8FOLD: Mighty Medley # 36, January 2017, by Messrs. Brenton, McClure, Perron, Russell, and Stokes

Tom Russell joltcity at gmail.com
Thu Feb 2 13:10:06 PST 2017


On Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 10:47:09 PM UTC-5, Drew Perron wrote:
 
> I HATE YOU SO MUCH RAINSHADE. >:/
> 
> >    "She," whispers Kelly, defiant, and then everything goes black.
> 
> awwwwh ;.; Man, I wish we'd gotten to know her before this story. Getting the 
> rad genderfluid character and then taking them off the table immediately is Sad. ;.;

Yeah, I was pretty conflicted about it, actually.

Featherweight's been a character that's been bouncing around in my head for... geez, has it been six-and-a-half years since I posted the precog for Featherweight # 1? Yep, June of 2010. Wow.

I think I wrote about a half-dozen versions of that # 1, but I never quite got it to work or to resonate. I eventually gave up and took the "glove that alters mass or weight" gimmick and gave it to Knockout Mouse.

When I needed a character to fall victim to Rainshade, I started thinking about what kind of character would have resonance with Cal's life-- since Cal identifies as gender-queer-- and which would highlight Rainshade's rabid anti-technology/anti-Medusa stance. And Featherweight immediately came to mind as the character who would have the most resonance in that case, who would make the most sense thematically.

And I made Featherweight extra "rad" to up the emotional wallop-- to try to make the character likeable right away, so the viciousness of what Rainshade did would be more terrible.

You mention above that Rainshade sounds a lot like folks who argue against important things. And I think you've really hit the nail on the head there, and I can confirm that she's meant in some respects to represent certain attitudes and political points of view that are less empathetic, and even morally reprehensible, held by family and other folks who aren't bad people necessarily, but who support bad things, tacitly or otherwise.


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