Were groups in general

[ad-kelley.livejournal.com]

I know I'm still new here, so let me know if I'm putting up too much stuff at once, but there was another point I wanted to make after my initial post last week.  After a couple of years of stewing about this author it's cathartic to finally have a place to post these things.  My bone to pick du jour is about the animal groups residing in the Lou.  While you could probably go on ad infinitum about how there are now far too many, my main concern is how they advance the plot (if at all).  
      The wererats, though underutilized now, fill a great niche in intelligence gathering and mercenary work.  The wolves work because how are you going to have vampires and not werewolves? After this, the relevance of the groups begins to dissolve.  It seems more and more (see a recent blog entry where she discusses cougars, I don't remember which) that LKH gets a passing interest in an animal and in the next installment Anita is boffing that particular beast and we're stuck with it forever mucking up the Anitaverse continuity.  To some extent the problem is just the same as it is in the rest of her writing in that she allows everything to become bloated and never thins the herd as it were, but that doesn't make it any more irritating.  I mentioned the werehyenas in my last post.  Where are they? They show up, posture, disappear again.  Their alpha NEVER shows up.  How many other groups are like that? This particularly gets under my skin because I considered the hyenas to be a really interesting idea until nothing came of them.
     The most persistent and blatant offenders however, are the wereleopards.  How can of the world's deadliest big cats become so flaccid and stupid in one woman's hands? Without exception (besides Merle and some new guy) they are sniveling children who can't move until Anita tells them to.  They do nothing to advance the plot (Nathaniel and Micah, in my opinion, are literally the worst characters created in modern fiction), and accomplish nothing in the narrative other than making you feel like you could probably beat up a wereleopard.  I know Gabriel was a pretty horrendous guy, but he was scary as hell, too.  I think LKH needs to drastically reduce the amount of shifters in her stories, or at least the ones that come onto centerstage, and focus on building those characters into something respectable.  Pathos is a wonderful thing, but at the end of the day these ARE supposed to be monsters, aren't they?

Anyways, i was basically wondering what everyone else here thought about the various lycanthropy groups (leopards in particular) , which ones could YOU do without? What do you want to see more of?

Comments

[dwg.livejournal.com]

This is probably one of the larger inconsistencies in LKH's work, I can remember a podcast a while back (this is where the "werewolves are the most popular story of man turning into a wolf!" quote comes from, as she then went to say that the reason why there's so many more werewolves than anything else is just that she can find more werewolf stories) and she mentioned that feline lycanthropy (...or therianthropy?) was harder to catch and people needed to be practically mauled to death in order to become infected, and even then it was dicey. But there's suddenly all these feline shapeshifters everywhere. What. You'd think that there'd be more reports of animal attacks, or miraculous recovery from vicous animal attacks. Surely if this many people were attacked, there'd be a database somewhere with little lights pinging over a possible rogue shifter chomping on people? IDEK. As soon I start to pick at this, the fabric of the world begins to unravel.

I'm also pretty sure that a lot of the problem is that the books don't let the monsters be monsters. Yeah, it's nice to see that they're people, but bottom line is: they're not human, they're probably not going to react like humans, so throwing them into a situation where they do exactly that is...silly. Vampires that live for hundreds of years ought to know how to survive without Anita in their unlife. Shifters that are part of a social group would probably not readily welcome Anita into their structure because a) she's a stranger, and b) she's not actually one of them. I know she's got the four different strains in her system, but I am desperate for some leader to be like "WTAF? NO." and then if she gets in his/her face, just challenge her for leadership. No guns, no necromancy, just straight up tooth and claw. Anita would be wiped all over the floor.



ETA: also running joke that I had with a former member of this comm was that there totally needs to be wereravens. And Anita would try to be their Poe. I would die of laughter if wereravens showed up in the books.

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

Wereravens & a Poe would be so funny!

You've pretty much summed up my feelings on this topic too.

The werezoo in Lou never made sense to me. For me the books took a downward not when Anita started having sex, but actually before when she intro'd the wereleopards -- and then became their queen for No Good Reason At All. It was just so unbelievable and full of wtf-ery.

