Quote:
Originally Posted by Chiaroscuros
I agree with the critical comments about the buildup to the 'first change'. If this is supposedly a process that is agonizing to the point where it kills all "non-unique-snowflake" women,
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Nah, that's not it, the transformations aren't what kills most of the infected females. It's a combination of three things that's kept the female werewolf population down in the book series at least.
1. The lycanthrope gene is only passed from father to son, so no natural born female werewolves.
2. Most women don't survive being attacked by a werewolf in the first place according to the books. So they never even undergo the first transformation since their throats were torn out or some other immediately fatal injury was inflicted during the encounter.
3. The first transformation is supposed to be very rough and sometimes uneven, like a person's throat could change before the rest of their body and they choke to death. Apparently that's more common in females than males.
In the TV series it seems they really downplayed how rough that first change was supposed to be for her, she didn't seem to suffer much at all, while in the book she nearly died.
In the books it's also possible for a werewolf to get stuck between forms, if that happens they are simply doomed to constant agony until someone comes along and kills them. Though I doubt the series will get as far as showing us that.