#wolf-men

It’s that time of year when the things I love the most get noticed and celebrated at least a little by everybody else (even though corporations still hate creating typical Halloween products that actually include werewolves; seriously go check your local department store, it’s been this way since I was a tiny tiny child)...

Happy Howl-o-ween! Time for a special Halloween post!

(finally grabbed this game in a sale. Guess I’ll play it soon)

First off - welcome (again), new followers! I had a big ol’ followers flux, in part because my werewolf masterlist made the rounds and in part because of Overly Sarcastic Productions’ new video on werewolves! I communicated a lot with Red about research for it; be sure to check it out. You’ll recognize pretty much everything in there, if you’ve spent a lot of time on this blog (and if you’ve read my latest book, too)!

For a while now, I’ve been getting lots of messages and asks about werewolf stories and character concepts (and I always enjoy those!), but a lot of them have a something in common... an antagonistic or generally evil werewolf/werewolves or discussions thereof - or asking how to make a werewolf who isn’t an antagonist.

While villain werewolves are great and can be totally awesome, they are generally terrible, and on average, we do not like those or support or encourage them here on this blog. My goal with werewolf (and wolf) education is to encourage the creation of sympathetic and not evil werewolves and wolf-related characters. This doesn’t mean they have to be “cuddly” by any means (I’m not a fan of that, either), but it would be great to see werewolf characters that aren’t one-note villains.

Using them as villains is great, but I would so much rather see werewolf and wolf villains be done sparingly instead of the overwhelmingly “almost always” that you see today and have always seen throughout the history of entertainment.

Historically, werewolves (and wolves in general) are always cast in a bad light and as villains, often being pure evil and menaces that must be stopped (read: killed), and that needs to stop for so many reasons. If you want to hear more about that, though, you should read my book on how werewolves in folklore are not what they are in pop culture, how werewolves are nothing but misconceptions today, and why that isn’t a good thing.

All that being said, let’s move on to the meat of this post...

How do you make werewolves not evil?

There are many characters in stories. Not all of them have to be protagonists or antagonists. They do not have to be good or evil. Werewolves fit perfectly into shades of grey, whether they are directly cast as heroes or villains or not.

I want to emphasize something here: Werewolves are characters first and werewolves second. Essentially, werewolves are people, too.

It’s like any other character creation. If you create a character specifically to be “a female character” or “the love interest” or whatever, they are inherently going to suffer from that. If you make “the werewolf character” instead of making a character and then making that character happen to be a werewolf (or whatever other template you are applying), your character will never be as good as that character who was created as a character first and then the other element second. Do not let “being a werewolf” (or whatever other element is at play) dictate the character.

Almost all werewolf characters in media are werewolves first and characters second. They suffer for that. They aren’t really people - they’re just plot elements.

Werewolves are so much deeper than throwaway villains. At their core, werewolves are sill human, and they have problems and motivations and hopes and dreams like everyone else. Their lycanthropy affects that, not destroys it.

If you do not want the werewolf to be a primary hero or working with the primary hero, they do not necessarily have to be the villain, either. Werewolf characters can come and go like any other characters. Their motivations can be a mystery - they themselves can be part of that mystery. They do not necessarily have to be good or evil, but characters with their own motivations.

Being a werewolf does not have to impact them being good or evil at all. They could help the hero(es) directly or indirectly or only now and then, or they can be a looming threat the heroes hope they never have to face. They can be something that only helps the hero in their greatest moment of need due to the potential risks of doing so.

Werewolves can be a mysterious hermit, the wandering loner, the person who never lets anyone get close. They can drift in and out of a story and help the protagonists in only minor ways. They can be the Gandalf.

They can be literally anything in any story, if only horizons would be expanded. Werewolves are not a villain or antagonist, throwaway or not, by nature. They are characters, like everyone else. They just happen to also be werewolves, which only adds yet another very interesting layer to their characters - a layer that offers endless possibility and exploration, with so much character growth and development.

Werewolves are generally assumed to be villains. The natural line of thought is to make them such. That is exactly what I want to change.

The uncontrollable werewolves do not necessarily have to be the type to come charging out of nowhere, wanting to kill the protagonist and their friends for no reason at all. Give their animal side more depth, too. Why would it behave in such a way? What motivates it? Do you really want your readers to se your protagonist thinking that anything animalistic is an evil plague that must be destroyed, instead of just a part of nature that is trying to keep to itself? Or what if that werewolf was a hero, whether a hero or an anti-hero, instead of a villain - like all those other werewolves?

There are so many things one can do with werewolves. They can be enigmatic heroes, they can be the shades of grey. They could be a force of nature, they can be guardians, healers, sages, seers, shamans - they can be the thing that goes bump in the night, the thing you never see but know is there. They can be knights in shining armor with a dark side (my favorite and also my primary werewolf protagonist), they can be the absolute perfect anti-heroes - the possibilities are endless!

Werewolves do not inherently represent a force of evil or something to oppose the protagonists. They can take up any role in a story. Turn to folklore for ideas and inspiration! Read about them as great warriors, as heroes, healers, as simple wandering travelers - and as that friend you never expected could turn into a wolf and bring you a deer to eat when you got too hungry on the road.

Werewolves are not something that always has to be “fought” in a story. They can simply be a part of the world and part of the environment, a character someone sees in passing. They don’t have to be at the forefront as heroes and villains. They don’t have to be “faced” and “dealt with” in some way every time they are encountered. The fact that so many people write stories in which the werewolf must be immediately dealt with and is “evil” only highlights further the fact that werewolves have been put in this evil light because humanity feels it must destroy and restrain the forces of nature instead of letting the wild be free.

And if you want to have a werewolf who isn’t a hero (not all stories need werewolf heroes, either, after all), a great role for a werewolf is a red herring, since everyone does naturally assume a werewolf will be evil - but maybe that werewolf just wants to be left alone instead.

Werewolves are often at their best when they are only under suspicion - when the characters are wondering and worrying about it. Wonder if that thing behind them is the werewolf. Is the werewolf evil? Is it going to kill me? Are they even a werewolf? Like any horrific creature, werewolves are at their strongest when they are not front and center and tearing up everything, but when they are mysterious and a source of fear - when they are more characterized and less a monster encounter action scene that comes and goes in a hurry. When they are too powerful to be fought directly and are best just avoided.