Even though this is entirely fiction -- about vampires and were-people no less, I just couldn't buy that. Nor could I ever really support the idea that Anita was still the Lupa even though she no longer dated Richard, and in fact didn't even get along with him very well.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I never got the sense that St Louis is a Big City. If the books were set in LA or New York, you could probably get away with having more secret cabals of shapeshifters. According to Wikipedia, St Lou is about twice as big as my home city. And my home city? TINY. There's a lot of crazy random happenstance with bumping into people I know/went to school with. Or instant bonding over "oh you're from home city too!" with strangers when I'm interstate.

I'm pretty sure that there's no way that the goings on in Anita's world would go unnoticed for long in a city that size. "Hey, there's a few thousand people that drive out to the woods once a month, what's up with that?"

I really wish there'd been more tension about Anita being in charge of something, as it's pretty clear from the start that she's utterly clueless over what it means to be a Nimir-Ra (she didn't even know what that meant, ffs) so if they have to mansplain everything to her, how in the hell can she even think she can effectively lead/protect them? She didn't even know she had 'inherited' them, so great start there. Time to shop around for a new leader, or use all the money they earned from hooking/porn to start new lives. I refuse to believe that anyone that's a lycanthrope would be so helpless as to just let everyone walk over them unless there's some massive psychological damage involved, in which case they probably wouldn't be very functional people.

[kisstheground.livejournal.com]

huh. i never realized that my hometown, denver, has a higher population than st. louis. we have very much the same running into EVERYONE here, too. i'm fairly certain if a good several thousand people around here turned into animals once a month, we'd notice. and we've got a lot of open space in the plains and mountains to move out into.

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

I've always pictured this big traffic jam on that one night a month. Police don't notice a long string of cars going offroad to the woods every full moon? Yeah, right. ;)

Inheriting the leopards was just bad writing. I completely agree with you. I would have loved to see the leopards just disband and go their separate ways. What purpose did Anita serve in their lives? If anything she dragged them into more trouble than she ever protected them from.

[sehkmetschild.livejournal.com]

"I've always pictured this big traffic jam on that one night a month. Police don't notice a long string of cars going offroad to the woods every full moon? Yeah, right. ;)"

Too funny!! I always thought that was a little sloppy too.

When I write about the weres going to "celebrate" the full moon they all say their Wiccan and carpool out of town.**

That thing that didn't make sense to me about the books was that the weres can't reproduce without Deus Ex Machina help. LKH of the Biology degree should know that an organism's first priority is to gets its genes into the next generation. And if the disease really made it's host as healthy as possible to survive, wouldn't it then protect the infant from miscarriage?

Also, do you think, were lycanthropy real, people with HIV and AIDS virus would go looking for a were to infect them since in all the legends it kills any illness the host already has? Or am I just an insensitive dork?****



**I wrote about multiple were communities before I even read the Anita books. I hate when that happens!

****I vote insensitive dork.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

That conversation's come up before with okay, if lycanthropy is so awesome, why aren't people with terminal diseases lining up to get infected in order to be cured? Morally, there's nothing to really stop a doctor from injecting patients with concentrated lycanthropy serum.

The other part is that there's a serious neglect of shapeshifter culture because it's all so OMG SECRET. I mean, if you get infected with lycanthropy from a bad batch of vaccine, then what? Where do you go for help figuring out where to go from here? How the hell does the pack find you to induct you into their secret gatherings? Is there homework on the history and rituals? An instruction manual of "So You're A Werewolf: Things You Need To Know."

Vampires have a semi-structure in place when if you're going to be turned, the master would stick around to show the n00b the ropes, so what do werewolves do? Especially if you're a survivor of a genuine attack.

Ugh, sorry to babble at you, but you're not alone in being an insensitive dork that thinks too much about these things.

[leggomylegolas.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Anita have like a degree in "preturnatural biology" or some such nonsense, even?

