I love the werewolf mythos in the Vampire Diaries show, I love the actors who portray the werewolves, love the story surrounding them, their powers, abilities, –all that happy shit. What I do not like, is that for the billionth and half time, the show’s producers tried to effectively cut costs and funds, by using a few real wolves. Which are frigging endangered species, for one thing, bred in captivity, and more than likely, diluted with domesticated canine genes. It’s not an anti-species thing, it’s a “Jesus, can’t we just make a werewolf, –these aren’t half man-half wolf… they’re wolves.” So I have to ask, —are we happy to see them coming back to Mystic Falls, which is what the spoiler blogs are all saying? I mean, I love the werewolves of the show, but not so much the execution of the plan to put them there.
TV Overmind reports on the re-appearance of werewolves, –which are still awesome, for sure, just… a bit cheap:
“The wait is almost over TVD fans, after this particularly long mid season break we will have a new episode in just two weeks (see promotional pictures here). Until the time has come to find out what havoc Isobel will cause with her return, there has been confirmation of another character whose reappearance will cause conflict for those in Mystic Falls. So who is the mystery returnee?
Werewolf vixen Jules (Michaela McManus) is who, the woman who took Tyler on his werewolf road trip of self discovery. This throws up several questions including whether Tyler will return with her and will she will end up being the werewolf used in the sun and the moon curse ritual? Her return will coincide with the next full moon in Mystic Falls, right around the time that Klaus will be in town I would imagine (for more on Klaus spoilers look here), will Jules have to team up with the vampires that she so detests to save her skin? Her aim I would suspect will be to get the moonstone to break the curse for the werewolves so I can see a lot of double crossing happening, this will be hard to do with vampires like Damon and Katherine around who always seem to be ahead of the curve.
Jules was a character who made it easy to dislike her, she tried to kill the Salvatore brothers with her wolf pack and tried to manipulate Tyler against those closest to him and then encouraged him to leave town. She is a character however who was pretty fearless in her pursuits and even if you don’t like her this is something to be respected, but I can see this fearless attitude being the undoing of her character. It will interesting to see how different Tyler is when he returns after spending so much time with vampire hating werewolves, how will this influence his feelings towards Caroline? Another factor regarding the problematic romantic entanglements between Caroline and Tyler is Matt, and how he reacts to his new found knowledge at the end of “The House Guest”. Romance is never easy in Mystic Falls and there always seems to be the pesky triangle shape business in matters of the heart.”
The last thing I have to say on the subject of VD’s werewolves is this: if the show spent half as much on the werewolf effects as they did on the vampires (which would be fair even, since vampires -are- the main characters), then they’d be far more awesome. Other than that, all I have to say about Tyler and Caroline, is: Duh. Matt -so- needs to get out of the picture. If he can’t handle Caroline saving his life, and trying to be honest with him, then he needs to get a life. Besides, his sister was a junkie bitch, who couldn’t keep it together, as a human, or a vampire. And Caroline had nothing to do with that, —Tyler is not only a werewolf, but a reformed guy. He’s changed a lot in the last two seasons, and he deserves a chance to be with someone as awesome and sweet as Caroline.
thats messed up
Wolves were scary and mysterious…in the middle ages. I’d have liked the producers of the show to have shown up effort in creating their werewolves, but this is the paranormal romance genera so why bother creating something good when you can just shovel out the same crap everyone else is doing?
What do we get instead? TWU WUFFIES to appeal to the tweens.
Not all wolves are endangered, maybe in some areas but there is a very healthy population of grey wolves in North America. Original werewolves (the earliest stories and records in history) are that of people who change from human to wolf. The half wolf half man monsters today were more than likely taken from historic illustrations of werewolves in mid-transformation, as that is really the only way to show the viewer that this is a picture of a were wolf (and not just some guy or some wolf). so really shows like V. Diaries and trueblood are keeping the “original” werewolf alive.
Not comnpletely, since (at least it looks like that) the most common transformation into a wolf in Europe was either via a wolf-pelt, a girdle or an ointment, respectively a combination of those.
As for the image of the wolf-man. Hard to tell were it came from. Your theory is definitely valid, another might be that it evolved over time since Cheney Jr.s time and they added more and more canine features to make it more “monstrous”.
There would be a third option, although I have no idea whether that is connected but considered that not a few people confuse the image of dog-headed people where the dog-head has erect ears (to be honest I remember an author who stated a dog-head with floppy ears – like a basset – as a wolf-man) with werewolves, maybe that image was a base for the modern day wolf-man, at least some of these dog-heads where also described as having a furry body and sharp nails/claws.
But to be honest, I think your theory is probably closer to the truth than this third, since most people barely know anything about mythjology on domestic animals.
What they need to do is a dam decent transformation. I don’t mind the use of real wolves, but a decent transformation would be nice.
I see another Forwood shipper ;)
Well on these weres in TVD, there are a few things I don’t really get with them:
1. Why are they the vamps worst enemy? Seriously their bite is not really an asset in actual combat since the vamp still lives for a while and can fight, a bite that disables them from healing their wounds would be more effective, the current one is rather good for drama in my eyes.
2. It is stated that they could transform at will more than 600 years ago (well the characters said so), but even if the transformation gets easier with time (was that ever stated somewhere, because I can’t remember), what sort of person would willingly undergo such a transformation in the first place?
3. Apart from the Lockwoods, all weres who got more than a few minutes of speaking where sociopaths. Has that some meaning.
4. Rose was more than 500 years older than Caroline but didn’t fare any better against Jules than Caroline against Mason. Shouldn’t she have been able to throw her through the wall?
One thing was there that was in line with the “classical depiction” of werewolves in film and tv: When they are background characters there are almost exclusively male.