Two Big Questions

[Apokryltaros]

So, I'm working on a novel, in which, I have an antagonist who is a werewolf.
Mind you, though, he is in total denial over his situation, and refuses to acknowledge even the most blatant clues to his alter-ego. As such, when he does change, he either blocks out all his memories as a werewolf, or remembers it as a vivid nightmare.
Anyhow, on one night of the full moon, he runs afoul of a weretiger, the protagonist, who bites off, and eats his ear after a prolonged fight.
I figure that his regenerative powers would be enough for him to have healed enough, so that when dawn comes around, and he changes back, he's going to wake up with a mass of teeth-marks and scar tissue where his ear used to be.

So, my problems are two-fold:
1) Would having one's ear bitten off (and eaten) be enough to leave a werewolf deaf in what's left of that ear, or would their regenerative abilities be powerful enough to restore hearing to what's left of that ear?

And

2) If you were a closet werewolf who denies the existance of your alter-ego, and rationalizes away even the most obvious trace of it, how would you go about rationalizing away about what happened to your missing ear?

[Vilkacis]

1) Would having one's ear bitten off (and eaten) be enough to leave a werewolf deaf in what's left of that ear, or would their regenerative abilities be powerful enough to restore hearing to what's left of that ear?

If the werewolf ear resembles that of a canine (as I am assuming), then it seems to me that only the external flesh would be damaged. I don't see how he would become deaf, unless it was ripped off in such a way as to cause internal damage.

In any case, if the regenerative abilities of your character are only such that wounds heal scarred (as in no true regeneration -- just fast healing) then I don't think hearing could be restored in such a manner. If true regeneration exists, then it might eventually be restored.

2) If you were a closet werewolf who denies the existance of your alter-ego, and rationalizes away even the most obvious trace of it, how would you go about rationalizing away about what happened to your missing ear?

Obviously, losing one's ear would be considered by many to be a rather traumatic event. Likely, he might rationalize that he underwent some such terrible experience and that he's blocked it out of his mind and that's why he can't remember (funny how close this is to the truth). He might even go so far as to try to explain away his werewolf 'nightmares' in terms of a psychological response to this un-remembered trauma.

-- Vilkacis

[Anubis]

i think that werewolves regenerate but regeneration takes time, and have your ear ripped off wont cause deafness order to have loss of hearing their would be damage to the inner ear. where all the hardware is. lossing the ear would might mess if up a little but not much.


if that were happened to me, i pretty much finaly believe it that i'm a werewolf and like what vilkacis said losing an ear would be tramatizing. if it happened to me i would freak out for a while, then the fear then the sadness, anger then you finaly accept that you lost your freaken ear.

[Silverclaw]

Yeah, hearing should not be affected if the external flesh got bitten off or anything. At least nothing as dramatic as going deaf.

And for the rationalizing the missing ear part: If they simply refused to believe that they were a werewolf, they could blame mental illness. Multiple personalities and such. Not a much better thought than being a ww, but, they could believe that easier. Or they could think they were druged and attacked or something like that maybe.

[Shadow Wulf]

If the antagonist has a pet dog then he can try blaming the dog for his bitten ear.

[Apokryltaros]

So, I guess then, that, he (the werewolf) won't be deaf in what's left of his ear.
As for what happened to his ear...
Would it sound logical if he felt the scar tissue and the teeth marks, and, for the most part, ignored the fact that he used to have an ear the day before?
(As a taunt, later, when he meets the protagonist again in human forms, he's taunted about his missing ear, even).
And no, he doesn't have a pet dog.
Ironically, both he, and the protagonist have a profound dislike of dogs and wolves.
For different reasons, actually.

[Darth Canis]

I think the regenerative abilities would probably be enough to keep his hearing at least human strength in that one ear. We must remeber that werewolves would have superior hearing compared to ours so maybe he just loses that extra edge. As far as the ear if i were in his position i would just chalk it up to something i didn't remeber maybe a car accident or something like that.

[vrikasatma]

Hearing would continue if the aperture wasn't obscured by the scarring (as would be the case if the scar tissue keloided). Then it would be muffled.

In any case, without swivelable ear conches, the sense of direction would be lessened: he could hear what was happening on that side but it'd be muffled and couldn't pinpoint the source unless he cupped a hand behind his ear aperture. Might also affect his balance. There is also the occurence of phantom sensations which would be a nice layer of description to the character's experience.

[Lupin]

Would it sound logical if he felt the scar tissue and the teeth marks, and, for the most part, ignored the fact that he used to have an ear the day before?

I would think that he would try to deny that anything actually happened to his ear. Especially if he had any memories of the events that lead to the loss of the ear.

Might also affect his balance. There is also the occurence of phantom sensations which would be a nice layer of description to the character's experience.