I always found that sort of ridiculous. I mean, everyone knows there are wereanimals, correct? And yet no one knows anything about them or how they work? I just find that ridiculously hard to believe. If it became known in the real actual world that goddamn werewolves existed for real, EVERYONE WOULD TALK ABOUT IT NONSTOP for like YEARS.

And I have to wonder what exactly WAS covered in those preturnatural biology classes. Maybe she just boffed the professors for four years.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

IDEK what she did at college, because it's clearly not getting drunk or higher learning. Or both, as there were a couple of times when I got drunk in my lunch break and then turned up to prac where I'd get to handle dangerous chemicals.

There's talk in...Blue Moon, I think? About Richard going off to study trolls with his new girlfriend and Anita's musing about how she wanted to be a Jane Goodall for this sort of thing. So...it's okay for people to go off and live in the wild to study trolls, but not somehow get themselves intergrated into a wolf pack (even thoug humans are allowed, like Marianne) to study them, or even get themselves wolfed in order to be accepted? Whaaa. Or even vampired to study their internal political hierarchy, because Anita's meant to be an expert in the field, lives with the undead, and still has to get things mansplained to her.

There's very little thought gone into how the world is affected by having this one simple thing of werewolves exist, everyone knows about it. I'm pretty sure that even once it was understood that some of the mysticism is dispelled with science to reveal that it's a disease, there's still all the folklore surrounding werewolves and that's been around a hell of a lot longer. It doesn't make sense to even treat it with the same stigma as HIV/AIDS. Schitzophrenia would be more appropriate, perhaps? Given that Anita's got all these animals inside her that seem to have independent wants of their own that she fights against, or perhaps are a magnification of her own baser instincts and this causes her to act inappropriately toward others and not realise what she's doing because it's not her it's her "beast."

[leggomylegolas.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there one - something Ashes? No, Burnt Offerings, I think. Where there's like, a pyromaniac vampire and at one point this lady sets a vampire on fire and Anita instantly knows that this lady knows a lot about vampires - such as, that they're flammable - and she must be part of that anti-vampire church or cult or something. And she explains to one of the policemen that vampires catch on fire. And he's all "Damn I didn't know that". There's a college program about the biology of these things, but no one ever thought to tell the GODDAMN POLICE that vampires CATCH FIRE PRETTY EASILY? This really strains credulity.

Like, who the fuck wouldn't/doesn't know that? It seems pretty goddamn basic to me. I think Laurel just needed Anita to know lots of things about vampires that other people don't, but couldn't be assed to come up with something that would make sense for that purpose.

[sehkmetschild.livejournal.com]

Glad I'm not the only one :P.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

[b]That conversation's come up before with okay, if lycanthropy is so awesome, why aren't people with terminal diseases lining up to get infected in order to be cured? Morally, there's nothing to really stop a doctor from injecting patients with concentrated lycanthropy serum.[/b]

Not to go too far back, but read this and had to respond. I have in my "future writings" notebook a plot like that. Except it was vampires. In the future, vampires are known to exist and have made a name for themselves as a medical miracle. They claim that they are free from human sufferings like cancer and aids. To prove it, they infected a few patients and - wham! - said patients appeared cured. Slowly, they start changing people and keeping others as slaves and food supply (they need to breed humans to continue having food). The hero or heroine of the book used to have cancer and became a vampire under the program. S/he finds out that it was all a lie and the infection is still there, it's just growing at a much slower rate and surgery is out of the question because it could kill him/her now. Also, all the infected were slated for death so the secret can't be made known.

I think it's between the pages of the ghost psychic plots and the vampire lawyer story.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

That's OK. This insensitive dork agrees that at least some terminally patients would likely be just fine with a side effect that manifests once a month.

[roguetailkinker.livejournal.com]

A talented fanfic writer wrote about a living will giving permission to do this in case of serious illness or injury. She called it the "Bite Me clause". :-D

[vandersock.livejournal.com]

Saint Louis City demographics are a little deceiving--the city proper has lost a lot of people to the burbs, but they're not all that far out. Still, it's nowhere near the size of Chicago(land), etc.

