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

[Drew Perron]

On 2/2/2017 4:10 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 10:47:09 PM UTC-5, Drew Perron wrote:
<snip>
>>>    "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.

*nods*

 > 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.
<snippaste>
 > Which is all to say that this was a horror story in many ways, a sad story,
 > and an expression of empathy and of anger, and also to let this story inform
 > what happens next in Cal's serial.

It's hard. Something like this feels almost like fridging, in the sense of a 
character getting fucked up for someone else's narrative - but would you really 
want this happening to someone as part of their ongoing narrative? It kind of 
reminds me of how Countdown to Infinite Crisis made everybody realize how great 
Ted Kord always was right before killing him off. It's hard and I don't really 
have an answer! <3 Other than to say: I would like another flamboyantly 
nonbinary character like this, please. :>

 > Also: while I identified this as the first Featherweight story, and the last,
 > it could also be interpreted as the first publication-wise and the last
 > chronologically, which doesn't mean that there can't be further stories
 > taking place before this.

It's true!

 > 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.

*nodnods* And notably, like... it's very relevant to have someone who expresses 
these ideas in a way that many people would consider reasonable, and is actually 
way more willing to go to dangerous extremes with them than those people suspect.

Drew "moar writings" Perron