Episode 582 - The Werewolf of Ponkert - Part 1

It clearly is, but not the sad ones? Please?

Grackles

About that ”who ever wrote a werewolf story from the perspective of the wolf”: somebody who who did it really well was Ursula Le Guin, in _The Wife's Story_ - a very short story with a pretty dark (and sad) twist. Isn't it time you pick up some of her writing?

"Appealing to the Robin Hood aspect... How is it though that they become rich, now they've become what they beheld?" Ah, the good ol' "Dennis Moore Paradox" https://youtu.be/rJo3wwRCdhU

The 'Master' makes it sound like some sorta Werewolfey, get rich quick, MLM scheme.

Ponkert is like something Lord Dunsany would come up with.

Perre be like, “You’re gonna promote my place when you travel around right?” Narrator: “… yeah. Sure.” Perre: “Oh good, I really need the money.” Narrator: “So… how about another bottle of wine?”

Michelle Elbert

Oh, Chris, did you really say that Vlad's ferocious defense gave the wolves pause? They are wolves; they already have paws! Then Chad said he went out bear foot! Surely wolf foot!

Peter Larsen

I tried to read one of his Merlin books back in high school but couldn't get into it. It had a cool cover with a fire-breathing swan.

Ben Gilbert

I was reminded of the scene in Willa Cather's My Antonia where their Russian neighbors recount why they had to leave Russia. The brothers were groomsmen at a midwinter wedding. Afterwards the wedding party was returning to their own villages when they were attacked by a big pack of wolves. When outrunning them seemed hopeless one brother pushed the groom off the sledge and threw the bride overboard to distract them.

Ben Gilbert

Nothing to contribute, except to say I enjoyed this and am looking forward to more Werewolfuary

Jeremy Impson

This was downright delightful! I don't mind a slow burn, but sometimes I want a flamethrower set to full moon inferno. So far this is headed in the right direction.

Excellent, I can't get enough werewolves. I delight in all manner of lycanthropes. All manner of therianthropes, in fact! I'm very glad you guys keep finding more werewolf stories. I never really believed you'd found them all anyway. This is shaping up to be a good one, too. Love the framing device. No one outside of Massachusetts can ever correctly pronounce the names of towns in Massachusetts, so I'm not picking on you Chad, but the "A" in Athol is pronounced like the "a" in "axe." So the town's name sounds sort of like "asshole," as in someone who corrects a stranger's pronunciation of a non-standard proper noun.

Man, I was super into this one! I'm torn between wanting the whole story this week and having something to look forward to for next week :) Also I think business class is kind of that in between you're looking for. A bit more pricey than coach, but not so much as first class. People seem to assume you're there because you need to arrive at your destination ready to do business-y things, rather than that you're some rich asshole. I sprung for business class on a train trip once, it was pretty nice.

When you mentioned the name Wladislaw Brenryk, I said to myself "wait, that's from a Lovecraft story... isn't it?" I had a memory of Rachel's grandmother Agnes reading that name. So I went and looked it up, and I was right! Well, sort of. I assume it was actually HPL (and Barlow) making a reference to this story, since the Lovecraft story I found it in was "The Battle that Ended the Century." The line from the first paragraph is "Cream-puffs were inattentively vended by Wladislaw Brenryk..." All credit to your show Chris and Chad; if Agnes hadn't read that, there's no way that I ever would have remembered it (I certainly didn't go read that story myself!)

Ponkert is a very silly word. I was looking for the sequel, The Werewolf's Daughter, and found this Slovakian folktale: https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/wolfdaughter.html

Steve

Sweet. I’ve been jonesin’ for some werewolf yarns. Especially where there’s no ambiguity- just changing and eating. I’ll have to track down a copy; it’s a keepah!

Happy Febr-aroooo-ary!

Brian J