Hhn. Looking back over my recent entries, the
meme:anything else ratio is kinda high.
The main reason for this is university work, both thesis and readings (how insane is it to have to do two additional subjects with fat weekly readings and other assignments
when we're meant to be writing a thesis? *muttered imprecations*). And I really don't think much else will be happening during the next three months - other than writing/critical thinking burnout, naturally (I think
these two
images from
Despair, Inc. cover the general forecast ;)...).
So I just thought I'd post one of the thoughts I had during thesis-type writing:
You become a werewolf by getting bitten, right?
Well, that particular part of werewolf lore didn't appear until about the late 19th or early 20th century (and was subsequently popularised in films such as
The Wolf Man). About the time that Louis Pasteur was working on a vaccine for rabies, and real virology was just getting started. So if you consider that the idea that being bitten by an animal could pass its contagion on to you gained a foothold in popular understanding around this time, then werewolves aren't just a creature of the supernatural; they're creatures of science, too.
Thought that was an interesting idea. And it certainly goes some way in explaining why science keeps popping up in werewolf films.
(Exactly where the "get bitten=turn into werewolf" thing came from has been bothering me. An association between werewolves and the moon is mentioned, I think, by a Medieval monk (need to check my sources); vulnerability to silver weapons (specifically silver bullets, and usually "inherited silver") appears in many German werewolf stories; but no folklore mentions anything about this contagious curse. Hence the theoretical link to Pasteur.)
And I obviously need to makes me some werewolf thesis icons.