Werewolf

Since the dawn of the term “monstrosity,” queerness has been interwoven with the concept of disruptive, hybrid identities — identities par for the course in paranormal stories. There is a tight connection visible through the portrayal of the werewolf, a vilified creature in a futile fight with their own physical reality, which will often ostracize them from “normal” society. Although it may not be as blatant to those outside the LGBTQ+ community, werewolves have served as inspiration for adaptive and radical fanworks within queer representation due to the similarities in experience. In essence, queerness and lycanthropy mirror one another on three main fronts — the struggle with physical reality, the repudiation from greater society and the shame associated with the “monstrosity” ascribed by societal norms.

In recent years, we have seen more of an assimilation culture occur in queer media whereby queer stories are injected into traditionally heteronormative plots. Rules like the Hays Code, which prohibited the portrayal of queerness in films and shows between the 1930s and 1950s, made clearly queer stories almost impossible to produce