This is why werewolves make for such great horror and mystery - and that can also help characterize them.

Maybe the protagonists cannot be sure if the person is a werewolf or not - and if that person is on their side or not. Maybe the werewolf doesn’t specifically help or fight them. And maybe ,at some crucial moment, the werewolf will appear and offer aid. Werewolves make for great enigmatic characters, especially when they are trying to hide their nature.

Most folklore werewolves are not necessarily heroes or villains (though they often came in a more heroic variety before the Renaissance, of course). Werewolves can take so many different roles, depending on what story you want to tell.

My favorite werewolves will always be those that have a dark side, not those that are sweet and cuddly. To me, if a werewolf is not in some way dark, it isn’t actually a werewolf (especially if they are just dog-people, which isn’t werewolves at all, but you’ve all heard me rant about that before). But that absolutely does not make them inherently villains - it makes them extremely interesting characters with endless depths to explore. Giving a character lycanthropy only gives them that much more substance. It should never take substance away - which is what tends to happen with a lot of werewolves in media, especially those one-note villain ones or the simplistic ones that are just a plot point in a mystery (and then are generally killed anyway).

So do not fall into that trap of making werewolves the villain(s) in your story/setting/etc. Think of them as you would both individuals and a force of nature - the most dangerous wild animal of them all... but not in any way inherently “evil.”

I hope this provides food for thought about making a character first and putting the werewolf element second - having that character you created react to being a werewolf the way a real person would, instead of existing solely as a plot element and/or a villain.

Expect more in-depth writing advice posts on this topic in the future!

And in conclusion... Happy Halloween!

(If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to check out my other stuff!

[Image ID:  Illustration for the story below. A pen and marker drawing of a neon pink werewolf in profile facing left, with purple streaks in her fur and a few bound locks of hair. She has a pair of long, curved brown horns atop her head and a teal eye. Her broad nose is purple and she has white on her muzzle. She is wearing a silver arrowhead on a string around her neck and appears to be smiling gently. / End ID.]  Summary:  In a small kingdom-city nestled among mountains, the people wait in fear.  The neighboring kingdom-cities have been ravaged.  A plague is coming. The Wolves will be here any day now.  The kings and priests, in deciding what to do about it, decide that a sacrifice is in order.  Are they going to render it?  Pah! Since when have the wealthy and the powerful been willing to sacrifice anything? Unlike other plagues, however, this one has a will of its own and a sense of judgement. What will come of it?  

To the Wolves The church bell sent out seven peals for the Seven Gods in Traad, the last of the seven mountain city-states.  The people of Traad were, in general, very pious. They were also surrounded by wolves. The beasts that the people feared were no ordinary animals.  There were the standard, four-legged kind of wolves that roamed the surrounding forest, but the creatures that Traad entreated the gods against were man-beasts. Their howls echoed off the snowy stones of the Fortress Mountains, long and loud and something not-quite-mere-animal.  Their heads were crowned with horns and their eyes shined in the dark.  They were rather easy to spot in the daytime for those travelers and hunters who’d lived to tell the tale of a sighting.  Unlike the four-footed animals that bore the same common-name, the horned wolves were brightly-colored.  Scholars offered their theories about this – mostly having to do with the colorblindness of most of their prey.  Bright pinks and reds likely didn’t register to the eyes of most herbivores, while the blues and greens likely blended into the surrounding foliage.   Humans were prey, but being able to sight a man-beast wolf easily hardly mattered in their case.  If you saw one, it most likely had seen you first and if it was hungry, it would overwhelm you with superior speed and sheer brute force. They were not shapeshifters, nor were they, by anyone’s knowledge, born of humankind, and so were not the werewolves of other lands’ legends.   They were considered man-beasts because they walked on two legs (although they also loped on all fours) and they had a kind of civilization.  No one in Traad had ever been to any cities that they owned, but they appeared to have some kind of a tribal society.  They wore no clothing, their fur sufficing for their needs. Males had horns that curved around similar to those of a ram while the horns of females simply curved back like scimitars – or like the horns of an ibex.  The women among the man-beasts also had two tails.  They were studied as much as they could be from a respectful distance.   Traad raised their prayers to the gods, for it seemed all they could do now.  They were the last of the cities in what used to be a federation of small kingdoms before the wolves came.  Six cities fell to ravenous jaws and slashing claws, stone spears and obsidian swords. Rhana in the far east was the first to fall.  The latest was Greatriver.  After that, Traad kept getting word from carrier pigeons, traveling merchants and escapees about the destruction of the cities due to an advancing horde of wolves. East to west the tribe of beasts traveled.   No one knew what had “awakened” them. There was no particular reason that anyone knew or could guess that would have made them abandon living simple lives in the wild or keeping to wherever their own cities lay.  Even though they had no known kingdom to increase territory for, they were on the move as an army of conquest.  Curious travelers who’d claimed to enter the cities they had been to spoke of seeing nothing left behind but ruins, blood and broken, gnawed bones.  