Balance is controled buy structures in the inner ear. If there isn't any damage to the structures that sense sound waves, there shouldn't be damage to the one that affect balance.

[Lupin]

if that were happened to me, i pretty much finaly believe it that i'm a werewolf and like what vilkacis said losing an ear would be tramatizing. if it happened to me i would freak out for a while, then the fear then the sadness, anger then you finaly accept that you lost your freaken ear.

Yeah, but you're biased

People will go to great lengths to deny reality. It's very common with battered women: months and even years of denial about the fact that having their husband/boyfriend/whatever beat them isn't right.

[Figarou]

Balance is controled buy structures in the inner ear. If there isn't any damage to the structures that sense sound waves, there shouldn't be damage to the one that affect balance.

In other words...

Disorders of the vestibular system can lead to dizziness, poor regulation of postural muscle tone and inability to detect quick movements of the head.

[Figarou]

People will go to great lengths to deny reality. It's very common with battered women: months and even years of denial about the fact that having their husband/boyfriend/whatever beat them isn't right.

Whoa...thats completely different.

The battered women knows whats going on. She could stop the abusive husband at anytime. But the reason why she won't do it is because he could be the only one working to pay the bills. If he goes, then the place she lives will also disappear. It just depends on the situation.

[Lupin]

The battered women knows whats going on. She could stop the abusive husband at anytime. But the reason why she won't do it is because he could be the only one working to pay the bills. If he goes, then the place she lives will also disappear. It just depends on the situation.

Yeah, but a lot of times they'll also blame it on themselves, and say that it's their fault that their husband abuses them, because it's something they did, when that's not the truth. Denial and rationalization are very powerful things.

[vrikasatma]

Another rationalization I keep hearing...

I know a lot of smokers. They see the warning labels on the packs, they know they're going to get cancer, they know they're inhaling formaldehyde, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, benzene, et alia, and they still do it.

A lot of the time I hear them say, "We're going to die anyway. Might as well enjoy ourselves." "At least I know how I'm going to die." "Tobacco is more addictive than heroin, it's almost impossible to get off it." "Cigarettes are legal." "I have a right to my vices, don't I?" These are all rationalizations. The fact remains, they're *still* slowly killing themselves and people around them.

(I better shut up before I go off on a rant)

[ChaosWolf]

He should still be able to hear, albeit not as clearly as before...

...And he'll just think, somehow, he was attacked by Mike Tyson.

[Jamie]

Would having one's ear bitten off (and eaten) be enough to leave a werewolf deaf in what's left of that ear, or would their regenerative abilities be powerful enough to restore hearing to what's left of that ear?

On humans and other mammals, it is the ear drum, located deep inside the head, that causes hearing. Thus, the werewolf would have to have a pretty deep chunk of his head ripped out (as in, probably got some brain tissue too) before he could go deaf permanently. However, early in the healing process, the tissue on that side of the head could easily be swelled up enough to temporarily stop or severely dampen hearing in that ear. As the healing process progressed and swelling lessened, the hearing would gradually return.
This event did create a weird image in my head: of the ear eventually growing back, but now when he transforms, he's a wolf with one tiger ear.

And

2) If you were a closet werewolf who denies the existance of your alter-ego, and rationalizes away even the most obvious trace of it, how would you go about rationalizing away about what happened to your missing ear?

If he's already rationalizing it as nightmares, he could easily add sleepwalking to that. Some sleepwalkers do very bizarre, life-threatening things such as eating non-food items, driving cars, climbing high walls and so on, yet this is not considered a mental illness, just a sleeping disorder.

[Scott Gardener]

On the lycanthropic Van Gogh:

The internal versus external ear anatomy has already been covered. I would expect ear regeneration to be comparatively fast, since the outer ear ("pinna" is the anatomic term for it) has to change fairly significantly in size and location in shifting, and since it's already been demonstrated to be easily regenerated in genetically altered mice. It took them about a month, but a werewolf could conceivably do it a lot faster. It's amazing what stem cells can do if given a chance.

On abuse, denial, and shape-shifting:

Victims of abuse will deny that they are abused until it reaches a certain breaking point. A lot of this comes from rationalization.

Denial is a funny thing, because the subconscious mind has to know it is deceiving itself in order to manage the process of that deception. However, there is no evolutionary advantage for the development of denial. It would be far better for the subconscious to realize the advantages of seeing the problem and its ramifications and thus deciding to get the organism, consciousness and all, out of harm's way. (Unless denial specifically served as a reproductive advantage--that is, that those who denied were more likely to have children than those who didn't. One could postulate that being in an abusive relationship as opposed to no relationship served an evolutionary reproductive advantage, even if at the expense of the organism involved.)

