![Smile :)](./images/smilies/smile.gif)
For those who don't remember me, I’m Gevaudan, and although I was a frequent poster on The Pack back in 2008-2010, I haven’t made a post since then (with the exception of one post I made back in 2012, if you want to check out what I was like back then). So much has changed over the past eight years, and I don’t know if I elaborated how much this forum affected me in that 2012 thread. If you don’t want to hear me ramble, go ahead and skip down to the bottom, but I feel like I should share some of my feelings after coming back here.
While growing up in Buffalo, New York, I was a very shy kid, and I found that my best outlet came through theater and music, so I developed a friend group there starting in middle school. Still, though, I had grown up with the Internet, and I had been exposed to various chat-rooms/forums that discussed different fandoms. Up until that point I had never really considered developing my own interests beyond what I felt I was “supposed” to read to be smart, such as science books and classic literary works. Learning about (and in a sense joining) fandoms such as the werewolf, anime, or furry fandom gave me an identity, even if it was secret from my peers and family.
I felt kind of ashamed of it at the time, although I was still an avid fan of media pertaining to werewolves and animals. To be honest, it's still something that affects me to this day despite not being a part of those fandoms anymore, and I enjoy watching stuff with talking animals every now and then. The metaphor of humans being forced to confront their animal nature has resonated with me, and I find it very poetic; it often comes up as a lyrical theme in the music I make. At the time, however, it just felt like a weird secret subculture that only I knew about, which was both awesome and profoundly alienating. I would join MUCKs and role-playing forums and IRC chat-rooms to pass the time, and I actually became recognized as a regular member. To an awkward middle schooler, that was the coolest thing. After hearing about Freeborn, I joined this forum in 2008, in my freshman year of high school.
Although I was only on here for two years (2008-2010), it was a crucial period of development in my life. Theater became my biggest outlet and the source of most of my close friends to this day, and I was also starting to listen to more varied music, which would later become my biggest passion. The Pack was a full of interesting characters and fun people, and it pushed me to be open-minded (you kind of naturally have to be accepting in a community like this). There was also that sense of recognition that I enjoyed. It felt, well, warm and fuzzy here. I didn't necessarily mature by any means, but the world was suddenly much bigger and full of freaks and geeks, and yet it was okay to be weird. Sure, I wrote some s*** short werewolf stories and I sang Broadway musical songs and Pink Floyd lyrics, but for the first time in my life I felt the joy of creativity, and in retrospect it was incredibly rewarding to have those outlets. I could read Watership Down, I could watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I could listen to obscure concept albums from the 1960s, and I could just enjoy them as they are, as artistic works. When I left The Pack, I became much more outgoing and stopped caring as much about what others thought of me.
I went into college to study economics, as around senior year of high school I was getting more interested in politics and economics than theater, music, or fandoms, and I felt like it was time to leave that chapter of my life behind. I think that I had unfortunately turned my new-found outgoing-ness into teenage political rebellion, at the expense of my creative inclinations. So I stopped posting on The Pack, with only one post in the interim of 2012 to check in. Looking back, I'm ashamed of how simplistic my views were back then: I was a hardcore atheist/anti-theist as well as an Objectivist/anarcho-capitalist/Austrian libertarian. I don't intend to bash anyone who holds those views currently, but I have since moved on. Ironically, joining an atheist student club and attending school at a university which has an incredibly free-market economics department made me actually question what I believed. It didn't help that I was exposed to some rather unsavory people who happened to share my beliefs and ideas at the time and yet were despicable human beings that either leeched off of me or betrayed me. I then tried to establish a new friend group surrounding theater, "geek" fandoms, and the like, but the group succumbed to drama and I got sucked into a terrible romantic relationship at the same time.
It wasn't a fun time, but it helped pry open my eyes a bit. After studying abroad at Oxford University, not only did my views do a complete 180-degree turn (I'm now squarely on the left and have distanced myself from the more dick-ish parts of atheism), but I also rekindled my passion for the arts, theater, and music that had been laying dormant for so long. I broke up with my girlfriend at the time, retooled my economics degree towards business and management (since I couldn't change to music), and started hanging out with better people. This group turned out far better: they all had different interests and majors, but all of them loved music in one way or another and yet cared far more about good personalities rather than shared interests. Hanging out with this group of friends led to some of my favorite experiences in college, and along with studying abroad and deciding to go into music or the arts it was just all-around a good time.
I graduated this past May of 2015, and now I'm currently living in Chicago, where I have a great job working in the music industry, and I still remain in contact with my friends from high school and college. One of my best friends from college even moved up to Illinois for work as well! I've planned to start making music or art on my own in one form or another, and I've already written and recorded some songs as well as joined a band.
However, it was The Pack that was at the heart of my early creativity. If it wasn't for The Pack, I don't know if I would have pushed myself to explore the boundaries of art and imagination as far as I have done and will continue to do. There don't seem to be many forums (or the equivalent) around today, social media is far more focused on the latest thing rather than content like internet forums. It was a significant catalyst for who I am today, and although I wouldn't currently consider myself to be a part of the fandoms of my youth, they were still a huge influence on me. I can't thank you all enough for giving younger-me a community that was open-minded, constantly creative, funny, accepting, and generally awesome!
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/closedgrin.gif)
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/closedgrin.gif)
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/closedgrin.gif)
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/closedgrin.gif)
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/closedgrin.gif)
(You can start reading here if you skipped my rambling!)
So anyway, what brought me back here this time around was that I was looking through my old documents on my hard drive, and I happened to find some stories that had been posted by older members of The Pack. Despite the hibernation that the forum currently seems to be in, I figured that I would share these stories so that older members could reminisce about the earlier days of the forum and newer members could read them for the first time!
Here they all are! I also attached an archived version to this post, for posterity's sake.
Call of the Beast is a story derived from a role-play session between Malignant-Librarian and Lycanthropeful.
Storm is a story by Berserker, and it tells the tale of the first werewolf to go public, and the unforeseen consequence of doing so.
Wulfen Blood (and its sequel novella Pursuit and Capture) is the longest one, a novel by RedEye about a secret underground society of werewolves as told through various connected subplots of different people encountering this society. I believe he was working on a sequel called Wulfen Honor, but I can't seem to find anything about it. He does have an Amazon page, though!
I'm perfectly willing to take them down if requested by either the admins, mods, or the original authors themselves (if they ever see this), so just let me know via email, which I've updated to one I use more often.
I'll leave you all with this rubber ducky for old time's sake.
![Duckie bounce :bounce:](./images/smilies/bounce.gif)