8FOLD/ACRA: Nonfiction # 5, "Justice for Julie Ann"

[Tom Russell]

On Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 6:57:40 PM UTC-4, Andrew Perron wrote:
> On 5/5/2015 8:13 PM, Tom Russell wrote:

> >     But Julie Ann Justice has "gotten stuff done" from the very start.
> > Whereas most four-colours spend their salad days fighting muggers and
> > glider-pirates, her first adventure pitted her against the
> > havoc-wreaking duplicate moon, and last I checked, there was still
> > just one moon left in the sky, and my house wasn't underwater (the
> > mortgage on my house, that's another story).
> 
> That is an amazing story. <3
> 
> > the week after that, she prevented the anti-explosion
> > of an anti-particle accelerator accidentally created in a renegade
> > thought experiment,
> 
> THAT'S EVEN BETTER.
> 
> > This was posted after she rejoined an Earth that had been
> > pulled apart by pseudocylindrical interrupted composite map
> > projection.
> 
> You're tossing a lot of good ridiculousness in here - intentional contrast? Or 
> just part of Julie Ann's milieu?

Little bit of both. Imagine Julie Ann Justice and her Seven Wonders as being like Morrison's JLA, and you won't be too far off.
 
> >     Not only were both nominees women, but one was black (Fennec Fox),
> > and the other Lebanese (Shamal). "It's political correctness, just
> > enforcing a quota, a made-up version of diversity where it doesn't
> > belong. And you know what happens when they step down? It's going to
> > be another woman, another negress or Arab, because you know there will
> > be a shit-storm if they try to nominate a normal person. So those
> > slots are lost forever."
> 
> See, "negress" feels, not too far, but off-base - it doesn't feel like the 
> kind of horrifying slur a real person would use in 2007.

Doctor Night (the speaker) is really, really old, and really, really white. That said, there was enough in the story that was ugly that I didn't want to use a slur that was too strong. (Just as I tried to find a racial slur for Dingham to use in "The Last Story" that wouldn't derail the story.)

> Also, the repeated use of "fandom" feels off? Like, I'd probably say "pundits" 
> or "the media" or - I dunno, it seems an odd way to talk about the equivalent 
> of a politically-active celebrity.

Yes and no, in that Eightfold has a distinct superhero fandom, a geek subculture, and that the vitriol is coming from that fandom, and not from the mainstream media/culture-- though the /tendencies/ are still there, just less pronounced and less obviously reprehensible. Just as, in our world, the toxic parts of video game and comics fandom are the louder and nastier reflections of tendencies inherent in mainstream culture.

Really, it's a story that's very much and transparently about fandom, today-- about gamergate, about Val D'Orazio, about the Batman film critic death threats, etc., etc., sadly etc.

==Tom