Terra LudusToni Bruce

Spine13.056 mm

Terra LudusA Novel about Media,

Gender and Sport

Toni Bruce

S e n s e P u b l i s h e r s

Terra LudusA Novel about Media, Gender and SportToni Bruce

Set in the near future, Terra Ludus follows a group of friends as their lives are turned upside down by the downstream effects of the actions of the protagonist, Daniela Bartoli. Five years after the professional International Women’s Basketball League is unceremoniously dumped by its parent men’s organization, Daniela is working in Los Angeles as a freelance journalist and playing regular weekend pick-up games with her friends Mike, Constantin, Dominic and Simeon. Her relatively simple life changes almost overnight after her vlog, challenging a powerful media corporation to step up and broadcast women’s basketball, goes viral. The publicity sets off a chain reaction that brings the sport back into international prominence and sucks Daniela into a vortex of media and public visibility that leads her to question what is really important. In an imagined context where all professional sport takes place in a single country – something like a permanent Olympic Games – we follow a cast of characters with very different viewpoints on a roller-coaster, year-long, journey as they adjust to the new women’s league. Although fictional, Terra Ludus is grounded in decades of researching, theorizing, teaching and writing about women’s sport and media representation. Terra Ludus can be read entirely for pleasure or used as supplemental reading in courses in sport, media, gender, communication, journalism, sociology, creative writing, performance, physical education and cultural studies.

“Toni Bruce turns her keen literary eye on the spectacular failure of sport studies scholars and activists to convince mainstream sports media to increase coverage of women’s sport. Her gripping story turns this narrative on its head, and shows all of us how things could be different. Terra Ludus shows us how to move forward. This is the power of storytelling.” – Norman K. Denzin, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Using popular culture pedagogically to think about popular culture and power, Terra Ludus is a valuable tool for critical thought.” – Lawrence Grossberg, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Terra Ludus is a sine qua non tale about Third Wave Feminism. Set in a future society, it asks: What could happen if dominant ideas about women, sports, sexuality, ethnicity and the media left-over from the Twentieth-Century are challenged head-on by women athletes? Finding out will keep readers reading, students buzzing.” – Laurel Richardson, Ph.D., The Ohio State University

Toni Bruce, Ph.D., is a sport sociologist and media scholar at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

ISBN 978-94-6300-768-9

SOCI 21

S O C I A L F I C T I O N S S E R I E SS O C I A L F I C T I O N S S E R I E S

Terra Ludus

Social Fictions Series

Series EditorPatricia LeavyUSA

The Social Fictions series emerges out of the arts-based research movement. The series includes full-length fiction books that are informed by social research but written in a literary/artistic form (novels, plays, and short story collections). Believing there is much to learn through fiction, the series only includes works written entirely in the literary medium adapted. Each book includes an academic introduction that explains the research and teaching that informs the book as well as how the book can be used in college courses. The books are underscored with social science or other scholarly perspectives and intended to be relevant to the lives of college students—to tap into important issues in the unique ways that artistic or literary forms can.

Please email queries to pleavy7@aol.com

International Editorial Advisory Board

Carl Bagley, University of Durham, UKAnna Banks, University of Idaho, USACarolyn Ellis, University of South Florida, USARita Irwin, University of British Columbia, CanadaJ. Gary Knowles, University of Toronto, CanadaLaurel Richardson, The Ohio State University (Emeritus), USA

Terra Ludus

A Novel about Media, Gender and Sport

Toni Bruce

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6300-768-9 (paperback)ISBN: 978-94-6300-769-6 (hardback)ISBN: 978-94-6300-770-2 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858,3001 AW Rotterdam,The Netherlandshttps://www.sensepublishers.com/

