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Me 'n Riley by Cole Parker


dude

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I like Travis a lot. He’s very well developed (as a character!). I also like his father. He comes across as nonauthoritarian; that’s an excellent quality for a father, based on my personal experience.

It’s strange, the only antonyms I could find for 'authoritarian' were: liberal; servile, humble, modest. None suggested nonauthoritarian, probably because it’s just a negation instead of a different word. Of course, the fact that there were only two dictionaries (Merriam-Webster.com and Wiktionary.org) that have definitions for nonauthoritarian might have something to do with it. Regardless, nonauthoritarian is a good word and needs wider dissemination and acceptance.

Colin :icon_geek:

 

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  • 1 month later...

It’s always a bittersweet moment when I finish reading one of Cole’s stories, and that’s certainly the case as we see the end to “Me ‘n Riley” posting today.  I’ve learned a lot about foxes and even more about the sort of kids who have grown together so interdependently that they seem two sides of the same coin.  Although we don’t know what the future holds in store for their relationship until Cole writes the sequel to this story, what I do know now is that these two boys, along with Travis’s Mom and Pop, constitute a real family that is strong, supportive, and wonderful.  I will think of them fondly for a long long time.

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Thanks so much, James.  This story eventuated partially due to an editor, god love him, who constantly scolds me because, according to him, my first person stories, and even the dialog in those written in third person, make the kids sound like Oxford dons.  He always wants the kids dumbed down.  So, not only to placate him but just to see how it would work out if I tried to do that, I wanted to take a stab at creating a protagonist narrator who'd be real, to make him sound like an 11-year-old—a smart 11-year-old but still sounding authentic.  So I worked hard trying to write how I thought one might sound, a boy enthralled by a first love, most of his entirety wrapped around that, but still being 11.  I'm really pleased at how this came out.  It shows boys as I remember them, living in their own world, accepting events around them but seeing those as peripheral to their own instant concerns, enjoying their daily adventures and ready for the next.  I really like how the story came out.  

Thanks for your kind words.  

C

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