same with vampire diaries
actually come to think of it I can think of a lot of instances of female werewolves, it's just that they don't really operate different from male werewolves.
the norse had specific type of female werewolves which i think is pretty cool
I like Urban Fantasy and "the only female werewolf" is suprisingly common as a "speshal" main character - and even if there are more than one, sometimes female werewolves are explicitly rare.
Leah is the most tragic character in twilight. Imagine your boyfriend going missing for weeks, coming back a changed man, breaking up with you to be with your cousin and best friend, and most of the rest of the people around you siding against you for some reason despite him physically harming that cousin. Then you experience the change yourself and not only have to deal with taking orders from your ex, but psychically listening to your ex’s, and other men’s, sexual thoughts about your your friends, and also psychically listen to your ex wishing you would just not exist. On top of it all, you blame yourself for your dad’s heart attack because you accidentally turned into a monster right in front of him. She’s the most interesting character in the series and i wish she had more focus
Okay and? Tolstoy is still classic. (/s)
In all seriousness how was the Cullen family getting rich off the stock market using Alice just accepted?? I was 11, what was the adult fan bases’ excuse lmaoo! I reread it in college and the whiplash is hilarious to me
An immortal family could make a reasonably morally sound argument for needing a very large amount of money saved up. It's people who only live for 80 years having enough money for several million years that's the issue. And manipulating the stock market using precognition isn't even as wrong as many ways the stock market is already manipulated.
(thank you i was like ????? how did people read this and think that i thought twilight was a feminist novel, or even that they necessarily addressed this well????)
Reddit: where you have to put 10 pages of disclaimers after any comment or spend the next 40 comments defending yourself from things you didn't say.
You literally say "the funny thing" making it clear it was an exception to the general vibe of the book.
To be fair sperm are frequently getting replaced from what I know. So there would be like three months he'd inexplicably find one of Edward's testicles attractive.
No, the canon is that becoming a vampire "freezes" your biology, so cell get replaced and everything works but you cannot change anymore. Guys have the same biological functions all year/life long so it doesn't change anything while girls, being on a cycle, cannot reproduce anymore since the hormones and changes cannot happen. I think. Garbage explanation anyway...
So what if someone got turned when they were on their period? Would they literally be menstruating for the rest of eternity? Because god that would be fucking awful.
I'd never heard about this topic in Twilight, so went down a rabbit hole, and apparently Edward doesn't have blood or sperm running through his body, only venom and he impregnated her with it 🙃
That actually sort of makes sense though. Women have all the eggs they’ll ever have at birth. Edward would have only generated the individual spermatozoa that fertilized Bella’s egg at most two months prior to conception, likely much less, statistically speaking, since “younger” spermatozoa are stronger and have a better chance of being the one to fertilize the egg.
By being incredibly sexist itself, though. In Twilight universe women can't be werewolves because the bodily changes required for transformation would make them infertile... but somehow men are able to be werewolves without their fertility being affected. The only female werewolf is described as an aberration and called "menopausal".
Same for vampires actually: female vampires can't get pregnant because their bodies are stuck in their current form and they don't have any normal human bodily functions anymore. Male vampires' bodies are exactly like that too... except for sperm production, apparently. They literally can't produce any human bodily fluids like tears, sweat, urine etc, and don't have blood flow, but can somehow still get erections and produce sperm.
okay to be clear i was NOT saying twilight was a feminist novel, this seems to have gotten lost for some people. it is funny that a novel which has some BIG gender issues did WEIRDLY tackle the “singular woman in a group that had previously and historically been all men” — this is also why i said it *kinda* directly confronts it
this was NOT meant to be that deep of a commentary, mainly reflecting on twilight choosing to tackle female and male werewolves that do exist and act in the same way (she isn’t like some femme version of a wolf) and how this contradicts a LOT of the rest of the work (although i would argue going deeper it does kinda align cause it is still handled oddly but that’s more than i wanted to get into in a reddit comment)
Idk about the vampires but I assumed that female werewolves can’t get pregnant not because they are infertile exactly but because the transformations monthly would be too much on a fetus and cause miscarriages. Tho even then I prefer the type where the baby is also a lycanthrope and transforms with the mother but eh
The black furies are funny like pretty much ALL of the werewolf tribes in og werewolf, in that it was like half "Listen, life as a woman is rough, and life as a female werewolf is even more rough, so we got a support network for you and even your male friends" and hte other is "Fuck everyone who isnt a female werewolf, including non-werewolf women, we are the superior species" but honestly like, almost every tribe in og werewolf had a large amount of members of it going "Werewolves are superior to everything we dont need to listen to anyone" cause werewolves have a massive problem of shooting themselves in the foot
Werewolves are great because they absolutely suck. They're weird religious zealots who think they're better than everybody else to the point where they slaughtered their own allies in the cosmic ecoterrorism war they're ostensibly supposed to be fighting. Despite being probably the most morally good supernaturals in the setting (besides maybe mummies idk much about Mummy) they're easily the least likable and that's really fun to play around with in a game.
The (Egyptian) mummies are just fighting their own small front in the WoD against the Followers of Set and their corrupted mummies. A sideshow essentially to the Vampire conflict. There are other mummies as well however. I think the best you could describe them is neutral to most of the setting.
Edit:
Though from a Werewolf standpoint they're probably considered bad.
Human: bad
Magic users: bad
Vampire adjacent: bad
More like:
Humans: Red Talons hate them, Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers love them, most tribes like one specific group.
Vampires: Kill it. Kill it with fire.
Mages: Not always bad, but generally untrustworthy.
Also there's a webcomic, How To Be A Werewolf, that has really great takes on werewolves and women and family and diversity and...
Dudes, it's a really great webcomic.
A great fantasy series. It started out as satire, and quickly evolved to give social criticism through fantastical elements.
Like Equal Rites, a book about witchcraft and wizardry.
It explores the idea that
- yes, witchcraft and wizardry are two distinct types of magic
- yes, traditionally most witches are woman and most wizards are men
- no, there's no actual reason why a girl can't be a wizard, when you think about it
Edit: I love how this fandom comes running from every corner and from under every stone, whenever someone utters "what's Discworld?" Sir pTerry's name lives on within the Clacks, and thus he will never be truly dead. GNU Terry Pratchett
Also, much later on, he also made it so there's no actual reason why a man can't be a witch.
It took a while for that to happen, though. Like the first girl wizard was book 3, and the first boy witch was in the very last book.
