Werewolf Genre Guilty Pleasures

"There's a place for everything,
Everything, anything,
There's a place for everything
Where it ought to be"

-Robert Graves

If you've read my earlier essay (fav.me/d5t6ss7), you know that there are tropes and aspects of the werewolf genre that really bother me.  Some of them I feel are completely broken or reflective of a creative culture that I feel is outright broken (Hollywood's depiction of women being the big one).  Yet there are some things in the genre that I know are clichéd and kind of stupid, but I like them anyway.  I know that it's not what the refined werewolf snob should be doing, yet I put it in my own work.

Odds are that some of your own favorite - and least favorite - werewolf genre stuff will be in here.  That's okay.  This isn't an essay to bash what I think is wrong.  It's a monument to suspension of disbelief.  Ultimately, werewolves can be whatever you want, provided that you can get your audience to buy into it.  

In no particular order, of my five guilty pleasures that I'm ashamed to admit I love about the werewolf genre.


Werewolf Theme Naming

Ever noticed that werewolves tend to have werewolf-themed names?  This is often true even when the werewolf in question started life as a human, making you wonder what drugs his or her parents were abusing at the time.  Even good writers, such as J.K. Rowling, are guilty of this.  It doesn't make much sense for werewolf parents either.  What ever happened to keeping a low profile?  A lot of werewolf theme names are also seriously lacking in originality, with "Fenris/Fenrir," "Luna," and "Lupine/Lupus" being very common.  Of course, if you want a gold star for having zero creativity, there's always naming your werewolf "Wolf."

They give other things associated with werewolves names like this too - towns, villages, and even their own homesteads.  Expect moon- and wolf-related items to be widely used, as if they're living in some bizarre werewolf-themed amusement park.  They'll even wear clothes with a wolf motif… because you wear clothes with a generic human face on it.

Why It Can Be Awesome

In certain settings, werewolves may not be hiding.  They may even want people to know that they're werewolves, either as a source of racial pride or as a way to say "don't mess with me."  In that case, a well-chosen theme name not only makes sense, but can really help a character stand out from the crowd.  Some human transformee werewolves may change their names to match their new identity, reflecting the theme of "change and acceptance."  When done well, it’s very effective.  Using wolf-themed items can be done cleverly too.  In the original The Howling, the product placement of as many wolf-themed items as possible gives the film some extra re-watch value.


Hulkwolf Smash!

A 100 pound supermodel is a werewolf.  Upon transformation, she becomes a ten foot tall, 1500 pound mountain of fur and muscle.  She hears a loud whirring sound: Albert Einstein is spinning in his grave.

Physical transformation already breaks a number of laws of physics, but the idea of someone gaining a ludicrous amount of mass can seem just a little too much, smashing through any suspension of disbelief not unlike a 1500 pound she-beast breaking through drywall.  It's doubly silly since wolves are actually very lithe.  What looks like bulky muscle is nothing more than fur.  A bipedal werewolf should be actually quite skinny - maybe even skinnier than a human.  A quick, skinny werewolf who hunts through ambushes and long chases can be plenty scary.

If that wasn't enough to hate hulkwolves, there's the fact that it's widely overdone, despite the fact that bipedal werewolves are very rare in folklore and hulkwolves non-existent.  Why?  Because someone would probably notice a bunch of ten foot talk hulks stamping around.  It’s hard for them to hide in secret.

Why It Can Be Awesome

There's a reason why hulkwolves are so pervasive on DA: because sometimes, bigger is better.  Depending on the story, you may want giant werewolves to crush humans into a paste or to fight a large opponent on equal footing.  The werewolves may be bad guys who need to give a plausible threat to a superpowered good guy. Any way you slice it, a hulking beast with claws like knives and a maw full of sharp teeth is a real monster.

What I do wish I'd see a bit more often is an accurate portrayal of scale.  Most house ceilings are about eight feet tall.  It may only be seven in older houses.  A werewolf this big isn't going to fit in a car and will utterly destroy any clothes it's wearing (though clothes rippage is a genre standard).  Any items a werewolf this big uses are going to have to be custom-made.  And of course, the idea of a hulkwolf secret society running around a major city without being noticed is still awfully silly.


Take a Bite of Me

In werewolf folklore, there are a lot of different ways to become a werewolf: salves, belts, black magic, selling your soul, being cursed, being born on the wrong day, and a few hundred others.  However, to the best of my knowledge, no one became a werewolf by being bitten by another one until 1941 when the original Wolfman came out and reinvented the myth.  About 99% of all werewolf species created since then can reproduce by bite.  This can cause problems with suspension of disbelief when werewolves are savage and mindless since everyone dies but main characters who tend to only end up with one little bite wound that quickly heals.  In this case, they're walking around with a mouth full of lycanthropy and anyone who wanted to spread the "curse" or "gift" could infect a couple hundred people every month.  You'd assume that the world would be utterly overrun with werewolves.

