This is the place for discussion and voting on various aspects of werewolf life, social ideas, physical appearance, etc. Also a place to vote on how a werewolf should look.
Yes it's a sweet and sentimental picture, but it just smacks too much of tribal White-Wolf style werewolves to me, which is not something I'm into, personally.
I'm gonna agree here, we wanna stay as far away as possible from anything that resembles WhiteWolf's werewolves.
Anyhow, adult werewolves, would most likely spend most of thier time in human form, so I imagine that werewolf children would as well. So instead of focusing on the fact that wolf pups are cute, if they are going to be used, it has to be related to the social impact of werewolfism, upon werewolves, somehow.
Yes it's a sweet and sentimental picture, but it just smacks too much of tribal White-Wolf style werewolves to me, which is not something I'm into, personally.
if they are going to be used, it has to be related to the social impact of werewolfism, upon werewolves, somehow.
It depends on the story, The pups don't have to appear transformed, they could be there to show that they can have kids. Maybe in one scene where there is a group of werewolves they could appear. Or if there is to be conflict, a bad werewolf or human could steal a Pup and threaten to kill him/her. Then when the protagonist confront the bad werewolf, in a last ditch effort the wolf cub transforms and distracts the bad werewolf, just enough for the good werewolves to get the upper hand.
Children can be quite usefull to a story if you can work them in a plausible way.
Mmm.... I don't like the idea of introducing characters just to be used as hostages. Nor do I like the "convenient adorable hostage" routine, especially when the hostage gets angry and takes iniitiative.
Simply put, I've seen that scenerio, alot. It's unrealistic and well, kinda a cheap emotional shot towards the audience.
Which is why I say, if there are cubs, they should be there for a reason, preferably pertaining to the social impact of werewolfism.
Simply put, we should use wolfcubs just because we can. There needs to be a purpose in using them, they would need to be apart of an overarching message.
WolvenOne wrote:
Which is why I say, if there are cubs, they should be there for a reason, preferably pertaining to the social impact of werewolfism.
This is makebelieve werewolfism isn't real. You can't make a social issue out of something that isn't real. Social issues in life are mimiced in art, not the other way around.
Art Imitates life, and in the case of fantasy, the are is a sort of collage of 4-5 different aspects/issues of real life.
Aids, racism, the price of being unique and mans eternal struggle with the primal forces within him seem to be the issues we're all using as source material, none of us are simply pulling these things out of a hat.
WolvenOne wrote:Art Imitates life, and in the case of fantasy, the are is a sort of collage of 4-5 different aspects/issues of real life.
Aids, racism, the price of being unique and mans eternal struggle with the primal forces within him seem to be the issues we're all using as source material, none of us are simply pulling these things out of a hat.
Werewolves borrow from life, all fantasy does. Unlike non-fiction type art pieces though, fantasy borrows a little from this, a little from that to create creatures that don't exist, and to work in real life issues into situations that otherwise would be completly seperated from the real world.
Werewolves, are a collage of human and wolf features, centaurs, human and horse. Almost every mythalogical creature is either a combination of existing creatures, or is a metaphor for certain types of human beings.
There-fore, the social impact of werewolfism, upon werewolves, is perfectly feasible. One simply has to look upon the impact of aids, racism, and other such issues that occur in real life, and overlay them atop the fantasy.
Am I the only one who subscribes to the idea that werewolves should begin changing preferably with the onset of puberty, what with puberty being the official flood of hormones which help to inundate children, and forces them into their long and arduous, if not excrutiatingly agonizing, metamorphasis into adults?
Well, the idea of Werewolfism being a metaphor for puberty, is an appealing idea.
However, the idea of, inherently being born different, has always been appealing to me. As you know, some kids just arn't born, "normal," and spend a good portion of thier entire lives on the outside looking in.
Besides, the "first change sometime during puberty," bit, has been done by a couple other popular werewolf settings I believe. Mainly WhiteWolf Games, whom, I'm somewhat wary of copying, for, more then one reason.
The thing is, we don't have to be so afraid of some of the cliches that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. If something works, there's no reason to change it, especially if it's just for the sake of being "different".
Well, lets take a look at WhiteWolf's little system.