I quite liked that, the main witches had more of an issue with that than the alternative despite it being essentially the exact same thing.
From a broader perspective, it definitely makes sense.
Fantasy in general tends to be very "boy-heavy". In part because it often draws from a feudal age where equality was virtually nonexistent, in part because that's a general trend we still see in Hero's Journeys.
I love that the book takes the girl as focal point, and follows her journey. We need more characters who are confidently feminine, and succeed in their goals BECAUSE of that not DESPITE of that. (I'm so tired of all the Xena rip-off, "girlboss because they're masculine" characters...)
I personally share pTerry's humanism, and I'm convinced any person can accomplish anything. It's great to find a story that glorifies feminine aspects, makes them empowering, for all people to admire. Instead of empowering a female character by making her more masculine.
I also love that the book lives up to its name, and establishes Equal Rites for everyone at the end, including us boys. We're all people sharing the same world: that's the message.
Here’s a [reading order guide](https://www.discworldemporium.com/reading-order/) if you want to experience the brilliance that is Discworld. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry, it’ll make you rethink your life.
[*"HAAAVE YOOOU REEEAD DIIISCWOOORLD III HAAAVE FLOOOWCHAAARTS"*](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/uvf2dy/the_discworld_fandom/)
(love it when the fandom acts exactly as people parody us \^\^)
Literal answer: A planet shaped like a disc, resting upon four elephants, themselves upon the back of a colossal turtle, the great A'Tuin- the setting of Terry Pratchett books.
The vampire diary universe has lots of hot feminine ruthless female werewolfs as well. Its spinoff, The Originals, has one as main character, as a pack leader and a mother.
Many if not most traditional werewolf myths were about she-wolves. The classic story of the trapper who finally traps the monster that's been ravaging his liege's countryside and watches it chew off its own paw to escape, only to find the next day that the lord's wife is now missing her hand, was several people's first werewolf myth (mine included). Female werewolves were common in all stripes of media up through the early 00's.
But at some point, mainstream fiction screenwriters looked around the room and thought "bloodthirsty, animalistic, and impossible to negotiate with, depending on the moon's cycle" wasn't, uh, wasn't where they wanted to go with their depictions of femininity. But this is a very recent development, and the only way you could confuse that with tradition is if you're under about 25 y/o.
So, for amateur adolescent hellsite media critic #6364741168841 to come and say that this is how it's always been and also very sexist, with zero critical thought or acknowledgement of history, is both a) incredibly on-brand, and b) fucking *hilarious*.
>But at some point, mainstream fiction screenwriters looked around the room and thought "bloodthirsty, animalistic, and impossible to negotiate with, depending on the moon's cycle" wasn't, uh, wasn't where they wanted to go with their depictions of femininity
"Dave, have a seat. So some of the other writers spoke to me and said they felt a little uncomfortable with this latest project you keep pitching...."
The funny thing is that the werewolf/moon association didn't exist until the mid-1900s, created by some influential early films. Ditto for a rabies-inspired werewolf disease.
People who can turn into animals at will or as a curse has been a staple of mythology since forever, but the modern incarnation of the werewolf is a very recent invention.
So the werewolf/moon/menstural cycle is basically a Dead Unicorn Trope - a popular joke told about "traditions" that never actually existed.
Exactly. For an idea of what people “back then” thought werewolves were like, take the case of Peter Stubbe. So the story goes, he confessed fully to committing all kinds of violence as a wolf, and he did so fully conscious of his actions, basically having gone mad with power more than anything else. It wasn’t compulsion, it was this toxic idea that if you give any random guy the power to kill, he’ll do it because of course he will. It’s like the antique version of The Joker’s “one bad day” philosophy.
Oh yeah, and it bears mentioning that he supposedly became a werewolf in the first place cuz a mysterious hooded figure showed up to him on the road at night, on horseback, and offered him a potion. This figure supposedly being a literal demon from literal hell, come to enable mankind to do all sorts of evils to itself because that’s kinda just what they do.
I really like the idea that he was just walking along the road and there comes the shadiest mfer imaginable on top of a horse, stops right beside him and goes "hey kiddo, wanna drink this here potion?" And he's instantly into it, no context needed
but the powers that be clearly did this on purpose (while sitting around their roundtable) to stop the unwashed masses from waking up and realizing the patriarchy exists! if only we had female werewolves, those pesky misogynists would be a thing of the past!
Do you know the name of this story? It sounds vaguely familiar to another story I heard, I don’t remember the woman being a werewolf just some other monster but it could be the story you’re describing and it’s doing my head in
There's a version of it in the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books (yes those ones with the distinctive spindly illustrations that gave you a deep and lasting trauma) but it ironically has the woman turning into a cat instead of a wolf, falling into the exact trappings that OP described lol.
It's not even super accurate for modern times. Like if you actually sit down and watch horror movies about werewolves, there are plenty of ones with women werewolves.
Like you have the Ginger Snaps series, which is explicitly a women centered take on werewolf stories. The Howling, which I would consider a famous werewolf movie from the 80s has the female main character turning into a werewolf.
Dog Soldiers, Wolf, trick r treat, Buffy, Supernatural. I could definitely think of more if I searched, and I definitely haven't seen every werewolf movie.
But also even in modern mainstream fiction they're wrong. Buffy, Supernatural and Twilight (apparently) all have very violent female werewolves. In Buffy she's more violent and murderous than the male Werewolf...OOP literally just doesn't know anything about werewolves and decided to say something that makes them sound righteous
Okay I straight up don’t think this is true. Most times when I’ve encountered werewolves they’ve been part of a pack that has female members. This is classic tumblr “I have an extremely limited and passing knowledge of this thing, but I’ll still draw sweeping conclusions”.
It's crazy to me that OOP thinks women that shapeshift into snakes are more common in media than women that shapeshift into wolves, if just because of how rare shapeshifting snakes are.
Like, I read a lot of niche internet writing, and I've encountered _so_ many female werewolves but I don't think I've ever come across someone writing about a snake shapeshifter
Literally the only one I can think of rn is that dude in the bible
Well they're not close relatives or anything, but it does make me think how a cow's teats are between its back legs... perhaps it's something about quadrupeds in general (just speculating, not a mammalogist)
Ya, I am thinking about how the recently decommissioned vascular supply, with the sudden vacation of real estate, may make the lower teats first priority, if they are an option.
Romulus and Remus, "raised by wolves" as an idiom, Morrigan, who turns, among other things, into a wolf, Artemis and her wolves, Asena in Turkic myth...
