“There is it is true, a certain sexual element associated with the werewolf, although it does not approach the sado-erotic subtlety of the vampire. The werewolf is a crude and aggressive rapist; the vampire is a Don Juan among demons.” —“The Werewolf Delusion”, Ian Woodward, Paddington Press, 1978
While werewolves do seem to be gaining traction, it does seem that writers have often felt more drawn to vampires. Perhaps it’s because vampires have often been seen as cold and sterile while werewolves have the reputation of being elemental and slightly more feral. Werewolves are messy creatures of flesh and blood while vampires have found a way to cheat death. Dainty fangs versus snapping maws; frost versus flame.
*sits back and wonders who will dominate comments: Richard or Jacob, Edward or Jean Claude*
Comments
...that's why I fell for--the Leader of the Pack! AAAAOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!
But I wanna knooooow for sure!
The quote, I feel, is crap. It's crap because there isn't actually anything necessarily rapelicious about werewolf stories; in fact, they tend much more towards the internal; i.e. "Man versus his bestial nature."
There were a large number of werewolf, and of course, vampire books too.
BTW I was looking for King of Sword and Sky. Wasn't there.
To your dominate comments query: I prefer Jacob to Richard, and Jean Claude to Edward. My favorite werewolf however, is Jason Shulyer. So glad we got to see more Jason in the new book.
I also think that authors find it easier to write about cold and political creatures like vampires than werewolves, who at least have to have some fuzzy action sequences as wolves. Filmish action in books is difficult to do.
Hence vampires are more attractive to authors. At least I think that's part of it.
And I agree with the poster who chose Jason Schuyler as their favorite. He's infinitely cooler than all the rest.
I think one of the main reasons writers have been drawn to vampires is that Bram Stoker and Anne Rice had phenomenal success. Same reason there are so many more "boy wizard" stories right now than there used to be. Why do we keep lumping vampires and werewolves together? White Wolf games. As to the specific vampire fascination, there's just more folklore about vampires, as said above, they can talk and be sinister at the same time, and they take less special effects in movies. Werewolves.... they're normal and then they're wolves.
I'm mostly annoyed that all monsters are now put through the "erotic" lens. Maybe they're just scary and will kill you.
ETA: Wait, I have more to say about this. The vampire was the perfect Victorian lover because he couldn't get you pregnant and was always gone before sunrise. The werewolf may be a better choice for the 21st century, when sex has perhaps gotten a bit too civilized. Those who have needed to discuss the details of safer sex rules before going further than heavy making out will know what I mean by this. :) And I'm speaking as someone who is sex-positive and a former safe sex educator.
Edited at 2008-09-30 12:55 pm (UTC)
Of course, werewolves are pretty much worse since sexuality is much more overt there but I don't think Victorians saw vampires as perfect lovers. They're seductive but they're still bad guys, especially in Victorian literature, where their main goal was to murder the innocence of young maidens :P
I really have no love for one over the other myself (even though I do prefer Hamilton's writing style over Meyer's)
As for more vampires than werewolves? I read a LOT of YA lit (as in, I'm going back to school next fall to get my PhD in it) and you tend to see a lot more vampire oriented novels (Peeps by Scott Westerfield, Of course the twilight series along with countless others that I can't think of off the top of my head). I haven't read a lot of them so I don't know how often werewolves are incorperated into those stories, but just browse through the YA lit section of your bookstore and I bet at least a third of them will be Vampire based. Whereas the only book that I can think of that is completely werewolf oriented in YA lit (again, off the top of my head. There is a vast margin for me being wrong here) is Blood & Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause. I think a large part of that is because a lot of YA books tend to address the subject of budding sexuality in teenagers and since Vampires have been so sexualized possibly because of this perfection that they have, that may be why they appear so often in the genre.
I am a lot less versed in Adult fiction (not that I don't read it, I do, I just tend to steer away from the vampire/werewolf novels) so my theory may not hole up as well when applied in other genres but I just thought that it was interesting to point out how frequently it appears in the literature that is marketed to teenagers.