[quote=@Dinh AaronMk] Lions, tigers, and other big-cats aren't nearly as wide-spread as the wolf or often as close to humanity as the wolf. Likewise as said before, big-cats are considered the realm of the modern furry. The canine is more the realm of classical anthropomorphic ghost stories. [/quote] Actually a very enlightening read on the grounds of some historical elements I was not terribly familiar with and how it ties into now; thank you for the contribution. I admit that it seems more and more inherently grounded and less evolving than I imagined. Not to say that werewolves and zoanthropes as a whole are "behind", but again it just strikes me as strange that a roleplaying community with all its glorious strangeness and cross-overs or mixed material and ideas still hasn't hit this note much, if at all to my awareness. As for the last portion, I've never heard of big cats being the "realm of the modern furry", my impression of that genre has been that it was really "anything and everything anthropomorphic animal" was fair game as content. I am uneducated enough on the sort to know if that's true or not. More than anything I assumed it was because of geographical separation and early history, which seems to be more and more the root cause. [quote=@Ellri] We think a lot of the blame lies in the field of the historical role of "farmer". In western culture, the wolf has traditionally been vilified by the people. And if the regular wolf is evil, imagine then how much more evil the human that turns into a big and nasty wolf would be. Big cats just never were common in the traditional western culture, thus they did not develop the same fear. Today of course, big cats are visibly much more dangerous than wolves ever were. But that doesn't truly sink in for most.[/quote] As said before, culture and location seem to be the two driving forces of this. Zoanthropes of any color are terrifying monsters, in particular against a mundane human being; human and feline contact being "rarer" seems to fit in with this regardless. [quote]The werewolf/vampire conflict is also a reason. the other weres haven't had a traditional enemy. With less writing covering them, the other weres require more thought and study to use, as there isn't a flood of available sources for how they work and what traits they exemplify. A werewolf can both be a lone wolf and a pack animal, which gives an author/artist more options when choosing the variety to use. A werebear, for example, doesn't have a natural pack mentality. We think all sorts of weres can be good if done right. Yes, even a were-muskrat. [/quote] I find it interesting that there needs to be a conflict among werewolves and vampires to make them "interesting" in a way. The concept alone has a lot to work off of and its own incredible implications among fantasy, which have been explored quite a bit. Did that burn out somehow to the point where we need "Team X or Team Y?" - not to abuse a well loathed example, but it isn't the only one. That's another discussion altogether I suppose, but you are right... other zoanthropes have no real "enemy" or "struggle" outside of those already sort of expressed. Not to say they lack unique ones, but the werewolf and vampire competition is a major element of its modern draw. I admit though that the one thing I would disagree with in terms of dynamics is that werewolves somehow give more options. If anything the other strains are options in and among themselves, just not well represented. As a side note, I've not seen a weremuskrat character, but I [i]would[/i] be legitimately curious.