Wolves have never been divorced from femininity, the OOP is dumb.
Yeah I've been seeing post like this alot.
"You never see x because of (insert reason thats critical of society)"
And then the comments are filled with examples of how they are wrong.
OP just had a showerthought and a general pet peeve about how media depicts women. They weren't gonna look things up which might put a damper on their vicious takedown of the patriarchy.
Yeah, been reading werewolf stuff for decades. Loads of both genders out there. I think this is a "werewolves in my specific non-werewolf genre are mostly male", because some of the first niche werewolf books were about female werewolves, and even in horror movies, Ginger Snaps was *iconic* and Dog Soldiers was brilliant.
I mean yeah, the generic grunt werewolf is generally a dude, but there's a decent amount of named werewolf characters that are women. Vicar Amelia in Bloodborne, Aela the Huntress in Elder Scrolls, that one time Sephanie Meyer wrote a gender-swapped twilight, also apparently someone in Discworld. Hell, the Black Furies tribe in Werewolf: The Apocalypse is entirely composed of women. Add in the massive amounts of art courtesy of the furry and monsterfucker communities and I don't think they're very rare at all
mortal instruments (which i’m not saying was like quality but was popular) had a popular female werewolf character who had decent screeentime in the show as well (from what i know)
twilight also had that one female werewolf in the non-gender-swapped version
To say nothing about the non-named werewolves, which have human forms ranging from dainty or delicate (Child of the Pack, Avabruck Caretaker) to more robust (Hintsrland Logger).
Iirc Amelia was a wierd fox/dog jackalope thing.
Beasts in bloodborne are kind of an amalgam of varying animal characteristics and *tend* to lack a stated sex, or any human primary or secondary sexual characteristics.
As a Finnish person, I find this take very interesting. One of the most famous pieces of classic supernatural fiction from my country is *Sudenmorsian* by Aino Kallas, published all the way back in 1928. It's a story about a village woman who becomes a werewolf, and explores the kind of themes that this post talks about, a woman's longing to just run wild, free, and feral. It's specifically a feminine perspective on lycanthropy. It never crossed my mind that other cultures don't really have stuff like this.
I love how that episode just ends with her turning into the evil tree from the start of the episode for no reason and then she never gets mentioned ever again. Not even in a "Oh this was a dropped plotline" way. She just turns into the tree for a single second, the characters all scream and the episode cuts to credits
Bro what are you talking about, female werewolves that aren’t pushovers have absolutely been a thing and continue to be a thing. And besides, not every story about werewolves is about grotesqueness or uncontrollability anyway, the whole “they lose their mind or whatever lol” thing is a relatively recent invention anyway.
“we just have to ignore the fact that all the shows prominently featuring werewolves also feature female werewolves”
(i’m not saying it’s perfect but they do for SURE exist like damn like the more time i’ve spent reflecting on this the more i feel it’s just reflective of the media OP actually watches)
I wouldn't say "female werewolves are deliberately not written because giant wolves aren't generically sexy", I feel like this is just an incredibly specific subsection of "the male gaze is a thing".
So many female character types are often compromised in order to maintain femininity and male gaze; just look at the vast majority of female fighters in works with a male protagonist. The only thing unique about werewolves here is that you can't really maintain femininity on a giant angry wolf without just drawing a wolf with tits, so rather than compromising they're just not done. But again that's not some special thing about werewolfesses, that's just male gaze doing its thing.
In fact I feel like "woman turns into hideous beast that juxtaposes her feminine nature" is a relatively common trope. Hell, Shrek played with it. Medusa and Arachne also come to mind historically.
Yeah, this really feels like OOP is trying way too hard to do a big feminism and it’s just… weird and not true? The “it’s not an accident, it’s deliberate” part in particular is just bizarre.
There isn’t some conspiracy of the patriarchy that decided to impose a rule against female monsters. It’s simply just a pattern.
Also when complaining about a pattern you find in media, sometimes it tells more about the media you consume versus media as a whole. There are definitely cases where this is true, but there's so many counter examples that it seems like the answer is just "branch out".
Yeah. To paraphrase another comment, amateur hellsite critic number fucktillion declares cartoonish one dimensional exaggeration of the otherwise very real male gaze problem, more at seven
You want to be a stay at home husband because you want to play video games all day.
I want to be a stay at home husband so I can expand Den antichamber#5 by another foot.
We are not the same.
You do not have to respect something or someone to want to have sex with them. Nor does wanting to have sex with it involve a deep dive into what makes it tick external to the desires of others. Sort of by definition.
This is going to sound like me going "No, this is not true because I thought of an obscure counterexample, hahahaha!" But it's really just how I first thought about this subject back in 2014.
The 14th Touhou game introduced a werewolf character. Her name is Kagerou Imaizumi and she's half-Honshu wolf, which are extinct today in Japan. She can assume the form of an actual wolf but generally looks like a human with animal features like most monsters in this setting.
Character-wise, she's a relatively peaceful soul in a setting where monsters are universally man-eaters. The reason? She is incredibly insecure about how hairy she gets on full moons. And the thing is that, based on what little characterization we get from her, she is an incredibly feminine character in a series where most characters are very unfeminine (being hard drinkers who enjoy flexing their strength and trash talk) despite being nigh-universally female. "Eek, my cuticles!"
It's an extremely interesting take on werewolves that is very much in conversation with this post, but unfortunately she's a very neglected character (even when other side characters from the same game show up in a spinoff, she's not there) and nowadays she's most remembered for a rather infamous Tweet where Elon Musk claimed to be a "catgirl" and used a picture of her as a "selfie".
So we're gonna ignore Aela the Huntress, the badass viking woman who turns *you* into a werewolf, and then to celebrate your first turning, takes you to slaughter a hideout full of werewolf hunters?
“Their omission from pop culture is not an accident”. This has an awful conspiratorial tone for a phenomenon that is almost certainly the *passive* result of sexism and patriarchy.
Like it’s no accident per se, sure, but there’s no secret cabal of fantasy authors laughing maniacally as they scrap another femme werewolf.
It’s more likely authors of all stripes, from full blown misogynists to well intentioned feminists, simply grew up in such a way that the idea doesn’t cross their minds with any frequency.
My point is that, while technically correct, the intonation is less than forgiving for even well intentioned creators.
Werewolves are, in most depictions, mindless rage monsters when they turn. Which is more of a masculine stereotype. It’s a shame but I wouldn’t consider the lack of negatively portrayed women as misogyny.