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

PRAISE FOR TERRA LUDUS

“Surely a new classic, Terra Ludus reverberates in the traditions of both Aotearoa literature and best basketball fiction. Toni Bruce reassembles sport into a narrative imbued with high fashion, futurology, beloved characters, and collective tales of patriarchy-womanhood-sensuality. Bruce vividly – I laughed, cried, appreciated irony, quickly read ahead – narrates a future world that she and her characters interlace with fresh and sometimes shocking sport-media tropes and turns of plot. For Bruce, the future of sport is both terrifying and wondrous and for those reasons alone, I loved this book – it’s smart and never typical – beach reading and graduate seminar material all at once.”– Synthia Sydnor, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Terra Ludus is entertaining fiction that actually gets us thinking about the complicated and often disturbing relations of the commercialism of sports, the globalism of media and the persistence of gender bias and violence. Using popular culture pedagogically to think about popular culture and power, Terra Ludus is a valuable tool for critical thought.” – Lawrence Grossberg, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Imaginatively grounded in patriarchal and misogynist worldviews, Terra Ludus describes a future world where unbalanced opportunities for sportspeople remain. It is both engaging and thoughtful, a balance between a literary, thought-provoking and exciting story. We follow Daniela Bartoli, a feminist social justice warrior who fights for equity and opportunity for women in a dystopian future where sport opportunities for skilled female basketball players still are limited. She becomes the face of a new league, suffering misogynist threats and soldiering on for equal opportunity. Toni Bruce has produced a tour de force. She confronts the dominance of male sport in popular culture,

media and popular consciousness by writing a future world, not unlike our own, where sexism is still very real. Terra Ludus makes us ponder whether each new generation has to fight for social justice anew.” – Robert Rinehart, Ph.D., University of Waikato

“Terra Ludus is a sine qua non tale about Third Wave Feminism. Set in a future society, it asks: What could happen if dominant ideas about women, sports, sexuality, ethnicity and the media left over from the Twentieth-Century are challenged head-on by women athletes? Finding out will keep readers reading, students buzzing.” – Laurel Richardson, Ph.D., The Ohio State University

“Toni Bruce, sports reporter, sport columnist and academic, turns her keen literary eye on the spectacular failure of sport studies scholars and activists to convince mainstream sports media to increase coverage of women’s sport. Her gripping story turns this narrative on its head, and shows all of us how things could be different. Terra Ludus is a story about what can happen when long-held ideas about women and sport are disrupted. She shows us how to move forward. This is the power of storytelling.” – Norman K. Denzin, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

To my family, who nurtured my writing efforts and raised me to love language and stories. To SBL, my first and last reader,

whose faith in my capabilities far exceeds my own. And to Stuart Hall (1932–2014), Norman Denzin and

Laurel Richardson for being the kinds of writers, change-makers and academics I can only aspire to be.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xv

Chapter 1: End of an Era 1

Chapter 2: Real Life? 7

Chapter 3: Friends 11

Chapter 4: Speaking Out 17

Chapter 5: Vid World 27

Chapter 6: The Meeting 33

Chapter 7: Back to Normality? 49

Chapter 8: Eat Shit and Die 59

Chapter 9: Threat 73

Chapter 10: Getting Ready 79

Chapter 11: Back on the Court 83

Chapter 12: Training 93

Chapter 13: The Announcement 99

Chapter 14: PR 105

Chapter 15: Warning 111

Chapter 16: Authenticity 115

Chapter 17: Downtime 125

Chapter 18: More Support 131

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 19: Reactions 145

Chapter 20: No Rest for the Wicked 149

Chapter 21: Terra Australia 155

Chapter 22: Back to Terra Ludus 159

Chapter 23: The Game 165

Chapter 24: Aftermath 173

Chapter 25: Travelling 179

Chapter 26: Down the Runway 187

Chapter 27: Change 193

Chapter 28: Going Home 199

Chapter 29: Coming Back 205

Chapter 30: Recovery? 209

Chapter 31: It’s All Alright 213

Chapter 32: The Final 219

Suggested Classroom and Book Club Use 225

Discussion or Homework Questions 225Creative Writing Assignments 226Performance Activities 226

About the Author 227

xi

PREFACE

Set in the near future, Terra Ludus follows a group of friends as their lives are turned upside down by the downstream effects of the actions of the protagonist, Daniela Bartoli.

Five years after the professional International Women’s Basketball League is unceremoniously dumped by its parent men’s organization, Daniela is working in Los Angeles as a freelance journalist and playing regular weekend pick-up games with her four friends, Mike, Constantin, Dominic and Simeon.