__________________

“Perhaps they have simply gained a specific taste for human flesh?” the King of Traad’s advisor speculated. King Drummond paced back and forth before him as he was seated at a table.  Veras could not see him, but could hear his footsteps.  They clack-clacked upon the stone floor in one of the private room’s of Traad’s hilltop palace – a far cry from the dirt or rough wood floors of most of the homes far below.   “I lost contact with Lord Perron, Drummond said.  “Could the wolves have even stormed his palace?  Has he fallen?”   “It is likely,” Veras said gravely. “Perhaps wealth and fortifications are no protection from them.”   “Fortifications must provide some protection. They protect from all else.”   “The messenger-birds repeat the screams of soldiers,” Veras intoned.   “My old, dear and wisest friend,” the king said, “You must have some idea of how we might survive their advance.”   “They may turn in their tracks.  Wolves, like any force of nature, are notoriously unpredictable.”   “Not unpredictable enough.”   “What of your people?”  Veras asked, crossing his hands one over the other on the surface of the table.  Drummond found it unnerving that the man’s sightless, milky eyes could follow his movements perfectly.   “The people are my property,” Drummond replied. “Hmmm,” his advisor grunted.  “It is best not to let them hear that.”   “I never say the quiet part aloud while in public,” he responded, “But it is true that they are my inheritance and owe their lives in this land directly to me.”   “What are you suggesting, sire?”   “That if the wolves come to us, that it shall be impossible to save them all,” the king said, wrapping his cape around himself.  He sighed and took a drink of water from a goblet on the table before returning to his steady pacing.  “I’ll keep those closest to me intact, of course, all of the Court and the greater-merchants and everyone who furnishes the palace – the great-creators, the important people, anyone that I find useful.  However, Traad can well-afford to lose some of its number.”   “Surely you can’t! You won’t!”   “Ah, ah, Veras.  The peasants tend to live a little shorter, anyway.  Those who have failed in the fight to make something better of themselves know the cost of that and have fairly insignificant lives to begin with.”   “But their lives are meaningful to them! I am diminished for my lack of sight, but I still want to live!”   “Your life is painful for you,” the king answered, “but it is less so than it could have been because of your proximity to me.  As for the commoners, they have grown too numerous in the land, as their kind do and their demands cut into certain pleasures of mine and my cohorts.  They demand much and, to be honest, I cannot say that I really care to provide it.  Rule comes with its accolades, but is also very tedious.  The gods have given the people into my hand, which makes me an earthly god.”   Drummond continued speaking, although he stood still at last.  “Perhaps the wolves are a blessing.  Traad could use a fresh start.  The survivors will thank the fallen for their sacrifice and become more grateful for what they are given from the top than ever.”   “So, we shall not raise the army and fight what is coming?”  Veras inquired.  “I do not like such a plan, sire.”   “Oh, Veras – the army shall fight – for us and all who are secured away.  The people that I order to the city’s edges?  Beyond the bulwarks?  Well, the strong and the lucky shall live.  They’ll be better for it, too.  They’ll accept their survival and will whine less.  Unless my friends wish to gather a greater profit, they may even benefit from the loss of their kin in that there will be more to go around among the bottom-feeders.”   “So, you are going to toss the greater number of our people to the wolves, then?”   “To the wolves.  They’ll take the weak – those who cannot run and cannot fight… definitely they who cannot work.  They’ll take the useless ones.  They’ll take the fools that refuse to run or who are stupid enough to trip on their own feet in fear.  Perhaps they’ll take some of the good stock, too, but if such people were the best, they wouldn’t be in a position to be shoved beyond the bulwarks to begin with.  I am thinking that only the bottom-tier of our society will do for a sacrifice, you see.”   “At the risk of incurring your wrath, sire,” Veras spoke up, “I believe this plan to be very cruel.”   “Believe it all you want, Veras, but it is for the greater good.  All populations need a cull every now and again.  It was what we learned when the deer grew too numerous and invaded the crop-fields.  There will be no real blood on my hands.  A convenient natural genocide of undesirables is better than the alternatives.”   “I do not like this,” Veras insisted nervously. “As your advisor of court, I think that it is a bad idea, not just for the harshness, but because such plans lead to discontent and rebellion.”   The king laughed.  “Oh, not at all, old friend!  I highly doubt that there will be enough survivors for it!  As for them, they’ll have no place to go!  The woods are dangerous.  There are worse than even wolves there.  And do you not think that they will take their issued allotments of grain over starvation?  Or being driven out entirely into the cold?”   Drummond stalked over to the throne within the counsel-room, one of many he had around the palace and sat down upon its purple velvet cushioning.  His servant at the table did not turn his head toward him this time, although Drummond was certain that he’d heard him.   “Those that deserve to live shall live,” he said.   _______________   Misha-Misha picked her way through one of the cobblestone streets of the deserted city.  