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.
wait... if a werewolf dyed his hair from say, brown to red in human from... when he TF's it would make sence for his fur to be brownish and not red, right?
but when he changes back, will his hair still be dyed, or would it revert to it's natural color?
If the shifting is pure-biological, the hair dye is either lost--the hair shed because of a toxin, or absorbed, the hair dye metabolized by a heavily overworked lycanthropic liver. Either way, the coloring job is gone. Being a werewolf is expensive, but on the plus side, a bad hair job can be fixed rather quickly.
If it's magic, either hard-magic or soft-magic, the hair could have a "last left off" memory, returning to whatever it looked like before the shift, dye and all. If such principles applied, hair length could also be preserved.
Taking a Gestalt approach, since it's the "in" thing...
I'd figure the dye would be visible because much of the hair on the wolf form's head and neck would correspond to the human form's hair. The wolf's undercoat and so forth would mix in with it, so it would be less saturated in color. While this way avoids skin problems and various mind-bogglers, it definitely would look out of place on a wolf, and prevent the werewolf from "passing" as a normal wolf (assuming they could do that otherwise). Moral of the story: werewolves should not dye their hair.
Scott... quick question though. I've been reading through this forum, and I'm still as confused as heck as to where you get the hair absorbing thing. At least on the head. Why would the hair on the head be sucked in with the rest of the fur? I'm guessing that's where you're getting the toxins and whatever.
That would be the more biologically plausable option...though I really don't care for it. Sounds Messy.
I would accept that on a Werewolf that is supposed to be as close to physically (as in...staying within the laws of physics) realistic as possible, as this would be one of the only probable options on a "real" biological creature, so in that situation it would work.
...but when one is trying to make the werewolf more of a legendary, mysterious, supernatural creature, I think that leaving a huge pile of shed fur wherever they change back would be silly looking, and not fit well with the mystique. A small bit of shed hair, on the other hand, could be kindof spooky, as finding it somewhere could be a sign that a werewolf has been there recently.
A small bit of shed hair, on the other hand, could be kindof spooky, as finding it somewhere could be a sign that a werewolf has been there recently.
Hells Yeah! Thats what I think as well. Not a massive pile of fur or anything cheesy like that. Enough that it would make a person stop and look around uneasily
kitetsu wrote:has anyone mentioned the possibility of shedding all the fur when someone shifts back?
I can't speak for everyone, but to me, shedding large amounts of fur when TFing back to human is...well...ugh.
Yeah...ditto.
Yeah, I'd prefer the less realistic method where the fir is re-absorbed.
I dunno why.
I also find myself preferring the resorbtion of one kind of hair while the other is extruded. There is something neat about things which end up being challenging to explain. It is perhaps called 'mystical'.
The change, does it wrack the bones and rend the flesh ? Yes, indeed it does. But is this pain and agony alone ? No, in fact hardly at all. It is the Sacrament of the Moon. The flesh flows and so do the endorphins. It is, in truth, the agony ecstatic; The Pain That Is Pleasure
because wolves tend to have ether grey, black, or white hair (i'm not going where you may think i'm going with this) the fur of a werewolf should be a mixture of the human hair color and either grey, black, or white.
GRIFFON:I'm Griffon ,and I'm a werewolf
GIRL:your crazy!
GRIFFON:Perhaps I was too forward.
SnowWalker wrote:I'm more than likely wrong on this but here's my 2 cents. Wolves don't go gray all over when they get older, right? I know dogs grey around the muzzle (and paws?), and horses grey in the tail and mane... so wolves would be similar in that they grey around the muzzle, right?
ok.. in that case, my own preference is that an aging werewolf would go grey around the muzzle... but not all around.
oh well, just my own thoughts.
~Snowy
You're looking at it from the wolves/dogs point of view. Humans get gray hair all over when getting old. Its starts with the head and works its way towards the rest of the body. (I think)
I'm 37 and I already have some grey hair showing on my head.
what about me? i am 24 years old and i am half bald.... since the last 3 years my hair is leaving me....
SnowWalker wrote:I'm more than likely wrong on this but here's my 2 cents. Wolves don't go gray all over when they get older, right? I know dogs grey around the muzzle (and paws?), and horses grey in the tail and mane... so wolves would be similar in that they grey around the muzzle, right?
I'm very late in answering this, but yes, they go white:
I always thought they would have fur the color of a wolf.
White, Gray, Black, red, and so on.
I really don't like the thought of the werewolf having fur the color of your hair.
I always thought that a werewolfs bite, carried certain traits for the fur, eye color, the way your body transforms when you shift, or just the way your werewolf body looks like in general.
I could care less if I am a "freak". I don't care what other people think about me. I am me. I am different from the masses of society in unique and profound ways, anyway. Being physically different would trouble me not
Anook wrote:I always thought that a werewolfs bite, carried certain traits for the fur, eye color, the way your body transforms when you shift, or just the way your werewolf body looks like in general.
The problem with that is the tendancy to end up with "clones", all werewolves everywhere looking the same. If the bite alone dictates so much of the physical appearance there's no room for variety. I don't know about you, but I don't like cookie cutter critters.
Thats a really good resonse. I never really thought about there being clones.
I could care less if I am a "freak". I don't care what other people think about me. I am me. I am different from the masses of society in unique and profound ways, anyway. Being physically different would trouble me not
When you think about it, a human's hair color becoming the dominant influencer on a wolf's fur isn't all that strange. Both humans and wolves have the same basic colors. Lupin posted a series of pics a while back that showed this perfectly. There was a blond person and a blondise wolf, and redhead and a reddish wolf, a brunette and brown wolf, and so on. It wouldn't end up looking unnatural.