[wonderlander.livejournal.com]

That's another problem with it. (warning: I'm from Chicagoland.)

Anita's been trying to get all up in Chicago vampire politics. I imagine those are even more corrupt and cut throat than human politics in Chicago. She should get eaten alive by Chicago monsters.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

I lived for five years in the fine City of Chicago on the South Side, and yeah...she wouldn't have a clue, especially as she had no practice with something genuinely nasty, like school board politics.

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

really, my mind sort of gave up trying process the were-groups when it hit wereswans.

Just...wereswans.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Now, if they were wereGEESE, I'd be terrified.

[flaveur.livejournal.com]

The swan one is not so fucked up. Well back, I remember she was saying someting with a witch curse, because Were have to be predators, somehow ? There is more than the swan killed in the earlier books ? Didn't follow that.

Read one book with fucked up FairyTall, the last was with Red Hood, she was wearing a wolfskin, permitting her to change in wolf. And Fairy were not so sugary than in the Gentry serie.
It was pretty much awesome (check Jim Hines, it's a good writer).

[mad-troll.livejournal.com]

Seconded!
(but I must admit that swans share a lot of traits with geese - including being evil bastards)

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

The wereanimals are my biggest bone of contention with the Anitaverse for so many reasons, not least that there are way too many of them. What, we've got wolves, rats, leopards, lions, tigers, swans (swans!), bears, hyenas, foxes, and snakes... and that's just off the top of my head without having any of the books to check.

I don't approve of this "no paranormal left behind" approach to writing because it just kills the premise that shape-shifters are still hiding out and treated as a dangerous minority in the Anitaverse. Surely they must outnumber the regular humans in St Louis by now, all told. I may be remembering it wrong, but don't the werehyenas alone number in the thousands?

Besides that, as much as LKH flaunts her biology degree, she doesn't use much animal knowledge logically in the books. Hyenas are matriarchal - it bugs the hell out of me that we don't hear about any female hyenas. Lionesses are the hunters for prides in real life - why aren't there more lionesses around? Why leopards and tigers living in groups? Of course you can take liberties - it's fiction after all! But why scream from the mountain tops about your bloody biology degree and research, and then ignore so much natural history?

[moons-storm.livejournal.com]

LKH did address the hyena issue in... NiC, I believe, when it was pointed out that Narcissus was pregnant, and it was because the hyenas were matriarchal that Narcissus never allowed females to be turned or brought into the group.

Not that it excuses the fact that LKH just likes to populate her world with bi boys that only ever lust after the Doom Crotch.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I remember that now. Well, in that case, I don't believe Narcissus found and turned that many body-building bisexuals. But then, why am I looking for logic?

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

Wait whut?
...
Snakes? There are weresnakes?
Did I miss this or did I block it out??

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

It was in Cerulean Sins, with Chimera the Panwere. One of his forms was weresnake, and I have a feeling there were maybe two groups - cobras, and something else? I'm probably misremembering that, but Chimera could definitely take on snake-man form. Which of course raises the whole issue of warm-blooded mammal turning into cold-blood reptile, but I'm not touching that.

[ad-kelley.livejournal.com]

there were also, wait for it...were-anacondas. Seriously. How I didn't know this was the series jumping the shark at the time I have no idea.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

Aha! I knew there was another snake in there somewhere. CS was the book I knew the series had gone to hell. I started Incubus Dreams because I found a cheap second-hand copy, but I gave up after the rainmaker scene and never regretted it.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

There were snake shifters earlier in the series, but I think they were "natural" magical creatures not weres. The shifting wasn't caused by being bitten by another shifter or dependent on moon phases.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there was a naga, wasn't there? In Lunatic Cafe, if I recall correctly. I liked that; nice to have some eastern mythology thrown in. I think maybe that's why the weresnakes in CS threw me so much. We had a precedent for reptilian shapeshifters, grounded in recognised mythology and operating under their own rules, and then WHAM! It's all thrown out the window.

