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Split Out Non-Canine Examples: Our Werewolves Are Different

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shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#51: Aug 9th 2011 at 6:37:45 PM

The YKTTW has well over 50 examples. I think that's more than enough for a page.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#52: Aug 9th 2011 at 6:38:12 PM

Sigh... Apparently some people don't want to look at links, so I'll put it right here in hopes of killing the idea that there aren't enough non-wolf weres to go around.

EDIT: Ninja'd. But yeah, I've linked this several times before in this thread as well as lists from The Other Wiki. Also, this is just what I've collected so far. The article is still collecting examples at a good pace.


Anime and Manga
  • Keine Kamishirasawa from Touhou Project is a were-hakutaku, a mythological beast that appears to wise and just rulers to dispense advice.
  • C'tarl C'tarl from Outlaw Star are werecats with several intermediate forms (Fuzzy Space-Elf to Cat Person to Buff Superpowered Cat Person to Giant Tiger) whose access are dependent on the presence and phase of a moon and on their own personal energy reserves.
  • Fruits Basket: Kyo (cat, male) and Kisa (tiger, female) turn into cats on under certain conditions.
  • Zoan fruits in One Piece turn the recipents into werecreatures. They tend to be dangerous mass of muscle even if the template creature was relatively harmless (this is also a general tendency among werecreatures. A werehamster can be as dangerous as a werewolf.)

Film

  • The Wallace And Gromit movie "Curse Of The Were-Rabbit" featured the eponymous creature.
  • Cat People involved people that could turn into black panthers when sexually aroused.
  • Ladyhawke features a couple of young lovers cursed to take on animal form at different times, as to keep them apart; the man turns into a wolf at night, and the lady into a... guess what.
  • Sunshine'' by Robin Mckinley has werecats etc

Literature

  • The Shifters Series by Rachel Vincent features werecats who change at will and live in lion-like prides.
  • The Turning by Helen Ellis has an werecats. It's genetic, starts sometime during puberty, then lasts for two weeks every year for five years before stopping permanently. The 'turning' is brought on by contact with a cat (real or 'turned'). there is a cure, but it only works before the second time you 'turn'.
  • In Warwolf: The Centurion Warrior Book 1: The Warriors has mentions of werecats and even a werecobra, in addition to the more typical werewolves.
  • Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle series includes several characters who are werecats. The novel describes werecats not as shapeshifting humans, but as a separate magical species.
  • The children's novel, Prince of Pirates, features an enchantress named Leonora, who can turn herself into a panther at will.
  • In the Harry Potter series of novels, Minerva McGonnagal= is able to transform into a cat, due to her being an Animagus.
  • Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, in addition to werewolves, has wereleopards, werelions, weretigers (including blue, red and black tigers in the last book), at least 3 weredogs (their abilities are inherited not infection), weresnakes (at lest 2 species cobra and anaconda), swanmen (some are cursed others inherit their abilities like the weredogs), wererats, werebears, and werehyenas.
  • In the book On the Edge, by Ilona Andrews, the heroine's brother is a werecat. He can turn into a lynx at will.
  • In Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels books, the leader of the Pack is a werecat. He can change into a lion. Additional werecreatures include werebears, werebuffalos, wererats, werehyenas, werebadgers et
  • The short story "Lusus Naturae" by Margaret Atwood centers on a young woman whose parents fake her death to hide the fact that she is a werecat.
  • In the book series Sword Of Truth by Terry Goodkind includes a werecat.
  • The Jill Kismet series by Lilith Saintcrow contains a number of werecat (or cat-were) characters.
  • In the Otherworld series by Yasmine Galenorn one of the main characters is a werecat named Delilah D'artigo.
  • In Patricia A Mc Killip's novel The Tower at Stony Wood the characters meet a selkie, or were-seal.
  • In the first novel of the Merry Gentry series, A Kiss of Shadows, Merry's lover is a selkie named Roan Finn who has temporarily lost his ability to change shape.
  • James A Hetley's novels Dragon's Eye and Dragon's Teeth have a family with the hereditary ability to turn into seals.
  • A.E. van Vogt's SF novel The Silkie features genetically modified people who can transform into aquatic, seal-like creatures or into living spaceships.
  • The Hobbit features Beorn, a "skin-changer" who can shapeshift into a bear at will and uses this ability to kill orcs. The Silmarillion also features some magical shapeshifting, which requires the skin of the monster to be imitated.
  • The fantasy novel The Shattered World takes a more true-to-folklore approach: its various werebeasts are humans who acquire their shapechanging powers through a spell, so they can take the shapes of animals. One of the protagonists is a werebear, and must periodically "release" the bear within, fearing it that will force its shape upon him if denied its freedom for too long. Werebeasts in this Verse are vulnerable to normal weapons, suffer Transformation Trauma, and can never be cured if they've been shapechangers for longer than a few weeks.
  • The Kitty Norville novels have a few non-wolf lycanthropes, including a were-jaguar and a were-seal. The rule is that the were-creature is always a predator, as Kitty explains to a caller on her radio show who suspects he is a were-alpaca.
  • Mordred in The Dark Tower is a werespider.
  • Spider Robinson's "Lady Sally" stories have a were-beagle.

