This is what it's come to. I started out just playing around on alt.tv.due-south, shooting cannons off and stuff, and, by golly, I'm giving my characters backstory and characters and family. And it's fun. Like, wow. |
MURPHY'S STORY SAMMY'S STORY This started out as another birthday salute at AFP, with Sammy's grandpapa singing "Sunrise, Sunset", from Fiddler on the Roof, a fine song and a fine musical. I decided to expand it a bit more, and I think the result is much better than "Murphy's Story". Somewhere along the way I decided that Sammy was an ordained Rabbi, and I wanted to explore what influenced him to become the individual that he is today. In short, this is Sammy's story. I originally referred to "Sammy's Grandpapa" and "Sammy's Parents", but I found that rather awkward, so I figured I had to give them names. For similar reasons, I named Sammy's aunts and uncles, too. In the process, I gave Sammy a family. It's interesting how much you can develop a character simply by giving him or her a name. This deals with death - with some dignity, I hope - but I warn you, it's a real tearjerker. Click here to go to "Sammy's Story". MAX'S STORY I've told Murphy's Story, and I've told Sammy's Story, but this one was harder to write than those two, brief as it is. It could easily have been an exercise in bad taste. I hope that I have given Max the dignity that he deserves. Please remember the petstore babies. Let's hope they get the help that they need, and that there will someday be no more suffering. Click here to go to "Max's Story". OKAY, STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE, BUT THERE WAS THIS MOUNTIE AND THIS RABBI... This story was written at the suggestion of a friend of mine from one of the ferret-related discussion groups (Hi, MC!), and this was fun to write. It gave me a chance to fill out Sammy's character and develop those furry people around him. I rather like the idea that, somewhere on South Seneca here in Wichita, there is a synagogue for ferrets. I particularly had fun coming up with the Old Abraham character; I'm sure that some of you know someone just like him. I enjoyed developing Sammy's Jewish heritage, and I hope I did it justice. Yes, his Great-great-grandfather was a survivor of that horrible time known as the Holocaust; the tattooed numbers on his arm are clear evidence that he was in one of the concentration camps. I don't think that I'll write about that in any more detail; I don't think that I have the strength. After the events written about here, Murphy now has his own set of personal demons to face down. When I wrote "Murphy's Story", I hadn't counted on writing this one. Now that I have, I think it adds a resonance to "Murphy's Story" that I did not expect. I'm not completely satisfied with the goldmining subplot - I should have explored that a little more. How did McDermott get into looking for gold? How come nobody noticed five ferrets missing like that? I am happy, however, with the murder mystery and the whole rare stamp thing - I think that turned out good. There really is such a thing as an "Inverted Jenny" - Google it and see; I find that particular stamp fascinating. One part I had difficulty with was writing the fight scene. I wanted to convey the thrilling knock-em-down nature of the fight, but I didn't like going into gory detail. It was enough that one thug was beaten so badly. That might have been too much, except I wanted to show Sammy stopping it. The violence wasn't the point; stopping the violence was. I don't like violence. There's too damn much violence in movies and TV, and it seems to convey the message that the proper thing to do to stop the always-one-dimensional bad guys is to shoot them or knock them down until they don't get up again. I'm always thinking, "There has to be a better way." Sammy says "Vengeance is not justice", and I think that's very true. Not a popular opinion these days. One thing that I find worrisome about the story is the general lack of interaction between humans and ferrets. The humans are there in the background, but why wouldn't you see more of them? I think the answer is that humans are BIG and ferrets are little, and there's simply, literally, no room for them in the complex world that my ferrets live in. Sammy's synagogue would welcome a human to their services, but where would they put him? But I think the funeral was a good place for the two worlds to interact. Of course the Canadian Prime Minister would be there. Oh, that reference to a crimefighter from Metropolis - yes, that is exactly who you think it is. At the moment, how Murphy and Sammy could interact with this character is beyond me - and it would probably be unpublishable. (And as for a trip to Gotham City - I'm working on that.) In all, I'm very happy with the results of this one. Enjoy. Click here to go to "Okay, Stop Me If You -" um, to learn how Murphy met Sammy. TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO FERRET HAS GONE BEFORE! I first started planning "To Boldly Go..." in my mind years ago as a bit of "due South" fan fiction, back when I was so enthusiastic about the show that I was doing fanfic; it would have entailed Constable Benton Fraser and his partner, detective Stan Kowalski, traveling up in the Shuttle to the ISS to arrest someone. I never got around to writing that one. So now, there are only about a dozen Shuttle flights or so left, and NASA is already planning the follow-up craft, Orion. I realized that the weight limit on an Orion flight is a definite possibility, so sending up a 3.8-pound Mountie actually made sense. I still find the growth of the Cannon Crew fascinating to watch, and I'm the one doing it. I enjoyed working out the details on the Skippy Compound. Remember, the Skippys are the best at what they do, and