To be a wolf

[altivo]

New excerpt, sampling the third subplot in ARROW: a College Tail. Francis is a raccoon but he wishes he had been born a wolf. When he writes about it and reads his work in his composition class, he is suddenly presented with an odd-sounding but apparently desirable opportunity.

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As with almost all my writing, these excerpts are "safe for work."

Comments

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Heh, I have to say that the opportunity was odd sounding.

*ponders* I think that in all the years I have known you that this is the first time I have read any of your writing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's odd sounding to Francis, and perhaps to us, but in the context of the first subplot, which took place 115 years earlier, it has a rather chilling subtext. There's a brief online excerpt, the prologue to the book, that hints at it, and the other modern subplot, which appears in the "Fennec meets Hammel" segment, involves a re-examination of the century old events that are connected in the end to what happens in the current timeline.

This is a different direction to my writing, and has a lot of stuff in it that I've not attempted before. The stories like "Catch Me if You Can" or "Rabbit Food" are more typical.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying the excerpts. And the nice, friendly, benign wuffies.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ummm. Benign? Well, I suppose you haven't seen enough yet. Even Jay Greyson is far from benign. Stefan Ulf was really wicked.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

But they're so fuzzy and cute and harmless! Lookit those darling little ears and those sweet little noses and my, what big teeth they have...

(Also, I was muchly amused at ΑΗΡ. That is sheer genius.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I considered Alpha Eta Omega but decided not to go there. ;p

It's amusing, or perhaps disturbing, how quickly all my negative feelings about the Greek system re-emerged when I started writing this. I haven't been exposed to that again since almost 40 years ago. It's fortunate that sheep are not sentient in this world, or I'd have had them lining up to pledge and get Greek letters branded on their little butts.

Of course, you don't get the college Greeks over there, so you have to kind of map it onto things like the "houses" in Harry Potter or something.

(I'm entitled to Greek letters myself, but rarely reveal them. None go to secret societies, though, only honoraries.)

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

I only know about the whole Greek letter fratern/sorority thing through American films, and apart from that you get a pin you can give to your girl, I don't know all that much about them. They've always seemed vaguely sinister to me anyway, though, as do all elitist cliques (probably because I've never been part of one).

I've never known schools who take their houses and house points very seriously. I imagine it's a bit more competitive in the US, but I can only guess, not having much experience in either place.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It can in fact be sinister, but that's probably pretty rare. More often it's just stupid. A fair number of deaths from excessing (really excessive) drinking for instance. And there are things like that "Skull and Bones" group that G.W.Bush belonged to, and groups that are vaguely similar to the KKK or whatever. But mostly the Greek letter societies are just little snobby social groups.

Where I went to school, such groups were required to maintain a certain level of academics among their members in order to retain their authorization. This resulted in recruitment of some individuals merely because they had high grades rather than because they were socially favored. I was targeted that way repeatedly during my undergraduate years, by several of the fraternities, and I hinted at it in Francis' meeting with Jay Greyson. I had no interest in drinking parties or chasing girls and no desire at all to live inside a Greek house, so I always brushed them off. My two freshman room mates pledged Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and the stuff I heard them talking about did little to change my mind.

I was nominated to three honorary Greek letter groups during my college career. One had a rather weird initiation ritual, but none of them ever really invaded my life the way the fraternities and sororities seem to do.
Phi Beta Kappa you may have heard of. I also was Phi Kappa Phi and later Beta Phi Mu. I didn't even bother with the initiation ceremony for the last one, but I have the certificate here someplace.

I'm going to post another excerpt today that will start to show the direction of the main plot. Brace yourself, it will be the first time you've ever seen blood in anything I've written. ;p

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

It seems a school fraternity is all upon paternity and how much booze your father can afford. Enjoy a canine benison upon this meal of venison and hope to Dog the meat is nicely cured.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

If I call that doggerel will you make dog's meat of me?

New segments posted at FA and FR. Gotta get to work, but I'll make a new post here with URLs and word count once I get there and am at my desk. If I maintain this brutal pace for seven days, I'll still make the 50K.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

The otter and his partner, a skunk, lifted the bundle onto their cart with a practiced ease that somehow made Hammel feel a bit uncomfortable. Such things should never be easy, he thought.

Lovely. :)

I like all the wolfy names too; Olfred and such.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I agree with Tolkien about names. They are an important element in the overall feel of the story. I spend way too much time choosing names.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

My story features names like:

(on one side) Taupeshank; Roseeye; Gingerbeard; Greenback; Pinktail; Fuchsiatongue; Ceruleandrool
(and on the other) Alluring Swiper; Pretty Singer; Unblinking Smiler; Fleeting Sprinter; Deceptive Swimmer; Retarded Flailer

I don't even want to contemplate what that says about the overall feel. ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ummm.... I think I'd better keep quiet. ;p

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Nice nice. Ended all too soon. Onto the next segment!

Reading the above comments, I imagine your exposure to frats was in the bad old days. I joined a nicely diverse house in the early 70's just beyond the hard-core hazing days. Not quite Animal House (whooo, I won't print the furry image of what that makes me think of) but still a good time had.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the behaviors and atmosphere vary quite a bit from one place to another as well. This was a large state university, 1967-1971. My later observations, while I was a grad student there in the mid-1970s, are that the whole Greek system appeared to be declining rapidly. Houses that had been active and filled since the 1940s were emptying out and even being sold. Some fraternities literally became extinct there. I'm not sure what the underlying changes were, other than economic.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

My house at URI bellied-up in the late 80's after 70 some years. One of the things I saw was the lack of focus and the fear of order. In that 'anything goes' mindset it is hard to maintain rules and directives, especially among a group of 17 to 21 year olds. The first thing to go was the house mother, horrored out two years before I arrived. The alumni pres was a recent grad and didn't want to be seen as a bully, so anything went as time moved on. It took time, too, but eventually it caught up with them.

There was a lot of anti-frat backlash, too, from the 50's and 60's, and incoming students had preconceived notions of houses from their parents, as well as the anti-frat movies.

or so I believe ;o) They're rechartering my house now, so the pendulum may have begun its swing back.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Interesting. By the 1980s I'd have thought the new arch-conservatism would have been enough to save any houses that still remained. I haven't looked to see what actually survived at MSU, but some big names like Farmhouse, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Delta Upsilon, and Beta Theta Pi either disappeared or shrank to a mere shadow of their former selves. Some of the large real estate they owned ended up being converted to rooming houses or cooperatives.

Farmhouse and Beta both pestered me several times in the latter part of my freshman year. It was patently obvious to me that they had little interest in me as a person, but only as someone who was consistently on the dean's list and could raise their house grade point average. I could just imagine living the life of the quintessential nerd in the middle of an Animal House environment. No thanks. ;p