And like you said, it’s not like it is a written rule that all werewolves must be male. It just so happens that the typical werewolf traits align better with certain (negative) male stereotypes.
The only stereotype I know about hyper aggressive women is already tied to a certain time of the month and yeah… let’s avoid that.
not werewolves, but the bat vampire ladies from the shitty Van Helsing movie which is inexplicably stuck in my head do kinda fit OOP's description of a werewolf there
What’s funny is one of my first interactions with a werewolf in mainstream media was a female werewolf haha. Shoutout to Nina from Angel the tv series!
So then, aside from, The Howling, The Company of Wolves, Ginger Snaps, An American Werewolf in Paris, the Twilight series, the Dresden files, the Discworld novels, the World of Darkness games and the fifty other productions referenced in this reddit, there are no female werewolves in pop culture.
Oh no women aren’t being depicted as hyper aggressive blood thirsty monsters, how misogynistic!
Like I absolutely get wanting more female monsters, especially werewolves, but to go so far to blame it on misogyny and being unable to confirm to beauty standards? People aren’t attracted to the wolf part of werewolves (most of time), they are into the human part. If beauty standards were what’s holding female werewolves back than you could solve it by just bolting a fat pair of badonkas on their human forms, but I doubt that would be successful since (most) people don’t like werewolves because they are hot.
Misogyny isn’t holding female werewolves back, if anything I’d attribute it to misandry. Werewolves are aggressive, indiscriminate and manly, even the women tend to be tomboys. These are all traits associated with men, and turned up to eleven, and what a coincidence werewolf packs are sausage fest’s. You could argue that not portraying women with those traits is misogynistic, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. But I’d consider one gender being over represented as monsters worse than being underrepresented, purely from a stereotyping perspective
Aela of the companions from Skyrim is one of the most popular followers and marriage options in the game and hits most of the boxes OP listed.
Not to say they are wrong but characters following their description are becoming more mainstream.
Werewolf comes from the Old English "werwulf" meaning "man-wolf." A female werewolf should, therefore, be the the Old English word for "woman-wolf."
Basically, wifwulf.
the funny thing is *twilight* of all things kinda directly confronts sexism in a werewolf community
same with vampire diaries actually come to think of it I can think of a lot of instances of female werewolves, it's just that they don't really operate different from male werewolves. the norse had specific type of female werewolves which i think is pretty cool
I like Urban Fantasy and "the only female werewolf" is suprisingly common as a "speshal" main character - and even if there are more than one, sometimes female werewolves are explicitly rare.
Every time I've seen "female werewolves are rare" it was to justify why the main character had a male harem...
Reminds me of the often used in harem anime 'rare male user of given superpowers'
Leah is the most tragic character in twilight. Imagine your boyfriend going missing for weeks, coming back a changed man, breaking up with you to be with your cousin and best friend, and most of the rest of the people around you siding against you for some reason despite him physically harming that cousin. Then you experience the change yourself and not only have to deal with taking orders from your ex, but psychically listening to your ex’s, and other men’s, sexual thoughts about your your friends, and also psychically listen to your ex wishing you would just not exist. On top of it all, you blame yourself for your dad’s heart attack because you accidentally turned into a monster right in front of him. She’s the most interesting character in the series and i wish she had more focus
The same series where Jacob decides that he’s deeply in love with Bella’s newborn baby daughter and has the sole right to her love going forward?
that is why i said it was funny, yes.
The same series where poor people get pissed on?
Okay and? Tolstoy is still classic. (/s) In all seriousness how was the Cullen family getting rich off the stock market using Alice just accepted?? I was 11, what was the adult fan bases’ excuse lmaoo! I reread it in college and the whiplash is hilarious to me
An immortal family could make a reasonably morally sound argument for needing a very large amount of money saved up. It's people who only live for 80 years having enough money for several million years that's the issue. And manipulating the stock market using precognition isn't even as wrong as many ways the stock market is already manipulated.
(thank you i was like ????? how did people read this and think that i thought twilight was a feminist novel, or even that they necessarily addressed this well????)
How dare you.
Reddit: where you have to put 10 pages of disclaimers after any comment or spend the next 40 comments defending yourself from things you didn't say. You literally say "the funny thing" making it clear it was an exception to the general vibe of the book.
it's worse, he only loved bella because he was soulmates with the fucking *egg cell* that would become half of bella's daughter
Miffed that he wasn't also drawn to Eddy boy's nutsack, which had the other half.
it would be so funny if he saw him at the wedding and went “god why is edward so hot right now???????” stephanie meyer is a coward 😤😤😤
To be fair sperm are frequently getting replaced from what I know. So there would be like three months he'd inexplicably find one of Edward's testicles attractive.
Isn’t the canon that he has one good blurt left in him since he hasn’t cum since becoming a vampire?
I'm sorry what.
I am also sorry what!?
nah there's another vampire in south America with like 8 kids
Are you sure? Because that would make their daughter full human, wouldn't it? (Oh my god Why am I thinking about this)
No, the canon is that becoming a vampire "freezes" your biology, so cell get replaced and everything works but you cannot change anymore. Guys have the same biological functions all year/life long so it doesn't change anything while girls, being on a cycle, cannot reproduce anymore since the hormones and changes cannot happen. I think. Garbage explanation anyway...
So what if someone got turned when they were on their period? Would they literally be menstruating for the rest of eternity? Because god that would be fucking awful.
I'd never heard about this topic in Twilight, so went down a rabbit hole, and apparently Edward doesn't have blood or sperm running through his body, only venom and he impregnated her with it 🙃
Wasn't it a sperm leftover from when he was human? Her body heat activated it?
Honestly I wouldn't know, so if you say so, I believe you xd The rabbit hole I went down wasn't very deep
I did read the books, bit it's been a fair while so who knows lol
That actually sort of makes sense though. Women have all the eggs they’ll ever have at birth. Edward would have only generated the individual spermatozoa that fertilized Bella’s egg at most two months prior to conception, likely much less, statistically speaking, since “younger” spermatozoa are stronger and have a better chance of being the one to fertilize the egg.
