#wolf tools

[wolf-tools]

The Wolf Tools

Before we get too deep into analysis, let me establish the system we’re analyzing on here—that is, The Wolf Tools.

They’re a series of symbolic categories that define, in broad terms, what makes a werewolf a werewolf. Some of the tools are traits that move beyond just the werewolf, but in combination, they define the werewolf as something unique.

In short, we’re looking at the following:

The Moon - transformation

The Beast - monstrous form

The Bite - infection/initiation

The Bane - weakness

The World- narrative surroundings

For longer descriptions of the tools, read on, my friends

Disclaimer: there are many stories out there that lie on the fringes of “werewolf”—especially when we emerge into monster stories of other cultures. The lines can blur, but I’m not really here to have the argument of “could you classify a skinwalker as a form of werewolf?”. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. That’s not what wolf tools are built for.

My focus is on the tools, how designing a werewolf with certain traits or details can shape a narrative’s tone, and how these stories reflect the wider world they exist within.

All that said, let’s dive in:

The Moon

The Moon represents the act of transformation. Despite the name of this tool, not all werewolves transform by the light of the full moon. Mostly, it sounds poetic.

Common questions that the moon asks of a werewolf story:

What causes the act of transformation?

How much control does the werewolf have over this act?

What is the physical process of transforming? How is it described? How is it shown to the audience?

The Beast

“the beast” represents the actual, physical, monstrous form of the werewolf. If the Moon is the initiation and process of transforming, the beast is the end result. Depending on the story’s greater purpose and the era of generation, you’ll see some interesting variations here.

What does the beast look like? How lupine is it?

What is the mind of the monster? How much conscious control does the human within have?

The Bite

The bite concerns itself with transmission. It’s a more common trope among monsters—we see bites among vampires, among zombies—and it lends a certain universality to their horror. Not only is this thing terrifying… but you could be, too.

With werewolves, the Bite broadens beyond a physical, disease-like “transmission”, and in certain cases, there is overlap between the Bite and the Moon (where a transmission or bestowing of Werewolf-ism immediately triggers a transformation. We see this a lot in curse stories)

What causes transmission?

Typically the answers to this question fall into three main categories:

Physical interaction (eg a bite, scratch, lovemaking, exchange of blood or saliva)

Birth (born to a werewolf parent)

Magic (placed under a curse, given a magical ring)

The Bane

The Bane encompasses the werewolf’s weakness. What renders a werewolf vulnerable? In some cases, this may be what makes it killable, what pierces its thick hide; in other cases, this is a question of what forces, or hinders a transformation.

What is the material, object, location, or action, that triggers the weakness?

How does it affect the wolf?

The World

Finally! Last but not least, this is a broad category that explores how the werewolf navigates the world, how the world perceives the wolf, and the general back and forth relationship between the monster and its surroundings.

How easy is it for the wolf to navigate in the world?

How much of the world knows of the werewolf’s existence?

What is the world’s opinion of the wolf

How intertwined is the wolf’s story and experience with the structure of the wider world?

[valentingaio]

Remember how you looked like?

Just a very short 2 panel comic I wanted to draw based on this tweet!

[liderfin]

[sleepingboar]

We found each other.

[lavendarr00]

Egg lookin' crisp in 4k 🤌

-

Tumblr compresses large images. Should I make a Dragon Age folder in my Google Drive so folks can download full size .pngs if they want? Is there demand?

EDIT: I did make that folder haha! The link to my Google Drive is on my pinned post.

[theoutcastrogue]

[From a 2014 article by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. He's talking about how a random spam email ended up inspiring a part of his book Wolf in White Van. Later, in 2020, the album Getting Into Knives came out, and I think it inspired its artwork too.]

"It took years for me to be able to just reflexively delete spam, or filter it so that I never see it at all. I blame the spammers for this; the quality of their work took a sharp nosedive at some point. But during whatever period of the internet’s growth you’d call the early 2000s, it seemed like you’d still get some winners: things that had been typed up by a person, sent out to a bunch of email addresses they’d bought or rented for 5 or 10 bucks from the only guy who was ever going to make any money in this particular exchange. Most of them went directly, if manually, into the trash; but once in a while, there’d be one that seemed to earn, at the very least, the minute it’d take me to read it.

The one I’m remembering here was subject-lined SUPPLY OF KNIVES. [...] The subject line opened on an all-caps email that boasted, in ornate, antiquated English appealing to the reader’s more refined sensibilities, about the high quality of the knives on offer at an external website. You shouldn’t click on links in spam email. I live my life on the razor’s edge! I clicked the link.

