New here and I want to start some trouble! ;)

[dirgeseries]

Hi Everyone!!!

New here so if I step on any toes, please let me know. I would like to stay!

I would like to know people's opinion on the vampire/werewolf/witch aspect of horror.

How do you all feel about werewolves vs lycans?

How do you feel about vampire/lycan hybrids?

What is your view on witches being a subset of vampires?

Honesty always!

And go!!!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

What's a Lycan?
Why do you want Vampires that happen to be Witches? Are they pretty witches that got turned into vampires?

Carpe Jugulum is best Vampire and Witches book I ever read.
The Fifth Elephant has some interesting Werewolf conflict.
Pratchett has some interesting Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Orcs, Dwarves, Trolls, Golems, Auditors, Elves (terrific, they terrify!), Goblins, Tooth Fairy, Bogey Men, Gnomes and Gnolls. However don't ignore the Nac Mac Feegles
Susan is no ordinary girl, as DEATH is her Grandfather.
Witches
Wizards (one is a inconveniently a girl)
and a Sourcerer (sic).
The Igors may be a clan, or species (there are girl versions).
Then there are the gods and Gods.
Anoia, Goddess of the Kitchen utensils and jammed drawer is getting popular.

 

[Brian G Turner]

werewolves vs lycans

Lycan is just an abbreviation of 'lycanthrope', which refers to shape changers such as werewolves. I believe it was made normative as a term in the popular Vampyre role-playing game?

If you're talking about research - stories are not about ideas, but words. Ideas are the seriously easy bit. Learning to communicate it all adequately with words can be incredibly time consuming.

 

[Randy M.]

Witch/vampire goes back a ways. See Gogol's "The Viy" (a late scene in that short story reminds me of some Asian horror -- or maybe Asian influenced horror -- that I've seen).

If you're a writer, whichever direction you go, do a little research to see what's gone before; no use reinventing the wheel.

I'm aware of movies from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man to Van Helsing & Underworld using mash-ups. These are for the most part action/adventure movies. As a reader, I would be more interested in a deeper exploration of the theme, of the motivations of those involved. An example of what I like, though not exactly what you're discussing, would be Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth or the grand-daddy of werewolf novels, Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris. (I mention those as a touchstone of my taste, and so an indication of whether my opinion coincides with your tastes or not.)


Randy M.

 

[BigBadBob141]

Don't know what a lycan is?
Vampires, Werewolves & Witches have all been around for a long, long time and as such can get a bit stale in literature.
However there is usually someone out there who can give them a new twist!
So don't write them off just yet.
As for witches being a sub-set of vampires, a witch is a witch and a vampire is a vampire, as far as I'm aware they have nothing in common other then the supernatural.
The vampire was once human but is now a supernatural creature, where as the witch is still human but practises the occult arts.
But there is no reason they can't intermix!

 

[BigBadBob141]

Ever heard of a Skinwalker, they are Navajo witches (always male, no women allowed), they use corpse powder to attack their victims (this is the dried and ground up skin taken from certain parts of a dead body).
The interesting bit is that they can also change shape to become another person or animal.
So I suppose you could say they are a sort of lycanthrope/witch hybrid.
They are sometimes mentioned in the Sgt Jim Chee/ Lt Joe Leaphorn books by Tony Hillerman.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Skinwalker, they are Navajo witches

What do the Navajo think of them?

abbreviation of 'lycanthrope', which refers to shape changers such as werewolves.

Yes, I knew the term 'lycanthrope', didn't realise people abbreviating it. I've largely ignored the more modern 'Pop Culture' aspect of Werewolves, Zombies etc, especially TV series and the related books.
Duckula was good fun though.

where as the witch is still human

Plenty of Fantasy tradition of non-human Witches.

 

[anno]

Maybe my old cantankerous brain but wasn't Lycan a Whitley Strieber thing in The Wolfen?
(Obviously pre-alien abduction )

 

[dirgeseries]

Hey everyone!!!

Thank you for your replies!!! Long story short, here is my stuff. I write horror/dark fantasy and my new novella is out. I write the Dirge Series and Fortune (novella) is a post apocalyptic fairy tale about both werewolves and lycans, here's why...

I wanted to make a world where the things that go bump in the night are just a subset of humans.

In my research I learned that most people prefer to have lycans and werewolves be separate. Lycans do not need the moon to change where as werewolves either always do or they can't change back once in wolf form.

I didn't want to build a world full of said monsters and make them have to be ugly or different in huge ways. Small, simple ways is my focus. Our world with a twists, so my idea of witches is just another form of a monster with different abilities.

I would love to talk to you all more, so ask away and thanks for getting back to me!!! You all seem like a wealth of awesome knowledge!!!

 

[Dave]

There may be a real life explanation for werewolves that does not involve the supernatural. There are known cases of exceedingly hairy people with other physical disabilities caused by a genetic disorder. You can quite easily imagine these people being driven out of towns and villages in the past by superstitious people who were ignorant of their condition and frightened by it. Left to survive in the countryside and woodlands alone, they would avoid contact with other humans and live fairly basic feral lives. They might have come into the villages during the night to steal food. The people of the villages and towns would forget they existed until the lighter nights around the full moon exposed them. Harvests were always made under the full moon because you had longer to work in the fields, so more villagers would be out later than usual. It isn't a coincidence then that the Autumn Harvest moon is the time when humans supposedly run the greatest risk of meeting werewolves, nor that this coincides with Halloween. There is also strong evidence that the full moon effects our brain activity. There are statistically significant increases in hospital admissions during the full moon. So, 'lunatics' probably also have some basis in fact too.