Today’s topic comes from Angel Martinez: “Traditional shifters and why people have forgotten them”.
By traditional shifters, I’m guessing she means werewolves and the like – creatures that appeared in films and novels before the last 10-20 years?
I love a good werewolf tale as much as anyone else, and remember the days before Teen Wolf and Twilight when werewolves were something to fear, not objects for teenaged (and adult) lust. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. :)
I remember when I first saw An American Werewolf in London. I must have been close t0 16 at the time, and that film scared the crap out of me. In a lot of ways, it paralleled the common wisdom about gays at the time – if you became a werewolf (gay), you were a social outcast who was shunned by society and ultimately doomed.
And in today’s society, both are more accepted (albeit one only in fiction).
So here are my questions today. What would you define as a “traditional shifter”? How were shifter stories from 20, 30, 40 years ago different from today? And should we stage a revival?