seanan_mcguire: (zombie)
[personal profile] seanan_mcguire
W is for WAHEELA.

There are no werewolves in upper Canada. The waheela ate them all. But when you're a cold-resistant therianthrope that can turn into a giant wolf-bear-hybrid-thing capable of throwing cars without expending any real effort, you can pretty much eat whatever the fuck you want. Including each other; waheela don't get along, and have a nasty tendency to turn cannibal when forced to co-exist for extended periods of time. Family groups are generally temporary, and exist only as long as they can fight the urge to eat each other. Female waheela will sometimes form close bonds with their children, and littermates occasionally feel affection toward one another, but that's about it as far as loving waheela families go.

Waheela are equally comfortable in both their forms, as they find both to have advantages. Wolf-bear-hybrid-things can take down moose, which helps to keep them fed, but human fingers are better at skinning and preparing meat. Many waheela, if not the majority, prefer their food cooked, and have even learned to tolerate each other for the sake of trading meals (I give you a haunch of moose, you give me some of that venison stew, everybody wins). There is no such thing as "the average waheela," because we've never been able to spend enough time with them to find out what the average waheela would look like. They are, for the most part, not aggressive toward humans, viewing them as somewhat sad, what with their inability to turn into giant walls of furry muscle. This attitude changes quickly once humans get out the guns.

Istas (last name unknown) is a waheela living in Manhattan, where she is an active, if somewhat nerve-wracking, part of the local Gothic Lolita community. She owns nineteen frilly parasols. Woe betide he who damages one of them.

Seriously.

Date: 2012-03-01 04:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com
It does, and oh, do the waheela get PISSED when you conflate the two.

Date: 2012-03-01 04:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stormsdotter.livejournal.com
Why am I not surprised? You put an amazing amount of detail into your worldbuilding, and I adore every minute of it.

Date: 2012-03-01 04:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tigertoy.livejournal.com
I don't think I ever heard the word Waheela until this post, so all my information is on this page, but I get the impression that they get pissed at pretty much everything.

Since the first thing you told me is that they ate all the werewolves in upper Canada, I start out strongly biased against the species, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it if you get around to spending time telling us about a Waheela who's a decent person at heart and has to deal with being a member of a generally despised species.

Date: 2012-03-01 05:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com
To be fair, werewolves are lycanthropes, waheela are therianthropes; this was them practicing quarantine on something that was really quite bad for the local ecology. They were helping!

Date: 2012-03-01 05:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tigertoy.livejournal.com
I think this is a matter of point of view. Some would argue that the reason for having a local ecology is to support the local werewolf population.

(By the way, the way you use "lycanthropes" and "therianthropes" seems to imply that you mean them to be separate groups. I thought that therianthropes were the general group of shapeshifters that go between a human and an animal form, so lycanthropes would be a proper subset of therianthropes. So maybe you mean something different by those words, and knowing what you meant would make it make more sense to me.)

Date: 2012-03-01 06:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com
In this particular world, therianthropes shapeshift naturally, either via magic or via biology we do not yet understand. Lycanthropes have been infected with something.

Date: 2012-03-01 07:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tigertoy.livejournal.com
OK, that makes it clearer. (I would tend to disagree with the Waheelas' implied philosophical position that a condition being passed by heredity makes it morally superior to it being passed some other way. But still and all, I think what really counts is whether you like werewolves or not.)

Date: 2012-03-01 07:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com
Their position isn't "we are morally superior," it's "we don't kill all the humans and leave their bits strewn around to convince other humans that it was normal wolves and get them killed, too, because we're uncontrollably feral during that time of the month."

January 2024

S M T W T F S
 123456
7 8 910111213
14151617 181920
21222324 252627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 20th, 2025 08:02 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios