This is not for any particular reason (I mean, I’ve been watching a few episodes of season 2-3 Buffy randomly lately, but that isn’t it). I’m sure there are plenty of books and films and whatever that are about werewolves exclusively or only, but I realized today that I can only think of one. Blood and Chocolate. It’s based on a book that I haven’t read, and I don’t remember the movie too clearly, but I do remember that it just sort of made my friends and I giggle.
Why is this? I actually don’t have an answer to the question, it’s not like I’m asking why rhetorically as a lead or something. I mean, werewolves aren’t necessarily the sexiest of supernatural creatures. But werewolf mythologies seem a lot of times to be tacked on to what was already a vampire mythology, so I’ll just do my big 3 of analysis, because really, I need to talk about how creepy Stephenie Meyer’s werewolves are. Actually True Blood werewolves are occasionally creepy too, but a lot of it (not all of it) is more the individual I guess.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Oz (Seth Green) is really the only werewolf we ever know, and that’s not till season two. I’d think that Sunnydale would have to be home to some sort of wolfpack, being as it is home to basically everything else supernatural. And there had to be at least one wolf in town in order to have bitten Oz’s cousin who then bit him. But maybe that was a traveling wolf just wandering through town biting babies?
- DINGOES ATE MY BABY. That is all.
- Since Oz is the only werewolf we know, and Veruca (Paige Moss) really the only other werewolf we see (there are apparently a couple on Angel, which is my summer project but I’m still just barely in season two, what have I been doing with my life), we get a pretty complete lone wolf mentality. There aren’t really packs hanging around that we see; the Buffy wiki entry on werewolves does mention packs, and they are mentioned in passing on the show, but we don’t see them, really.
- Sometimes Buffy werewolves look adorable and silly, like people in yeti suits; sometimes they look like people in more serious yeti suits.
- As per the events of 4×06, “Wild at Heart,” and the surrounding, we get a pretty clear sense of Oz’s and the others’ moral stance on werewolfism (?) and what goes with it. Oz has the others restrain him at the full moon until he goes off to learn to control it and change at will, Veruca thinks that’s dumb and wolfs out when it happens, regardless.
- Buffy werewolves are fascinating to me because everyone but the Initiative seems to see them as a shade of gray. The Scoobies make exceptions because Angel has a soul, and Spike eventually has a chip and then a soul, but other than that, they aren’t really asking examining the life choices of individual vampires. “The Scooby Gang and the Angel Investigations team argue that werewolves can’t be held accountable for their actions in lupine form. They do make an exception to this belief when it comes to werewolves that, knowing of their condition, do not seek any method of restraint, regarding these individuals as they would regard common vampires and demons, or at least a dangerous human,” says the Buffy wiki. Yes, there aren’t really vampires or demons or anything who do try to keep from the killing, except the souled guys, but they have a conditional policy about werewolves. Which is interesting.
True Blood:
- We don’t get werewolves until season three (or book three) here. At first, we mostly know Alcide (Joe Manganiello), then we meet Russell’s (Denis O’Hare) crazy V-addict wolves and craycray Debbie (Brit Morgan).
- And Alcide, until season four, also seems to be a lone wolf.
- These guys have the magic of modern computer generated imagery on their side, so they look like real wolves.
- Packs are first presented in the light of the crazy V-addicts, so we don’t have the best first impression. There is definitely a ceremony to belonging to a pack, and that is in and of itself fascinating; the True Blood world has a lot a lot of ceremony in it, a lot of structure that always seems to want to be broken.
- But the packs don’t actually seem that great. I mean, there’s the having a pack aspect, having folks who know your secret (since weres aren’t out yet at this point) and who you can wolf out with, and that’s theoretically good. But abjuring is kind of weird, and packmasters are a strange thing.
- Oh, okay, we’ll talk about this creepy factor for a moment: Martha Bozeman (Dale Dickey) wolfing out at the sight of her son Marcus’s (Dan Buran) corpse and then leading the rest of the pack in the ritual nomming, because apparently it’s expected to nom your dead packmaster. Ick.
- Also, werepanthers aren’t werewolves, but at least in the television series, creepy. No good comes from incestuous cult-families of poorly educated supernaturals who think it’s okay to kidnap people for sex. No. Werepanthers, at least the Hotshot ones, I’m just going to call bad on.
Twilight:
- Wrong bad no. Having werewolfism be a part of the Native American tribe could actually be cool, and I’d be interested in seeing someone do something with that who wasn’t being creepy and gross. But these guys… wrong bad no.
- I am still laughing about the fact that these guys routinely ripped their shirts off.
- And still cringing about the handling of Leah (Julia Jones). Quotes from the Twilight wiki: “Seeing their daughter phase rather than their son, Seth, her father suffers a fatal heart attack.”Whoa potentially gross. “She and Jacob have a deep conversation one day whilst hunting, mentioning how being frozen in time has stopped her menstruation cycle and may have disabled her ability to get pregnant. Jacob also remembers her breakdown when she first became a wolf, thinking herself as a freak, a “girly wolf”. Leah also wonders if she maybe isn’t as feminine as she thought she was, and wonders how imprinting would be for her. It is in this discussion that Leah mentions how she can relate to Rosalie’s protection of Bella and the idea of never having a child from her own body was upsetting.” I mean, if Leah really wants to be a mommy, she could adopt, couldn’t she? But apparently not physically birthing one would just be too much. And honestly, if you want to have kids, that’s your business, whatever. I just still find it frustrating that basically every female character in Twilight who is remotely significant except for Alice has to be written as defined by motherhood roles or a lack thereof. Also: Dear Leah Clearwater, you can be as feminine as you damn well please and still be a wolf, being a wolf who may not birth a child physically doesn’t make you a bad woman, there are many ways to be a woman.
- And it’s weird to me that Leah is the first lady wolf at all.
- Aaand imprinting. It’s like an arranged marriage and a biological imperative formed by entitlement and just… creepiness all around. And really, I am still making faces (as I am sure most people are) over the notion of imprinting on a fetus. Again, the wiki says it all: “Unlike her imprinter, the imprintee can choose whether she’ll accept him as her ‘soulmate’ or not. It is however implied that a rejection is highly unlikely, since it is said that it would be very hard to resist the levels of “commitment, compatibility and adoration”. It has also been noted that the imprintee feels incomplete without the wolf nearby. / But if she does choose someone else over the shape-shifter, he will be in deep emotional pain, though he will still respect her choice.” Well, at least there’s that respect, theoretically.
- These guys are technically shifters and not werewolves, but they’re… basically wolves. They might as well be wolves, the rules are close enough.
- Yet again, the mythology just… no.
–your fangirl heroine.