In thier setting, werewolfism is always passed on via heridity, however, werewolves are useually born as either humans or wolves and raised as such until sometime during puberty when they're kidnapped by werewolves and indoctrinated into thier society.
Now, the kidnapping bit makes sense whenever a werewolf runs the risk of being raised by humans. Though for different reason in each setting. In the WhiteWolf setting, they're not so worried about werewolfism being discovered, but rather, it's the fact that there are a bunch of tribes that need soldiers for some sort of war.
In this setting we're describing, the reason as more about secrecy and the safety of the young werewolf. With this in mind, if an orphened werewolf is being raised by humans, at some point, they are going to need to step in and take the child away, for everyones sake.
Now, lets assume that it's sometime around puberty when children officially enter werewolfism. Now, the reasons behind stealing up these children would be different in both setting, however, the actions and resulting indoctrination, would be almost identical.
Now I'm not trying to be difference for the sake of being different, but the more similer we get to WhiteWolf, the more we run the risk of being seen as a copy. Whats worse, Whitewolf has been known to sue movie studio's they percieve as ripping off thier ideas.
I can understand why people wouldn't like the ideas of infants turning into little werewolves though. It does sound, a little corny.
However, here's what I suggest we do.
We make it so children, at almost any age, could theoretically transform into thier half-wolf form.
However, statistically the chances for succeeding would become lower and lower the younger the child is. The explanation for this? They're too young and too weak to safely transform, therefore, they're given a natural resistence to it.
So we could have some werewolf cubs transforming for thier first time around twelve, others transforming when they're a mere 3, though I would place the statistical average around 8 years old.
Besides, being kidnapped when you're an infant would probably be dramatically less traumatic then being kidnapped when you're 12 or older.
You know we've been spending all this time discussing whether we should have wolf cubs or not, but we haven't been describing what they should LOOK like....
Just imagine what a normal child, maybe five to seven years of age would look like, then "increase" the size of a similarly aged wolf cub, or maybe a newborn. Meld the two... What do you get....something innocent.
Obviousely, there wouldn't be, nor should there be, any visible sexual organs on such a cub, or nipples, for modesty and decency purposes if any, The adults however, that is another story.
Last edited by NightmareHero on Wed Dec 08, 2004 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Unfortunetly, the fact that they'd have to be cute, works against them in a way. As the more they're on screen, the more difficult it is to take the adult werewolves seriously.
I do agree with you on the design though, mostly. I don't think an 8 year old's half wolf form would really resemble a newborn. More likely it'd resemble a pup preportional to the kids age.
In my opinion, young werewolves under the age of 13, (or "cubs" as we seem to be calling them in this case), should have the capacity to change at any age,(including infancy if they were Born that way), but it would be extremely dangerous.
As suggested earlier, they would probobly have a natural resistance to triggering a shift simply because such a young child usually wouldn't survive the process.
As for hormones... I personally don't like the scenario where a Werewolf would not become a full werewolf untill the onset of puberty. It felt lame in the old flick "Teen Wolf" and I don't think it would work any better in this movie.
However, to suggest that hitting puberty would possibly push young Werewolves over the edge, causing them to have more involuntary shifts, would be plausable to me.
If any pre-teen transformed werewolves appear in the movie, I think they should have some little touch of extra creepyness to their look over full grown Werewolves, if only to avoid the "awwww...cuuuute." distraction. Otherwise it would make it harder to take the parents seriously.
Ideally, I'd like to see any pre-teen werewolves be capable of both cuteness and creepiness depending upon the situation.
I'm not sure that's possible though.
Even Butt-Ugly puppies can be cute if they act the part. ...but irrisistably cute ones are always cute, even when they are acting nasty.
...so, yes. I think even naturally creepy werewolf "cubs" could be cute if they wanted to be.
I actually dug out my old werewolf script after I heard about this project, to see how it looked. While the script is weak, it did involve cubs in a central theme of the film, so I thought I'd post what I'd done.
Pretty much I had it that werewolfism was tied to puberty, before puberty, the body lacked the hormones in sufficient quantity to perform the change. This means the "cubs" looked perfectly human, which is the plot device in my own movie.
