The Social Role of were-creatures (werewolves, werecates, etc) in my story's world

So i got a VN i am working on called My Boyfriend's a Werecat!, which is about Zack Kuroneko, and his boyfriend Spencer Waters, and the romantic misadventures they get up to when Zack discovers he is a werecat!

Tonally, its a fairly light and fluffy, almost a rom-com, but with a bit of a bite to it on occasion. it can get painfully real at times, given the setting very much mirrors our real world and its boring capitalist nonsense.

Narratively, the story is currently divided into 2 acts. Act 1 has Zack discovering he is a werecat, trying and failing to reverse it, and is currently completely drafted, and is in mid-editing. Act 2 would cover Zack learning to come to terms with, and eventually come to love, his status as a werecat, and currently exists as a very very loose outline, with only really that stated arc, and maybe a few scene concepts solidified. act 1 on its own is roughly an average novel in length btw, and presumably so will act 2.

and currently i am hitting a block with it on 1 question i had left unanswered that will deeply effect the exact nature and layout of how i write Act 2: the broader nature of were-creature (Called Therians in my story) socially. like, how living as one is treated in greater world.

so part of that is in act 1 Zack just comes down with "being a werecat" suddenly one day, and the act focus more on the kinda traumatic event of having your body rapidly transform with no real cause or explanation readily apparent, and the inherent isolation and fear discovering something new about yourself, but having no real shared reference point with anyone around to help you relate thru it. so for that, Zack doesn't find out about Therians as a group/community until act 2, but this decision is causing me a few problems.

basically, as I have it currently plotted, by the end of act 1 there are several question, such as how the curse works and why Zack just came down with it one random day (which i know what those answers are already), and why they couldn't find out those answers initially in act 1 (which i currently do not have answers for).

and to figure out those answers, i need to nail down what i want the Therians to be like, socially. how does society view them, etc etc. Now, there are a few things that are solid about the story already:

• the setting of the story is very much similar to our world in the broad strokes, but with its occasional magical/mystical element, like the Therians. think similar in concept to how Steven Universe has a world that is clearly like our world in the broad strokes, but with obvious magical additions as well.
• the Nature of how the curse itself works is very detailed on an individual level. some, but not all aspects include:
  • transmission: while not every therian's bite can transmit the curse, most therians have unique individual "Vectors" of spreading the Therian curse, the most common being bites and scratches. some therian's have no vectors, save for the few universal ones all therians having.
  • Therians are Not any more violent than the average person, even when in beast form
  • Therians do however often experience a state of altered consciousness when in their animal forms.
  • some therians are hardier than the average person, their shapeshifting giving them a degree of rapid self-healing, that is by no means universal.
  • the exacts nature and specific of the curse, from how controllable it is, to the forms it has, are mostly unique to each individual therian, though you will likely have a similar curse to the one of whoever gave it to you.

So from that, I need to answer at least the following questions:

Questions i need to answer for my story:

• how well known is the therian curse and those afflicted with it in the mainstream?
• how would it relate to other marginalized identities (lgbtq in specific because plot reasons)
• what does the government think about them?
• what do furries think about them? do furries know about them?
• Why couldn't Zack figure out in act 1 but could in act 2? should he not find out in act 1?

So when i first outlined and world built my story, I kind of skirted around may of these questions with a kinda blanket Masquerade. you know, the usual, muggles don't know about the few magical things in this world because the government is suppressing that info. in this case they'd be rounding up all the therians it can find and tossing them in a secret encampment somewhere in the mountains or whatever. but the more that I've sat on that idea the less of liked it. one would be the logical nightmare of the government doing something of that scale for decades and no one knowing about it (no one caring about it, sadly believable, but no one knowing about it? less so), and the other being that its a bit too dark for what is ultimately a fluffy rom com about cute guys turning into cute cats, and self discovery.

so the other idea I am gravitating more towards is make it less rigidly and forcefully oppressed, and parallel more real world minority oppression more closely, which i am kind leaning towards, but then i need to figure out the above questions with genuine answers instead of covering them with a convenient masquerade, and potentially rework part of the ploting of act 1 to address that, and that's kind of what i need help with.