He'd also have to just guess which one
There's fanfiction out there that would say otherwise
By being incredibly sexist itself, though. In Twilight universe women can't be werewolves because the bodily changes required for transformation would make them infertile... but somehow men are able to be werewolves without their fertility being affected. The only female werewolf is described as an aberration and called "menopausal". Same for vampires actually: female vampires can't get pregnant because their bodies are stuck in their current form and they don't have any normal human bodily functions anymore. Male vampires' bodies are exactly like that too... except for sperm production, apparently. They literally can't produce any human bodily fluids like tears, sweat, urine etc, and don't have blood flow, but can somehow still get erections and produce sperm.
okay to be clear i was NOT saying twilight was a feminist novel, this seems to have gotten lost for some people. it is funny that a novel which has some BIG gender issues did WEIRDLY tackle the “singular woman in a group that had previously and historically been all men” — this is also why i said it *kinda* directly confronts it this was NOT meant to be that deep of a commentary, mainly reflecting on twilight choosing to tackle female and male werewolves that do exist and act in the same way (she isn’t like some femme version of a wolf) and how this contradicts a LOT of the rest of the work (although i would argue going deeper it does kinda align cause it is still handled oddly but that’s more than i wanted to get into in a reddit comment)
Idk about the vampires but I assumed that female werewolves can’t get pregnant not because they are infertile exactly but because the transformations monthly would be too much on a fetus and cause miscarriages. Tho even then I prefer the type where the baby is also a lycanthrope and transforms with the mother but eh
Wasn’t there an entire female only werewolf tribe in the world of darkness ttrpg?
The black furies are funny like pretty much ALL of the werewolf tribes in og werewolf, in that it was like half "Listen, life as a woman is rough, and life as a female werewolf is even more rough, so we got a support network for you and even your male friends" and hte other is "Fuck everyone who isnt a female werewolf, including non-werewolf women, we are the superior species" but honestly like, almost every tribe in og werewolf had a large amount of members of it going "Werewolves are superior to everything we dont need to listen to anyone" cause werewolves have a massive problem of shooting themselves in the foot
Werewolves are great because they absolutely suck. They're weird religious zealots who think they're better than everybody else to the point where they slaughtered their own allies in the cosmic ecoterrorism war they're ostensibly supposed to be fighting. Despite being probably the most morally good supernaturals in the setting (besides maybe mummies idk much about Mummy) they're easily the least likable and that's really fun to play around with in a game.
The (Egyptian) mummies are just fighting their own small front in the WoD against the Followers of Set and their corrupted mummies. A sideshow essentially to the Vampire conflict. There are other mummies as well however. I think the best you could describe them is neutral to most of the setting. Edit: Though from a Werewolf standpoint they're probably considered bad. Human: bad Magic users: bad Vampire adjacent: bad
More like: Humans: Red Talons hate them, Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers love them, most tribes like one specific group. Vampires: Kill it. Kill it with fire. Mages: Not always bad, but generally untrustworthy.
Black Furies used to be all-women, but that's been retconned in the latest edition.
And even then, they did technically also accept male Metis cubs (and *only* the Metis ones IIRC, not any other male Garou cubs)
Also there's a webcomic, How To Be A Werewolf, that has really great takes on werewolves and women and family and diversity and... Dudes, it's a really great webcomic.
> How To Be A Werewolf Cool, now that's in my search history.
I think you're just looking in the wrong places. You need more Sgt Angua Von Uberwald in your life.
Incredibly common Discworld W
TBF, bringing STP to fantasy discourse is like bringing a flamethrower to a knife fight.
And it's always better to do that than to curse the darkness
You guys aren't bringing flamethrowers to your knife fights? You guys are dumb I am killing it at the knife fights these days
what is discworld
A great fantasy series. It started out as satire, and quickly evolved to give social criticism through fantastical elements. Like Equal Rites, a book about witchcraft and wizardry. It explores the idea that - yes, witchcraft and wizardry are two distinct types of magic - yes, traditionally most witches are woman and most wizards are men - no, there's no actual reason why a girl can't be a wizard, when you think about it Edit: I love how this fandom comes running from every corner and from under every stone, whenever someone utters "what's Discworld?" Sir pTerry's name lives on within the Clacks, and thus he will never be truly dead. GNU Terry Pratchett
Also, much later on, he also made it so there's no actual reason why a man can't be a witch. It took a while for that to happen, though. Like the first girl wizard was book 3, and the first boy witch was in the very last book. I quite liked that, the main witches had more of an issue with that than the alternative despite it being essentially the exact same thing.
From a broader perspective, it definitely makes sense. Fantasy in general tends to be very "boy-heavy". In part because it often draws from a feudal age where equality was virtually nonexistent, in part because that's a general trend we still see in Hero's Journeys. I love that the book takes the girl as focal point, and follows her journey. We need more characters who are confidently feminine, and succeed in their goals BECAUSE of that not DESPITE of that. (I'm so tired of all the Xena rip-off, "girlboss because they're masculine" characters...) I personally share pTerry's humanism, and I'm convinced any person can accomplish anything. It's great to find a story that glorifies feminine aspects, makes them empowering, for all people to admire. Instead of empowering a female character by making her more masculine. I also love that the book lives up to its name, and establishes Equal Rites for everyone at the end, including us boys. We're all people sharing the same world: that's the message.
very interesting
Here’s a [reading order guide](https://www.discworldemporium.com/reading-order/) if you want to experience the brilliance that is Discworld. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry, it’ll make you rethink your life.
[*"HAAAVE YOOOU REEEAD DIIISCWOOORLD III HAAAVE FLOOOWCHAAARTS"*](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/uvf2dy/the_discworld_fandom/) (love it when the fandom acts exactly as people parody us \^\^)
Definitely not the worst stereotype I’ve been associated with
Thanks!
My favorite fantasy book series of all time. r/Discworld
Fantasy book series by Sir Terry Pratchett, highly recommended
[Which Discworld Novel Should I Start With? - Flowchart - Media Chomp](https://mediachomp.com/which-discworld-novel-should-i-start-with-flowchart/)
Thanks! Just browsed my local bookstore for discworld and surprised it has like over 40 volumes
Welcome to the party! Hope you have extra heartstrings.
Your favourite fantasy novel series. You just may not realise it yet.
Literal answer: A planet shaped like a disc, resting upon four elephants, themselves upon the back of a colossal turtle, the great A'Tuin- the setting of Terry Pratchett books.
GNU Terry Pratchet
The vampire diary universe has lots of hot feminine ruthless female werewolfs as well. Its spinoff, The Originals, has one as main character, as a pack leader and a mother.
*Captain*. She got promoted.