I want to tell you about these knives: They were beautiful. They were weird. They had elaborate designs in the handles, moons or stars of wolf heads, and special grips, and a variety of points. They were made from metals whose pedigrees were described lovingly, and had been struck — smithed? wrought? — via processes I knew absolutely nothing about, but that sounded fantastic, difficult, arcane. It’s the joy of specialized language: When you’re an outsider to it, it can’t help but sound cool.

Of course this is the whole idea of any operation like this. SUPPLY OF KNIVES could well have been, and probably was, a company in Ohio who’d stumbled across an old warehouse full of knives, and knew enough about sales to describe these things in the most exotic terms they could find. I’m pretty immune to pitches: Who likes to feel like he’s being pitched? But somebody involved with SUPPLY OF KNIVES had had just enough authorial flair — that, or true faith — to caption each knife’s mysterious, blurry accompanying JPEG with a description whose constant recourse to specialized vocabularies seemed to say, “You’re not even reading this unless you already know about this sort of thing. Let us therefore speak like the fellow travelers we are.”

It was like a trade catalog for roadside bandits in need of knives.

I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that when I was a child the life of the roadside bandit seemed like a pretty romantic way to go. I looked at all these knives and read the descriptions and was just generally delighted about the whole thing, so I saved the email in a “memorable spam” folder I used to keep that had maybe two other emails in it. A few years later, Apple came out with this robotic-arm-screen iMac you never see any more, and we were long overdue for a new computer so we got that; and then, after a while, I got myself a laptop, because I was traveling all the time, and eventually both the old iMacs ended up in the basement, and they were both asleep but alive until fairly recently, as far as I knew.

But when I went to check for the email, it was gone. The old blue iMac is dead, bricked, lifeless. Searches on the term “supply of knives” on this laptop and on good old robot-arm-screen find nothing. The backup CD for the blue iMac drive is probably in a drawer around here somewhere, but that’s like saying, “The coin I had in my swim trunks’ pocket is probably somewhere in the ocean.” There is no SUPPLY OF KNIVES. There’s only the memory."

[source]

And this is the wonderful cover art of Getting Into Knives. Back cover and promo material below. Note that "Knives International" and "Knives Wordwide" are not real companies, they appear to be a callback to that elusive spam email.

[danmeichael]

it's really cute when a character is completely obsessively devoted to someone they are entirely aware is toxic. submissive not because they're naive but because they are completely content with being taken advantage of.

[taritoons]

"Get in the Metal Gear, Hal."

Extremely cursed Metal Gear Solid / Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover, solely inspired by the fact that Huey put Hal in Sahelanthropus when he was just a baby. All based on various screenshots and promotional art from the show.

In case it isn't clear enough: Hal/Shinji, David/Kaworu, Huey/Gendo, Strangelove/Rei, Wolf/Asuka, and Emma/Mari. Not pictured: Julie/Misato.

☕ Support me on Ko-Fi ☕

[saliosis]

the start of my insanity (part 1)

1, 2, 3, 4

[puppppppppy]

Remember how they pointed out that Palistrom wood was becoming rarer? Because Belos kept over harvesting it and not giving it time to grow back?

The University’s tree is blue. Its a big ass Palistrom tree

[heartnosekid]

🛠️ gadget the wolf 🧲

with mechanic themes & tinkering in red for @rubyprototype!

🧲-🛠️-🧲 / 🛠️-🐺-🛠️ / 🧲-🛠️-🧲

[wolf-tools]

Welcome to Wolf Tools!

Wolf Tools is a living, evolving repository of Werewolf stories.

My goal is to gather a huge literary canon of Werewolf books/films/etc, set them all in a greater context of the time/space they were written, and organize them all with a set of common analysis points (THE “Wolf Tools”)

Wolf tools is one part archive, one part history and analysis, one part book/film review, and one part writing process blog.

If you like writing, film, history, and especially werewolves, stick around!

As this blog develops (once I clean out my backlog), I’ll be taking requests on what Werewolf media to hunt down next! Feel free to drop in and make suggestions

[valentingaio]

Here's my take on the Yellow Glamrock Chica from the Tales From The Pizzaplex books! The supposed Pre-SB Glamrock Chica

[liderfin]

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [5/6] creatures -> kanimas

Like the wolf, the Kanima is a social creature. But, where the wolf seeks a pack, the Kanima seeks a friend. A friend. What does that mean? Maybe it's lonely? ...Like a teenager.

[sleepingboar]

Well … God's punishment has descended from heaven. The winged wolf is angry that people who extract killer whale meat have injured his son. I warned you that there would be consequences.

I definitely should study the stormy sky better, but I think there is an appeal in such intuitive styling.