I didn't necessarily want to ever make a post pontificating about the deep important meaningful meaning of my big fancy werewolf novel (which features yiffing and scritching and murring) but well here we go.
This right here, this is why the republicans are fucking babies. The right wing is not the rational escape from the increasingly hysterical left, just as the left wing is not the escape from the deluded right, and when both are simultaneously threatened, they will work together to turn on any opposition.
That's what the story of this book is about. Thomas is an isolated lonely loser who finally gets out into the world with the help of Laily. They enter their werewolf clan, which is essentially a neutral centerist group.
On one side, they have the doofus cuckservative werewolves who believe in the lord (werewolf) baby Jesus H. Christ (well not really but it's kind of like that) who thinks that when a werewolf baby is born you must stab them with your wolf claw, it is very meaningful and important for werewolves you see, hm yes, it is an ancient tradition, therefore it must be a good thing.
On the other side, you have the fruity new age werewolves who believe that werewolves should not be carnivores, it is so gauche, and those silly other werewolves with their old dog(!!!!!!!!)matic beliefs, hm yes so silly, instead we worship Sister Luna and Mother Gaia, etc. I laid it on a little thick but I didn't give a fuck, I was just writing to entertain myself at that point.
Both of these clans have hated Thomas and Laily's clan, probably for centuries. Both want his clan to join one of their clans, both seeing themselves as the obvious choice, and Thomas' clan seeing itself as wishing to exist as a free state not beholden to the other clans ways. Thomas is now supposed to be the "king" of his clan (he certainly doesn't feel like one) but he sees no reason to change the clan's ways and join either clan. So both clans hate him far more than they hate each other.
That's why I wrote this book. Originally I planned it as "a lonely nerd gets out and has adventures with a sexy girl, maybe werewolf adventures for hot muscle expansion fetish and also andrew dobson shoves airhoses up their ass double murr" and then I abandoned this story in like 2002 because it was merely an idea. It wasn't until after both Bush eras and into the Obama era did I realize what this story could become.
I'm not saying "Thomas is Donald Trump" though, or pro nazi anything like that. But it's the same situation. Both sides now hate the third option more than they hate each other. The republicans put up the shittiest candidates ever against stupid Obama, and before that the democrats put up the shittiest candidates ever against dumb Bush. Now there's Trump against both of them, and they're digging deep to find anything they can, someone with a laptop and a Trump sticker and white power tattoos. You could do that with any candidate, it doesn't matter, in fact if you've seen "All the President's Men" you know that "rat fucking" is not a new practice. Using the media to discredit any opponents is simply the purpose of politics from its origin. The sad part is how seriously they take it, even the republicans are suddenly aghast at someone with white power tattoos sitting at a Trump sticker laptop with a phone in their hand, golly! "Trump must be the worst candidate," says the party who has run equally shitty stupid incompetent delusional lying candidates for the past several decades. Why the fuck would anyone respect any part of this process?
So like I've said to a few people already: this is kind of a book for no one. And that's how I want it.