A jagged mountain peak, all angles and edges of dark purple stone loomed behind her.  Her tails lashed, for exciting scents remained on the air.  She picked a bit of meat out of her bottom front teeth – from a young ewe that she and her younger brother had roasted upon the fire of what had once been an apothecary shop.  The wind smelled of ash, metal, mud and blood, blood, blood, blood blood. The fluid-scents were of many kinds – men, livestock and of the wolves themselves.   Misha-Misha saw a dog wander by.  They were one of the few kinds of creatures that the wolves did not devour, being too close-in-kind to themselves in the wolves’ reckoning.  The lanky mutt growled at her.  She snarled back and the smaller beast slunk off with his tail between his legs.  The scene was silent save for the crackling of fires and the howling of lonely hounds newly bereft of masters.     The leader of the wolves turned her head sharply when she heard the growling of Blue Hour, a member of the tribe named for the grim glow of early evening, interspersed with the cries of a human. Apparently there was a last one left here in what was once the city-state of Greatriver.   “Young lady, you do not have all of the facts!” the man screamed.  He crawled pathetically, leaving a thick streak of blood upon the cobblestone street. “My kind live long,” the blue-furred wolf replied.  “I am not a ‘young lady.’  I am likely your elder by many seasons.”   “Dear…”   “Do not call me ‘dear,” Blue Hour snarled. “We could have civilized you!”   “By encroaching upon our home?” Blue Hour demanded, “By slaughtering our natural prey in excess?!”   “You….” The man gasped, “You could have earned your gold… Especially you… you females.  You could have served, learned to cook and clean alongside our wives and daughters!”   “And nothing else?”   “Why usurp your natural place?” “Our natural place is to live without limit.” “And that is why you are a bunch of backwards cannibals! You could have prospered!”   “Cannibals?” Blue Hour asked.  “The last time I looked, we do not have the same form at all.”  She smiled as the man continued to bleed.  “We wolves do not live in subjugation, not even for the sake of peace.  And who is prospering now?”   “Are you having trouble?”  Misha-Misha asked.  She planted a clawed foot uncomfortably close to the struggling human’s head.   “Not particularly,” her compatriot replied. “This prey is just… a bit obnoxious.” “I do not recognize him as one of the ones that fought us, nor as anyone securing the escape of their whelps.”   “I caught him up in a tree,” Blue Hour explained, her muscles tense and her tails writhing in a predatory glee.  “He was defending his perch, pushing others down during our assault.  Trapped all night.  I was determined to get him.” “Kid…Dear…” the man mumbled, his voice going progressively pale as he tried in vain to pull his injured form away. “Young ladies…”   Misha-Misha stomped her foot upon his chest as she looked to Blue Hour.  “He has squawked enough.”   Blue Hour got down on all-fours, seized the human’s throat in her mouth, clamped her jaw down and shook him until she heard his last choked outward gasp and felt his pulse cease.   “So you kept him treed, eventually managed to tear him down and then wounded him and let him crawl all night?”  Misha-Misha asked.   “Indeed,” Blue Hour managed around a mouthful of windpipe.  She let go, contemplating just where to tear into the body first before it went cold. She’d probably go straight for the liver.  Misha-Misha knew of no other wolf that liked liver as much as her friend did.  She also knew of no other wolf that was quite as pointlessly vicious.   “That whole business was a bit unnecessary, wasn’t it?”  Misha-Misha spoke, letting authority drip off her voice.   “You cannot say that the coward did not deserve to crawl.”   “True,” the leader conceded, “but as your chief, I caution you to watch your tactics.”   Misha-Misha left Blue Hour to her feast and wandered on.  The humans seemed to have divided themselves into main groups during the assault, save those who had simply fled with their children in-tow; Those that had fought for their city and their fellows and those that had acted in a cowardly fashion like the man that her underling had made sport of – the kind who pushed others out before themselves so that they alone could attain safety.  The end was the same for the cowards and the brave, but Misha-Misha had respect for the latter.  There was a thrill in the fight.  The cut on her upper left arm throbbed and annoyed her, but she would remember the fat cook who’d given it to her with some fondness.  She would remember Blue Hour’s tortured kill with disdain.   She sniffed dust as she wandered into the town church, past doors that had been broken off their hinges.  She had some rudimentary familiarity with the beliefs of the human population of the Fortress Mountains.  The iconography she found upon the sanctuary walls differed slightly from that of their other cities that had been their conquests.  In the first city they’d taken, Rhana, for example, imagery was rather sparse as the people in that place seemed to have focused most of their worship on a god they called “The Un-imaged.”   Here, artwork of the twin goddesses Materia and Machina – gods of certain aspects of physical life – prevailed.  Misha-Misha did not know the finer details of the theology, but found it interesting that some of the peoples’ Seven Gods received more focus than others in different locales.  She raked her claws across a ceramic mural of Materia for no real reason.  She just liked the sound that they made against it. _____________

