the owl and the olive tree

This was a fascinating presentation, partly on biology in fantasy literature and partly on pedagogy. As someone who feels that science and fantasy don't have to be mutually exclusive from a literary point of view, I really enjoyed it.

Since it's a presentation rather than a panel, I've written it up in sort of a prose format rather than as a dialogue.

Presenter: Christina Blake

Notes behind the cut. People are attributed by initials; Q/C indicates an audience comment or question. As always, transcribed fast and edited only glancingly, misattributions and errors are my own (particularly, in this case, science errors are almost certainly errors of transcription rather than the presenter's errors), assume everything outside of quote marks is a paraphrase.

( Presentation notes )

According to this video -- Against the "Alpha Male" -- natural wolfpacks rarely fit the commonly-understood stereotype of an 'alpha male,' particularly not an 'alpha male' that gets that position by fighting. Apparently that concept is somewhat outdated and doesn't seem to hold true for natural wolfpacks around the world.

If this is true, it begs for a different take on werewolf romance. Granted, I say that in part because I love werewolf stories, and do not care for romances where the male is pushy and violent and dominates the hell out of everyone including his love interest -- which is depressingly common in urban fantasy/supernatural romance that features werewolves. (Even if the woman is a werewolf, the man is almost always a stronger and pushier werewolf -- or some other kind of dominant supernatural critter, sometimes.) So of course a paradigm other than that for wolves would interest me. But still, it seems like there's some cool potential there.