The biggest appeal of bitten infections, however, is that anyone can become a werewolf.  Authors enjoy writing about themselves getting bitten and turning, which is perfectly fine when you're writing your own fantasies, but it's very irritating since "ordinary high school student gets bitten" is an irritatingly common plot in all forms of media.  Infection through bite is an extreme convenient plot device too.  Is your love interest dying in your arms?  Bite 'em for magic healing.  Got a human friend who won't be useful in the climactic battle?  Bite 'em for a power upgrade.

Why It Can Be Awesome

Sometimes, the fact that biting is so easy can work to the story’s favor.  Maybe the writer wants a world overrun by werewolves or a werewolf race who know that they're extremely infectious and are trying to stop this from happening.  The ability to easily make anyone into a werewolf offers a lot of storytelling opportunities.

One thing that I've rarely seen explored are "bites gone wrong."  Perhaps the bite often kills the aspiring werewolf or maybe it's easy to accidentally kill even a willing volunteer.  Alternatively, the wannabe werewolf is bitten and learns that being a werewolf isn't as good as he or she thought - or likes it so much that he or she starts infecting everyone.


"My Pack 'Tis of Thee..."

When wolves were on the edge of extinction in the Continental US, biologists began to study them.  They came up with new concepts to describe the pack: Alpha, Beta, Omega, et cetera.  As werewolf writers and artists began to re-imagine werewolves, it was only natural that they drew from real-life wolf behavior.  And here's where the issue happened: a lot of these early observations were incorrect.  As it turns out, a random group of adult wolves crammed into a cage start behaving like humans in prison.  Wild wolves tend to act more along the lines of a human family: mom and dad ruling the roost with a bunch of kids following and sometimes the grandparents or aunts and uncles in tow.

Despite that, the use of this terminology and behavior continues unabated.  Werewolf packs described as being several hundred or even thousands of years old use terms like "alpha" and "omega" that weren't developed until the 1970s.  Bullying the omega or killing the alpha male to take over leadership is the "way of the beast," despite beasts not doing that unless placed in a captive environment.

I'm actually outright ashamed that I think that something as pervasive, as cliched, and as (at times) flat-out wrong can have a good use...

Why It Can Be Awesome

A 1000 year old werewolf pack won't use these terms.  Who would?  A bunch of rookie werewolves.  They have no idea what they're supposed to be doing, so they go to Barnes and Noble, pick out a wolf book which may or may not be accurate, and start organizing a "pack."  The use of wolf ranks can make an upstart group of werewolves can make for an interesting contrast if they clash with an older pack who knows better.

As far as pack behavior goes, when it's done wrong it can be very irritating, but when depicted properly, it's a breath of fresh air.  If a "wrong" example is deconstructed by the writer, it can also make for an interesting subversion.


"Yes, I really did sail over on the Mayflower"

Werewolves seem to come in two types:

-Killed within a couple days after turning
-Live for a really, really long time

Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but long lifespans seem to be typical for werewolves.  It makes sense that something able to transform itself and regenerate when wounded would live longer than a human.  The problem is that it's not alluded to in folklore (especially since werewolves tend to die prematurely) and it's absolutely rampant in fiction, although not as common as presumed immortal vampires.

Long lifespans can also be problematic when set in the modern world, where it's next to impossible to live without a real ID.  Writers may decide to use long life as a way for a werewolf character to "play" in different historical eras or to allow them to take part in famous historical events.  This can be awesome or awful, depending on the author's historical knowledge and research skills.

In general, however, the effects of living an abnormally long lifespan are rarely taken into account by the writer.  A werewolf with a human's perception of time is going to struggle.  Its human friends and family are going to get old and die.  Yet one hundred years later, the werewolf is still acting like a spoiled teenager.

Why It Can Be Awesome

Long lifespan is an interesting concept in itself when explored by a good writer.  It dovetails nicely with the metamorphosis plot of a werewolf story.  No matter how hard the werewolf pretends to be human, everyone he or she cares about is ultimately going to get old and die.  People will notice when he or she doesn't age like a human, forcing the werewolf to uproot or risk persecution.  Ultimately, the werewolf will be forced to realize that the only choices are a long, lonely masquerade as a human or seeking out other werewolves.


So there they are: my "guilty pleasures" of the werewolf genre.

As with my pet peeves, I do feel like there are ways to refurbish even the most tired, most annoying cliches.  These tend to be very easy to do well in a story.  Even when done poorly, they usually don’t annoy me, even if I know that they're stupid, overdone, or plain just bad and I know shouldn't be quite so fond of them.

Don't judge me!  But feel free to leave comments.