Her relatively simple life changes almost overnight after her vlog, challenging a powerful media corporation to step up and broadcast women’s basketball, goes viral. The publicity sets off a chain reaction that brings the sport back into international prominence. As the public ‘face’ of the new competition, Daniela is sucked into a vortex of media and public visibility that leads her to question what is really important.

In an imagined context where all professional sport takes place in a single country – something like a permanent Olympic Games – we follow a cast of characters with very different viewpoints on a roller-coaster, year-long, journey as they adjust to the new women’s league.

Terra Ludus explores the many and contradictory ways that gender, media and sport infuse our lives. In the face of dumbed-down and click-bait driven mainstream news delivery, it also challenges us to think about the possible implications of profit-driven media engagements with professional sport.

Ultimately, Terra Ludus is a story of unusual connections, budding possibilities, and what can happen when dominant ideas about women and sport are challenged and disrupted.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The triggers for the novel emerge from my experiences as a sports reporter, sports columnist and academic who has been writing, researching and theorizing about media coverage of women’s sport for more than 30 years. The ‘ground’ on which the action takes place is the

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PREFACE

sport of basketball, in large part because it is the sport with which I am most familiar, as a former player, referee and occasional coach. I also acknowledge that I am writing from a particular location, informed by more than a decade living in the United States, and from a lifetime in a land that made space for my ancestors through the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, a pivotal moment in Aotearoa’s history at which my great-great-grandfather is reputed to have been present (Death at, 1937). I attempt to honor my own and others’ cultural and linguistic heritage through acknowledging the first peoples of both lands and by including both the English and Māori languages. However, Terra Ludus is not auto-ethnography, nor does it contain significant autobiographical elements. At its heart, it is an imagined world in which contradictory discourses collide and effloresce into new patterns that disrupt traditional ways of understanding the place of women in sport and media.

Terra Ludus is my response to the spectacular failure of sport studies scholars and activists to convince the mainstream sports media to increase coverage of women’s sport. Over the last quarter century at least, it has become clear that, in Larry Grossberg’s terms (see Liang et al., 2005), feminist sport scholars are not playing the right game, they are not playing on the right field, nor do they understand what’s happening well enough. Indeed, if Albert Einstein was correct in arguing that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, then those arguing for more coverage of women’s sport could indeed be considered to be insane (Bruce & Hardin, 2014). For this is what activists, athletes and researchers have been doing for the past 30 years at least, producing thousands of studies documenting the persistent media ignoring of women’s sport, preparing guidelines, complaining in letters to the editor, posting comments, writing blogs and placing their research before the world’s sports media journalists and editors. And what has changed? Very little. Everyday news coverage of sportswomen languishes at about 10 per cent throughout much of the Western world, increasing for brief periods during major events such as the Olympic and Commonwealth Games or certain world championships, when nationalism becomes more important than gender in determining who or what counts as

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PREFACE

important (Bruce, Hovden, & Markula, 2010; Horky & Nieland, 2013; Jorgensen, 2005). This is not to deny that pockets of good practice exist, nor that some women’s sports have successfully cracked the code. Professional tennis, especially the four Grand Slam tournaments, is one example, along with the predominantly female sport of netball in New Zealand, and the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBA) in the United States, although basketball’s current success follows at least two previous failed leagues.

In some contexts, the threads that have long woven femininity and physical frailty together have frayed to the point where strong, physically competent sportswomen have become the ideal of femininity (Bruce, 2016; Daniels & Wartena, 2011; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003). But overall, the big picture is dismal and shows little sign of forward progress. Indeed, in the 21st century, ‘everyday sexism’ continues to infuse media coverage, and there are indications of regression rather than progression (Cooky, Messner, & Hextrum, 2013).

In thinking through my own work and that of colleagues around the world, I realized that if academics want to make a difference, then we need to take seriously Grossberg’s (1992) argument that, “We have to look at how both domination and subordination are lived, organized and resisted; we have to understand the possibilities of subordination that are open and allowed within the structures of domination, and perhaps point beyond them” (p. 67). He suggests that “by gaining a better sense of the state of play on the field of forces in popular culture and daily life, perhaps we can see more clearly where struggles are possible and, in some cases, even actual. Then we can try to find ways to oppose them, or help articulate them, to nurture and support them and perhaps, to bring them into visible relations with other struggles” (p. 66).

