Deconstructing a half human hybrid

So I'm creating a character who is the offspring of a human and a monster species I created for a previous project. Since I often see hybrids like her as overpowered/over-idealized Mary Sue fodder, I'd like to write something about how and why being part supernatural beast could/would suck.

A few things I already know:

1. Her father's species is territorial and ferocious, and they are not known to be "pack" animals. They may temporarily band together to hunt if several of them happen to be together, but it tends to quickly dissolve into fighting and chaos and they generally will not join up with that same crowd again afterwards, and may even kill them should they cross paths again. I feel like this could have an effect on my character's social skills, but how? And what would this be like combined with human behavior?

2. Related to the above, the species is sentient by human standards and can speak like humans, but they do not think or reason or see the world like humans in many ways, especially in terms of relationships. They do not have any social groups or hierarchies outside of a "nuclear family" consisting of a mated pair and their offspring, and they typically split up after the young grow up and leave. They also largely have a mentality of "if you're not my mate or children, I do not trust you...and even the mate and children had better watch their backs sometimes."

3. The father's species has very sensitive senses of smell and hearing. Regarding the hearing, I suspect it could affect the character the way sensory processing disorder might, though I really only know the "basics" of that condition. I'll research it a little more though.

4. She is much closer to her father and takes after him more. I could easily see her being the target of bullies in school due to the looks and odd features she's inherited from him, though she's been told to just say they're birth defects so as to hide her father's identity (he's a dangerous fellow and much of the city is out for his blood). It's pretty obvious what problems this would cause, but I feel like there's more I can do, especially when combined with everything else I've described.

Thoughts?

It all sounds fine and pretty good to me, but I have this feeling a true deconstruction would be going into the actual biological aspects of this. Like the hybrid in question being either fully sterile or only capable of reproduction with another hybrid, her DNA being unstable and succeptible to diseases from both sides, and so forth.

How much of the territoriality is just their social structure and how much is legit, hard-wired instinct? Even if it's an instinctual reaction, she could likely deal with humans like wild dogs can, but could exhibit Aspergers-like behavior as a result of predatory instincts:

• inability to deal with social interaction or tell emotional states,
• hyperfocus in that cat-sees-a-mouse predator way,
• lack of appropriate social cues (doesn't smile when pleased, derisive behavior to socially regarded "alphas," etc. so staring at her would be a BAD BAD IDEA)

A perfect example of how her enhanced senses could affect her would be fluorescent lights... The noise they make is annoying to normal people that can hear it, to her it may be intolerable. Or maybe bad things happening when she gets a whiff of an ovulating rival female.

Biologically, things are ALL up in the air so far as the effects of hybridization. She could go the liger route and be much larger than either of her parents, with the crappy results that go with it (enlarged heart, etc). Depending on the father species' diet, she'd likely get some funky allergies as a result of weird digestive enzymes.

edited 18th Apr '14 9:32:34 PM by Poisonarrow

Or like Scorpius, who was a hybrid, but neither half was human, but I digress. Anywho, the two halves of Scorpy's biology constantly opposed each other and forced him to wear a special suit just to live without intense pain.

Soon I Will Be Invincible deals somewhat briefly with this in the character Damsel. Her father's human and her mother's an alien, but their species aren't genetically compatible so she had to be grown in a lab or some shit. Idunno it's been forever since I read it.

edited 19th Apr '14 12:13:12 PM by Eagal

Not actually a deconstruction, but definitely an interesting premise.

I second that. The most deconstructive would be either no interbreeding possible, or the weaknesses of both parents and the strengths of neither.

It sounds to me like your hybrid, if she possesses more of the "beast" traits you describe, might have the kinds of problems faced by individuals with functional psychopathy or clinical sociopathy.

Not all sociopaths become serial killers - from what I've read, it's actually along the lines of problems with empathy that can be somewhat overcome by a loving home and parents teaching a child displaying signs of it all of the social rules / learning how to play the social game. (I remember reading a story that's gone viral recently about a nueroscientist who saw a scan of his own brain thinking it wasn't his. He declared that he was looking at the brain of a serial killer before he found out it was his own. He was shocked, but admitted to having problems with empathy that his family could clearly see. He credits having a very happy childhood in a loving home for his becoming a scientist instead of a serial killer). As with most conditions, there are levels and shades of it...

A species of non-social beings that only marginally tolerate each other for the purposes of mating and to form temporary hunting parties strikes me as a species that would have traits that - work well for them - but in humans would be akin to sociopathy.

So, a hybrid taking after such a species, but forced to live in human society and to say, go to school and so forth, is going to have more than just the general awkward misfit's way with it, and will have to learn to "play the game" of humans, perhaps without really feeling any of it or forming close friendships. Of course, if what I've read about CE Os and sociopathy is true, your hybrid, if you decide to go that route, would more likely become the Alpha Bitch than the picked-on nerd. (The nerds tend to have the opposite problem in my experience: too much feeling).

I can also see a hybrid of a dangerous species having to suppress urges to harm people in school / the neighborhood, and to have to be taught to not given into those throat-ripping impulses.

Just my random ideas.

Ian Irvine's Three Worlds Cycle has a character who is a Half-Human Hybrid. Her half-human status makes her an outcast who is very easily manipulated by other, far more powerful outcasts. Furthermore, like real-life hybrids she is sterile, which is distressing for her. Due to these factors, she has zero self-esteem and is easily used as a tool by other people.

Not sure if this is so helpful to the OP, but it's another cynical take on the topic.

You raised some good points; one of the major conflicts of the story is that her mother (the human) wants to her to sort of "adapt" to human ways—and should she still have any trouble, it could all just be blamed on Asperger's/autism like Poisionarrow mentioned (it's also another way she could cover for her father). Daddy Monster, however...has different ideas...

edited 21st Apr '14 7:25:40 PM by Fangmane

Ooh!

I just thought of a film you could look into that does a neat job of deconstructing half-human hybrid-ism... It's different than the morality issues ( Blue-and-Orange Morality ? ) that you seem to be trying to go for, but does play with a lot of issues that are overlooked in fantasy fiction:

"Wolf Children: Yuki and Ame" - it's an anime' film...

It's a story narrated by a young half-werewolf about her mother's life raising her and her brother. It goes from her human mother and werewolf father (with a human form) meeting, falling in love, living together in a secret marriage - home births and the children kept off the national record due to the parent's fears for them... The father suffers a sudden death, leaving the mother to raise the daughter and son alone. She doesn't send them to school or even take them to the doctor because during their early years, they shapeshift constantly and she's scared to death of what a doctor might do if one of them starts going wolf while being given a shot or something...

There's a scene in which Yuki eats a dessicant packet and gets sick and the mother makes a calls from a public phone to both a pediatrician and a veternarian (claiming "her dog" was sick) to figure out what to do..

The mother eventually moves to a fixer-upper out in the middle of nowhere-country because she finds it too difficult to keep the children a secret in the city (they shift between puppies and children when playing in the park and there's no way to make them understand not to do that while they're still young).

And there are other little odd things that come up, like Ame (the little boy's) sadness over reading fairy tales and seeing how the bad guys are wolves... and Yuki's "wild" nature - I absolutely adore a scene where she scares classmates at a country school with her collection of small animal bones. (I'm a bone-collector and make art out of bones as a hobby).

It's actually a sweet take on a deconstruction, but it deals pretty well with taking out a lot of the "cool" of werewolf-ism, showing some practical difficulties one would have in a modern world raising a pair of pups stuck between worlds.