Regarding Zack only managing to find answers in Act 2, one (fairly well-trodden, I fear) option might be to introduce a third party who knows, and who spots the signs of the werecattery and so addresses Zack in Act 2. Since the third party wasn't present in Act 1, they weren't able to inform Zack—but having turned up in Act 2, they can then do so.

The idea on its own actually seems pretty good, though I can emphasize with it being a little too dark for your story's theme. Perhaps a way around this is some sort of voluntary retreat from society, with government assistance? As in, the government knows these therians exist and wants them out of the way, and the therians themselves for whatever reasons wish to remain outside the public eye, so the government creates housing in isolated areas for them.

The Mercy Thompson series kind of employs this element (werewolves tend to congregate in packs out of instinct and for safety in numbers. One American pack has an entire town isolated in the mountains where nearly everyone is a werewolf.) For the government aspect, the government of the story has cooperated with the Fae races to set them up in their own communities away from humans as a sort of mutual agreement where everyone benefits.

I'd actually recommend reading or just reading about this series if you want to keep this idea about how The Masquerade could work; in that story it's only a sort-of Masquerade, but ideas from it could lend themselves well to the full-on ignorance of the supernatural you want to portray.

Simple:

Ask yourself "How does out society across the globe treat LGBTQ part of the population in the real world?"

And in that question, lies the answer on how your world should treat the "Werec" (My name for "Werecats") in their society across the globe.

Simple as that.

I was already planning on the knowledge in some way coming from a 3rd party. ACT 1 has a fairly limited cast (4 people) so it would only be natural that new characters are introduced and one of them knows something. but it'd be the difference between a doctor having medical knowledge on the subject, the magic fed coming to hunt Zack down, a lone therian on the run they stumble across, or a whole enclave of therians in a nightclub they go to. all ideas I've had for potential bits in ACT 2 which i haven't gone a single which way on either.

well I got something to look up today at least. thanks!

so for the history of Therians, I am actually able to use the real life history and views of werewolves up to a point at least, only modified slightly to account for them actually being real in this setting.

Werewolves specifically, in the west at least, were held in folk belief as de-facto real until like the 18th century, despite official church rulings in their impossibility. and "werewolf" was a common accusation along with witches in that period of the witch trails. no doubt lots of actual therians would be deeply effected by that.

the use of real history starts to breakdown around the turn of the 19th century when like, theoretically some scientists would have noticed it as a real phenomenon, even if they come to a completely incorrect assumptions as to the how and whys of how it works.

Therianism could at that point be medicalized, much like how being lgbt was medicalized at the time.

assuming the 20th century in my setting is roughly the same as in RL, therians easily could have been used/misused in the world wars, and theoretically afterwards treated much like how homosexuality was treated in the west at the time. something society is vaguely aware of, but not something that is openly talked about,still a personal failing to be, etc etc.

the difference comparing it to LGBT history, at least the modern history, is we had stone wall, and then the aids crisis, and then a rapidly growing degree of understanding and acceptance thanks to emerging technologies like the internet just to name a few things, all of which had a massive impact on how LGBT people are seen today. (and just a brief caveat that i am being fairly US centric in LGBT history, i know that, but for simplicity i am narrowing in on that for use of comparison).

Several of those things probably wouldn't happen to the Therians. as a community they probably didn't have a stone wall like moment where being loud and proud was seen as the only viable way of public acceptance. though, they might not even have needed one? Stone Wall itself was "energizing" to say the least, for a lot of people, and was fairly inter-sectional.