Through refusing to accept sporting discourses that have historically disempowered sportswomen, the characters in Terra Ludus reveal the limits (and stupidities) of those discourses, while creating other connections. In this approach, the novel is informed by third wave feminism, which rejects the historic either/or articulation that culturally constructs sportswomen as either physically competent or feminine. Instead, it recognizes the contradictions and complexities

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of 21st century female embodiment, presenting female athletes who see no contradiction between femininity and physicality and refuse to ‘play the game’ as it has been constructed for them (Bruce, 2016). Instead, they chart their own paths, write their own (new) stories and, hopefully, entice you, the reader, along for the ride.

THE AUDIENCE

This novel is appropriate as supplemental reading in a range of courses in sport studies, media studies, cultural studies, communication, journalism, gender studies, sociology, creative writing, performance, and physical education, or can be read entirely for pleasure by anyone interested in gender, media and sport.

REFERENCES

Bruce, T. (2016). New rules for new times: Sportswomen and media representation in the third wave. Sex Roles, 74, 361–376.

Bruce, T., & Hardin, M. (2014). Reclaiming our voices: Sportswomen and social media. In A. C. Billings & M. Hardin (Eds.), Routledge handbook of sport and new media (pp. 311–319). New York, NY: Routledge.

Bruce, T., Hovden, J., & Markula, P. (Eds.). (2010). Sportswomen at the olympics: A global comparison of newspaper coverage. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Cooky, C., Messner, M. A., & Hextrum, R. H. (2013). Women play sport, but not on TV: A longitudinal study of televised news media. Communication & Sport, 1(3), 203–230. doi:10.1177/2167479513476947

Daniels, E. A., & Wartena, H. (2011). Athlete or sex symbol: What boys think of media representations of female athletes. Sex Roles, 65(7–8), 566–579.

Death at 93. (1937, April 13). The New Zealand Herald, p. 12.Grossberg, L. (1992). We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and postmodern

culture. New York, NY: Routledge.Heywood, L., & Dworkin, S. L. (2003). Built to win: The female athlete as cultural icon.

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Horky, T., & Nieland, J-U. (2013). Comparing sports reporting from around the world:

Numbers and facts on sports in daily newspapers. In T. Horky & J-U. Nieland (Eds.), International sports press survey 2011. Norderstedt, Germany: Books on Demand GmbH.

Jorgensen, S. S. (2005, October 31). The world’s best advertising agency: The sports press. Mandagmorgen [Mondaymorning], 37, 1–7.

Liang, X., Wong, P., Wong, H-W., & Chan, S-H. (2005, June). Let’s tell a different story: An interview with Lawrence Grossberg. Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Retrieved from http://www.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/3rd_issue/interview_01.htm

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This novel would not have been possible without the support and advice of many people. First, I acknowledge Paul Cowan, Margaret Henley, Katene Paenga, Ma Zhao, Steve Leichtweis, Jen Rankine and Travis Bull for specialist advice on specific elements of the novel. Any errors are entirely mine.

Thanks also my friends and whānau who read early drafts and gave me valuable feedback, including Bobbie Whiting, Richard Bruce, Chris Leichtweis, Nicoletta Rata, Esther Fitzpatrick, Katie Fitzpatrick, Tony Tapsell, Odette Miller-Waugh, Deborah Fraser, Fetaui Isoefo, and Dale Hills. I am fortunate to belong to the Narrative and Metaphor Special Interest Network (NAMSIN) at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, which promotes and supports creative writing practice. I also thank the Faculty for providing financial support to employ Diane Osborne of Design Options to format the novel.

Deep gratitude goes to my friend and writing buddy Victoria Paraschak with whom I shared the intense joy and challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days during National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/). The work I produced forms the core of Terra Ludus. During NaNoWriMo, I was inspired and reassured by advice from published authors Catherynne Valente, Veronica Roth, Jeff VanderMeer, Malinda Lo and Rainbow Rowell, who blogged throughout the month. Like Rowell, I was “shocked” that “I kept almost every word I wrote during NaNoWriMo”. My thanks also go to the Auckland region NaNoWriMo-ers, whose interest in sci-fi writing inspired me to set the novel a few years in the future.

