas has turned into a vampire himself, despite his beating around the bush. He eventually explains his problem: due to vampires being invisible in mirrors, some models of cameras cannot see him, hindering his career as a performer. With Jenny called away on another adventure (“it's raining frogs at the mosque again”), she promises to get back to him. Later, back home, she discusses Dumas's unlikely problem with her roommate Kim.
Two days later, as the parody band Dörx is playing at the Faux Fur End, Jenny goes to meet Dumas a second time, in the company of Kim. She suggests that he create a stage persona involving elaborate make-up, so that the cameras will pick up the body paint even if they can't see his actual skin — telling him that it's been done before on the musical scene.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The Jenny featured in this story is the one previously seen in PROSE: Parallax. She gets her income from being a professional music reviewer (or, as she puts it, “I get paid to tell musicians they suck”), although she says this is purely something she does for the money, and she would primarily describe herself as an adventurer. She also once describes herself as a superhero. She is roommates with Kim.
Universes
- The story begins in the home universe of Kim. Vampires are not known to the wider public but are apparently fairly common.
Other
- The night prior to the beginning of this story, Jenny Everywhere was “out until past dawn saving the Internet from the Eye of Tripoli”.
- Kim displays the ability to turn into a swarm of bats, as well as sufficient strength to bend a metal door and rip it out of its hinges. She is unwilling to enter Ulysses's bloodied cell, which Jenny seems to readily understand, suggesting that despite her peaceable disposition she does not deal well with the presence of blood right in front of her, and fears losing control.
- Fiona is Irish. At least in her lupine form, she is “bullet-proof”, with silver being her only weakness; being hit by the wooden bullets intended for the King causes her momentary pain but no serious damage.
Continuity
- This story's Jenny previously appeared in another short story by Scott Sanford, PROSE: Parallax, alongside Kim.
- Sanford's later multi-part serial PROSE: Paying It Forward saw Cha Ni reminding this same incarnation of Jenny of the Eye of Tripoli affair.
- Jenny mentions the Greek god Pan, who another Jenny met in COMIC: Holiday Pandemonium.
- The Vampire King would later be mentioned again in PROSE: Cleaning Day, where Jenny would be revealed to have retained the Crown of the Vampire King.
Behind the scenes
Background
When republishing the story on Dreamwidth in 2021, Scott Sanford appended some commentary looking back at the story:
| When I rediscovered this I found that it was a much better story than I’d remembered it being. Light and quick, yes, but that works well for Jenny Everywhere adventures.
This is clearly the same Jenny as in Parallax, now with a much more pleasant challenge. She would approve. And she’s living with Kim, a situation which I imagine must involve an interesting story itself. This is the last of my stories to survive from this period. I know there were other pieces started but unless there are hidden files lost in an old hard drive archive somewhere, not even the notes survive. It’s too bad; I know there were at least a few hundred words written about a child Jenny growing up on a farm and wondering about her mother’s old biplane hidden behind the barn… But we leave off with Jenny feeling accomplished and relaxing over a beer. There are worse ways to wrap up a tale. |
| —Scott Sanford |
Among the minor changes made between the 2008 version of this story and its 2021 repost was the replacement of Ulysses Dumas' “knowing a guy at the Red Cross” with a mention of his knowing a guy “at a kosher butcher's”. This was presumably done to obviate the plot hole of how a vampire could get into a Red Cross building despite his allergy to crosses.
The next year, Sanford rediscovered a prologue written for the story in 2008 but discarded for “tonal reasons”. He decided to publish it in its current state, in defiance of a minor plot hole introduced in the comparison of the Lost Prologue with the published version of the main body: the Prologue seems to end with Jenny and Kim already suspecting that Ulysse will turn into a vampire when they rescue him, whereas they are seemingly surprised by the development six months later in the main body. The commentary written in 2022 was as follows:
| In September of 2022 I got a surprise from 2008! Camera Shy was not originally released with a prologue and I had completely forgotten I’d ever written such a thing until one night I ran across it in a forgotten archive directory. I can see why I didn’t include it then, as it doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the story and there's a continuity problem, but it was a delight to find an unexpected piece of history ready to share. Before I found it was an intact story and felt delight it was a shock and a surprise, greeted with exclamations of "What?!" and "Who the f* is Fiona?!?" The reader is welcome to accept this as a prequel to Camera Shy if you want to, or just treat it as a short standalone story. Note: This is the original 2008 draft, presented as found. |
| —Scott Sanford |
Read online
The story is available both Shy on Sanford's original Jenny Everywhere Google Site and on the author's Dreamwidth website. There, it was given some Author's Commentary.
