When Lycanthropy and College Mascots Merge
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
The end of October in Dallas, Texas. The State Fair was over, and so was the I-20 Road Rage. Most years, summer heat finally broke, causing locals to crack out jackets for the first time since the beginning of April, and some years got cold enough to justify coats, and most had their first smoke detector scare of the year as nearly eight months of dust, lint, and pet fur burned off heater coils. Outside, leaves weren’t necessarily dropping but pecans and acorns were, with subsequent scrambling by local squirrels and clock goblins to gather up the largesse before late autumn rains started. The lower temperatures encouraged outside fairs, fun runs, arts and music fests, fall arboretum tours, and chili cookoffs, and the incredibly clear night skies became perfect opportunities for stargazing, Kirlian aurorae watching, and tracking Seid owlriders on their nocturnal hunts.
For two groups, though, the first full moon of mid-autumn was particularly portentious. At the vaunted Menasha Fight Club bar at Greenville Avenue and Lover’s Lane, the real party animals came out after dark and took over. The largest populations of hippoanthropes and bovinoanthropes in North America gathered in Dallas, and they were ready to rumble.
Just as the Masters of Business Arts degree, by way of its value and rarity being diluted to nothing, gave way to the Executive MBA program, so did standard Greek culture at Texas universities give way to a new level of exclusivity. While standard lycanthropy had been tolerated through Texas for generations, as witnessed by the massive turnouts at the annual Goatman’s Bridge Music Festival near Denton every May, only at the end of the Twentieth Century did it become associated with school pride. While wags had joked for decades about the fraternity and sorority output of Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Austin resembling their respective mascots to a level never seen outside of Michigan State University or MIT, the dawn of the new century saw an acceleration. Thanks to a crack research project at St. Remedius in the 1980s, standard lycanthropy was an easily reversible condition readily vaccinated against, so the once-massive populations of werewolves, werecoyotes, and wereferrets were now niche predators holing up further and further out at the edge of the sprawl. These were replaced by exclusive enclaves of werehorses loyal to SMU and werecattle at UT: tattoos and branding in Greek culture were replaced with mane extensions and horn rings and Beast culture. St. Remedius Medical College avoided this by avoiding collegiate sports, with the exception of the women’s football team, but for every other higher educational entity in the state, the “shifters” ruled.
When the Beaver Moon Rivalry started around 2002, the events often tended toward violence. As the years went by and the finest of each college woke up in jail (including the winner of SMU’s Hans Schlau Award for mathematics), the Rivalry gradually shifted to each assemblage of collegiate elite gathering on each side of Menasha Fight Club’s dance floor, nickering and snorting until the moon rose and Luna’s influence changed them all. Now freed of mere human form, they were free to stomp, kick, and buck on the dance floor, hitting each other with insults such as “Our maids went to UT!” and “At least we don’t have to pay OUR football players!” until the sun rose again.
The next morning, all returned to Dallas normal. Former literal party animals were lined up side by side at the local Tim Burton’s Donuts shop, getting a dozen dusted with Bright-brand powered sugar (speed, agility, endurance, or mental vacuity) while slowly moaning from the low pain of regeneration and hangover. Aside from occasional run-ins at grocery and liquor stores, they would separate for the rest of the year, only to return to Menasha Fight Club the next November to do it all over again.
Every once in a while, both sides would call for a detente in order to joint challenge other Texas shifters, but that never went well. For a year, the duo went after the University of North Texas and Rice University in the assumption that neither the Eagles nor the Owls would dare wander into Dallas proper. At the Beaver Moon, though, the assembled shifters from both schools stepped out into the parking lot and looked up at the moon upon hearing Wagner blasting from aerial speakers from the south and Queen from the north. The joint attack was swift, sure, relentless, and completely without casualties, but dry cleaners, salons, and car detailing shops across the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex made fortunes from removing the stench of guano from clothes, hair, and upholstery, the parking lot and adjoining roads were unusable for a week until they could be power-steamed clean, and neither SMU nor UT Beast culture never attempted to bother either school again.
As with all things football in North Texas, for a short time, dedicated helicopter parents attempted to graft college traditions onto high school, with disastrous results. At first, school pride triumphed over common sense and mascot-affiliated shifters filled the ranks in rich high schools across the state. However, that lasted until the first time the Southlake Dragons challenged the Lewisville Fighting Farmers to a special game, and everyone on both sides understood who was going to win the moment the Lewisville players and alumni started singing the school fight song at full volume. Today, most students and their overbearing parents wait until college to induct them into Beast culture, mostly so as not to pay for multiple changes of wardrobe before graduation.
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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