qwanderer aka Irene Wendy Wode

reasons why I, an AFAB autistic person with an eccentric relationship with food, relate to pop culture werewolfhood:

I’ve got the senses. I’m a metallic supertaster, hypersensitive to certain smells in perfume and the like, I get itchy very easily and have enough sensitivity in my fingertips to untangle almost any knot in hair, yarn, or whatever. But the two most werewolf-y are the high-pitched hearing sensitivity and my low-light visual acuity.

I can still hear the full range of mosquito ringtones even though I’m getting up into my mid-thirties, and I can’t bear to be around a CRT screen that’s on. I’ve been watching a show and clutched my ear and gone “Damn there’s a CRT on set and the mics are picking it up” and the next shot shows an old tube TV is on in the room. Sometimes I’ll just cringe and look up and go “well SOMEONE in the neighborhood just turned on a really old TV or something” also I’m pretty sure the neighbors a couple of blocks down have one of those sonic animal-deterrent things in their garden to stop the deer from nomming on it because DAMN I wouldn’t want to hang there either.

I often walk around places without turning on the lights because why waste energy, I can see well enough to do what I’m here for. I get a lot of people coming in and going “wtf why are you hanging out in the dark why don’t you turn on the light eyestrain blah blah blah” and I’m just like nah I’m good, didn’t care enough to turn it on, I’ve been reading in these lighting conditions for 20 years and my eyes are still fine so….

On the other hand, being a metallic supertaster can get pretty werewolfy, in my case, since generally using stainless steel silverware is fine, but if it’s genuine silver it tastes super funky and I just want it away from me kthx.

I’ve got the heightened body temperature and metabolism and I’m stronger than I look. I mean I’m big-boned, so I’ve always looked smaller than I am, and I’ve always had people going “omg do you have a sweater aren’t you cold.” Looking back there were a couple of instances in high school where I was gifted sweaters or sweatshirts were mysteriously left on my doorknob and that may have been because people thought I didn’t have any sweaters. In reality I was like “Oh wow cool I LOVE sweaters I COLLECT them I wish everywhere wasn’t always HEATED so I could actually keep one on a whole day without sweating all over it”

but since I realized that I do much better when eating a high-fat paleo diet (hunger is so distracting, I decided to eliminate it from my being) I’ve gotten a little smaller and a LOT more muscular and EVEN MORE furnace-like.

so

me, coming in from my 20-minute walk to work in freezing temperatures in my usual haphazard collection of layered hoodies: Hey

my coworkers: Did You Walk

me: yah?

my coworkers: Are You Okay

me: this is nothing, my dudes, did I tell you about the time I lived north of Chicago and walked to work everyday in February, I actually owned a jacket in those days

my coworkers: O_O

Later on:

My coworkers: do you not own a long sleeved shirt, seriously you are the only person in the store with bare elbows

me: my work hoodie is in the locker room if I need it but seriously, I might be working on the docks but the trucks left hours ago, the doors are closed, I’m on the warm end of the docks and the radiant heaters feel like they’re gonna melt my ears, plus I’m working up a sweat with these boxes

(the dock is still colder than the rest of the store, FTR)

Another day:

A Man: Oh wow I sort of feel weird getting you to do this for me

my AFAB self, hauling a small snowblower into the back of his SUV: why?

another point here is that a greasy paleo diet such as mine is a predator’s diet. I’m pretty comfy in the whole knowledge that I’m a predator. I prepare and eat many an animal. I’d probably hunt and clean them too if I had a bow.

(I type as I polish off a bowl of slightly-cheaty baked black soybeans for an early lunch *shrugs*)

I can also get a little reckless and shrug off accidents that would injure other people. I think this is actually a missing-social-cues thing - I never really found falling down that embarrassing, so at a certain point I decided that instead of trying to stop falling down, I would learn to fall down better. I’ve stopped rolling my ankles because I’ve learned to just let go and roll my whole self instead. When I trip and fall at other times, I know just how to react to incur the minimum damage.

It might also be an aware of/sensitive to touch information thing, too, because I usually do become consciously aware immediately if I’m about to fall or if something hurts, and I’m not sure how universal that is.

I might heal a little quicker than usual, too, but it’s hard to tell because I’ve never had a major injury with which to form a real benchmark.

I also relate to a lot of the dynamics of these things alienating werewolves from being quite human, when most people assume that they are human based on them looking human, and treat them as if certain untrue things follow from that. My natural behaviors are often just off enough that I get a lot of funny looks.

This is probably more of a general supernatural-universe sort of thing, but I have more herbal knowledge than the average person and often select herbal remedies when I can.

My hair also grows faster than average. So do my nails, and they’re strong. It takes a few weeks, but I’ve got the capacity to grow some pretty vicious claws.

Anyway, what else is true of werewolves? Ah, yes, physical and emotional changes once a month. Well, as both a uterus-haver and someone who has trouble sleeping when the moon is especially bright,

GPOY. that is me. I am a werewolf.