Finally, I want to acknowledge Laurel Richardson for bringing the Sense Social Fictions series to my attention, Patricia Leavy and Shalen Lowell, and the team at Sense Publishers, without whom the opportunity to bring creative, research-informed writing to life would be much more challenging. To those at Sense who have supported this novel into publication – Peter de Liefde, Paul Chambers, Jolanda Karada, Robert van Gameren, and Edwin Bakker – thank you.

1

CHAPTER 1

END OF AN ERA

The sound of the buzzer ripped through the roar of the crowd, creating a millisecond of silence as everyone realized it was over. Then the rolling roar began again. Bodies poured off the bench onto the wooden floor, leaping, embracing, screaming with joy.

Daniela was bowled to the ground by an over-boisterous tackle. Gaia, that hurt, she thought as her elbow took the brunt of the fall. But who cares? We won! As she heaved her way out of the pile of sweaty females, Denise’s voice penetrated through the noise.

“Danny! Danny! Where’s Danny?”“Over here,” she yelled and ran towards her co-captain. A

foot apart, they both paused, face to face. Then they stepped forward simultaneously and began their trademark low-five, high-five hand slap, one side then the other. Rotating to stand back-to-back, they repeated the move, before rotating again to grab each other in a fierce hug. They rejoined the roiling mass of players, coaches and support staff still reveling in their success.

As the hubbub died down a bit, the team gathered together, walking the edge of the court blowing kisses, waving and bowing their thanks to their vociferous fans, before venturing into the crowd to hug family or close friends.

They were champions. Again.As the organizers got the court ready for the medals ceremony,

Danny approached the Terra Sparta bench, stopping to shake hands or commiserate. They’d played their hearts out to no avail, as Canestri Mulier’s stifling defense and Danny’s last-second heroics shut them out.

Twenty minutes later, adorned in champions t-shirts and medals, they headed to the locker room to wash off their rapidly cooling sweat and begin the celebrating in earnest. Danny set her Most Valuable

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Player trophy beside her locker, giving it a tender caress before hitting the showers. When she returned, wrapped only in her Canestri Mulier towel, it was sitting alongside the winner’s trophy on the table in the middle of the room, most of the team ranged around both trophies in a semi-circle.

Oh no. Here we go.Denise stepped forward, recreating the medal ceremony,

drawling in her best announcer voice. “And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have Daniela Bartoli, this year’s MVP and the League’s only Living Legend. And may I say what a marvelous finals series she had. Let us enumerate her myriad of skills. First, she dominated the high post – being, of course, far too short and too scared to mix it up with us big girls in the middle.” Giggles all around, as the taller players high-fived. “Second, her basketball smarts meant she led the series and the season in assists. Oh what a selfless player.” Again the friendly sarcasm triggered a wave of giggles. “Third, she shot the lights out with remarkable consistency – maybe due to those genetic enhancements she received in the off-season?”

“I call lies on that one,” Danny interjected. “You all know if I did that, none of you would ever get to score a point!” She high-fived the nearest teammate, flicking a triumphant look Denise’s way.

Undeterred, Denise continued to the climax, accompanied by rhythmic clapping that built in speed and intensity. “Fourth, she did enough convincing renditions of being fouled, including that textbook charge that won us the game, to earn this year’s butt-on-the-floor award. And finally, dear fans, we can’t forget that Ms Bartoli also topped the ratings in fouls. Aggressive little minx isn’t she? And, on behalf of everyone in the team, can I say that I’m mightily happy that I play with her, rather than against those unnaturally sharp elbows.”

Knowing what was now expected, Danny bowed to her teammates and initiated the team dance as Shania Twain’s ‘Man I Feel Like a Woman’ rang through the changing area. Then they were all dancing in unison, singing the first verse with uninhibited enthusiasm.

As the MVP-winner, Danny’s responsibility was to sing the chorus by herself. So she belted it out, hoping that volume would

END OF AN ERA

3

compensate for her lack of melody. As she sang the team’s own variation – “All flirts, short skirts” – she hitched up her towel to mini-skirt length and did a twirl, before finishing on the title line of the song.

