Are werewolves ruining YOUR creativity?

[JoshuaMadoc]

We may have discussed if we're ruining werewolves, but are werewolves ruining you?

I'm aware that some of us do "our own thing" when it comes to werewolves, be it innovation, deconstruction, dark parody, twist, antithesis, or self-entertainment. To me, this is absolutely natural, as natural as making art for yourself or experimenting with more ways to make music.

But what really concerns me isn't the quality of the ideas people create, as you can just make it well-written enough that people might just forgive you for being unoriginal (thus this is another discussion completely), but rather just how far people want to take it with these ideas, especially when they declare that they want to be more service-minded to the werefandom.

I have seen instances where authors and artists alike claim that they can pull off an innovative werewolf story and/or lore to impress the fandom, regardless of how (over)confident or how humble they are, saying, "I've added X, Y, and Z to the lore, people are gonna love this", or "I do X, Y and Z for happy reader, I happy reader too". While pulling off something like that is commendable in itself, I find it rather tedious whenever I find out that it's NEVER what I expected them to say.

In other words, this is what I'm still seeing in the fandom:











I have tried to be patient with this kind of issue. I do blame myself for my inaction, because I myself can make my own ideal form of self-entertainment, and forget everything about this... But doing that all the time feels about as good as masturbating; it can only do me so much until it starts becoming painful and stale.

I really want to see someone blowing me away with something better than what I come up with... and I'm fully aware that this is like wishing for transcension into godhood without any form of qualification for such a thing, no thanks to my incredibly high standards. I still haven't found anything that I consider to be above me, and because of that, I will keep waiting under the stars, hoping that I'll stumble into my jar of Branston Pickle: Moonlight Paste flavor.

Failing that, I can still leave this fandom indefinitely in hopes that I'll be a little bit more at ease with myself. After all, many in the fandom already agree that my take on shapeshifters are so far away from their comfort zones that I might as well be part of the sci-fi/fantasy crowd - one crowd I surely wish to stay away from.

[Berserker]

It's all about identifying the audience. Great pictorial, by the way.

Fiction genres have tropes which appeal to the vast majority of people who read them. "Internet werewolfdom" is its own genre, a composite of Werewolf the Apocalypse and Underworld with inspiration drawn from DeviantArt. As a result, working in any genre means that tropes will inevitably stimie your creativity as an author; but, genre authors choose to work this way with a full understanding of their audience's expectations.

If someone says, "I've written this story/drawn this picture to appeal to werewolf fans on the internet, I think you'll like it," and then everyone else sees it and loves it, whereas you remain disappointed, that simply demonstrates your inability to identify the audience.

In no way does it imply that you are somehow "above" everyone else, much like a freestyle rapper wouldn't wander into a heavy metal festival and suddenly feel aloof in his superiority, hoping desperately that one of the heavy metal bands will "blow him away" with freestyle rap better than his own (that would be asinine, wouldn't it?) If you think you transcend a genre, then why are you still trying to force yourself into that genre?

[Aki]

It's all about identifying the audience. Great pictorial, by the way.

Fiction genres have tropes which appeal to the vast majority of people who read them. "Internet werewolfdom" is its own genre, a composite of Werewolf the Apocalypse and Underworld with inspiration drawn from DeviantArt. As a result, working in any genre means that tropes will inevitably stimie your creativity as an author; but, genre authors choose to work this way with a full understanding of their audience's expectations.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean you need to limit yourself to said tropes. Like, for example, the pic that details fighting. W:TA itself managed to transcend "BITE/SCRATCH ONLY!" in a number of areas, from werewolf-specific (well, Crinos specific) martial arts, to magically infused weaponry that enables their wielders to inflict damage on foe in the same way said foes inflict damage on them with silver weapons.

Most of the time said weapons took the same of massive knife shaped swords. Sometimes however, they were massive firearms that would break a human's shoulder if fired by someone "normal." That bit of weirdness courtesy of the Glasswalkers, who were also infamous for having cybernetic tech.

While each genre has it's own tropes, nothing stops you from grabbing ones from other genres to sprinkle for a unique flavor - like White Wolf did with the Glasswalkers, where they effectively yanked some tropes from Cyberpunk (like Cybernetics eat your soul).

There's always room to change things around, rearrange, subvert exist tropes and whatnot, as well as throw new ones in. Hell, W:TA nor Underworld would be what their were without a liberal heaping of new tropes, since werewolves were much ye old myth and some appearances on before they showed up and exerted their considerable influences in the genre.

