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Since this thread is superior to zombies’ thread anyway, might as well pose this related question here.

Recently I was asked to ask "my little internet minions" how the whole werewolf transformation bit might work if the werewolf was in space. Meaning, if the werewolf is in a spaceship and the moon is in full view does he transform or hell if he's ON the moon, does he just stay in permawolf mode?

I suppose another related question would be if vampires still melt into sludge if they're flying about in space and the sun is in view.

Ha, I'm surprised anyone on a CYOA site would even need to ask that space vampire question...

ADMIN EDIT: Had to replace the pic, the really large one was doing something weird with the forum posting.

I didn't read that one, though I remember seeing some Buck Rogers episode with a space vampire that I think died due to Buck flying the ship near a star and pulling the window shutters up.

Anyway, I figured I'd throw in the vamp one to see if anyone had an opinion on it too, the werewolf one was the more pressing question.

The cover I linked in my original post this morning was to a different book in the series... which shows the space vampire being killed when you raise the blinds to reveal the sun outside the spaceship. If I remember the story correctly, the space vampires were aliens who otherwise looked and behaved more or less like traditional vampires.

As for the space werewolf thing... I would further ask if it's only Earth's moon that causes problems, or can it be any moon? Jupiter, after all, has 79 moons. That could be an interesting scenario...

I'm picturing like these tatty venetian trailer park blinds installed in a spaceship now, and our hero desperately diving for the string.

Let's see if this version works better...

Nope, it didn't, so just click the link.

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1539617362l/191052._SY475_.jpg

I like Mizal's version.

By any chance, would that spaceship look like a Winnebago?

I'm pretty sure Choose Your Own Adventure books are from the 1990s, but mixing genres like that is such a 1970s/early 1980s thing to do. Even the artwork is mostly 1970s. All that's missing is a scantily clad woman in a cowboy hat with ginormous breasteses.

CYOA books got their start in the 70s

All I remember about that one is accidentally getting a small scratch that made vampires aware that humans were full of blood. So that would imply they weren't even 'real' vampires to begin with, just a bunch of aliens. Even if they had sensitivity to sunlight at all it wouldn't have been for the usual reasons.

If you think about it, it has to be some quality of the moon interacting with reflected sunlight that causes the transformation. So a werewolf is safe if he keeps to the dark side of it.

Little known fact: if you have a chunk of moonrock and touch someone with lycanthropy with it while outside on a bright sunny day, they'll start sprouting hair. This is a harmless, reliable test for werewolves and if I could just get one I could stop shooting everyone I suspected in the heart with a silver bullet.

No need for a TL;DR, the last paragraph is the most important one.

I feel like it has more to do with the symbolism of the moon than the actual physical implications of the moon itself. The sun is viewed as, like, a purgative thing that banishes or at least reveals the truth of evil or magic and shit, which is why sunlight harms vampires but moonlight and warmth doesn't. You could argue it's the UV Light that makes sunlight different from moonlight if you're an early 2000s movie doing an edgy 'scientific' take. 

Of course, the obvious issue with that is that's kind of boring on its own, and it's obviously a magical thing anyway since UV Light doesn't make regular corpses burst into flames, and lightbulbs that don't give off UV also don't cause werewolves to transform. Unless it's like a super subtle medical effect, (Wear these special sunglasses while you're on the computer. Studies show that the harmful amounts of blue light cause werewolf transformations 50% more often over a period of just 6 months!) which is only gonna be fun if you're Terry Pratchett.

So, the real question we have to answer is, what makes a full moon any different from other phases of the moon? If we're going by the logic that night is full of darkness, evil, and terrors, surely the new moon would be when werewolves transform? We can assume a few possible reasons.

1. Wolves are traditionally assumed to howl at the moon, so if a dude had a wolf inside him, it would be brought out when the moon's just so big that he can't help but howl at it.

2. The moon, like the sun, illuminates dirty evil night-time deeds, but, unlike 'universal' light, not the people who do them. Vampires can't stand the sun because they're evil all the time, but werewolves can because they're only wolves some of the time.

