werebeasts

[ex_pippin880]

Werewolves and other werebeasts and transforming animals and humans -- what are your thoughts? Where does your suspension of disbelief start wavering? Do you prefer magical or genetic transformations?

Does a large mass difference bother you? Do you stay awake at night wondering how a woman with a menstrual cycle could safely and regularly become an animal with an oestrus cycle? Do placental mammals turning into birds or marsupials make you go "err" at the story? Do you get annoyed when the animal forms have human intelligence/morals, or even abilities like telepathy?

...Is this something you've never thought about because you're not weird like me?

What are your favourite stories with werebeasts?

Comments

[lurkingcat]

I think I prefer magical transformations to genetic transformations because it's easier for my brain to hand wave away things like mass difference and other potential physical impossibilities*. I've always worried about what would happen if a pregnant swan maiden changed from human form to swan form.

Having accepted that a werebeast can change form I don't really get annoyed if the were form retains the thought processes and abilities of it's other form - it's already magic, so why not? Telepathy sometimes feels like a convenient get-out clause in a story. It's often more interesting if the cat/dog/reindeer retains human thought processes but has trouble communicating while in the were form.

The thing that does throw me out of a story a bit is clothing. Character transforms to werelizard, scuttles off and does it thing. Character transforms back to human and is fully clothed again. This only just works for me if it's a magical transformation and I still wonder if there's come kind of vast shared portal wardrobe space where all these were creatures leave their clothes to be picked up at the other end of their transformation.

*There is also a bit of my brain that is willing to deal with comic book genetic transformations with "None of the rest of the science here makes sense, so why should this?"

[nightmareink]

At least in the Animorph books (I read them as a kid), clothing doesn't morph with them (unless it's like skin tight, but I think that's just the author's way of going "I don't want my characters to be naked upon turning back to human") and they had to deal with the being naked upon turning back problem.

...I never did finish reading those books.