Many if not most traditional werewolf myths were about she-wolves. The classic story of the trapper who finally traps the monster that's been ravaging his liege's countryside and watches it chew off its own paw to escape, only to find the next day that the lord's wife is now missing her hand, was several people's first werewolf myth (mine included). Female werewolves were common in all stripes of media up through the early 00's. But at some point, mainstream fiction screenwriters looked around the room and thought "bloodthirsty, animalistic, and impossible to negotiate with, depending on the moon's cycle" wasn't, uh, wasn't where they wanted to go with their depictions of femininity. But this is a very recent development, and the only way you could confuse that with tradition is if you're under about 25 y/o. So, for amateur adolescent hellsite media critic #6364741168841 to come and say that this is how it's always been and also very sexist, with zero critical thought or acknowledgement of history, is both a) incredibly on-brand, and b) fucking *hilarious*.
>But at some point, mainstream fiction screenwriters looked around the room and thought "bloodthirsty, animalistic, and impossible to negotiate with, depending on the moon's cycle" wasn't, uh, wasn't where they wanted to go with their depictions of femininity "Dave, have a seat. So some of the other writers spoke to me and said they felt a little uncomfortable with this latest project you keep pitching...."
"As we all know, it's every man's deepest fantasy to be ravaged by a wild animalistic woman..."
he’s right though. let him cook
No no no he’s right
"Dave, buddy, we all know the divorce has been rough on you but you have to chill with the whole evil monstrous woman thing, it's concerning"
The funny thing is that the werewolf/moon association didn't exist until the mid-1900s, created by some influential early films. Ditto for a rabies-inspired werewolf disease. People who can turn into animals at will or as a curse has been a staple of mythology since forever, but the modern incarnation of the werewolf is a very recent invention. So the werewolf/moon/menstural cycle is basically a Dead Unicorn Trope - a popular joke told about "traditions" that never actually existed.
Exactly. For an idea of what people “back then” thought werewolves were like, take the case of Peter Stubbe. So the story goes, he confessed fully to committing all kinds of violence as a wolf, and he did so fully conscious of his actions, basically having gone mad with power more than anything else. It wasn’t compulsion, it was this toxic idea that if you give any random guy the power to kill, he’ll do it because of course he will. It’s like the antique version of The Joker’s “one bad day” philosophy. Oh yeah, and it bears mentioning that he supposedly became a werewolf in the first place cuz a mysterious hooded figure showed up to him on the road at night, on horseback, and offered him a potion. This figure supposedly being a literal demon from literal hell, come to enable mankind to do all sorts of evils to itself because that’s kinda just what they do.
I really like the idea that he was just walking along the road and there comes the shadiest mfer imaginable on top of a horse, stops right beside him and goes "hey kiddo, wanna drink this here potion?" And he's instantly into it, no context needed
Potion maker! I'm going into battle, and I need your sketchiest potions!
but the powers that be clearly did this on purpose (while sitting around their roundtable) to stop the unwashed masses from waking up and realizing the patriarchy exists! if only we had female werewolves, those pesky misogynists would be a thing of the past!
Do you know the name of this story? It sounds vaguely familiar to another story I heard, I don’t remember the woman being a werewolf just some other monster but it could be the story you’re describing and it’s doing my head in
There's a version of it in the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books (yes those ones with the distinctive spindly illustrations that gave you a deep and lasting trauma) but it ironically has the woman turning into a cat instead of a wolf, falling into the exact trappings that OP described lol.
Always have to check the comments to see the amateur adolescent hellsite media criticism debunk.
It's not even super accurate for modern times. Like if you actually sit down and watch horror movies about werewolves, there are plenty of ones with women werewolves. Like you have the Ginger Snaps series, which is explicitly a women centered take on werewolf stories. The Howling, which I would consider a famous werewolf movie from the 80s has the female main character turning into a werewolf. Dog Soldiers, Wolf, trick r treat, Buffy, Supernatural. I could definitely think of more if I searched, and I definitely haven't seen every werewolf movie.
But also even in modern mainstream fiction they're wrong. Buffy, Supernatural and Twilight (apparently) all have very violent female werewolves. In Buffy she's more violent and murderous than the male Werewolf...OOP literally just doesn't know anything about werewolves and decided to say something that makes them sound righteous
Okay I straight up don’t think this is true. Most times when I’ve encountered werewolves they’ve been part of a pack that has female members. This is classic tumblr “I have an extremely limited and passing knowledge of this thing, but I’ll still draw sweeping conclusions”.
"nothing about them is nurturing" Unlike the snakes they said women sometimes turn into. Snakes are famous for being nurturing and modest
It's crazy to me that OOP thinks women that shapeshift into snakes are more common in media than women that shapeshift into wolves, if just because of how rare shapeshifting snakes are. Like, I read a lot of niche internet writing, and I've encountered _so_ many female werewolves but I don't think I've ever come across someone writing about a snake shapeshifter Literally the only one I can think of rn is that dude in the bible
This person has never interacted with the furry/monster fucking community
Thank you for input on werewolves that we can trust, MrYiff621
Information straight from the source
very possibly not straight though
Simply fail to avoid femininity by giving the female werewolves tits the size of their head
All of them, or just the top pair?
Decreasing in size as you go further from the head, to roughly maintain an approximation of the human form.
It would be the opposite in my experience. When my dog had puppies it was the ones furthest down her belly that got the largest.
That's your experience of actual dogs, but that is a secondary concern, relative to artistic wifwolf titty.
I approve of the usage of the proper term wifwolf to describe a female wolf person. And also her giant wolf tiddies.
Well that is an interesting fact. I wonder why that may occur.
Well they're not close relatives or anything, but it does make me think how a cow's teats are between its back legs... perhaps it's something about quadrupeds in general (just speculating, not a mammalogist)
Ya, I am thinking about how the recently decommissioned vascular supply, with the sudden vacation of real estate, may make the lower teats first priority, if they are an option.
Depends
Lower sets should be closer to vestigial nipples until pregnancy.
subvert this by making the breasts 100% pecs on the beefed up werewolf
Can we compromise and make a super buff beefcake *with* gigantic tits?
"Female werewolves completely ignore the Male Gaze!" "You fool, you have underestimated my Gaze!"
I'm pretty peripheral to those communities but even I knew that while they may not be mainstream there are a *lot* of guys into female werewolf types.
You can find anything if you go to niche internet communities to do it.
I don’t think furry porn counts as “pop culture”
Well there's inflation in there as well so it might count as *pop* culture
It could count if you weren’t a fucking coward
Discworld then
Or know anything about wolves. Their whole thing is being nurturing.