Then the whole team hollered and whooped their way through the second verse. As their coaches and support staff entered the room, they greeted them with a final full chorus, hoisting both trophies high, nothing but happiness and anticipation of the partying to come in their voices.

As they passed around the champagne-filled winner’s trophy, their coach Roselyn Smyth raised her voice above the laughter and chatter.

“Hey girls,” she said, swapping high fives with the closest players. “Time to quieten down a bit. Sit down if you don’t mind.”

Expecting the standard congratulations, they took a few minutes to find their places on the hard benches in front of the lockers.

“What’s up coach?” Denise asked, still smiling. “You’re not looking too happy. Is something wrong?”

At her words, most players focused their attention. Silence rippled over the group as, one by one, they absorbed the serious facial expressions of everyone on their support crew. Danny thought she saw tears in the eyes of their physio, just before she turned away, apparently looking for a place to sit. Gaia. Something is going on. Could Roselyn have been fired? Surely not. We just won the championship.

Roselyn stayed standing, making eye contact with every player, her smile a shadow of those arrayed in front of her. “Well girls. Let me first say you did an outstanding job tonight. That was the best ball I’ve seen you play all season, and you needed every bit of skill and guile and smarts to win that match. You made me proud and you should be proud of yourselves as well.”

“Yeah. True that,” emphasized Denise, her statement followed by cheers from the players. “And on behalf of my co-captain Danny and the team, I want to thank you for what you’ve done for us … and to us,” she added ruefully. “I’ve never run so much in my life. And I hated it, almost every minute of it. But,” and she looked for

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agreement from the rest of the players, “we needed every bit of that fitness tonight. All that hard work really paid off.” More clapping, high-fives and cheers ensued.

“Thanks Denise, thanks Danny, and thanks all of you. I truly appreciate it. I know you didn’t always agree with my tactics. I know you didn’t always like the training I put you through but I hope tonight you know it was all worth it. To win this championship.”

Another round of cheers followed her statement but they died out quickly as the players realized there was more to come.

“And that’s the good news. That we won. That you won and that Danny took out the MVP. But I have some other news to share and it’s not good.”

“You haven’t been fired have you?” Danny burst out. “That wouldn’t be fair.” Yeahs of support from the other players.

“Not exactly,” came the response, “but I have some sad news. And I’m very sorry to be telling you now but I want you to hear it from me and not through Int-TV or social media.”

“Hear what? What’s going on?” Danny question sounded more like a demand.

“The league,” she said. “It’s the league. You won the championship tonight and you should savor it.” She paused to take in and release a deep breath. “Because this is the last championship ever.”

Ever? What does that mean? Ever?“Because of the international economic situation, the Basketball

Association International has decided to cancel the women’s….”She didn’t get any further before Denise erupted to her feet.

“Cancel the league? Cancel the league! You can’t be serious.”“Unbelievably I am serious. Or at least they are. They say that

women’s basketball isn’t financially viable and…”This time it was Danny who interrupted, her voice barely

audible over the confused babble that now filled the room. “But the stadium was packed tonight, and we’re all over social media. We have insanely committed fan vloggers. What do they mean it’s not viable?”

“I don’t know Danny, I’m sorry. All I know is that right after the game, we were told that the league has been cancelled permanently.”

END OF AN ERA

5

Confusion began to shift to anger as players turned to those near them. Disconnected phrases swirled. “Cancelled?” “It’s our league, not theirs.” “Permanently?” “For why?” “They can’t do that!” “No fair.” “That’s total b.s.” “Who do they think they are?”

“I know. I know,” said Roselyn. “And I’m very sorry.”Danny was now on her feet, her right forefinger drawing a

circle encompassing the entire group. “But where will we play? Terra Ludus is all there is for pro ball these days.

“I don’t know. I don’t have any answers.”“But what does it mean for us? For you? For everyone?”

Denise demanded.“It means that all of us will be paid out the minimum remaining

on our contracts – that’s to the end of next month.”“And then what?”“And then we all go home,” Roselyn responded as her shoulders

slumped and she collapsed into a chair, tears finally flowing. “Home to where ever home is.”

