Second Place
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0First place isn’t the best if you don’t get to live to enjoy it. Of course, it’s the bronze medalists that really get screwed…poor bastards.
And yes, I’m aware that gold medals are actually mostly silver! Unfortunately, nit-picking doesn’t make for fun jokes haha
Werewolves (in one form or another) have been around for almost as long as the Olympic games themselves. Tales of humans becoming wolf-like monsters have been recorded from the days of ancient Greece, though it’s fair to say they’ve evolved a great deal since those times. Back then, there were stories of a village in Scythia where the people all became wolves for a few days every year. Ovid, drawing from his Greek sources tells the story of the despicable Lycaon who attempts to serve human flesh to Zeus and becomes cursed by the god for his crime, doomed to wander the world as a wolf. There are other tales from Ovid of folk in the vicinity of Arcadia also becoming wolves and prowling the woods at night, looking for a meal, perhaps an ancient bronze medalist!
It’s interesting to note that the weakness to silver, particularly silver bullets, we now ascribe to werewolves was never a part of the original lore. Neither the ancient Greek tales of shapeshifting wolf-people nor the European folk legends that became proper werewolves mention it. In fact, it wasn’t until the 19th century that such a thing officially entered the record. At first it was silver weapons, then silver bullets, and now modern fiction authors often describe werewolves as having a rather terrible allergy to silver material of any kind.
Of course, if you don’t have silver handy and you’re in desperate need of some protection from werewolves (which, let’s be honest, is a common occurrence) here are some (thoroughly untested) strategies that might help (do not attempt):
1) Assert your dominance. The werewolf must know that YOU are the leader. Glare at the werewolf, puff out your breast, and take a wide stance. If the werewolf hasn’t yet eaten you, you’re probably alright.
2) Attempt to teach the werewolf some basic commands. Common werewolf commands are “Stop.” “Don’t eat me.” and “No, seriously, why are you eating me? Don’t do that!”
3) Keep dog treats on your person at all times. If a werewolf attacks, throw the dog treat at another person and hope the werewolf eats them instead. While it is distracted, make your escape.
4) Become good friends with that Dog Whisperer fellow. Maybe his sorcery would work on werewolves.
If all else fails, you can train for years and years, become star athlete, join an Olympic team and place second in the event of your choice, obtaining a silver medal and lifelong protection from werewolves.
Or I guess you could just carry around some proper silverware…
You know, whatever works!
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Discussion (28) ¬
Poor bronze medalists…
But the gold medals have a large amount of silver in them too. What kind of purity do you need to safeguard your neck from werewolves?
Would it be so bad to not be attacked by werewolves at the Olympics? If a pack of werewolves attacked the Olympics, I imagine hundreds would be infected. By the second consecutive full moon half of London would be lycanthropes. People would return home during the day, hiding their wolfism, to virtually every country on earth. You would be a minority in a lupine world empire.
That would be AWESOME!
Though I suppose silver prices would skyrocket even more.
Oh that reminds me… Theodore Gray
(Chemist, known for periodictabletable.com…and articles in PopSci.)
did a test to see if it’s even possible to make & use a silver bullet…
(Linky thing to the article…
http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/PopularScience/2005/07/1/index.html)
It’s plausible that it (silver) would make a decent bullet…. though the cost
would be the prohibitive part…
Back to topic….. (sort of)
The ̶G̶r̶e̶e̶k̶s̶ ̶(ancients)i̶n̶v̶e̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ (discovered a naturally occurring)
alloy of silver and gold. (They called it electrum)…
Most notably they used it for coinage…
(another link…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrum)
…
there I go again… straying from topic….
I better leave now then….
Somehow I knew you’d be pleased by this.
Nice link…
Why ya think that?
Nah, I know why…
and all I have to say is:
Werewolves are just you silly humans wanting to be wolves so bad!
(Runs of howling in laughter)
Gold medals are 90% Silver.
By chance after reading this I heard a segment on NPR (in USA) about how there is a consistent pattern of Silver winners being less happy than Bronze. (Apparently something vaguely like Silver looking askance at Gold thinking ‘Damn! Damn!’ and Bronze looking at the rest of the field, who got nothing, and thinking ‘Nyaa! Nyaa!’)
So don’s pity the Bronze holders, at least they’ll die happy.
And anyway any werewolf with any sense is gonna go for the spectators! There are more of them and moreover they will tend to be slower on their feet and much fleshier and less stringy than the athletes.
Erratum: for don’s read don’t throughout (I have nothing against Oxbridge scholars and usually don’t—or don’s for that matter—do grocers apostrophe’s.
I think the “silver” thing must have popped up around the same time as the “full moon” part of the story. I recall reading somewhere that the reason silver is supposed to have power over werewolves is because the moon looks like silver, so at that point of the folklore’s development silver becomes “werewolf Kryptonite”…
“modern fiction authors often describe werewolves as having a rather terrible allergy to silver material of any kind.”
Vampires have to deal with the same silliness when it comes to garlic. Another “I recall reading somewhere” is the actual reason why vampires are said to hate garlic.