Falland basked in the late afternoon light that sent many colors across the floor of the Cathedral of Traad.  He gazed up at the representations of the Seven Gods, both symbolic and figural. The gods of nature were depicted upon one side of the church. Gris, the God of Base-Nature, the Keeper of Stone, the Earth, Water and Fire and all non-living elements that the living depended upon – They had no gender and were depicted as a mountain.  Shoulou, depicted as a mighty bull-elk, was the God of Living-Nature – the plants and the animals, all wild things.  Arren – the God of Medicine and Compassion – he was envisioned as a long-haired man.   The other side of the sanctuary was decorated with windows depicting the Gods of Men; Materia the God of Social Power and Money (a golden woman, particularly spectacular in painted glass as the light from outside shined through her), Machina, her “twin” who represented Industry, Invention and Technology, and the last of the row, depicted in dark colors, was a cloaked figure with a long ungulate skull called Arrghus – the God of Pain and Suffering.  Arrghus was not worshipped so much as appeased, although he was not thought of as evil – just a neutral entity whose jurisdiction that people did not want to fall under.   One of the gods could not be depicted in any form, the “Grounding of the Gods” – the Un-imaged, the base-creator of all there was, existent beyond the Void, unable to be understood by mortals enough for even a symbolic representation.   Falland had watched the bent of worship change over the decades he had been in service of the gods and of the people of Traad. He’d found himself tailoring his sermons and those of any assistant-priests toward those that enriched the church.  It was the greater-merchants, after all, that had paid for the glorious windows even if the artists that had brought them into being complained that they had not been fairly compensated for their labors.   Falland had dismissed the artists’ concerns, telling them that they’d worked for the gods and that such service was the meaning of their gifts in the first place.  They, in turn, claimed education, training and hard work for their skills. The arguments went back and forth that way, but the artists remained employed by the cathedral and the king because alternative for them was starvation.  At least they were considered skilled laborers and made out better than many.  A frequent theme of Falland’s sermons was “the need for gratitude.”  He also tailored his preaching toward how he was among the Chosen of the Gods to give the people direction and thus deserved not only the public-keeping, but his many luxuries.   The people of Traad were largely abandoning giving their chief worship to the Un-imaged, which was dominant in the recent past.  In the earliest days of the area, when Traad was merely a settlement, the God of Medicine reigned in importance.  Currently, most of the citizens gave the lion’s share of their worship to Materia – the God of Power and Money.  The wealthy prayed to her in hopes of keeping their positions.  The poor sang songs to her in hopes of being taken out from under her punishment and finally given her graces.  Falland and his men had found it necessary to divide their services as the “Favored of Materia” did not much like keeping company with her “scorned.” Finding it quite enough to have to work with them and to hand down orders on non-service days the wealthier people of Traad had ceased to wish to mingle with their employees.   There were arguments among the priests that this attitude conflicted with the interests of some of the other gods – the Un-imaged and the three Gods of Nature, specifically.  In the end, it prepared them to focus on the affairs of humans and the specific gods of those affairs.   Falland had received word from the king that he needed to impress upon the lower class in his sermons the value of sacrifice and the needs of Arrghus now.  The old priest trembled as he sat down beneath the window depicting the skull-faced figure.  He turned and looked across the pews at the window of Shoulou.  It seemed that the two gods – the God of Living Nature and the God of Suffering had teamed up to enact a cleansing judgment.  Wild beasts were on the move and would soon fall upon the city if they kept upon their reported east-to-west path.  King Drummond had a plan to spare Traad’s “quality citizens.”  Falland could not say that he much liked it.  As a messenger of the gods, he was expected to offer people comfort, compassion and meaning.  He could not say that he absolutely hated the plan, either, for he was among the “quality citizens” slated to be preserved by it and in the end of all matters, death and the Will of Arrghus came to them all.   He sighed and opened the main church-doors to the waiting peasants outside.  They were going to hear a hard speech today.  The people that came to the later service would hear a far different one – one that was much more along the lines of what they wanted to hear – one about the “chosen righteous remnant.”   Falland knew that he would find the late service easier to preach, for its message was one that he wanted to believe in, too.   The man tried to ignore a shiver of guilt that wriggled up his spine and over his shoulders.   _________________ “When the soldiers come to take us outside, Nia, I want you to behave.  Be quiet for me.” “I don’t like it, Grandma!  Why do we have to let them take us away?  I don’t care what the preacher said about the Will of Arrghus!”   “It is more the Will of Materia,” the grandmother groused, “but we will not have a choice.  You might survive.  You have a chance.  Nia, when we are waiting outside the city and we see the wolves coming, I want you to run. You have long, skinny strong legs. You can make your escape into the woods and if you are lucky, you may even be able to sneak back into the city later.”   “But there will be nothing for me, Grandma! I live with you!  You are all I have!”   “I don’t have many more years left, child. You have an entire lifetime.”   “Not much of one if I run into bears in the woods!”   “Nia!”   “This is not fair!” the pre-teen protested as she paced the single room of their abode.  “Why can’t the king raise the army to defend us?”   “He has chosen not to,” her grandmother said grimly, hunching over in her worn chair and folding her hands in her lap. “We must live with our fate.  The gods will decide who survives, I suppose.” “It’s the king deciding this!” Nia raised her voice.  The old woman made a gesture with her hands to quiet down, fearful that their neighbors would hear her rants.  Nia balled up her small fists as she planted her feet on the packed clay floor.  “I hate him!”   At twelve years old, she knew that she was far too young to take on the entire army of the king’s men, but her boiling blood felt like trying.  Her grandmother was far too old.  Grandmother was wrong, though – she had many good years left, at least if she were not being thrown to the wolves.  She was all that was left of Nia’s family since both of her parents took ill and died several years back, having worked long in the rain and cold with only scraps of clothing and without access to anything but hot honeyed tea in terms of medicine.   Grandmother’s tribute from their garden was small, barely enough to pay the rent on their hovel of a home and to keep enough to eat for themselves.  Between that and Grandmother’s age, they were slated to be made a sacrifice (two among many) to the coming wolves to that the upper tiers of Traad could be spared. They were told that they would be “saving civilization” – whatever that meant.  Nia continued to pace.  They’d heard in the sermon they attended this morning all about how the world on the Other Side of death was peaceful, wonderful and how no one should mourn overmuch the prospect of their time in a hard world being cut short.  The youngster doubted that the priest fully believed in his own words.  He was not to be driven beyond the newly-erected barricades to the edge of the city and she doubted that he would volunteer to be with the portion of his flock sent to slaughter.   “Please run for me,” her grandmother pleaded. “Look at me, Nia.  If you escape – and hopefully others will as well – maybe you will find or make for yourselves, a place without kings.”   _________________ Misha-Misha scented the air.  Her tribe moved behind her.  Nearly two weeks out of Greatriver, all of them hungered again. Small prey was taken along the way; rabbits, squirrels and the like.  It only whetted their collective appetite for a large meal.  Traad was near – the next human city along their chosen line of feasting.  Soon the land would be back to its natural balance with the humans fewer and the larger prey animals returning.  In the meantime, humans made for rich and tender meat.  The wolves were sure that they would not take them all, but they would take enough to satisfy.   Misha-Misha’s brother, Lurek, briefly questioned the eating of beings that could speak to them.  Blue Hour and others overtook his vote as humans had always been a natural prey for their people, even if they used to prefer deer and boars. His own hunger overrode his questioning, too, as it always did.  From what she had heard, Misha-Misha looked forward greatly to taking Traad.  Rumors from scouts that had managed to get close and remain unseen were that many of its people were nice and fat.  She hoped that there would be a thrilling fight like in the last cities they had visited. Battle enticed her stomach.   It was early evening when they approached the city.   As they drew nearer, they witnessed several bodies hovering on the city’s edge, their gaunt faces lit with torches. There were multitudes of people, standing in wait.  Misha-Misha sniffed in sharply.  The odor of their fear was thick.  