the Compound is a World-class facility. I also like that I was able to give Max a role in this one and that I was able to develop his character. Rest assured, he'll be showing up in later adventures. I maintain that this was not all my doing; sometimes fictional characters drive themselves. I tried to make the technical information on Orion and the ISS at least believable; I realize that at this writing, the final design of Orion has not been finalized. The Cupola observation dome is scheduled to be one of the last Station components delivered, in 2010, and, frankly, it looks kinda neat. Look it up. There already is an Orion 7 mission tentatively scheduled for 2014 or 2015, designated a crew transfer mission. Now, as to names... I had some fun with those. With one exception, the names of the American astronauts are character names of fictional movie astronauts. I'll leave the task of tracking down the sources as an exercise for the reader. Alas, I made up the Russian cosmonaut's name up out of whole cloth. I'm certain that the Russians made space films, but I was just lazy. The names of the FBI and CBI agents ought to be easy to work out. Yes, Bob and Doug are brothers, eh? Hosers, the both of them. Itiyorshu was based on a faulty memory of mine about a Japanese character on "Designing Women" with a thick Southern accent. I've been informed that the person in question is actually a Korean named Henry Cho who was born in Tennessee; I do apologise. Pratchett fans will know the origin of the name "Itiyorshu". Enjoy. Click here to go to "To Boldy Go Where No Ferret Has Gone Before". FAMILY This is just a simple little short story to mark the first night of Hanukkah. Since I first established that Sammy was Jewish, I have enjoyed developing his character along those lines. Of course the Festival of Lights would hold much importance for him. I also enjoyed developing Sammy's family just a little more. I figure that Constable Gordon's and Grandpapa Levi's spirits would get along quite well - they may appear together some time in the future. Enjoy. Click here to go to "Family". THE WEARING OF THE GREEN: A POWER FANTASY Here I go, into fan fiction again. This will likely never see the light of publication, but what the hey? I find the concept of the Green Lantern Corps fascinating. Essentially, a Green Lantern could look like anything that you could conceive, and plenty of things you couldn't. I can only hope that I got this across in a single paragraph. According to sources I've come across, the comics really have mentioned a super-intelligent smallpox virus GL and a living planet GL (named Mogo, by the way). And, yes, a mathematical equation Green Lantern has been mentioned. And all of these beings are Green Lanterns - which almost automatically means that they're Good Guys. Making Max into a Green Lantern isn't as far-fetched as it might sound. I've made it clear that he's brave, loyal, big-hearted - just the sort of critter that would make a good Green Lantern. Besides, if Duck Dodgers can become a Green Lantern for a short time, so can Max. This is the story where I definitely establish Murphy, Sammy, Max and the Skippys as members of a separate species of ferret - Mustela sapiens. It's my attempt to present a logical explanation for talking, thinking animals. As I see it, besides the intelligence and vocal skills, Mustela Sapiens differs from Mustela putorius furo in that individuals are longer-lived and stronger. It's unclear at this point just how long the Mustela sapiens average lifespan is, but I'm certain that Murphy can take on a human in a fair fistfight. So, Mustela sapiens is obviously a mutation of some sort. And, as you can probably guess, I have an idea about the event that caused the mutation. That's a story I'll have to write down the road. And, since I have ideas about the beginning, I've also been thinking about the ending. The discussion between Sammy and Hal Jordan near the end is significant. I agree with Sammy - we don't seem to handle "different" too well. Human history is full of intolerance and misunderstanding. And, sadly, we still haven't seemed to learn our lesson; remember, I live in a state that recently added a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages and is proud of it. So, how would the average human being react to a talking ferret? Many would obviously want one as a pet. Some people really would consider them demonic. I could see some Victorian scientist wanting to dissect one of these curious creatures. And, in general, I think many people would view these talking animals with deep suspicion, especially with all the Skippys' remarkable technological accomplishments. Some folks in NASA would look upon the Orbiter with a mixture of contempt and deep envy. I have my regrets about portraying a bleak picture of relations between Homo sapiens and Mustela sapiens, but it's not like there's no precedent. In any case, it makes for high drama. I'm starting to develop the beginnings of an idea for the story about the final reckoning between the two species. It would tell of the final fate of the Skippys, as well as that of Murphy, Sammy and Max as we know them. I don't want to write that story for a long time, and you don't want me to, either. Still... that space station bracket that the head Skippy is examining on the computer screen will be important. I'll get the annotations out of the way now. First off, character names: El Presidente Franco Francisco is pretty obvious to anyone who knows anything about 20th Century Spanish history. You might ask Chevy Chase about this one. Capitan Don Diego is named after Don Diego de la Vega, better known in his secret identity of Zorro. Along the same vein, Sgt. Garcia was the bumbling comic-relief sergeant from the 50's television