Not just guns, to be clear. Cars are important too. Horses are expensive and before cars most people didn't have them. Even encumbered by a carriage, a horse is faster than a wolf for short periods, but wolves are persistence predators. A car not only doesn't have that problem, it's basically armored. A wolf can't force its way it without seriously injuring itself. There's a reason so many horror movies start by removing the protagonists' access to a car. Also stuff like urban sprawl, destruction and fragmentation of habitat means there are fewer big stretches of wilderness to get lost in or for wolves to attack out of.
Don't get me wrong; I love blaming bad werewolf tropes on vampires. Infection by bite, a special weakness of silver bullets to parallel wooden stakes, trouble crossing running water, psychic abilities... So many ways imitating vampire stories weakens werewolf stories. But in the case of power creep vampires are another victim rather than the culprit. Your example of Dracula is a good one. He's stabbed to death with a knife in his sleep. Modern vampire stories often want to show the heroes beating the vamp in a fight scene. So you get settings that treat shoving a wooden stake into the heart as a combat move instead of hammering it slowly into a sleeping vamp.
Have you seen tyrantisterror's Four Horrors Theory? (I'm having trouble with links just now but you can google it.) By that classification system, old-timey werewolves (and vampires) were more Gothic Horror while many newer ones have elements of Atomic or Slasher Horror. The latter genres place more emphasis on how big and strong the monster is and how it can beat you in a fight. Genre and theme are big drivers; rules of how monsters work change to fit inside them.
I think looking at the monster itself is almost the wrong place to start? It's like Manic Pixie Dream Girls--that isn't actually a character trope but a story structure trope. The problem isn't that the MPDG is quirky, but that she's basically a plot device in the male lead's life to give him character growth. Her quirkiness just plasters over the lack of attention given to her own character. The problem isn't her, it's that her story isn't being told. And no superficial changes to the female love interest to make her less of an MPDG can help unless they actually make her a character and tell her story.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-12-10 01:13 am (UTC)Not just guns, to be clear. Cars are important too. Horses are expensive and before cars most people didn't have them. Even encumbered by a carriage, a horse is faster than a wolf for short periods, but wolves are persistence predators. A car not only doesn't have that problem, it's basically armored. A wolf can't force its way it without seriously injuring itself. There's a reason so many horror movies start by removing the protagonists' access to a car. Also stuff like urban sprawl, destruction and fragmentation of habitat means there are fewer big stretches of wilderness to get lost in or for wolves to attack out of.
Don't get me wrong; I love blaming bad werewolf tropes on vampires. Infection by bite, a special weakness of silver bullets to parallel wooden stakes, trouble crossing running water, psychic abilities... So many ways imitating vampire stories weakens werewolf stories. But in the case of power creep vampires are another victim rather than the culprit. Your example of Dracula is a good one. He's stabbed to death with a knife in his sleep. Modern vampire stories often want to show the heroes beating the vamp in a fight scene. So you get settings that treat shoving a wooden stake into the heart as a combat move instead of hammering it slowly into a sleeping vamp.
Have you seen tyrantisterror's Four Horrors Theory? (I'm having trouble with links just now but you can google it.) By that classification system, old-timey werewolves (and vampires) were more Gothic Horror while many newer ones have elements of Atomic or Slasher Horror. The latter genres place more emphasis on how big and strong the monster is and how it can beat you in a fight. Genre and theme are big drivers; rules of how monsters work change to fit inside them.
I think looking at the monster itself is almost the wrong place to start? It's like Manic Pixie Dream Girls--that isn't actually a character trope but a story structure trope. The problem isn't that the MPDG is quirky, but that she's basically a plot device in the male lead's life to give him character growth. Her quirkiness just plasters over the lack of attention given to her own character. The problem isn't her, it's that her story isn't being told. And no superficial changes to the female love interest to make her less of an MPDG can help unless they actually make her a character and tell her story.