Werewolf sensory and communication issues
Sep. 6th, 2019 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was thinking about werewolves (still)
and a lot of stories concentrate on them 'learning control'
but way way fewer break down why they might be having issues in the first place.
Which varies of course, since Our Werewolves Are Different, sometimes even from episode to episode.
But I'm thinking of Buffy style werewolves where they get a wolf face (sometimes) and lose their words and have claw hands and like major sensory sensitivity.
And everyone runs away from them. And they follow.
But like, in Sunnydale, running when you don't know why is probably a survival skill?
Like, pack is running and screaming, oh shit, better join in.
So there can be room for miscommunication there.
And it's incredibly frustrating when you lose your words. And frightening. I mean it has been ages since I got so overwhelm I couldn't sort out what I was seeing and hearing, but it's a thing that happens, and then it's just... ball of misery time until brain catches up. And imagine if all your senses just got way more acute? And how you prioritise them changes too, smell jumps the queue and you don't have practice or vocabulary for that unless you're, like, really into candles or perfume or gardens, maybe. But just like, boom, whole sensory channel through of new and urgent. And to lose conversations because there's too much input, that's, like, the most isolating experience. Everyone around you is being a fully interactive human, you're just... wishing the damn refrigerator would shut up and the coffee machine stop Doing That and maybe there would be turn taking around here? Or less football and more... contrast, between near and far noise. Or just, anything that might make words make sense again. But no. You get random snippets like a radio lost between channels, and maybe if lucky retain enough words to decode them.
And if you can't read neither? Isolation and random input, and then humans will human at you, and you have lost all the channels that would tell you why.
I mean body language is very species specific so either werewolves get a new upload of what body should be doing or they're, like, waaaay confused, about their new configuration or their old one or both.
Full shift wolves probably have weird body language.
I mean even dog body language is weirdly human inflected, like we gave them an accent. And sometimes anxiety.
So I've been navigating my shifting language filters for A While now, but imagine you go from neurotypical to sensory overload nonverbal in one overwhelming moment.
New wolves would have zero strategy for that. They wouldn't be likely to have a framework to understand where the problem is at. They're just all the way up to meltdown and it's completely new to them.
Which is obviously not an excuse for biting people, but it do seem like a reasons.
Like if you're a human shaped human with words and culture and understanding of social interactions, you have so many options. Even without words there are interaction scripts that work pretty good. I order second drinks at the pub by take empty to bar and point, that works for me. But a werewolf? Probably is not having a 'same again' problem, and is unlikely to be seen as one side of a social script even if they try to start one.
Whatever their problem is, their ability to communicate it is pretty much down to Howl or Grrr.
It is difficult to be diplomatic like that.
And this is a new wolf, not a working partner with training in communication while dog. They've probably not got a backup plan for this contingency. They're just bumped right back to Feel Bad Make Big Noise.
And whatever variety of Bad they are feeling, there are very few possibilities where that's going to solve it for them.
So like, framing it as a question of Control makes some sense, everyone has to do their half. But it makes it all the werewolf's problem? And it's a crappy toolkit. They can do Control and try real hard to act like a human, but that doesn't actually address any of their not human problems?
So I guess I want to social model werewolf issues.
Like, obviously they should not bite people, but people should maybe work on understanding why the wolf felt that was an option? Because everyone is having a bad day here and the one with the words and more options could do some helping.
I know I've harped on this one before, with the full transformation fics, like when waking up as a puppy. Fic treats them as puppy, but they just lost speech and fine motor skills, they need adapted interfaces and some communication software. Said that a bunch.
But werewolves might be in the same corner?
Obviously sometimes they just have bitey teeth and language skills both at once. That's probably easier. Different set of problems there.
But there's still some stuff they are dealing with where the people around them could work on lowering the bar, rather than expecting them to straighten up.
So that's been bothering me.
and a lot of stories concentrate on them 'learning control'
but way way fewer break down why they might be having issues in the first place.
Which varies of course, since Our Werewolves Are Different, sometimes even from episode to episode.
But I'm thinking of Buffy style werewolves where they get a wolf face (sometimes) and lose their words and have claw hands and like major sensory sensitivity.
And everyone runs away from them. And they follow.
But like, in Sunnydale, running when you don't know why is probably a survival skill?
Like, pack is running and screaming, oh shit, better join in.
So there can be room for miscommunication there.
And it's incredibly frustrating when you lose your words. And frightening. I mean it has been ages since I got so overwhelm I couldn't sort out what I was seeing and hearing, but it's a thing that happens, and then it's just... ball of misery time until brain catches up. And imagine if all your senses just got way more acute? And how you prioritise them changes too, smell jumps the queue and you don't have practice or vocabulary for that unless you're, like, really into candles or perfume or gardens, maybe. But just like, boom, whole sensory channel through of new and urgent. And to lose conversations because there's too much input, that's, like, the most isolating experience. Everyone around you is being a fully interactive human, you're just... wishing the damn refrigerator would shut up and the coffee machine stop Doing That and maybe there would be turn taking around here? Or less football and more... contrast, between near and far noise. Or just, anything that might make words make sense again. But no. You get random snippets like a radio lost between channels, and maybe if lucky retain enough words to decode them.
And if you can't read neither? Isolation and random input, and then humans will human at you, and you have lost all the channels that would tell you why.
I mean body language is very species specific so either werewolves get a new upload of what body should be doing or they're, like, waaaay confused, about their new configuration or their old one or both.
Full shift wolves probably have weird body language.
I mean even dog body language is weirdly human inflected, like we gave them an accent. And sometimes anxiety.
So I've been navigating my shifting language filters for A While now, but imagine you go from neurotypical to sensory overload nonverbal in one overwhelming moment.
New wolves would have zero strategy for that. They wouldn't be likely to have a framework to understand where the problem is at. They're just all the way up to meltdown and it's completely new to them.
Which is obviously not an excuse for biting people, but it do seem like a reasons.
Like if you're a human shaped human with words and culture and understanding of social interactions, you have so many options. Even without words there are interaction scripts that work pretty good. I order second drinks at the pub by take empty to bar and point, that works for me. But a werewolf? Probably is not having a 'same again' problem, and is unlikely to be seen as one side of a social script even if they try to start one.
Whatever their problem is, their ability to communicate it is pretty much down to Howl or Grrr.
It is difficult to be diplomatic like that.
And this is a new wolf, not a working partner with training in communication while dog. They've probably not got a backup plan for this contingency. They're just bumped right back to Feel Bad Make Big Noise.
And whatever variety of Bad they are feeling, there are very few possibilities where that's going to solve it for them.
So like, framing it as a question of Control makes some sense, everyone has to do their half. But it makes it all the werewolf's problem? And it's a crappy toolkit. They can do Control and try real hard to act like a human, but that doesn't actually address any of their not human problems?
So I guess I want to social model werewolf issues.
Like, obviously they should not bite people, but people should maybe work on understanding why the wolf felt that was an option? Because everyone is having a bad day here and the one with the words and more options could do some helping.
I know I've harped on this one before, with the full transformation fics, like when waking up as a puppy. Fic treats them as puppy, but they just lost speech and fine motor skills, they need adapted interfaces and some communication software. Said that a bunch.
But werewolves might be in the same corner?
Obviously sometimes they just have bitey teeth and language skills both at once. That's probably easier. Different set of problems there.
But there's still some stuff they are dealing with where the people around them could work on lowering the bar, rather than expecting them to straighten up.
So that's been bothering me.
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Date: 2019-09-07 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-07 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-08 09:31 pm (UTC)https://justhuman.dreamwidth.org/584985.html