series; as a piece of trivia, in the original Zorro stories by Johnston McCulley, Sgt. Garcia was Sgt. Gonzalez. Cisco and Pancho are the Cisco Kid and his comic-relief sidekick Pancho. Also, General Duncan Renaldo was named after the actor who portrayed the Cisco Kid in the 50's TV series. James Slattery and Denton Walters are named after characters that have something in common: they were both played by Richard Crenna. Slattery was a state legislator in a now-forgotten 60's TV drama named Slattery's People. Walters was the Topper Harley's ex-CO - you know, the guy eating the Subway pig-snout sandwich in Hot Shots! Part Deux. As to place names: Corto Maltese figured into Frank Miller's ground-shattering graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, as the name of an island at the center of a Cuban-Missile-Crisis-ish incident that almost leads to nuclear war. It is also mentioned in Tim Burton's Batman movie as the location of an uprising where Vicki Vale had done her photojournalism thing. But the name was originally that of a sailor/adventurer in a series of comic book adventures by Italian comics writer/illustrator Hugo Pratt in the 60's through 80's. The Corto Maltese stories have been published worldwide and have been translated into many languages, including English. I'd heard good things about the series, so I've picked up the English versions, and I'll testify right here and now that they're just as good as everyone says they are. If you come across the graphic novels, I recommend snapping them up. It's obvious where I got the names St. Hugo and Pratt Boulevard. (And the town of St, Crepax is named after another Italian comics artist, Guido Crepax, whose work was more - Ahem! - adult. If you want to track his work down, that's entirely up to you.) The Republic of Hidalgo is a direct swipe from the old pulp hero Doc Savage. According to the stories, Doc Savage holds a land grant to a gold mine in the interior of Hidalgo, which is guarded by a lost tribe of Mayans. Every month or so, in response to a radio signal, a mule train leaves a hidden valley in Hidalgo with a shipment of gold, which Doc uses to finance his crimefighting operations. I figure somewhere along the way, the Skippys inherited the land grant and now they get the gold the same way; perhaps they did Doc Savage a tremendous favor just before he retired. I don't think I'll even attempt to write that one; Street and Smith are very picky about copyright issues. (And maybe DC comics are, as well. I'll take my chances there.) Enjoy. Click here to go to "The Wearing of The Green". ANTHEM (First off, I want to get this out of my system. I love this quote, from the 90's TV animated series - I highly recommend the show.) "I am Vengeance! "I am the Night! "I... AM... BATMAN!" (Right, moving on...) I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a big fan of the Batman. He has no superpowers, beyond the fact that he's driven to fight his own personal war to avenge the death of his parents. It's a setup that's worked for decades, and one can still find new ways to look at it. And his drive gives him strength; in a pinch, he'd take on Superman if he felt the need - and he might win. A great hero needs great villains, and Batman has some of the scariest that you'll find in comics nowadays. Batman and the Joker are made for each other. They'll probably be locked in mortal combat for all time. And, yes, all of the superbaddies that I mentioned in the story do exist in Batman's world (I'm probably guilty of excessive namedropping; oh, well). Some of them are just as silly as I implied; it's a wonder that they bother. Evidently the Penguin really has settled down and owns a popular nightclub known as the Iceberg Lounge. I gather that he does some fencing on the side as well. The idea of him accidentally backing into an honest living kind of appealed to me. Commissioner Jim Gordon is and always has been a good cop. He and his force have the thankless task of maintaining the law in a city that's like New York City with everything turned up to 11. They need all the help they can get. I did some research online, and Gotham City's hockey team is indeed known as the Blades, and there is a Gotham Square Garden. I have no idea what the Gotham U student newspaper is called; I borrowed the name from the high school paper in the TV series Smallville. I added some other touches here and there to make my Gotham authentic. According to canon, much of Gotham's hideous architecture was due to an architect named Cyrus Pinkney, until a major earthquake hit in 1998. I'd originally thought up this storyline years ago when I was still writing Due South fan fiction, but I never wrote it down and now DS fanfic seems to be a thing of the past. Pity. I reworked Benton Fraser's role for Murphy and Detective Vecchio's for Sammy. I think the fit isn't all that good. Sammy isn't as cynical as Vecchio and Murphy is a bit less naive than Fraser, and I therefore had to make some adjustments to my guy's characters. And, as always, the ferret/human size difference is a problem. Still, I like the way this works. I'm especially happy about the interaction between Batman and Murphy at the airfield when they figure out what's happening; I call it the "Aha!" moment, and I like how these characters play off each other. I think the Ferret in Red is just as good a detective as the Bat. I carried Inspector Margaret Thatcher's character over from the original in-my-head Due South fanfic, so this is a Due South as well as a "Batman" crossover. Working Benton Fraser into the story would have cluttered it up, I think, but he and Murphy surely know and certainly respect each other. There's room for future stories with the two. (And Les Neilsen comes from Leslie Neilsen, who had a recurring