What do you think? How about hairy legs and arms?
The best shifters I've ever read so far were L. Hamilton's "Anita Blake" books. Werelions, weretigers, werejaguars and so on - including of course werewolves. Fur everywhere - and yet when they shifted, all the furry hide receded and disappeared leaving them covered in clear goo and smooth as babies.
Maybe this shifting can be patented as a new depilatory method?
In any case, it seems that long past are the days when the werewolf ambled around as the moon waxed and waned, in human form still but resembling the animal (fur-wise) he would transform into - evident in hairy arms and chest and probably a beard, too.
Just like today's vampires have stopped wearing black cloaks and be bald, mean and old corpse-eating men, so have werewolves also evolved into romantic and fashionably smooth males - even if these don't sparkle as they run in the moonlight.
Interesting. If a being is forced to morph by the moonlight, or is capable of shifting whenever, it stands to reason they could loose all the hair. The change from animal to sexy, smooth man in the blink of an eye without a howl or two doesnt seem realistic when bones have to elongate and stuff.
ReplyDeleteBut it's certainly more romantic to lose the pain as well as the hair.
In my only shifter story so far, I wrote based on what seemed realistic to me, and that meant beard and chest hair, and intense pain, but that story isn't a romance.
It's tough enough for me to write vampires; I don't know how you shifter writers do it. I'm sure it's a very tough balancing act between finding what works and finding what is most realistic. Nice post. ;-)
ReplyDeleteThe issue I have is with the form they take as wolves etc. - I like them to look cute!! Not dripping fangs etc. But my shifters don't have excessively hairy anything!
ReplyDeleteI think I wouldn't mind a little chest hair -- but that's how I like my men too! Maybe the hairless shifters are just a product of how women (either the writers or readers ) like their men!
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