Denial of lycanthropy--granted, as far as we know, being a purely hypothetical but plausible psychiatric phenomenon--would likely be based on the premise that lycanthropy goes against most peoples' models of reality and possibility. We have our own models of how the world works, be it quarks and leptons, angels and demons, or in some peoples' cases, simply "you push the pedal to make the car go." People turning into wolves just doesn't happen. We've debated to death already whether or not it could happen, but could or not, it doesn't. If suddenly it happened to you, it would rock your world. Even if it's your life ambition, you'd still be, at the very least, very heavily weirded out. More likely, you'd be panic-striken. Denial is a very likely reaction.

However, denial might not be so much the battered / abused, "I promise I'll change" type of denial, so much as a very different sort of blocking it out--the kind seen in PTSD--post-traumatic stress disorder. People who have undergone a severely emotional ordeal, such as going from a simple farm life into a war zone, or being tortured, will block out memory of the process. The person may then be haunted by flashbacks. These flashbacks can be pretty surreal and dreamlike. And, if they involve being a wolf or a wolf-anthropomorph creature, the person could very easily dismiss the whole thing as a dream.

I took elements of both forms of denial and put it into the early part of my own werewolf novel.

[KnownToBite]

hmm my thoughts... you would eventually block the gene that helps you transform where you'd not transform anymore and depending in the severity of the bite he could still have hearing regardless. A dog's ear canal is close to 6 inches long, people who have fighting pits cut of the dog's ears completely to make sure that the other dogs cant have something to latch onto but those dogs still have hearing.

[00airknight]

I have a suggestion for your book. i am writing such things myself. he should probably have some inner conflict about it in run into a wolflord. he would not likely believe but he would likely have a clue. he would likely have a hurt ear but he could heal. the ear would eventually heal and he would forget it. but remeber to pile up evidence to make him finally accept. I think him running into a wolflord would certainly be a reavealation ( i con't spel). but he should have more evidence than that. but that is just my opinion.

ps: four speling hookid onn fonix wurx four mi

[Apokryltaros]

What's a wolflord?
Anyhow, Dauvner (the werewolf) never really gets around to really deal with his lycanthropy, especially since he's in a constant state of denial about it.

[Ultraken]

That seems to be the term 00airknight uses for a werewolf "alpha". I've seen him use it elsewhere, and figured it out from context.

[Apokryltaros]

That seems to be the term 00airknight uses for a werewolf "alpha". I've seen him use it elsewhere, and figured it out from context.

Oh.
Still, I strongly doubt that Dauvner would benefit from an alpha figure of any sort, mostly in that since he's grown too independent to work well in groups anymore, as a human, he'd sooner gut a werewolf than listen to it (and has done so on several occassions), and as a werewolf, he's a barely sentient monster who lives only for the hunt and kill.

[Ronkonkoma]

That seems to be the term 00airknight uses for a werewolf "alpha". I've seen him use it elsewhere, and figured it out from context.

Oh.
Still, I strongly doubt that Dauvner would benefit from an alpha figure of any sort, mostly in that since he's grown too independent to work well in groups anymore, as a human, he'd sooner gut a werewolf than listen to it (and has done so on several occassions), and as a werewolf, he's a barely sentient monster who lives only for the hunt and kill.

Denial can be a powerful thing, and can lead to a form of nerosis. (I knew someone that was a paranoid schizophenic who despite all the strange things he did, thought there was nothing wrong with him, he's 47 and living at his parents house now)

I'd say that Dauvner, after denying his alter-ego for so long may not have to make an excuse for what happened to his ear, he might just end up accepting that he 'blacks out' time to time and ends up with scratches, cuts, mud on his feet when he wakes up. Sleepwalking, anything.

Dauvner probably will never except his alter-ego as the cause of his problems, but definately find something else to blame it on like "I must have drank too much last night and got into a fight with a hungry Mike Tyson"

[Apokryltaros]

I figure that since Dauvner is so used to having denied the existence of his alter-ego, by himself, he conviniently "forgets" that he ever had an ear there, though, when asked, he claims that it was "a hunting accident."
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Though, I wonder how he'd react to seeing Rudy change into a weretiger, rather than a werewolf?

[Ronkonkoma]

I figure that since Dauvner is so used to having denied the existence of his alter-ego, by himself, he conviniently "forgets" that he ever had an ear there, though, when asked, he claims that it was "a hunting accident."
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Though, I wonder how he'd react to seeing Rudy change into a weretiger, rather than a werewolf?

explaining the losing the ear to a hunting accident is easy, trouble is when the ear starts to regenerate back.... try explaining that to someone that just two weeks ago saw that it was missing

hmmm, since you mentioned he'd rather gut a werewolf than listen to one, and has done so already, probably react confused and frightened, but then go to try and kill poor Rudy....

unless, somehow there be some truama involved in seeing Rudy change, that somehow got Dauvner to face off with his alter-ego, kinda like in a Me,Myself & Irene situation, or later when in human form, see's alter ego in mirror and gets like William Defoe in Spiderman.