And skipping to the current bit on public awareness and acceptance would have a huge impact on the story even in ACT 1, because currently, one of the first things Zack and Spencer do, assuming you pick the correct choices to make zack not be a dingus about it, is try looking up being a Werecat on the internet, and finding nothing conclusive (I imply with some of their searches that they could find the answer but don't look down the correct path because their are panicking, but even then what is to stop them from finding the correct answers later). I am already leaning into giving that entire sequence of events in ACT 1 a rewrite, but if i do, i would need to know these things of course.

doing so would also raise another minor quibble in the structure i would need to resolve in act 1 vs act 2. see, since Zack ends act 1 knowing little to nothing about being a therian, both he and Spencer end the act holding on to the belief that the curse is curable. but, it isn't really. and coming to terms with that is a pretty big thing to just slap onto the end of act 1. part of why i split the story into 2 acts, is to give zack the time he needs to have these major emotional developments. from discovery, to acceptance, to self-love.

Not sure if you're still looking for ideas, but this is something else that occurred to me about how you could present The Masquerade (and it's inspired by a whole other book series).

One way you could also "supplement" whatever system that keeps the therians secret from the rest of society is a sort of inborn Weirdness Censor that normal humans have through the modern world's rejection of the supernatural and arcane as myths and legends.

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles books actually use this a lot as a reason for why some of the more overt supernatural antics the vampire (and other) characters get up to are ignored by the general public, even on the rare occasions they cause actual public chaos.

The idea is that most people are so indoctrinated into the idea that there is a "rational explanation" for everything in the world, that they will not look at a supernatural phenomenon and think "Monster! Vampire!" at first glance. An example of this is that when the series' main character was first turned into a vampire and struggling to control his abilities, he would often demonstrate feats and super-strength and speed or other oddities, and people would just brush it off as him being drunk or just crazy. And that was in the 17th century.

In the modern era I could imagine someone seeing a therian in their transformed state and thinking it was some new species of animal or even just a person in an incredibly realistic costume. Or even if they saw the transformation process, they'd brush it off as some sort of social experiment or special effects from a movie being filmed. It would allow a sort of "safety net" for anyone that breaks the secrecy to rely on.

...I don't know. This is a device I use to an extent in my own story and thought that it would be helpful here if you also were still in need of ways to push your masquerade.

So, there's a bit of a story trap here. If it's sufficiently known to be out there, then he should have found out about it in part 1. Unless, his access to information is restricted in some way. I generally agree that government conspiracy is a bad way to go on this, so I might go extremely mundane, though some of these might interfere with what you've already done:

1) He lives in the equivalent of an Amish community. No internet and no one discusses this because its considered vulgar.

2) If you want to stick with Therian=LGBTQ analogy (see below) okay, all information about it is locked behind a parental filter on computer/phone (or even a community wide one), as its considered pornographic or otherwise inappropriate.

3) Not sure how long part 1 is, but if you can isolate them from their phones/computers, then you could just treat it as 'sure, there's a Therian community two cities over, but no, he didn't know about it anymore than I knew there was a major Somali-American community in Minneapolis until I happened to read a piece about it.

4) If he's really ignorant, maybe he's searching for the wrong thing. You search for "Therian" you get the Therian-supportive groups. You search for 'Cat-Demon' you get the Therian-opposition groups. You search for 'were-cat' and you get a bunch of furry stories.

But it's a rough problem. If they're significant enough to be part of the world-building, then in a modern world, with access to the internet, he should be able to find something. However, maybe accurate information is being drowned out by misinformation/propaganda? If he can't find anything that accurately describes what he's experiencing, maybe that would work for your purposes?

On a final note, I recommend splitting how people react to LGBTQ folks from how they react to Therians as otherwise you run into the True Blood 'coming out of the coffin doesn't work as an analogy issue'. I mean, here they aren't literal murderers, but it still appears to be contagious in a way orientation and identity aren't. Frankly, a better example might be how people with aids or suspected of having aids were treated at the height of the crisis (maybe even down to some social status being connected to method you were cursed? (also Therians will have their own society and their own view of what it is and I very much doubt it will be curse, unless you're going the self-hating route which doesn't seem like what you're doing)).