Werewolf Torts

Actually, yeah!

You seem rather scandalized.

Along the wild Pacific coast of British Columbia, there lives a population of the sea wolves. “We know from exhaustive DNA studies that these wolves are genetically distinct from their continental kin,” says McAllister. “They are behaviourally distinct, swimming from island to island and preying on sea animals. They are also morphologically distinct — they are smaller in size and physically different from their mainland counterparts,” says Ian McAllister, an award-winning photographer who has been studying these animals for almost two decades.McAllister captured the magic of these wolves in breath-taking pictures. 

Obsessed with contracts

Required to follow the letter (but not the spirit) of the law

Really good at exploiting loopholes

Range from semi-helpful to openly malevolent

you gotta digest it.

“oh man im so sorry i sucked some fairy dick once and now i have to keep coming back to do it again– its a long story”

Like, this analysis treats it as a substance problem, i.e. “edible matter from fairyland has properties that, if ingested, physically prevent you from being able to return to the real world.”

But OTOH, a recurring theme throughout fairy stories is that they’re all about…rules and exchanges and agreements with really steep interest rates:

“I’ll do you this favor, but if you don’t guess my name you’ll have to give me your first-born child.”

“You’re gonna be real good at everything but when you’re 16 you’re gonna prick your finger and die.”

“You loaned me $2 for the bus when I looked like a beggar, so now here’s a literal pile of gold and shit.”

Not to mention that in Childe Rowland, one of the central “if you eat food from fairyland you’re stuck there” stories, Rowland manages to retrieve his siblings despite them all presumably having chowed down on fairy food – all it took was beating the Fairy King in a swordfight and threatening to chop his head off.

The takeaway, I think, is that the food thing a matter of implicit exchange: if you get your grub on in fairyland, you’re accepting their hospitality and eating food that they own. This means you owe them, which the fairies can magically leverage to prevent you from leaving.

(You can probably get around this by explicitly agreeing to pay for your meal before you sit down to eat. From what I remember, fairies don’t seem capable of pulling a “Haha, we had an agreement but you’re fucked anyways!” maneuver, so if they agree to let you leave they might even be forced to help you leave.)

Which brings us to the matter at hand: if you blow a fairy you’re doing them a favor! They owe you.

And…they’re a fairy, so if you didn’t agree to terms beforehand they might not repay you in a way that’s ultimately helpful or safe, but it certainly doesn’t seem like they’d be able to, like, pat you on the head and be like “Thanks, you’re really good at this buuuuuuut also you’re stuck here forever now.”

“you wanna come over for the weekend?”

“oh man I’m so sorry i sucked some fairy dick once and now he always comes by over memorial day weekend and helps me out with minor home repairs.”

wolves: …..?

sir david attenborough: I’M A WOOOOOOOLF

wolf 1: what did he saaaaayyy

wolf 2: he said he’s a woooooollllf

wolf 1: … but we’re the wooooolllvvves!

A coyote cools off in the drink fridge at a Quiznos in the Chicago Loop, 2007

Yuri Shwedoff on Society6.

The absolutely awe-inspiring work of Yuri Shwedoff is available in his Society6 Online Store as prints, phone cases, pillows and more.

…further complications to trying to write non-ridiculous angst into a werewolf story

North American gray wolves have a natural fear of humans and attack people very rarely, really only when threatened or starving.

So like, imagine, like, a divide between people who got infected with Old World and New World lycanthropy.  One makes you this dangerous beast that sees humans as a viable food source an another makes you perceive humans as a threat.  Imagine people getting it wrong!

Some shady paranormal group capturing a werewolf to use as security but it just runs away when people trespass.

Some hunters go deep into the woods to murder a werewolf clan for their pelts but it turns out they’ve isolated themselves so deeply because they have the European strain and none of the hunters survive.

New werewolves are so confused because the websites give conflicting advice:  get yourself to your nearest national park when you’re about to turn and just let yourself run free; if you try to cage yourself the claustrophobia and the smell of people will make you panic and you could really hurt yourself or someone else.

vs

If you’re anywhere near human civilization you must make sure you turn in a closed space that you can’t escape from in wolf form or you’ll definitely kill someone.  Just try to take a nap during the full moon, OK.

Wolves from different geographic locations may howl in different fashions: the howls of European wolves are much more protracted and melodious than those of North American wolves, whose howls are louder and have a stronger emphasis on the first syllable. The two are however mutually intelligible, as North American wolves have been recorded to respond to European-style howls made by biologists (x)