just looked through about 700 werewolf books, good grief.
most seem to fall into two categories:
werewolf serial killer mysteries
domineering alpha romances
neither is really what I’m interested in.
here is what I’d want from the werewolf novel of my wildest dreams:
good relationships, especially friendships between packmates (lone wolves are boring)
werewolves who like being werewolves. (angsty wolves are boring)
the practical details of werewolfery: who’s got the bail money for animal control, whether anyone’s microchipped, what you pack in a bag for a night out werewolfing
the uses of werewolfery: hiring yourselves out as trackers or canine rescue, getting certified as service dogs, spending your free time at the library letting little kids read to a friendly doggie
female werewolves, and no weird gross hypermasculine alpha stuff going on in werewolf culture
queer werewolves, and no weird gross heteronormative ‘laws of nature’ stuff going on in werewolf culture
dog jokes.
The standard urban fantasy female protagonist dating a werewolf who is not an alpha. Bonus points for it being a cute beta werewolfess who thinks her girlfriend’s perpetual posturing as the ‘baddest bitch on the block’™ is the most adorable thing ever. Extra bonus points for fuzzy baby werewolves and adopted babies. (Because actual wolf packs? Exist to raise children. They’re family units, focused around rearing cubs.)
okay this is one of the cutest reblogs I’ve gotten.
imagine it
werewolves just going YES FAMILY GOOD and adopting everyone and making sure they get attention and food and understand that it’s fine to be who you are and that you’re not alone, you’re pack now
and the kids that can’t turn into wolves get to ride on the dogsleds to make sure they’re not left out during the full moon family bonding time (… you have to be an adult to pull a dogsled. mistakes have been made.)
werewolves on the PTA. werewolf den mothers. werewolf little league coaches. werewolves filling the bleachers and auditioriums and dance halls and galleries, cheering for their kids. werewolves helping kids with their homework, werewolves sewing costumes for the school play, werewolves showing kids how to change a tire
werewolves with battered kitchen tables with chewed legs. werewolves with huge family dinners. werewolves ferrying pies and casseroles and fresh baked bread back and forth between family members’ houses. werewolf extended families. massive werewolf packs that are technically only about 25% werewolf but still definitely packs
puppy teeth being left for the tooth fairy. fangs being left for the tooth fairy. cuttlebones being left for the tooth fairy. stolen teeth being left for the tooth fairy. werewolves with giant families full of kids with different needs and species.
werewolves adopting everyone. werewolves fostering everyone. werewolves who wind up with dozens of kids, all of whom are family and therefore pack.
WEREWOLVES BASED ON ACTUAL WOLF PACK BEHAVIOR INSTEAD OF BULLSHIT DOMINANCE THEORY! All the werewolf fiction I’ve read involves everything falling to shit due to infighting over who gets to be alpha like WAY TO ILLUSTRATE EXACTLY WHY THIS IDEA DOESN’T WORK. You really think wolves would be successful hunters if they were constantly getting injured and wasting energy fighting each other?!
The whole idea of “alpha” dynamics is based entirely on the behaviour of wolves in captivity! If you so much as google “wolves in captivity alpha”, you’ll get a bunch of results about why it’s not representative of actual wolf behaviour.
As it turns out, if you capture, restrain, and shove together wolves from unrelated packs, they will fight and form a hierarchy of power.
Kind of like prison. Because, functionally, the exact premise of that kind of captivity is kind of like prison.
Wolves are social animals, and they interact in the wild pretty much the same way other family-centric social animals do.
Hey, you know what another family-centric social animal we’re all familiar with is? People. Just, you know, take away the oppressive idea that one parent is the definitive and unchallengeable head of the household that most of us have lived under for so long first.
Wolves are apparently group problem-solvers, and presumably, in large packs, you’re going to get squabbling and older pack members mitigating it, just like that one patient aunt or uncle or grandparent or close family friend who is essentially a relative often does in big families.
There’s a very legitimate basis for writing werewolves as friendly, community-minded folks. If your werewolves view their human neighbours as other packs not in competition with themselves, they’re likely going to be those people that the entire neighbourhood views as very nice, but “a little overwhelming.” (And maybe a little too indulgent with their kids, according to the neighbourhood snobs.)
Your gigantic werewolf family is probably going to be a litle less threatening and overtly secretive and a little more “we’re having a barbeque, when can we expect you??? you didn’t come last week, were you sick??? we were all worried- do you not eat meat?? oh, okay, I’ll have Sophie and Thaddeus pick up some Halal burgers and we’ll scrub off the second barbeque for them and some vegetable skewers, too, does that sound good?? so when can we expect you????”
(Also: werewolves taking in queer kids and mentally ill kids and kids from broken homes even though they’re mundane because they can’t comprehend how someone could not want them. Werewolves taking in street kids.)