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think LKH never progressed part of her brain past age 8- where everything is down to magic, you write yourself into each story as the Princess, all hair is thigh length and handsome men wear frilly clothes and adore you.

But yeah, always bugged me that the Were-Leopards were so damned useless. She needs to spend some time out in Kenya.

I'm still waiting for a Were-Chihuahua. I imagine she'll run out of the cool predators come book 300.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for were-My Little Ponies. Her guys already have the hair for it.

LMAO

[gatitagitanilla.livejournal.com]

Dis cracked me up!!

Re: LMAO

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

They could have a tattoo on each of their rumps too....

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

Another idea on this subject...

It makes sense that wolves and rats are communal, but why does *everyone* have to be?

Wouldn't it be cooler to have social variety and allow for lone shifter cats and even some rogue vampires that choose to not live in a Kiss. What about lone wolves? Swans should have been in pairs for life, not one king to however many thousand swanmanes.

I don't know, it just feels very forced to me. For one thing not all humans live in groups. And those that do choose to live in groups don't always have a clear leader with structured hierarchy. What's wrong with an egalitarian society? People have already brought up that matriarchal groups are missing. But many people and animals are very happily solitary and single.

Certainly all animals do not live in groups. So why when we hybridize humans and animals do all of a sudden we have to live in groups? Not even pairs but large, organized groups with a clear leader and many followers. Just weird to me.

[ad-kelley.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I like the idea of the wolves and lions living with and following something that more closely resembles their innate behavioral ecology. Hyenas as well. Leopards, bears, tigers, and snakes, however, are a no go. I think it would make for a pretty interesting power dynamic because the wolves and lions would generate shifters with these alpha powers, but the others would all be their own alpha. That would lead to each individual cat were having to survive and prove itself on its own (clearly Nathaniel would quickly depart from the series). Not only that, but imagine if they had a biological compulsion to stay away from one another that they constantly had to battle with if they wanted to stay in society/human.
The fact that you can come up with these ideas in the five minutes it takes to sit down and boot my computer just shows how little effort LKH puts into her process. I have been fascinated with the idea of werecreatures since I was a kid which is one reason this incredibly shallow approach really irks me.

[morriganscrow.livejournal.com]

Werechinchillas would be fun, werepangolins, werebudgies, werejereboas....

Having a Hyena boss hermaphrodite who presented as male was a total cop-out - a way to avoid a strong FEMALE character to deflect attention from Anita. I swear, if her ego gets any larger, it will develop its own gravity well and invert the galaxy!

Leopards are solitary, like tigers, so the pard should have all gone their seperate ways when Gabriel died.

Everything you all have said upthread is so very much on target. The rigid group structures, the way so much goes against nature and instinct - her weres are just humans with a furry little problem, and woobies only Anita's cootch can fix.

I have a half written fic where Jean Claud is meeting a group of unknown shifters who want a vampire to create a Triumverate with, and they find that Asher is a good match. Anita goes ballistic, as her opposite number is a female Shaman and fully trained Medicine Woman, partnered to the Alpha shifter, and can whoop her angsty ass with one hand tied behind her back.

I have her dissing the Doom Crotch about her lack of basic magical, vampiric and were knowledge, about her ethics of "raping for the greater good", her refusal to face, mend and/or dismantle her own fucked triumverate, her refusal to deal with the Ardeur and blood magic issue etc etc.

The more I plotted it out, the more I realized just how much I loathed Anita and her menz, her behaviour, her missing morals and ethics. As a practicing Celtic Shaman myself, LKH's blithering incompetence and ignorance as the creator of this drivel made my head hurt.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I have a similar bunny, cept that tri was fully formed and active in another city, Anita, JC and crew go to 'visit' to try and roll this MotC like they did the others who posed a threat.

Cept the MotC is a female and rules her city closer to how Lex Luthor or a Mafia Don does it. Her Human Servant is a few centries old gunslinger, and her Wolfpack to Call is more like an elite Military Strike team.