[RedEye]

Great imagery, Kitetsu!

To answer the question about creativity; although I'm still working on the werewolf novels, I wrote a few quite non-anything supernatural stories for another website and wasn't stifled in the least.

Truth is, I suspect that's a person-by-person thing. Some people can get fixated on one thing, while others walkabout through a dozen genre's without a problem. I happen to be the latter.
The last book I read was by Mercedes Lackey: a new Valdemar novel called "Foundation" (yes people; the Companions are back!).
The last movie I saw was Avatar.
The last online game I played was Second Life; and I wore a fox avatar, not a wolf.
The last bit of music I listened to was by Chou Chou Sheng on Youtube. They're a German group who do HEAVY CELTIC METAL.

So...my opinion is...Meh, or No (whichever works best)

[JonTalbain]

In no way does it imply that you are somehow "above" everyone else, much like a freestyle rapper wouldn't wander into a heavy metal festival and suddenly feel aloof in his superiority, hoping desperately that one of the heavy metal bands will "blow him away" with freestyle rap better than his own (that would be asinine, wouldn't it?) If you think you transcend a genre, then why are you still trying to force yourself into that genre?

QFT theirs a HUGE difference between those two Genres - None of them sound the same!

Same for peoples view on werewolfs, its like comparing the werewolfs on Van Helsing to the ones on Twilight - theirs two different views right there!

Id say let the masses be creative, werewolfs will change with each passing generation.

Myself, Like Jon Talbain who is an ANIME & Video game based character who was made during the Early 90's.

Cheers

[alphanubilus]

We may have discussed if we're ruining werewolves, but are werewolves ruining you?

I'm aware that some of us do "our own thing" when it comes to werewolves, be it innovation, deconstruction, dark parody, twist, antithesis, or self-entertainment. To me, this is absolutely natural, as natural as making art for yourself or experimenting with more ways to make music.

But what really concerns me isn't the quality of the ideas people create, as you can just make it well-written enough that people might just forgive you for being unoriginal (thus this is another discussion completely), but rather just how far people want to take it with these ideas, especially when they declare that they want to be more service-minded to the werefandom.

I have seen instances where authors and artists alike claim that they can pull off an innovative werewolf story and/or lore to impress the fandom, regardless of how (over)confident or how humble they are, saying, "I've added X, Y, and Z to the lore, people are gonna love this", or "I do X, Y and Z for happy reader, I happy reader too". While pulling off something like that is commendable in itself, I find it rather tedious whenever I find out that it's NEVER what I expected them to say.

In other words, this is what I'm still seeing in the fandom:











I have tried to be patient with this kind of issue. I do blame myself for my inaction, because I myself can make my own ideal form of self-entertainment, and forget everything about this... But doing that all the time feels about as good as masturbating; it can only do me so much until it starts becoming painful and stale.

I really want to see someone blowing me away with something better than what I come up with... and I'm fully aware that this is like wishing for transcension into godhood without any form of qualification for such a thing, no thanks to my incredibly high standards. I still haven't found anything that I consider to be above me, and because of that, I will keep waiting under the stars, hoping that I'll stumble into my jar of Branston Pickle: Moonlight Paste flavor.

Failing that, I can still leave this fandom indefinitely in hopes that I'll be a little bit more at ease with myself. After all, many in the fandom already agree that my take on shapeshifters are so far away from their comfort zones that I might as well be part of the sci-fi/fantasy crowd - one crowd I surely wish to stay away from.

As stated, love the pictoral... As for my own ventures into the world of werewolves. With Hour of Darkness and and somewhat with The Wolf Prince, they "key" to each story was to develop a strong exciting narrative first, that in itself was a good story, but then became enhanced because it has werewolves. I am very particular when it comes to mythology, and I tend to create massive amounts of lore that 90% of won't get used. While it may not appear on screen per say, it is still there in the background. I don't see werewolves ruining my creativity because I would be pushing the envelope whether I was writing about werewolves or not.

Hour of Darkness had story issues during its early development due to me wanting to be over excessive with mythology, however the newer version focused the story first and then allowed the mythology to flow through the narrative instead. Learned this lesson, while developing The Wolf Prince. Both stories are loosely based around 12th century French Lais, as well as various old mythologies, such as Norse mythos, of which is prevelent in HOD.

SO, hopefully within the next few years, we will see both HOD and Wolf Prince on the big screen.