#…a pack of werewolves living in a huge house together like one of those huge families people sort of smile incredulously at#multiple generations#a pack occupying a trailer park because it’s near the woods and there’s a certain amount of security in having a mobile home#packs being viewed by mundanes as those eccentric families that fill the school gymnasium every time there’s an event with one of their kids#packs migrating to accomodate new packmates and encountering other packs#packs fusing to form entire communities#wolves taking in mundane street kids#werewolves#writing#urban fantasy
Aries: Caught fire because a neighbor fucked up at operating a tractor so bad that literally everything for like a quarter mile caught fire.
Taurus: Stalked by co-worker, sued management for not doing anything about the co-worker. Management defended their inaction on the grounds that the stalker was from Eastern Europe and they thought stalking was “pretty much culturally expected over there.”
Gemini: Hacked a company’s store credit system and bought a bunch of stuff on nonexistent store credit; defended self on grounds that their security system was really badly designed and the store was asking for it.
Cancer: Angry preacher who wanted to shut up the people on the internet saying they ran an “orgy church.”
Leo: Kept a lion in a small enclosure in their yard.
Virgo: Assault with deadly weapon. Deadly weapon in question was a chainsaw.
Libra: Police officer fired for “taking the whole ethics thing way too far,” ie, interfering with other officers’ crimes.
Scorpio: Murdered “an old friend.” Obviously 100% guilty, visibly 100% unrepentant. Jury let them off, to the firm’s total bewilderment. Sent senior partner a lovely fruit basket.
Sagittarius: Used work email account and work computer to exchange sexual fantasies and photographs involving horses with like-minded individuals.
Capricorn: Their goats wandered onto their neighbors’ property “one time too many,” so the neighbors shot the goats.
Aquarius: Shot at neighbors, including a grade-schooler, for walking across their yard. When police were called, was enraged and offended, particularly when the police also walked across their yard. When asked whether the neighbors had in fact been threatening them in any way, appeared to be genuinely hurt by the question, and began complaining about how hard their life was and how little anyone understood their woes.
Pisces: Doctor suing the state for preventing patients on probation from taking their medications, which the state thought were probably basically the same as cocaine.
About scorpios
I….
I am not saying the signs are anything of these things, I’m just sharing the stories because WOW
same
please… its 2016… get this homestuck off my dash.. im beggin u
This week on “how well can you disguise your Homestuck?”
This turned out a little over dramatic and silly but whatever I guess pffhaha. I did this super super quick after the announcement and listening to the ridiculous amount of dialogue there is between these two in the PTR patch. Hearing 76 talk to someone without being a huge bitter grump is so bizarre and great.
Okay I’m only gonna say this once and preface this with the fact that I am Eyak and I probably do not want to hear your opinion on the Pharah skins Raindancer/Thunderbird. This is a really soul baring post so I’m not so sure about people reblogging it, if you do just try to be respective and remember this isn’t a go-ahead to go and appropriate all native cultures.
They’re pretty damn clearly based on Pacific Northwest tribal cultures. The ones I can pick out being Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian, but we often get grouped together so that doesn’t surprise me. There are many more, but I don’t claim familiarity with all tribes and I can’t say if their art styles and myths were used.
For your comparison a little sample of the tribe’s artistic styles just to get the point across:
And I really have to get something off my chest people. I don’t have a problem with these skins, in fact I adore them. Please just chill with me for a second while I explain.
The biggest issue I see here is people (who usually arn’t ndn, let alone from pac nw tribes) yelling about cultural appropriation. Which good! I’m glad people are on guard for it! But it’s entirely possible that Pharah’s father was Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian or from another closely related Pacific Northwest tribe, so we can’t really call that yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was.
Most importantly, speaking as an Eyak. Which is all I can do despite Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian being so closely related, our tribe’s relationship with cultural appropriation is uh, not exactly the norm.
The last Eyak fluent speaker died in 2008, her name was Chief Marie Smith Jones and she was also the last full-blooded Eyak on Earth. The very last. Please appropriate Eyak culture. It’s the only way it’s going to survive. There’s less than 500 of us remaining, and we’re scattered more and more every year. Families I grew up with in Alaska converted to Catholicism. The military took my family across the globe and left us an entire continent away. The language I learned at the dinner table in 1998 now almost exclusively exists on those cassette tapes my white father recorded that night and in reconstructive attempts from a French academic that studied our language from halfway across the globe.
It sucks shit guys, it really does.
When I first saw the Thunderbird skin I cried, I cried for an hour. Because Overwatch is huge. It will live on for years if not decades. And there’s Pharah with her hair in braids I haven’t seen my mother wear in over a decade. Wearing the colors that remind me of a home I no longer have. Embodying a mythic figure that I trusted to protect me during Y2K and sought out constellations in the sky for.
So before you spew vitriol about how racist it is that they did that. Just kind of chill out and think about different perspectives for a moment. If you really want to help us? Consider taking a poke about http://www.eyakpeople.com/ and taking a look at our language revitalization project! It’s pretty fun and you could even learn a language out of it.