Live-Action TV

Music

  • Flippy T. Fishead had a song about becoming a Werecow. There is another werecow which he is engaged to (who is female when human, and whom he "turned"). The how-and-why of the male-to-female transformation is not addressed.
  • The music video "Thriller" by Michael Jackson has Michael turn into a werecat.
  • Similarly enough, the Bjork music video Hunter had her changing back and forth into a bear and back into herself. Although she seemed to be holding back her bear transformation.

Mythology and Religion

  • Selkies (were-seals)
  • Swan-Maidens (were-swans)
  • There were werejaguar and werehyaena cults in Africa.

Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons And Dragons has, aside from the usual werewolves, werebears, wererats, wearboars, weretigers, dire wereboars (hill giants that turn into dire boars), and jackleweres. The 3.5 edition monster manual even has a template for any animal.
  • Warhammer Fantasy has Werebears living in the Northlands.
  • Magic the Gathering has Werebears.
  • Rifts and other games in Palladium's Megaverse have them as multiple species, ranging from Wolves to Bears, and some of the big cats such as Werepanthers and Werejaguars.
  • The Vampire The Masquade: Blood Lines game, includes werebatlike creatures and weresharks which come as Giant Space Fee event.
  • Werewolf The Apocalypse from The World Of Darkness series, in addition to the titular werewolves, has 11 other breeds of shapeshifters, described in their own Splat books, like Corax (were-ravens), Gurahl (were-bears) and Bastet (were-cats).
  • In Ars Magicaincludes were-bears and were-lynxes.

Video Games

  • One of the Sonic games lets you become a "werehog", but rather than the half-human half-pig you might expect, it's a monstrous hedgehog.
  • Quest 64 has the Were Hare.
  • In the video game Breath of Fire III, one of the main characters, Rei, is a weretiger.
  • The game Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen features weretigers as hidden characters who can be recruited.
  • The 1988 video game Altered Beast includes a stage wherepower-ups transform the player into a weretiger, which provides extra strength and firepower.
  • In the video game Bayonetta, the main character has the ability to transform into a black panther at will, granting her cheetah-like speed. Likewise, the character Jeanne (a fellow witch in the game) can transform into a red lynx.
  • Borderlands has Were-Skags in the first DLC.
  • The Elder Scrolls mentions Weresharks and wereboars, but they're never seen.
  • The main gimmick of Bloody Roar is that every character is some sort of werecreature. There's a weretiger, werebear, werelion, wererabbit, werefox, werecat, wereboar, weremole, werebat, werechameleon...
  • An upcoming update to Dwarf Fortress will introduce werecreatures.

Webcomics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The werecar in the Futurama episode, "The Honking".
  • An episode of Courage The Cowardly Dog had Muriel get bitten by a weremole.
  • Stan Lee's Stripperella had to deal with a Werebeaver in one episode.
  • Parodied thoroughly in an episode of Dave The Barbarian. Dave is bitten by a succession of improbable were-creatures, including a cow and a gym teacher. The eventual solution to the crisis was to get him to bite himself, thus turning him into a were-Dave (exactly the same as a regular Dave).
  • Egon got turned into a were-chicken in The Real Ghostbusters.
  • In the 1998 animated film Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Lena Du Prais, Simone Lenoir and Jacques (the film's antagonist) were werecats. They were referred to as "cat creatures" several times. Other occurrences of "cat creatures" have appeared on What's New, Scooby Doo? and The Scooby-Doo Show.
  • In She-Ra: Princess of Power the villainess Catra can change into a panther.
  • On Regular Show, Rigby is attacked by a Were-skunk.
  • Also, in the Codename Kids Next Door episode, "Operation H.O.U.N.D.", Numbuh Five confronted her rival, Valerie, who was revealed to have the power to transform into a were-poodle. Earlier in the episode, Numbuh Five was attacked by a vicious dog who ate her homework, who was later revealed to have been Valerie in her were-poodle form.

Webcomics

  • Peter Is The Wolf: About one in every 1000 people in the world is some sort of were; werewolves are most common and have the most developed social structure, but there are plenty of other were species with their own idiosyncracies (werebears are antisocial, werelions are arrogant and lazy, etc.)

edited 9th Aug '11 6:42:47 PM by Auxdarastrix

Ookamikun This is going to be so much fun. (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
This is going to be so much fun.
#53: Aug 9th 2011 at 6:52:33 PM

That's "all of the other werecreatures", not each werecreature though. With that said, they should organize it for each species.

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#54: Aug 9th 2011 at 6:57:38 PM

Oh, we aren't splitting each werecreature into it's own trope unless it gets huge. I agree that an on page soft split might be a good idea, but right now we'd have to split a lot of those bullet points.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#55: Aug 9th 2011 at 7:01:32 PM

... Holy cow I just noticed a killer typo in my previous post's spelling of "werewolves" ... I plead Nanoism*

.

