(no subject)

[skygiants]

genarti has been telling me for a while now to read How to Be a Werewolf, a long-running webcomic of the old school that started in ... 2015 it seems?

Anyway, by happenstance, I finally got around to it right as it landed its first romantic denouement in nearly nine years and then went on its first hiatus in ditto, so a good time for it if any of you want to do likewise!

The comic's A-plot involves our werewolf heroine Malaya [bitten as a child, stressed by the experience] gaining self-confidence and overcoming werewolf-related social anxiety and agoraphobia after Elias, another werewolf comes into town and offers to mentor her in Werewolf Skills, Culture, And Bureaucracy. B-plots include a highly dramatic rogue witch situation, various werewolf territory disputes [hence the bureaucracy], Malaya's favorite coworker's witch gap year experience, and Eli's big crush on Malaya's chill non-werewolf brother Vincent, who is busy with normal college things and largely uninvolved in the witch and werewolf drama except when someone kidnaps him about it.

(Over the years I have gathered that Vincent is most people's favorite and I am not immune; he has filled me with appreciation once again for the particular type of fictional guy who is Not part of the core protag group and is broadly leading his own life, except when he gets yanked into the narrative solely by virtue of being Somebody's Sibling. I say 'guy' because most of the examples I can think of for this right now are brothers -- little sisters by contrast tend to enthusiastically worm their way into the adventure despite the fact that nobody wants them there, which is also a delight but a very different energy -- but I would love to be proven wrong on this! Or indeed just hear about any examples generally.)

Anyway. Werewolves! I had a lot of fun with this and thought it was quite charming; I was worried it might slide a bit into that coffeeshop-fanfic-where-everyone's-quippy-and-nice energy, but it does a good job I think of keeping enough high-drama supernatural Situations on the hopper to keep the plot chugging along while also keeping the focus primarily on the characters' personal journeys. Malaya Goes To The Mall, Gets Own Clothes For First Time Ever! gets more page space than any of the werewolf fights, and that feels correct and satisfying because Malaya gaining enough confidence to go to the mall is the A-plot and everything else is secondary.

Comments

[davidgillon]

2015? Can't be. Surely I haven't been reading it for that long!

Put me down as Team Marissa.

Also, how many webcomics have Filipina-American protagonists?

[skygiants]

I'm trying to remember when it first crossed my radar ... probably when genarti wrote a Yuletide fic for it, which appears to have been in 2018, so relatively early on!

[genarti]

I got into it when wakeupnew shouted at various friends about how good it was, which would've been that year, yeah! I wrote the Yuletide fic having fairly recently mainlined everything there was to date, when I was freshly full of feelings about all of them.

[jenett]

A friend (kiya) got me into reading it ... um. 2 years ago now? Maybe? I inhaled it too.

I really love the balance of things, and that there's "Ok, need to figure out werewolf stuff, but also I am running this coffee shop."

[skygiants]

Yeah, it feels like it hits a really happy middle-ground between plot-heavy and slice-of-life -- sort of like a good ongoing TV show.

[genarti]

I would also like to shout out the art! The art is SO GOOD, it brings me joy every panel. People have different body shapes and personal styles and body language and everything! And the colors are such fun too. Also it's remarkably consistent for something that's been running so long; full marks to Shawn Lenore for keeping herself on model.

(I would say Malaya and Vincent are co-favorites for me. I just love them both so much! Though Aubrey is a dark horse contender, depending on how things play out, and really I just love the ensemble. I realize this is a shockingly unpredictable statement from me, lover of responsible siblings and ensemble casts.)

[skygiants]

The colors are SO fun, it is really enjoyable to look at the spreads! And you're right, Lenore does a great job with both body language and face-expressiveness -- it's very pleasing to look at.

[lilysea]

Oooh, thank you for this post! ^_^

I used to read this webcomic

but gave up when there was a looooong break between updates

I'm delighted to see that it is updating again! ^_^

[skygiants]

Oh, I'm glad! Technically it is not updating again until October, but this seems to be a very planned short hiatus.

[passingbuzzards]

Ahh, you just have all the good comic recs this month! Stayed up so late last night reading this and just finished it today, this was so fun and good <3 What a wholesome bunch of werewolves and witches, I don’t think I even have a favorite, the whole cast is so genuinely likeable + interesting to follow (but Malaya is an amazing lead and I am totally rooting for her!). And agree that the story does a good job treading the line of being tonally light / light on the dire consequences without leaning so far into that as to lose narrative tension, I appreciated that it refrained from getting overly dark or exceedingly twee.

ALSO I love that the medium of comics means that the werewolf designs can 1) achieve their full Giant Wolf Monster Potential but also 2) be extremely cute on demand, 10/10, every panel of [giant wolf monster nervously knitting fingers together] is So Important,

(Man, though, I always wish that more webcomics took the route of updating in narratively coherent chunks rather than page-by-page, I find it to so impossible to follow the latter without losing the thread and then forgetting about them for years…)

[skygiants]

YES I love being two for two >:D I'm so glad you had a good time with this! YOU ARE SO RIGHT about the Many Modes of Werewolf, as genarti points out above Shawn Lenore has a real way with deeply endearing facial expressions and body language.

(but I have the same problem, I have never been able to consistently keep up with a daily/weekly/whatever ongoing webcomic for more than a few months at a time. One page is simply not satisfying! Give me a chunk to eat!)

[leaflemming]

Thanks for the rec -- I hadn't come across this but it's very much my sort of thing. Up to 2020 or so now & liking it a lot.

[skygiants]

Excellent, I'm so glad you're having a good time with it!

[superborb]

It feels weird that it's gendered, because I instinctively think of that sibling dynamic as driven primarily by age, but then all the examples I can think of fall into that pattern too!

[skygiants]

Yeah, I instinctively would have figured it was age-based too, but actually that doesn't seem to have that much to do with it even -- half of the brothers I can think of that hit this beat are younger siblings too!

[vass]

Thank you for the rec! I am now 351 pages into this, and I only started reading two days ago.

[skygiants]

EXCELLENT, I'm so glad this post is having such a high success rate >:D

[ninjapenguin]

Did I sit down to casually check this out and "accidentally" binge read the whole thing in two days? .... Maybe....

Now I just have to remember to check back in October

[skygiants]

yesss I love to hear it (though I too have to make a mental note to myself not to forget again in a few months!)

[genarti]

I follow the creator on tumblr, which is handy, because she posts a thumbnail every time there's a new page! Helps me remember to check it promptly. Though there's also something to be said for binging it in slightly larger chunks less often, so long as one remembers to do so. It's just pleasantly nostalgic for me to look at a webcomic on its dedicated site with its new page up once or twice a week; that's how I read a whole bunch of webcomics back in college.

[blotthis]

oooo thank you for this double rec!!!

[jazzfish]

Just spent this week archive-binging and it is indeed SO GOOD. Thank you!

Also, for those of us who use DW as their RSS reader, the comic feed is here: howtobeawerewolf_feed. (It's pointed at slightly the wrong place; I've put in a support ticket to update it.)