role in Due South.) There is reference to the Goose Egg Nugget and the mythical location of Calisota. The Goose Egg Nugget was found during the Alaskan Gold Rush by none other than Scrooge McDuck, whose money bin is located in Duckburg, in the state of Calisota. Yep, I crossed over into Disney's duck territory as well. How that would work out, I don't know, especially given how copyright-conscious Disney is. I originally named this one Anthem under the mistaken belief that The Maple Leaf Forever was Canada's official anthem. I found out via Wikipedia that that ain't so. Humph. I like the title, so I'm keeping it. Now then, names. I had so much fun with these. Constable Visit is named after a member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series. In both cases, the full name is Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets. Not much weirder than some of the names that Puritans gave their poor kids. Evangelistic, indeed. A lot of people - well, people who know something about comic book history - credit Bob Kane with creating Batman in the 30's. What not-so-many people know is that he had some help fleshing out the character, from unjustly forgotten folks like artists Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang, and writer Bill Finger. Of course I'd name a college dorm after Bill Finger. Robinson and Sprang probably have dorms of their own. But I swiped many of the names from obscure old comedians and comedy teams. Thusly: Policemen Olsen and Johnson - Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson were a zany comedy team starting in the 30's who appeared on stage, screen, radio and eventually television. Their most enduring legacy was a musical revue and eventual movie called Hellzapoppin'. From what I understand, the closest anyone came to replicating the lunacy was Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, but Olsen and Johnson's original antics are seldom seen nowadays. Al, Jimmy and Harry Ritz - The Ritz Brothers were another comedy team from the 30's. They had a large following, and they were compared to the Marx Brothers. However, the Ritz boys didn't have distinctive personalities, so it was hard to tell them apart. (And I just found out on Wikipedia that the family name was Joachim; I'm chalking this up to coincidence.) Theodore Healy - Ted Healy was an old vaudeville performer and movie actor who employed three performers in his act as what were called "stooges". (You can probably see where this is going.) He referred to the act as "Ted Healy and his Southern Gentlemen". His three employees broke off with him twice, first over a movie contract and then over Healy's drinking. Healy went on to a promising solo career in the movies before his death in 1937 under suspicious circumstances. His three former employees went on to form an act of their own as - wait for it - the Three Stooges. (I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel with these next two! Don'tcha just love it?) Carney and Brown - Wally Brown and Alan Carney have been called "the poor man's Abbott and Costello", with some justification. Carney looks something like Lou Costello, if you squint just right. Probably they're best remembered for the 1945 movie Zombies on Broadway (Great title!), about two press agents sent to a Caribbean island to find a genuine zombie for a new nightclub. They run into a creepy zombie expert played by none other than Bela Lugosi; two other actors in the film had also been in I Walked With a Zombie, where they'd done this sort of thing better. Zombies on Broadway is not that bad of a film, but not that hot, either. Mitchell and Petrillo - Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo were a nightclub act that did an amazing imitation of the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis team. Petrillo's imitation of Jerry Lewis was, frankly, dead-on and a marvel to watch. He was so good that Lewis put him under contract to keep him from working, but that contract was annulled. Mitchell and Petrillo made exactly one imitation Martin-Lewis movie together, a low-budget jaw-dropper entitled Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Goriila (1952). Anybody interested in badfilms has got to see this lousy little flick. And, yes, Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist in this one. This is how low Lugosi's career had sunk by the 50's; his agent should have been shot. Enjoy. Click here to go to "Anthem". KIDDUSHIN There's nothing much I need to say about this one. It's not a slam-bang action story; a major character's life is changed forever, that's all. I admit that my research was a bit rushed on this one. If I made any mistakes, please let me know. L'chayim. Click here to go to "Kiddushin". CIVILISATION: THE RISE OF MUSTELA SAPIENS VOLUME 1: EUROPE This is the story where I start to get really serious about the history of the development of Mustela sapiens, focusing on the natural event which started it all. My thoughts and annotations are at the end of the story. WARNING: there are some places in the story which pack an emotional wallop, if I do say so myself.. Click here to go to "Civilisation". BLOOD AND CLAY This story explores the fate of the Jewish ferret community in Łódź, and the relationship, uneasy at best, between Homo sapiens and Mustela sapiens. I particularly liked being able to use the proper characters for the Polish words. WARNING: This turned out to be a very dark story, but I'm afraid that it would come with the situation. How would you react to a talking ferret? Click here to go to "Blood and Clay". |
The characters Murphy, Sammy, Max, Clarissa, Levi, Skippy, Skippy, Skippy, Skippy, Skippy, etc., are copyright 2009 by Paul E. Jamison. |
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