The wolves stopped and stared at the huddling masses, pushed outside of barricades. Some were still being actively pushed beyond by armed men, who quaked and hid behind hastily-erected stone and wood-panels as soon as the wolves were sighted.  The people forced to the outside screamed, huddled and cried as the tribe came closer, legs bowed and tails lashing in curiosity at the scene.  Misha-Misha held up her hand, signaling her people to halt.

Misha-Misha could feel the disappointment off her vanguard.  They were expecting to dash into the city, tearing doors off their hinges, giving chase and having thrilling melee’ combat with sword, spear and axe-armed men. They had wanted the sport as much as the meat!   “The others have just given these ones to us?” Lurek asked, flicking an ear.   “It would appear so,” Misha-Misha answered, sniffing.  The frightened, helpless people cringed and shifted.  Many of them wept and held each other, but knew there was no place to go. The rest of the town of Traad would not let them back in through the spiked timber barricades.  In fact, their kinsmen were ready to stab or to shoot them.  The glint of rife-barrels and unsheathed swords were visible between the fortification-gaps.   Misha-Misha issued a low growl as she got a whiff of these people.  She caught many smells on the wind.  The odors of age filled her nostrils as well as those of various sicknesses.  There were the scents of hard work, of dirt from the farming-fields, of steel and blood of butchers’ work – somehow distinct from the blood-smells on Misha-Misha’s fellows who’d taken a rabbit or a stray lamb from one of the outer farm-fields along the way.  There was also an undercurrent of soaps.  Sweat was thick and so was terror.  There were children among the crowd, but not many.   Misha-Misha stood tall, stretched her chest to the sky and roared.  The humans outside of the barricades cowered.   “Do we begin the feast?” her brother asked her. He paced back and forth, eager, his tail lashing.  “All of these… they look miserable and helpless, and like they are more than enough for us to eat our fill.”   Misha-Misha looked at the shine of armor and weapons behind the barricades and let her gaze trail up to the various houses casting rectangular lights upon the streets from their windows and then up and up to the palace hewn into the rock of the mountain high above.   “I believe that is the idea that this city had,” Misha-Misha proclaimed.  “Their leaders must have chosen to give us a sacrifice.  They believe that if we eat a chosen segment of their people that we will leave – and leave them alone as we move on.”   Blue-Hour licked her chops. “No!” Misha-Misha ordered.   The wolves barked, snarled and growled, impatient with their elder.   “No, we do not!” she said, tails a-bristle. “I want to know what is going on here. Why would this village just give us a portion of its population to us freely when every other human city we have been through fought to the last?”   “Many of these ones smell weak,” Lurek offered. “There is injury and there is age. Perhaps we are a mercy to them.”   “Well, we do usually take the weak of the herds,” Blue-Hour observed, “the elk and bison that trail behind.”   “Is it not different with humans?” one of the younger wolves asked.   Misha-Misha stepped forward and lowered her snout.  She breathed out hot breath onto a wrinkled woman keeping herself upright on a cane. “What is going on here?” she demanded of the human.  “Answer me!” “Leave my grandma alone!” a little girl shouted, running out suddenly from behind the old woman.  The woman seemed as surprised as the wolf was, her eyes registering sorrow and disappointment in a flash. “Run!”  The woman shouted, but the child disobeyed. “I told you to run!” The girl brandished a stick and swatted Misha-Misha right on the nose, to which the wolf responded by snapping the offending branch in twain.   “No, Nia!” the grandmother yelped, pulling the child back and holding her to her chest.   The girl acted as if she hardly noticed. She stuck her neck out and continued to address the wolf.  “They pushed us out!” she cried.  “The king said that all of the poor people had to meet at the edges of the town, then the soldiers pushed us out here and gated up the barriers and made the walls! If we go back, they’ll just stab us!”   Misha-Misha growled.  Her people had little use for money, but they understood the concept of wealth in their observations of certain types of prey.   “Us old folks,” the grandmother added. “The old, sick and injured folk… anyone who ain’t makin’ enough money to own their own land and homes…”   “Your friends made you a sacrifice to us?” the magenta-furred wolf-leader asked with a quirked eyebrow, taking her snout back from the frightened people before her.   A man in a threadbare coat came up beside the old woman and her granddaughter as everyone else huddled behind them. “I’d hardly call them ‘friends.

Just the king, the court, the soldiers… our church.”  

“The Church of the Seven,” Lurek said, scratching his chin with a long claw.  “I thought that they considered human life to be sacred in the utmost.”  

“The king was not much for listening to me,” another elder said.  He turned his head to where the wolves were scratching their paws into the dirt, barely containing themselves.  He looked up with milky, unseeing eyes.  “Not ‘friends,’ indeed.  I was his advisor since he was a child, but he grew a tad bit tired of my objections to this, and so here I am.  I knew that my imperfections would lead to this someday.”  

“Did you think he would spare you, old man?!” Someone in the crowd shouted. “You’re disabled!  He wants to get rid of all of us!  Money and status weren’t gonna save you from that!”  

“It is true that I thought more of tactics than of morality,” the blind man said, “but I believed that it was the only way to make sense of the situation, the only way to reach him, but King Drummond is so absorbed in notions of his own brilliance.”   He nodded in the direction the yell had come from.  “In the end, I suppose that I glad to no longer be in his service.  I am proud to perish with you.”  

“Don’t’ pretend you are our brother now!”

The old woman who had spoken before and who was trying to shield her granddaughter raised a hand and tried once more to speak above the budding fray.  “They said they did… they… they said that they would protect us.”  Tears edged at her bottom eyelashes.  “The priests speak of protecting children – making sure all are born into purity, but… sometimes… Well, when one grows, one acquires sins, no matter how one tries.”  She sighed and shrugged her shoulders, continuing to hold her grandchild close.

“They didn’t like us!” the little girl said. “Some of us were… just too weird! Or too old! Or too poor and ‘dirty’ and beneath them!”  

“It’s the economy,” gruffed the man in the ragged coat.  “They decided that the coming of the wolves was inevitable and that they couldn’t save everyone, so they decided that only the important folk get to be behind the barricades and walls, and they’re the only ones that the soldiers will protect. They figured that if people are gonna be lost, might as well clear out the least valuable – us working-folk and the sick are many enough.  The wealthy are the few, but the soldiers are paid well and are more enamored of them than they’ll ever be of us, so this is our fate.”  The man glared daggers at all of the wolves.  “Just get it over with!”  

Misha-Misha’s muzzle twitched in a low, drawn-out snarl.  She raised her right hand again and turned to address her tribe.  

“Take the livestock,” she said, “and if anyone can breach their way into the city, you may eat your fill.  Otherwise, our bellies go empty this night.”  

There were confused half-yelps and murmurs among the gathering of wolves.  However, others stepped up to stand beside Misha-Misha, their heads bowed and their tails slung low in a gesture of submission.  “We understand,” they said.  

Misha-Misha lowered her snout again toward the little girl, who glared at her defiantly. “I’ll not harm her,” she assured the grandmother, “I have decided that my people shall harm none of you.”  

There were surprised shouts and murmurs now among the humans gathered outside the city.  

“In fact, you may come with us if you’d like. You may have a home among us.”

Tentatively, the little girl wriggled out of her grandmother’s grasp and reached out to stroke Misha-Misha’s muzzle, which the wolf-leader allowed.  

“As livestock?”  a man wearing a sheep-skin as a cloak inquired.  

“No,” Misha-Misha said, taking the girl’s hand in hers as she stood tall.  “No. You, exiled from your own people, who clearly do not care for you – you can join my people.”  

There was more murmuring.  

“The Gharrou – we wolves - take care of their own,” Misha-Misha explained.  “We know what we are.  We are ravenous.  We are the terrors of the forests and of the mountains.  Once we have targeted a feast, we sweep through with all of the terror of a disease leaving blood and bones cracked for marrow in our wake, but this… this action by your people – to put you out to face us out of selfishness and ill-awareness of their own luck… I believe I speak for my entire tribe when I say that I am appalled.”  

