[Book Reviews] Werewolf Marines

[thewronghands]

Still way behind on book reviews (I have an entire list open in another tab), but these two books were so unusual that they deserve their own post. I spent a lot of last week babysitting *nix installs, which has long periods of waiting in it. I learned through Sherwood Smith's blog that her co-author on their recent book, the "Yes Gay YA" one,

Comments

[tylik]

"...or stupid fights for dominance which make me roll my eyes..."

Because werewolves must have the social dynamics of an amped up pack of chimpanzees!! (I find this offensive on multiple fronts.)

[thewronghands]

Heh. It is pretty Monkey Dance, now that you mention it. But I think a lot of the offputtingness is that it is so often literally a patriarchy story. MY MATE. MY LAND. I AM THE BESTEST FIGHTER. RAAR. And everyone else just kind of has to live with the results, which don't have a thing to do with anything beyond ego and might makes right. That's not a story I can get all vested in; too depressingly reminiscent of crappy things that actually happen. I want a different world than that.

[tylik]

Also, the alpha / beta whathaveyou dynamic that the overwhelming majority of werewolve pack dynamics seem to be predicated on is increasingly not considered to be a valid model of actual wolf behavior, but is, as I understand it, fairly close to how chimpanzee group dynamics are actually described. (Is this actually more accurate? No clue.)

I tend to find this most irritating when it intersects with societal models of masculinity, because most dominant = most desirable (and generally most possessive). And I usually want to start stabbing everyone involved about then. Well, okay, no, but I probably would if they tried to get any of it on me.

Seriously, I think in another few decades people are going to do their doctoral dissertations on negotiating femininity as viewed through the lens of paranormal romance. (And don't even get me started on vampire politics, which is often amazingly similar considering that it's supposed to be All Different And Stuff.)

[misslynx]

Yes! This is something that really aggravates me in werewolf fiction too. I could more or less cope with the non-stop alpha-beta-pack-hierarchy-rarr-rarr-rarr stuff back when I thought it was more or less a reflection of actual wolf behaviour - though I did wish that once in a while there might be a book where the protagonist and/or protagonist's love interest was NOT the alpha, or that other types of shape-changers than wolves might get a little more attention, in part so that we'd get some different kinds of social dynamics. But when I found out that that whole model is based on outdated research and doesn't really reflect how packs work at all, my tolerance for it dropped by a lot.

I was quite delighted when, some while back, author jimhines was contemplating writing a werewolf book and began by posting an open invitation in his LJ for fans to tell him what tropes, tendencies, etc. they found most annoying in werewolf fiction and never wanted to see again, so that he could avoid them. Would that more authors did that...

[thewronghands]

As below, anything you'd recommend for actual wolf behaviour? I'm probably ten years out of date.

There are also several wolf books now about how the hero is the alpha and the heroine is the super submissive omega and they have to figure out how to make that relationship work. Ugh ugh ugh. And, of course, almost never the other way around. (Anita Blake and Nathaniel, but that's all I can think of. And he's her add-on, not her primary.)

[lilairen]

One of the kids' movies (I think) has a preview for an animated cartoon with that plot, but it seems to be "loser wolfdude gets hot alpha" and thus Standard Romance Movie #2 plot rather than anything interesting.

(It's my understanding that the alpha/beta/omega dynamic is a roughly accurate description of wolf behaviour... in the zoo, with unrelated animals thrown together in territory that's too small for them! It's just the monkeys watching them thought that that was a reasonable model for what wolves are like in their native ranges, in their normal family groups....)

[thewronghands]

Oh arrrgh it drives me nuts when someone with nothing to recommend them inexplicably ends up partnered to an awesome person, and this is held up as an ideal of romance. So yeah, I'll skip that one too.

[miss_adventure]

A Society of Wolves: National parks and the Battle over the Wolf, Rick McIntyre
Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Eds.)
Wolves: A Wildlife Handbook, Kim Long
The New Wolves: The return of the Mexican Wolf to the American Southwest, Rick Bass (this is less behaviour-focussed, but an interesting read nonetheless)

[thewronghands]

Thank you! I should have known you'd have the book hookup!

[tylik]

Gotta plug the Jane Yellowrock books, if you haven't read them. Jane is a non standard shapeshifter (it's complicated, but her primary form is a mountain lion.) Also, in the rather complicated ways that her mountain lion nature influences her (and this is plot important, so I can't go into detail) while Jane has most recently been raised as Christian, her mountain lion self is, well, not a pack animal, and has absolutely no sense of monogamy. And neither of them are interested in being involved in someone else's dominance games

[thewronghands]

I have bought the first one; I will let you know what I think!

[thewronghands]

Huh, I haven't read anything more recently than ten years ago or so on actual wolf behaviour. Anything you'd recommend? I think Barry Lopez/Bernard Heinrich was sorta where I left off.

And yeah... I so would not want to date any of those super alpha superjerks. Even Anita Blake Richard was too irritating for me (even before LKH dumped his real life analogue and made his character a big jerk on purpose). One of the things I liked about these romances were that the male leads were perfectly reasonable guys that one might actually find attractive.

Heh. I liked some of the early books that would now be called paranormal romance, but at the time they were just seen as urban fantasy. I haven't liked most of the ones since, now that it's its own genre, for the same reasons as I haven't much liked romance-romance. Too much of the same unexamined yet stupid societal scripts that annoy me, this is not fun or sexy. Please do something different and creative.

[haikujaguar]

I still can't stand Richard, and am irritated that he still gets any screentime at all. -_-

[tylik]

Most of what I've seen has been articles online (usually: see random article, look up research its talking about to see if its representing it remotely accurtely) or department seminars. So, not really anything specific, but I'd be happy to pirate academic articles if you can't get at 'em.

Much of what I'm thinking of isn't technically paranormal romance, but carries some of the same tropes. The Kate Daniels books are supposed to be urban fantasy. And really, I like them fine excepting for Kate's boy toy. (They win the least sexy vampire ever prize, which is something.) I mean, let's go propagate toxic masculinity for fun and profit.