We've got a very angry, very horny, sci-fi fan on our hands

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the etymology behind "jadewarr" -- the nom de plume that Canadian Human Rights Commission investigators Dean Steacy, Richard Warman and other Stormfront members used when they posted their online bigotry. I had read that the name was based on a character -- the Jade Warrior -- from a book that Steacy had read when he was young.

James Fulford went a little bit deeper into who Jade Warrior was, and what the stories were like that left such an indelible impression on a young Dean Steacy. The Jade Warrior was one of 26 books with nearly identical plots in which a modern-day hero was transported to a sci-fi alternative universe. Fulford dug up this book review:

The story lines in each book are very similar. Blade is transported, totally naked, to a strange new dimension where he encounters a set of opposing societies, with one oppressing the other. His sense of what’s morally right leads him to join the oppressed people in their battle over their oppressors. He becomes involved with the leading ladies in the stories and has sexually explicit encounters with them, regardless if they are the oppressed or the oppressors. Some of his ladies are killed in some of the books. The dimensions are very similar to Earth, but with some different types of vegetation and animals, and different skin colorings on some of the peoples he encounters, such as dark blue, red, etc.

Fulford remarks on how Steacy probably sees himself as a Canadian civil service version of that omniscient saviour of oppressed societies, and that he probably thinks he's a superhero, too -- so trifles like posting bigoted messages on hate sites, and even stealing private citizens' Internet broadband to do it, are okay.

I agree with Fulford's theory, and I have no doubt that many of the staff at the CHRC are living out some sort of psychological therapy, whether it's as a utopian hero or some angry avenger. I can only imagine the kind of issues the CHRC's HR officer has to deal with.

But I couldn't help but guess what Steacy was like in junior high school, reading such junk. I mean, I'm sure we all read plenty of shlock when we were young -- I probably read twenty books from the Jupiter Jones detective series when I was in elementary school, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit. But I can't help imagining young Dean Steacy as a teenager: awkward, self-righteous, a busy-body even then, the kind of kid who would remind the teacher when she forgot to assign homework. And when the other kids were playing together at recess -- politically incorrect games like tag or catch -- young Dean would prefer to sit by himself and read about the Jade Warrior.

The Jade Warrior was a superhero, like young Dean, unbothered by any such flaws as self-doubt or self-criticism, angrily smiting sci-fi "oppressors". Young Dean would read, very slowly, maybe even twice, the pages about the Jade Warrior's romantic encounters with blue and red-coloured women from opposing tribes. Ha! Let the other kids play tag and catch.

Maybe when recess was done, young Dean would daydream about the book, and maybe even doodle pictures of the Jade Warrior on his notebook instead of paying attention in math class. The Jade Warrior. Jadewarr. That's so cool, he would whisper. I wonder if jadewarr was a nickname that young Dean begged his friends to call him -- but no-one understood it, and he wouldn't explain it. Maybe he even wrote a little bit of fan fiction, that took place in his school, and that featured some kids in his class -- the mean kids, and maybe a leading lady or two.

Hey, like I said, we all probably read some weird sci fi as kids. We all daydreamed of being pirates or detectives -- or even polyamorous society-liberators. But not all of us were so impressed by that junk that, decades later, when we were liberated from any adult shame by the anonymity of the Internet, we chose to name ourselves after those creepy sci-fi characters from our youth.

I'm sorry, but the CHRC is just one weird place.