“So…you’re good monsters?”  Nia asked at length.  

“No, little one,” Misha-Misha answered her. “I would hardly call us ‘good,’ but we have some standards – some of which are clearly different than those of your tribe.  Come with us. We shall only devour livestock and the forest game for as long as any of you are with us.”  

The wolves turned around, trekking back through the dry forest leaves.  One by one, starting with the little girl and her grandmother hobbling behind her, the people put out as a sacrifice beyond the city of Traad’s barricades followed them.  

Prepare to rediscover the forgotten legacy of the legendary werewolf!

Purchase here on Amazon.com!

Since before recorded history, werewolves have captivated human imagination. Simultaneously, they represent our deepest fears as well as our desire to connect with our primal ancestry. Today, werewolves are portrayed negatively, associated with violence, cruelty, cannibalism, and general malevolence.

However, in ages past, legends depicted them not as monsters, but as a range of neutral to benevolent individuals, such as traveling companions, guardians, and knights. The robust legacy of the werewolf spans from prehistory, through ancient Greece and Rome, to the Middle Ages, into the Early Modern period, and finally into present-day popular culture. Over the ages, the view of the werewolf has become distorted. Media treatment of werewolves is associated with inferior writing, lacking in thought, depth, and meaning. Werewolves as characters or creatures are now generally seen as single-minded and one-dimensional, and they want nothing more than to kill, devour, and possibly violate humans.

Hollywood depictions have resulted in the destruction of the true meanings behind werewolf legends that fascinated and terrified humans for so many ages. If these negative trends were reversed, perhaps entertainment might not only discover again some of the true meanings behind the werewolf myth, but also take the first steps toward reversing negative portrayals of wolves themselves, which humans have, for eons, wrongfully stigmatized and portrayed as evil, resulting in wolves receiving crueler treatment than virtually any other animal.

To revive the many questions posed by lycanthropy, entertainment must show respect to the rich history of so many cultures all around the world – and rediscover the legend of the werewolf.

This book represents a lifetime of work, research, and argument. It’s the centerpiece of, essentially, who I am and what I want to fight for in my life. This underwent very close scrutiny by a board of distinguished professors, and I had to defend my research and my arguments before them in order to earn my degree.

If you enjoy my werewolf facts, you’ll enjoy reading this, I can guarantee it, especially if you want to hear my side of things. It won’t be a guide to werewolves, though it’ll certainly have plenty of useful information on various legends in coherent chronological order (all with proper professional attribution, footnotes, discussion, citation, etc.). This is a great place to start to get my perspective on things while also learning about almost all the werewolf legends and info I’ve covered in various facts - and many more that I haven’t!

It means so much to me that I have finally gotten to publish this. I really hope you’ll enjoy it and find it useful, educational, and thought-provoking.

I’m gonna get flamed into the next century for this one, I know. Not really looking forward to it. Anyway, here we go:

I was sent a message while I was on vacation asking me about what I mean by werewolves as zombies and werewolves as dogs and why I cannot stand either option. This person did not want to be identified, so I won’t refer to them - and I disabled anon asks on my blog due to getting too many hate messages over the years. Anyway, I never got around to answering the message (not been doing well at all lately; sorry about that), but I feel like maybe it’s something I should answer in a post, so here we go.

Here is a quick and dirty guide to how to tell if your werewolf might just be a zombie or might just be a dog.

Please note these are not complete lists. These are things that irk me on a deep and profound level, so I could go on about them for quite some time. But this is the short version.

Your Werewolf is a Zombie

Your werewolf is probably just a hairy zombie if...

They are only remotely powerful/intimidating in groups of 3-10+ and/or massive hordes of 10-80+, and they generally move in groups of these sizes

A single werewolf is not even a threat at all

The ONLY thing that makes them scary is they might infect you

They are extremely easily dispatched

They turn into a werewolf and never turn human again, and/or the transformation process “could kill them”

They are an “infestation” or a “plague”

There are literally entire villages and cities of nothing but werewolves (and all they want to do is kill people)

They are crazed, extremely stupid, and have not even the remotest vestige of human intelligence at all, they just want to essentially eat brains like a zombie

They were created by a virus/fungus/some other form of infection, and that is their centerpiece

They are ugly, mangy things that don’t even remotely resemble wolves. They have no actual wolfish features at all and are largely just mangy/hairy people with gross teeth, or else some kind of big mangy monster with large teeth and generic, gross semi-animal features

They have no fur or even hair at all and are just slick muscle zombies

They are all mindless and pure evil/insane and/or becoming one makes you evil and insane

Being turned into a werewolf is a death sentence

Characters are relieved to know it’s “just a werewolf” instead of something actually bad

They look and behave more like zombies than werewolves in general

They are essentially the first random effortless lowbie encounter/group fight in a video game (or a video game trailer...), often literally

Your Werewolf is Just a Dog

Your werewolf is just a walking dog joke and should just be a “weredog” instead (it’d honestly be infinitely better) if...

They bark

They exhibit domesticated behavior (fetching things, easily distracted by things, etc.)

They are a walking dog joke (bark at mailmen, pee on hydrants, shedding jokes, humping jokes, and whatnot) and other people also make dog jokes about them

They lack intelligence and revert to simplistic animal behavior, especially silly/harmless animalistic behavior, at the drop of a hat and they might be embarrassed by it in comically endearing fashion (howling at sirens, chasing things, etc., also see above)

Being a werewolf is just some kind of embarrassment (”I shed and bark at things and scratch and lick my balls :(”) instead of something scary, powerful, and/or potentially a real problem or hardship

They are just a “good boi” and want “head pats” etc.