It’s because it stinks.
Vampires are supposed to have highly acute senses, so they don’t like strong odors, bright lights, or loud noises.
Wesley Snipes could probably have skipped all the “injecting vampires with garlic” absurdity and just doused himself with an excess of “Axe Body Spray®” to keep vampires away in “Blade”.
Ah yes, but by that logic werewolves could be repelled by garlic too,
after all wolves (and thus werewolves) have a very good sense of smell.
As for the Moon/silver relation bit….
that is actually pretty close.
Silver has represented the Moon for quite some time,
(where as gold represents the Sun)…
The link between werewolves and the moon is most likely based
on humans seeing/hearing wolves howling “at” the Moon.
Though wolves don’t actually howl “at” the Moon,
the howling severs other purposes… but I digress a bit.
Anyways back to the silver/ Moon relation,
I’m not entirely sure why silver would be considered an allergy,
I mean it represents the Moon, which (in modern tales) causes the werewolf to transform from human…
The only way I could see silver actually affecting the werewolf,
is by reminding the werewolf of the Moon (and thus of the transformation)…
Though it is plausible that the silver could counteract the Moon effect,
thus transforming the werewolf back into human form.
My personal take is simply because silver represents purity, and so causes silver to burn the unholy, impure creatures of the night.
I’m the princess of the night…
…so of course they run in fright…
I don’t think you understand,
I bring darkness to their land…
Opps sorry….
Unholy? Impure?
How so?
According to whom?
But what causes them to flee-
Calypso, as to what causes them to flee?
Must be my supremacy!
…
(Sorry, now you’ve got that song stuck back in my head)
…
Let’s just say I have no reasons to like humans,
no reason to help them either.
“Ah yes, but by that logic werewolves could be repelled by garlic too,
after all wolves (and thus werewolves) have a very good sense of smell.”
Not necessarily – it would depend on whether they dislike the scent or not – or so I would assume. I think the more recent versions of the “vampire” legend are supposed to have “refined” tastes, whereas werewolves are assumed to be “savage” and therefore don’t care.
Also…”logic”? Applied to medieval/Victorian legends about vampires and werewolves? Where’s the fun in that?
RE: the allergy thing, I think it’s just part of the general movement in modern werewolf/vampire fiction to inject science into the legends.
People are more scientifically aware these days, both in the sense that science knows more about how stuff works, and that laymen are more aware both that such knowledge exists and that is in no small part the reason why modern life is different and more sophisticated than it was back then. Even if they don’t understand the science, they still know it’s got a better historical track record than magic, so in theory mixing a bit of science with your magic gives the magic a boost in effectiveness or verisimilitude.
Meanwhile, with generations of authors and filmmakers and such using the “silver is werewolves kryptonite” as a given without acknowledging (or knowing or caring about) the original reasons, most readers/viewers now have no idea why silver is bad for werewolves (or garlic for vampires), it just is. That knowledge has simply become lost in pop culture.
As a result, modern authors may legitimately find themselves wondering “yes, we know silver is bad for werewolves, but WHY?”, and because they’re trying to distinguish themselves, or because they want their werewolves(/vampires) to be a virus instead of a magical curse, they try to invent a scientific reason instead of looking up the original. An allergy is a pretty straightforward solution, because everybody already knows about allergies. No added symbolic reasoning or technobabble is needed, you just say “because allergies”, and the audience goes “aaaahhh, that makes sense then”.
Of course it isn’t actually realistic, because allergies don’t produce the sort of effects seen in werewolf/vampire movies (they don’t make people melt or explode or catch fire, and when they are lethal it’s not instantaneously so), but then it isn’t actually about actual realism: it’s about verisimilitude. As long as the audience’s emotions accept it, it doesn’t matter what their brains think. After all, viruses can’t remotely do most of the crap attributed to them in these movies/books either, and in fact the word “virus” itself has undergone a weird colloquial mutation in the last ten years or so to mean “anything contagious” regardless of whether it’s actually implied to be (or even explicitly stated not to be) a virus.
God dammit, why are these things always so much bigger on the page then they are in my head (or in the wee text box).
Don’t worry!
I oft’ do that too!
Anyways, I agree with you.
You have a very valid point and explanation.
The main question though still is how (or what) was the original reason,
of which, in some cases, we may never know…
It’d suck if you spontaneously combusted or something when exposed to common foods like peanuts or materials like latex. People with allergies would be extinct.
The..the face of the silver medalist in the first panel is just so sad. “I could have tried a little harder…I could have been top!” It’s just so “so close and yet so far.”
Awoooo!
Werewolves in London.
Awoooooooo!
Awww, son of a… It took me -way- too long to figure out the punchline. I just kept thinking, “But the gold medalist runners will still outpace the silver medalists when fleeing a werewolf attack.”
How embarassing for me. >_<
Today I learned that werewolves, when traveling together, wear matching cut off jean shorts.
Hmm, interesting, I only just noticed that once you pointed that out!
God, I love this comic and its wacky post-panel analysis.
The third panel is fantastic!