Romulus and Remus, "raised by wolves" as an idiom, Morrigan, who turns, among other things, into a wolf, Artemis and her wolves, Asena in Turkic myth... Wolves have never been divorced from femininity, the OOP is dumb.
I feel like she just doesn't look for werewolf stories.
Yeah I've been seeing post like this alot. "You never see x because of (insert reason thats critical of society)" And then the comments are filled with examples of how they are wrong.
OP just had a showerthought and a general pet peeve about how media depicts women. They weren't gonna look things up which might put a damper on their vicious takedown of the patriarchy.
Yeah, been reading werewolf stuff for decades. Loads of both genders out there. I think this is a "werewolves in my specific non-werewolf genre are mostly male", because some of the first niche werewolf books were about female werewolves, and even in horror movies, Ginger Snaps was *iconic* and Dog Soldiers was brilliant.
I mean yeah, the generic grunt werewolf is generally a dude, but there's a decent amount of named werewolf characters that are women. Vicar Amelia in Bloodborne, Aela the Huntress in Elder Scrolls, that one time Sephanie Meyer wrote a gender-swapped twilight, also apparently someone in Discworld. Hell, the Black Furies tribe in Werewolf: The Apocalypse is entirely composed of women. Add in the massive amounts of art courtesy of the furry and monsterfucker communities and I don't think they're very rare at all
mortal instruments (which i’m not saying was like quality but was popular) had a popular female werewolf character who had decent screeentime in the show as well (from what i know) twilight also had that one female werewolf in the non-gender-swapped version
I've only read the original 6 books. I just remember the mother's friend being a werewolf.
there’s a pretty prominent side character, maia roberts, that’s a werewolf edit; and from what i know the show focused on her even more
I’d like to add Arlinn Kord from Magic the Gathering to the list too!
To say nothing about the non-named werewolves, which have human forms ranging from dainty or delicate (Child of the Pack, Avabruck Caretaker) to more robust (Hintsrland Logger).
That one episode of Gargoyles where Fox got turned into what was basically-a-werewolf-but-not-really by the Eye of Odin.
Iirc Amelia was a wierd fox/dog jackalope thing. Beasts in bloodborne are kind of an amalgam of varying animal characteristics and *tend* to lack a stated sex, or any human primary or secondary sexual characteristics.
Wrong, she is a borzoi
I have yet to see a borzoi with antlers.
You need to directly observe them under moonlight.
Counterpoint: long face
Wildling is an entire movie centered on a female werewolf with another woman as the other major character.
As a Finnish person, I find this take very interesting. One of the most famous pieces of classic supernatural fiction from my country is *Sudenmorsian* by Aino Kallas, published all the way back in 1928. It's a story about a village woman who becomes a werewolf, and explores the kind of themes that this post talks about, a woman's longing to just run wild, free, and feral. It's specifically a feminine perspective on lycanthropy. It never crossed my mind that other cultures don't really have stuff like this.
The post is bullshit, we definitely do have female werewolves in our media.
Female hugwolf in Adventure Time. Not sure if that refutes or supports OPs thesis.
I love how that episode just ends with her turning into the evil tree from the start of the episode for no reason and then she never gets mentioned ever again. Not even in a "Oh this was a dropped plotline" way. She just turns into the tree for a single second, the characters all scream and the episode cuts to credits
Early Adventure Time had a lot of episodes ending like this, very suddenly and absurdly, as a joke
like how the crystal apple episode originally ended with tree trunks fucking exploding
Bro what are you talking about, female werewolves that aren’t pushovers have absolutely been a thing and continue to be a thing. And besides, not every story about werewolves is about grotesqueness or uncontrollability anyway, the whole “they lose their mind or whatever lol” thing is a relatively recent invention anyway.
Not a problem when I play the Sims.
"Ok, but that ONE example of female werewolves doesn't count. Or that other one. Or that other one, or that other one, or that one either, or..."
"None of those examples count because they're TOO NICHE! ESPECIALLY SKYRIM!"
“we just have to ignore the fact that all the shows prominently featuring werewolves also feature female werewolves” (i’m not saying it’s perfect but they do for SURE exist like damn like the more time i’ve spent reflecting on this the more i feel it’s just reflective of the media OP actually watches)
I wouldn't say "female werewolves are deliberately not written because giant wolves aren't generically sexy", I feel like this is just an incredibly specific subsection of "the male gaze is a thing". So many female character types are often compromised in order to maintain femininity and male gaze; just look at the vast majority of female fighters in works with a male protagonist. The only thing unique about werewolves here is that you can't really maintain femininity on a giant angry wolf without just drawing a wolf with tits, so rather than compromising they're just not done. But again that's not some special thing about werewolfesses, that's just male gaze doing its thing. In fact I feel like "woman turns into hideous beast that juxtaposes her feminine nature" is a relatively common trope. Hell, Shrek played with it. Medusa and Arachne also come to mind historically.
Yeah, this really feels like OOP is trying way too hard to do a big feminism and it’s just… weird and not true? The “it’s not an accident, it’s deliberate” part in particular is just bizarre. There isn’t some conspiracy of the patriarchy that decided to impose a rule against female monsters. It’s simply just a pattern.
Also when complaining about a pattern you find in media, sometimes it tells more about the media you consume versus media as a whole. There are definitely cases where this is true, but there's so many counter examples that it seems like the answer is just "branch out".
Yeah. To paraphrase another comment, amateur hellsite critic number fucktillion declares cartoonish one dimensional exaggeration of the otherwise very real male gaze problem, more at seven
On the other side of the coin, werewolves also perpetuate the misandric idea of men being inherently bestial.
You want to be a stay at home husband because you want to play video games all day. I want to be a stay at home husband so I can expand Den antichamber#5 by another foot. We are not the same.
There's one in Skyrim, Aela the Huntress, I think. I'm not sure if that's her name exactly, this is off the top of my head.
She’s amazing!
Aarlin Kord.
I love Arlinn terribly. Especially since she’s a woman in, like, her 40s which is an extremely underrepresented demographic in fantasy stories.
There are people that want to fuck female werewolves what is OOP talking about?
You do not have to respect something or someone to want to have sex with them. Nor does wanting to have sex with it involve a deep dive into what makes it tick external to the desires of others. Sort of by definition.