They’re basically just big friendly dog-people

They resemble a dog instead of a wolf (they have dog fur patterns [spots, merle, brindle...], dog ears [floppy or cut], jowls, pink nose/pink spots on nose, etc.) [this is such a big problem lately and it drives me insane]

They are largely comedy and played as such

They aren’t even scary at all, nor are they remotely vicious, and if they tried to be everyone would see it as a joke and have to be forced to take it seriously under extreme duress (and then the viewers/readers still wouldn’t be able to because the werewolf is still just a dog joke)

They are, in fact, so ultimately harmless that other characters refer to them as the walking dog jokes that they are (Fido, Fluffy, etc., tell them to fetch things, the whole nine yards)

They are literally just someone’s dog on a chain and wear a collar and refer to themselves as someone’s dog

They may not even be a character at all but are literally just a humanoid dog who never turns human, and/or the human also behaves exactly like the dog-werewolf

If any of these things and especially multiple apply to the werewolf, please just let them be called a weredog instead. I could tolerate that. I’d vastly prefer it. More weredogs. Weredogs for everyone. Let’s do it. I’m not kidding! I’m fine with weredogs! I just don’t want werewolves to be weredogs. Let’s keep them different, please. Wolves are not domestic dogs! They are very different, especially in that wolves are not and cannot be domesticated! There are tons of scientific articles and studies, and more releasing every day, that serve to highlight this!

...

And if your werewolf/werewolves meet these criteria, that is fine for you, but I’m really sorry, but they are not for me and I would much prefer to not even know they exist. No hard feelings.

I like werewolves to be werewolves. To me:

Your Werewolf is a Werewolf

Your werewolf is probably a werewolf of some form if...

They are powerful and terrifying as individuals and only that much moreso in groups. Taking down one werewolf is literally the final bossfight and will take all of one’s willpower, intelligence, and abilities; taking down several at once is basically impossible

What I’m saying is I like them to be among the very scariest of monsters in a setting

They may be able to curse/infect others, but that is not the centerpiece of their entire being

Being part of a group/pack and identifying solely as “a werewolf” is also not their entire being (they’re still people, and people have histories and cultures and identities, too! They’re not some alien hive-mind or something!)

They are still human individuals; being a werewolf is not the entirety of their character or their most important aspect (related to that previous one but also in general)

They retain intelligence (but perhaps not necessarily the ability to speak) in werewolf form; they will not bash their brains against walls in a fit of rage or go after the mailman or howl at sirens

They have poise and pride instead of licking their balls or “scritching” or whatever

They can be vicious, they can be noble, but they are always predatory and scary

They are taken seriously

They do not bark or otherwise exhibit domesticated behavior of any kind

They do not have any obviously non-wolf features (spots, stripes, slit pupils [WHY are slit pupils such a thing now!?], merle, jowls, floppy ears, curly fur, pink nose or paw pads [if they have paw pads], etc.). Weird eye colors are fine and great. A few stranger fur patterns might be fun and interesting (like maybe just a few stripes or something), but anything that makes them too obviously look like just a dog or even a cat really throws me off. My favorite werewolves will always look like wolves above anything else, no matter how odd or stylized or supernatural of wolves they might be. Wolves have their own distinguishing, incredible features and werewolves should have those too; save the rest for other shapeshifters and creatures.

If they have animalistic behavior, it’s predatory and wolfish, not domesticated

Being a werewolf is not a convenient button one can push*

They don’t just walk around, talk, and interact like humans while they are werewolves; they are more animal than human, while retaining their intelligence (they are more likely to go hunt and kill in terrifyingly intelligent ways than play a game of poker, even if they might be capable of the latter)

They turn into a werewolf and turn human again; they are not always one or the other

They actually resemble a wolf in at least some fashion (they are not just a bland horror creature with big teeth and mangy hair)

*: Some werewolves in stories are less cursed than others. That’s fine. I do like my cursed werewolves; to me, that’s part of what makes a werewolf a werewolf instead of just a shapeshifter, but I know that not all werewolves in legend were that way (obviously). That’s a personal preference storytelling thing.

Again, as I am fully aware, this is just my opinion. But I was asked, so there it is. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but hopefully this clarifies what I’m talking about.

You can, of course, consult my werewolf facts and related ask responses for more on my opinions and why I hold these opinions.

Another helpful list can be found here and also here, for potential clarification on werewolf tropes I like and dislike, especially in regard to the dog joke things. And here is more on what people call “werewolf angst” (I call it werewolf anxiety), and here is some more on my personal preferences and advice on writing werewolves and werecreatures.

AND! One more thing! This doesn’t necessarily condemn the werewolf product for me. It just has a 99.99% chance of doing so. Execution is everything. I love Resident Evil: Village/Resident Evil 8 because the hairy zombies are referred to as “lycans” like twice and are just hairy zombies that never resemble wolves or behave as wolves and I can just completely ignore that they’re supposed to be werewolves and overlook that. I love that game. But if there’s this emphasis on big wolfish werewolves being zombies, it honestly makes it worse for me. For instance, I cannot even look at ESO anymore (and that makes me really sad).

And as for the dog jokes... I’ve only ever enjoyed the original Teen Wolf movie insofar as that goes, and some of the things in there still make me groan. But I did enjoy the movie and story enough that I still like it a lot. But will you ever see me watching that Goosebumps movie again? No. I’d sooner hang myself up on meathooks.

I just... would very much love to see werewolves be their own thing instead of zombies or dogs, and if they are just zombies or dogs in a thing, chances are incredibly high that, no, I won’t like it, and I may even have extreme dislike for it.

So let’s let werewolves be werewolves.

It’s the last four days of my months-long deal on Patreon!

If you back me at the Nightlord tier or higher on my Patreon, you will receive a signed copy of The Werewolf: Past and Future - Lycanthropy’s Lost History and Modern Devolution!

For more info on the book, please click here.

This deal ends November 2, so grab it while it’s still available!

(note: you do not have to remain a patron at that high a tier for longer than 1 month to receive the autographed book. You only have to subscribe to the tier once and your book will be shipped immediately, as the Patreon will have you pay the first month upon subscribing)

Summary:  In a small kingdom-city nestled among mountains, the people wait in fear.  The neighboring kingdom-cities have been ravaged.  A plague is coming. The Wolves will be here any day now.  The kings and priests, in deciding what to do about it, decide that a sacrifice is in order.  Are they going to render it?  Pah! Since when have the wealthy and the powerful been willing to sacrifice anything? Unlike other plagues, however, this one has a will of its own and a sense of judgement. What will come of it?