3. Werewolves are analogous to serial killers, who want to make a statement or a spectacle, so their violent half chooses the brightest night to unleash their gory rage.

If any one of these are true, a Werewolf would transform in space at any point when the ship is lit by the reflection of the sun, but not directly by it in any capacity. Depending on how fast the ship is orbiting and where it is in relation to the sun, he could be a wolf for anywhere from a few minutes to a few years (or whenever the natural "time limit" for being a wolf ends in your story) and might not even finish his transformation before the sun comes around again.

It's arguable that if he was ON the moon, he wold never transform, because he's always in direct sunlight whenever the moon is full. Or, the moonlight might be strong enough to beat out the sun, but it's only a "full" moon when he's right in the middle of the space where the sun is hitting, like we are when the moon is full, meaning he'll transform if he rides a moon buggy into the wrong longitude no matter what the lunar phase is on earth.

But, humans only tend to be able to be on the moon during Lunar Dawn, since it doesn't have an atmosphere to protect it from the sun or to keep its own heat in either, so the surface of the moon goes from 127 degrees farenheit to -127 and it generally isn't a fun time. Since Werewolves are portrayed as hyper-regenerative or otherwise just super-hard to kill, maybe the most METAL answer would be that on the moon, they would be perma-wolves (since the moon's always full somewhere) and they live in a sort of frozen stasis for however long it takes for the sun to come back around and turn them into unstoppable killing machines of flaming fur and boiling flesh-... Oh hey look, we suddenly have an interesting concept without actually changing anything, what gives?

I think it's actually the tides that effect the transformation, as it doesn't turn into a half wolf when there's a half moon.
But vampires still melt into sludge.
Sent's is cooler though.

I thought the whole deal with being a werewolf is that you're 50% wolf. But I guess there is that subset of despicable furries people who subscribe to the theory that a werewolf is just a very big regular wolf. It could also be that the curse is engineered to specifically be as harmful to the person who has it (and the people around them) as possible, so it's designed to come out specifically on the nights that humans build their schedules around and are gonna be out having festivals or hunting things, (E.G. the Harvest moon and Hunter's moon.) to increase the likelihood that the werewolf is going to run into a bunch of unarmed and/or drunk people and tear them up before getting away.

Quarter wolf then, geez.
I like the schedule thing. In that case, would the curse adapt in different cultures and generations then?

It would be difficult to tell. By calling it a curse, O feel like it implies it was invented by gods or wizards or something. Curses as we've come to define them are usually designed with a distinct intention by the asshole who wants to curse somebody, so I would assume whoever invents werewolves in, say, a subterranean culture, or on a different planet with more or less moons than we have, would probably use different methods according to the calendar unless the moonlight itself really does have something to do with it...

 

Which I suspect it does, because, I mean, c'mon there's no such thing as a quarter wolf. Or maybe there is, but the margin is so small as to not be noticeable. Maybe that's just the point where they look like normal people but their hair grows really fast.

Subterreanean werewolves would be interesting.
Now, you can often tell if someone's a quarter black. I don't see how it would be necessarily hard to notice someone being a quarter wolf.

That depends entirely on where the black genes go. There are half black people where you probably couldn't tell what the hell ethnicity they are, a quarter can make them appear even more 'ambiguous'. But that's irrelevant to what's at hand, because the moon does a helluva lot of work to make one man even 50% wolf. It probably takes a lot of magic to bend someone's bones and teeth and muscles to turn them into a wolf. Can we really be so sure 50% of that effort would actually lead to 25% results? If you push a boulder uphill half as hard, you're not necessarily going to get half as high as when you're trying your damnedest.

If that's the case, shouldn't they also turn into werewolves during the new moon? After all, in both cases the sun and the moon are in straight lines, so the tides are strongest.

Oh wait, I forgot that the moon is flat like the earth.

Yes, that's KIND OF important to remember.
Smh, why do I bother?