But they're almost always called weresomething.
I was not objecting to the were- prefix, but naming the supertrope something like Our Werethings Are Different or Other Werethings. I consider that quasi-redundant....

edited 9th Aug '11 7:06:17 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#56: Aug 9th 2011 at 7:06:29 PM

[up]Heh. Saw that, but decided not to say anything. Werevoles would be pretty cool though. They'd certainly devastate the gardens, between them and the wererabbits. grin

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#57: Aug 9th 2011 at 7:13:44 PM

I prefer Werebeast or Werecreature myself. Those seem the most clear.

edited 9th Aug '11 7:14:06 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Ookamikun This is going to be so much fun. (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
This is going to be so much fun.
#58: Aug 9th 2011 at 7:16:43 PM

Is there even a point to the "Our Are Different" part anyway?

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#59: Aug 9th 2011 at 7:19:03 PM

There is actually. We've found that on tropes that say "are different" then people actually list how a creature type is used in media where tropes that are just the creature type are primarily X Just X as far as examples go.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Xtifr World's Toughest Milkman Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
World's Toughest Milkman
#60: Aug 9th 2011 at 9:59:56 PM

On the topic of "will any other types ever need their own subtrope?" The Other Wiki has a list of nearly 40 examples "in popular culture" for the were-seal (selkie) alone. And they have notability standards! :)

edit: looking through it, some of those are just references to the word, but still....

edited 9th Aug '11 11:11:21 PM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
nrjxll Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Not war
#61: Aug 9th 2011 at 10:36:21 PM

Selkies should really be their own trope, if they aren't one already.

MajinGojira Demoniac Daikaiju from Philadelphia Since: Sep, 2009
Demoniac Daikaiju
#62: Aug 10th 2011 at 6:10:45 AM

In world mythology, the idea of a were-creature is often super imposed on an existing mythological framework. Some books refer to Kitsune as Were-foxes, which really doesn't work since Kitsune are foxes to begin with. It's a western convention super-imposed on other cultures.

The Were-Jaguar is one such instance and Were-Hyena can fluctuate between the two.

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.
Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#63: Aug 12th 2011 at 4:08:05 PM

Due to someone mislaunching the YKTTW page, I've created a new one here with all the info copied over: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=8vcqbv8cmg92wunoam21bno7

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#64: Aug 12th 2011 at 5:06:04 PM

I think the crowner can be called. I'm locking it and launching the new alt names crowner.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Sethala Since: Dec, 2009
#65: Aug 19th 2011 at 9:18:18 PM

Personally, I'd prefer calling them "weres" instead of "werebeasts" or "werecreatures", though that might get confused with "wares" (i.e. stuff you're selling) too easily.

Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#66: Aug 20th 2011 at 7:16:33 AM

Anyone think this is ready to be called yet?

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#67: Aug 20th 2011 at 8:23:46 AM

[up][up] It lacks context and it's a term I've honestly never heard for them and I read a lot of fantasy and horror. That and it just means men which isn't very helpful. Or it's the past form of To Be which means it's likely to be confused for things that were but are no longer.

I think we can call it though. Locking the crowner.

edited 20th Aug '11 8:25:34 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#68: Aug 20th 2011 at 9:32:36 AM

Shouln't the title be singular?

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#69: Aug 20th 2011 at 9:56:23 AM

Is there any reason to add any additional verbiage to the title, such as the "Our Werebeasts Are Different" or can we just go with the single word?

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#70: Aug 20th 2011 at 10:01:27 AM

Tropes that use the Our X Are Different have better quality examples on average than pages that have just the name. Ones that just have the name tend towards X Just X at a much higher rate. Our X Are Different pages tend to explain how they're different. We actually went through all of them at one point and compared example quality and those were the findings.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#71: Aug 20th 2011 at 10:13:26 AM

[up]So you think it would be a good format to use for this? After all, it is about the many different types of werebeasts.

Also, I added a better pic.

edited 20th Aug '11 10:18:20 AM by Auxdarastrix

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#72: Aug 20th 2011 at 10:14:52 AM

I really hate snowclones on general principle, but objective analysis says that tropes work better.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#73: Aug 20th 2011 at 10:29:41 AM

Fine with me. I'll give the YKKTW another day or less for any additional last minute feedback.

edited 20th Aug '11 12:07:48 PM by Auxdarastrix

Auxdarastrix Since: May, 2010
#74: Aug 20th 2011 at 8:18:37 PM

Seeing no objections to the name, I'll be launching the trope now.

USAF713 I changed accounts. from the United States Since: Sep, 2010
I changed accounts.
#75: Aug 20th 2011 at 8:30:23 PM

The lycanthrope option notes that it's not the right name, so... shouldn't we, you know, make the right name an option...?

I am now known as Flyboy.

AlternativeTitles: TropeSplitFromWerewolves
12th Aug '11 5:07:21 PM

Crown Description:

Vote up names you like, vote down names you don't. Whether or not the title will actually be changed is determined with a different kind of crowner (the Single Proposition crowner). This one just collects and ranks alternative titles.

Total posts: 81
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