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CHAPTER 2

REAL LIFE?

Even now, five years later, most people see Danny as one of the lucky ones. After all, she got to live on Terra Ludus. She got to live the dream, just like her father. Of course, they don’t know what it’s really like. All they see is the surface, the excitement produced for mass consumption by Internet TV. And from that perspective, it looks like paradise. Lush fields, mesmerizing emerald-green water, and skies of blue so vivid and clear they seem photo-shopped. Fast roads and fancy cars. Fresh water, free-range organic meat, and land-grown fruit and vegetables. All the latest technology. And the clothes. Whatever is new, they’re wearing it. The action never stops. It’s exciting, physically challenging, and highly competitive. Life is lived large and loud.

But that’s only half the story. Danny knows that’s what Int-viewers don’t understand. They don’t see the boredom, the insecurity, the disparities in resources between different sports and teams. They can’t imagine the feeling when your dream ends without warning, and you find yourself back home, looking in from the outside.

And that’s where most people are. On the outside. Compelled, like the worst form of addiction, to seek their daily pleasure, their faux intimacy, their birds-eye view of the action. Because that’s what the northern island of this small nation has become. A global Internet sport reality show.

The shift happened in the mid-2000s, as media corporations tasted the possibilities of tax breaks, free state-of-the-art facilities, and a stable government with secure borders. By the time the major nations realized what was happening, it was too late. Internet media had found a profitable and sympathetic host and thereafter persuaded professional sports leagues to turn their temporary off-season training bases into permanent homes, supplied with world-class medical treatment, cutting edge equipment, clean air and water, and meat grown on the

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land rather than in a test-tube. As fuel shortages moved air travel out of the price range of ordinary citizens, media corporations exploited their ability to sell vicarious involvement in sport for even greater profits.

Terra Ludus started out as a media nickname created by a sports journalist trying to establish his literary credentials. Harking back to a mythic past seemed quite reasonable in the face of escalating political conflict, food insecurity, forced migration, and pandemics caused by over-population and porous national borders. Somehow, it went viral, the marketers got on board, and then all the sports took on Latin names.

Basketball became Canestri, American football rebadged itself Craticula, rugby union chose Harpastan, cricket settled on Gryllus, ice hockey adopted Glaciem, on and on ad nauseum. And the changes stuck. Even the southern island of Aotearoa, renowned in its own right as a spectacular outdoor adventureland, renamed itself Terra Periculum, the Place of Encountering Risks. Many other nations reimagined themselves, even if unofficially, through adopting a Latin moniker.

So that’s Terra Ludus, the Land of Sport. A real place but not really real, if that makes sense. From the sport fan perspective, there’s Terra Ludus and then there’s Terra Everywhere-Else.

Not that Terra Ludus is completely immune from real problems. Even though it’s well away from the major nations, Int-Rads regularly and successfully damage the undersea Internet cables, creating enough chaos that there’s never quite enough bandwidth for all the teams, let alone native Terra Ludans. Danny has to use old-school technology (like the Web for Gaia’s sake) just to stay in touch. Canestri Mulier, the only semi-professional women’s basketball team left on TL, can’t afford the bandwidth to provide virtual contact, let alone augmented reality experiences. Danny’s father gets to take his annual online immersive ‘walk around’ with the Harpastans to see how things are going but Danny has to rely on the Canestri Mulier vlog and buffered low-spec vid streams.

They’ve repaired the cable more than a dozen times in the last decade but it goes down again within months, sometimes weeks. On top of that, net neutrality no longer exists, trampled to death under the drive

REAL LIFE?

9

for profits. Once governments allowed the merger and consolidation of media corporations and Internet service providers, the new mega-corps quickly moved to artificially throttle access, creating two-tiered Int delivery. Now it’s only global corporations and the wealthy who can afford ‘fast lane’ access. Everyone else is stuck in the slow lane, constantly making choices between quality and quantity.

So even though the Int was supposed to be a liberator, it just seems to reinforce the haves and have-nots, even among the sports teams. Int access is the oil of this century, and bandwidth and cables are just as vulnerable and important as oil pipelines were last century.