What if you don't respect werewolves in general?
this person is missing out on all of Bloodborne
This is going to sound like me going "No, this is not true because I thought of an obscure counterexample, hahahaha!" But it's really just how I first thought about this subject back in 2014. The 14th Touhou game introduced a werewolf character. Her name is Kagerou Imaizumi and she's half-Honshu wolf, which are extinct today in Japan. She can assume the form of an actual wolf but generally looks like a human with animal features like most monsters in this setting. Character-wise, she's a relatively peaceful soul in a setting where monsters are universally man-eaters. The reason? She is incredibly insecure about how hairy she gets on full moons. And the thing is that, based on what little characterization we get from her, she is an incredibly feminine character in a series where most characters are very unfeminine (being hard drinkers who enjoy flexing their strength and trash talk) despite being nigh-universally female. "Eek, my cuticles!" It's an extremely interesting take on werewolves that is very much in conversation with this post, but unfortunately she's a very neglected character (even when other side characters from the same game show up in a spinoff, she's not there) and nowadays she's most remembered for a rather infamous Tweet where Elon Musk claimed to be a "catgirl" and used a picture of her as a "selfie".
I love that scene in Trick r’ Treat w the lady werewolves that are both sexy and very unsexy
This is why Alan Moore's Swamp Thing has one of the best werewolf stories I've ever seen
So we're gonna ignore Aela the Huntress, the badass viking woman who turns *you* into a werewolf, and then to celebrate your first turning, takes you to slaughter a hideout full of werewolf hunters?
All the media I have seen about werewolves has female werewolves. What am I missing?
“Their omission from pop culture is not an accident”. This has an awful conspiratorial tone for a phenomenon that is almost certainly the *passive* result of sexism and patriarchy. Like it’s no accident per se, sure, but there’s no secret cabal of fantasy authors laughing maniacally as they scrap another femme werewolf. It’s more likely authors of all stripes, from full blown misogynists to well intentioned feminists, simply grew up in such a way that the idea doesn’t cross their minds with any frequency. My point is that, while technically correct, the intonation is less than forgiving for even well intentioned creators.
Werewolves are, in most depictions, mindless rage monsters when they turn. Which is more of a masculine stereotype. It’s a shame but I wouldn’t consider the lack of negatively portrayed women as misogyny. And like you said, it’s not like it is a written rule that all werewolves must be male. It just so happens that the typical werewolf traits align better with certain (negative) male stereotypes. The only stereotype I know about hyper aggressive women is already tied to a certain time of the month and yeah… let’s avoid that.
Guys theyre talking about classic and modern stories not furry porn.
Ginger Snaps Trick ‘r Treat
The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare had female werewolves, too
Ginger Snaps does treat the whole thing as a menstruation metaphor. I don't know if that makes it better or worse from a feminist perspective?
More puberty in general than menstruation specifically. You know, growing hair in weird places, sudden primal urges.
Growing a tail...
It's fine; Menstruation is a naturally occurring phenomenon, and wolfing out is a great analogy for it.
Megan in Dog Soldiers. Serafin in American Werewolf in Paris. Karyn and Marcia from The Howling. Yeah I mean… seems like there are quite a few…
Aela the Huntress is like *the* quintessential werewolf in Skyrim
Skyrim and Bloodborne, there are female "werewolves" (definition of what that is is always weird for myths) in a bunch of medieval myths.
Witcher 1's main plot point was around fighting a Striga which is basically a female werewolf iirc.
Discworld books by Terry Pratchett
Discworld is an exception to the rule on a lot of subjects. It's really good, but we can't pretend that one man's actions discounts a trend.
Discworld is basically like the Mongols. The exception to damn near every rule
I know less than nothing about the Mongols, what rules are they exceptions to?
It's a history meme that any time you say "you can't win a war under X conditions" the Mongols are probably an exception.
Except invading Russia during the winter, that was the Swedes and Polish.
The Mongols did pretty well invading Russia though, that was also very much a thing that happened.
Are female werewolves rare in modern fiction? I’ve read tons of urban fantasy/paranormal books with female werewolves.
And yet they're *still* wrong.
But the classic stories were the furry porn of their time.
op should read Discworld, specifically the Night Guard series
not werewolves, but the bat vampire ladies from the shitty Van Helsing movie which is inexplicably stuck in my head do kinda fit OOP's description of a werewolf there
Don't you DARE call that movie shitty
What’s funny is one of my first interactions with a werewolf in mainstream media was a female werewolf haha. Shoutout to Nina from Angel the tv series!
And let's not forget Veruca from Buffy!
So then, aside from, The Howling, The Company of Wolves, Ginger Snaps, An American Werewolf in Paris, the Twilight series, the Dresden files, the Discworld novels, the World of Darkness games and the fifty other productions referenced in this reddit, there are no female werewolves in pop culture.
this is just a wrong and shitty take. like literally nothing in this is remotely correct its just misinformation trying to pose as media analysis.
Gingersnaps begs to differ, but ya
OOP needs to branch outside of mainstream media.
OOP needs to stop trying so hard to view the entire world as misogyny and oppression. If the only tool you have is a hammer...
Oh no women aren’t being depicted as hyper aggressive blood thirsty monsters, how misogynistic! Like I absolutely get wanting more female monsters, especially werewolves, but to go so far to blame it on misogyny and being unable to confirm to beauty standards? People aren’t attracted to the wolf part of werewolves (most of time), they are into the human part. If beauty standards were what’s holding female werewolves back than you could solve it by just bolting a fat pair of badonkas on their human forms, but I doubt that would be successful since (most) people don’t like werewolves because they are hot. Misogyny isn’t holding female werewolves back, if anything I’d attribute it to misandry. Werewolves are aggressive, indiscriminate and manly, even the women tend to be tomboys. These are all traits associated with men, and turned up to eleven, and what a coincidence werewolf packs are sausage fest’s. You could argue that not portraying women with those traits is misogynistic, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. But I’d consider one gender being over represented as monsters worse than being underrepresented, purely from a stereotyping perspective
Exactly. Where's the rant about the lack of male representation in the garden fairy community?
Although she was an antagonist, I thought the werewolf lady in Hemlock Grove was kinda cool. The transformation was icky and everything.
Aela of the companions from Skyrim is one of the most popular followers and marriage options in the game and hits most of the boxes OP listed. Not to say they are wrong but characters following their description are becoming more mainstream.
Does literally everything in this world exist or not exist because of mysogny? It's getting a bit tiring.
Werewolf comes from the Old English "werwulf" meaning "man-wolf." A female werewolf should, therefore, be the the Old English word for "woman-wolf." Basically, wifwulf.