Logic is that JC's powergrab hasn't gone un-noted by some MotCs and are prepped for War one way or the other. I do believe the phrase "Keep your whore on a leash or leave her outside till she learns to behave" was used at least once...

Thats what gets me...by all accounts Anita and her Zoo should be seen as an abomination by the Supernatural Community as a whole, Anita should be dodging highly calculated assassination attacks every other day, other Cities should be sending female or guys who for whatever reason cannot be flipped by the Doomcrotch to do business with JC, sure to GOD there are other MotCs out there who want no part of JC's little pissing match with the council and would be MORE than happy to nuke St Louis to keep the Council from invading the states.

[morriganscrow.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Given how much the Council is hated/feared (with good reason), anything attracting its possibly divided attention needs to be rubbed out pronto.

Like in your fic, my weres are all trained soldiers, infiltrators and assassins. As an isolated community, in rural Germany, they've needed to see to their own survival.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I dropped mine in NYC, the monthly cover is a club...not a strip club something closer to "Skull and Bones" where if you have the right 'family' connections you are a shoo in, and like Skull and Bones there is allot of myth and rumor and other fun stuff around it.

The whole 'Urban Warfare' came about as a need for survival, afterall the MotC wants her weres able to effectively protect herself, her people and her city from both para and normal threats, how I saw Rapheal and his Wererats before they got neutered.

Hell I never understood what being a MotC MEANT in Anitaverse other than "The Leader", Leader of just the vamps...or is the MotC responsible for ALL the Paranormal in his or her domain? If Packs/Pards/Flocks/Kisses were bickering would the MotC be expected to step in before it got violent? Stuff like that is rarely covered in the books other than to Let Anita Screw It.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I also want to know why the other Masters of the City haven't been putting the political kibosh on St Louis. It's clearly out of control, and no matter who JC is friends with, the actions of his people can't really be ignored, so surely there'd be MotC that are like "yeah, no. Pass." at their offers, and then basically blockade St Louis to prevent allies sending in reinforcements, striking deals to change people's minds, or organising an attack en masse to get rid of what's a very big public menace.

And this is even before the Council gets involved. *weeps* In my head, the Council smackdown is a thing of beauty.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Lets see...letting a Necromancer live (when the Council has a bit about killing them) makes her his Human Servant...gives her a usually Vamp Only Power, said human servant has become the leader of what 3-4 packs/pards and the MotC has done nothing to curb her behavior or restrain her power...or even SHOW that he's the MASTER and she's the SERVANT.

Yeah its shocking that nobody other MotCs or the Council has done more and sooner to knock JC down and put a new MotC in his place.

I imagine that the Council...rather than get directly involved...has made quiet offers to other MotC, anything to put JC and the St Louis Zoo down.

Lord I would LOVE to drop Lara Raith (Dresden Files) in there, she'd have JC killed in about a day (if that long) and then have Anita for desert...

[roguetailkinker.livejournal.com]

I imagine that the Council...rather than get directly involved...has made quiet offers to other MotC, anything to put JC and the St Louis Zoo down.

~chuckle~ That was a major plotline in my first Anita Blake fic. :-D

[naeko.livejournal.com]

*___* Please finish this and let me put it down my pants read it!

[avalonnocturne.livejournal.com]

I totally want to read your fic! Will you let us know when you post it?

[cobalt-cin.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with everything said here and i too wouldn't be too surprised to see wereraves, wereeagles, werejaguars or werecoyotes popping up in here, she seems to love her zoo. I love the idea of monsters, if monsters are done properlly and with a hint of scare. I liked the wererats and the werehyenas too. But they do need a female alpha, as hyenas are naturally lead by dominant females. The wererats were an awesome group of mercenaries and scouts - i cried when I heard of what she did to the poor alpha wererat. I loved that character and as with everything else, she bonked him over, literally. But it has been said again and again here, under the hands and talent of a different writer you would get such a different world here. Its such shame and so frustrating that the world she has createcd has so much potential in it that goes to waste. That is chiefly what finally stopped me reading her books.