Talk:Lycanthropy

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.

Contents

[edit] Personal experiences

I started looking for this subject about two years ago when, phenomonally my friends body started to mold itself for the shape of a hybrid animal. Yes unlikely, but very true, with only witness proof.
Now, so far in my hunt for this subject I have encountered more than my fair share of Lycanthropy.
I like the article on this site for Lycanthropy, it is the most detailed and honest(to my information) in my entire search.

Thank You,

Doren Greenfield


Hey! My freind too! Only he turned into a tazmanian devil. He was a devil before anyway.

I myself am one. a black cat with a cresent on my forehead

i beleive its inaccurate to claim that a vampire is an example of lycanthropy, as one oesnt have to be dead to become a lycanthrope.

Gabrielsimon 12:29, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Seems like someone copied some ideas (cat with crescent on forehead) from a Sailor Moon Manga cartoon, in wich the best friend of the main character is a lycanthrope soldier that can morph into a black cat with a crescent on his forehead. That's bad !!!¸ User: Estelle Pelland, 2nd february, 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.201.61.178 (talk) 23:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I have witnised the transformation many a time the person becomes wolf is the only one I have seen. User:24.224.8.145

Me too. In fact a few hours ago my friend transformed into a dipshit because he actually thought this article was real!...oh wait. --DA Roc 9 July 2005 02:00 (UTC)

Hmm... seems like there are many werewolves out there, or many jokers in here ;) --Arny 03:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
i beleive its inaccurate to claim that a vampire is an example of lycanthropy, as one oesnt have to be dead to become a lycanthrope. Actually it depends, somewhat. In Romanian folklore, the terms strigoi, moroi, pricolici and varcolac are closely associated with each other, and older folklore apparently uses some of them almost interchangeably, even though in today's modern Romanian fiction, strigoi is seen as referring to undead vampires or witches (or a life-sucking ghost, IIRC), moroi are a sort of living vampire (proving you don't have to be dead to be a vampire, either :P), pricolici are a type of undead werewolf or violent wolf-like ghost of a particularly nasty human, and varcolac is mostly either a type of goblin or a werewolf (for example, even though pricolici are universally said to feature a wolfish appearance, it was the term varcolac which was used in the translation of the title of American Werewolf in London, possibly because the character in question wasn't undead). Old folklore is a lot more complex and varied and jumbled than its modern equivalents in fantasy literature, trust me! Runa27 06:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jan Potocki

Jan Potocki, author of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, shot himself with a silver bullet because he believed, perhaps under the influence of syphilitic madness, that he was becoming a werewolf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Potocki

Thanks for that, I have put it on the silver bullet page. Rich Farmbrough 00:17, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] getting really really sick of people removing my work

i add " examples include Jenu and Wnedigo" which is true, becasue they are both creatures that werew orgionally human. people keep removing it, for various reaasons, and im getting tired of it, would people please put it back in?Gimmiet 17:53, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem is, as I described in my own stab at editing that section, the original legends of the Wendigo varied as to its origin and the modern werewolf-like conception of it is far from universal either. One can't just say "Wendigos are like werewolves" because it's not true in all cases. One must instead say "Wendigos are like werewolves in certain Wendigo legends and stories", and then hopefully mention some specific stories and legends where that's so. The same applies to the Jenu, which I didn't include in my edit because I've never heard of them before and the Jenu article has no information on which to base a statement. Perhaps you could flesh the Jenu article out more, explaining how they're like werewolves and mentioning which particular legends show them that way? Bryan 18:28, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Wendigos have thiewr origion in that they were once people, who were cursed, the same h9olds true for Jenu and Werewolves, it also holds simmilarity in that if you kill one, for all three , you become one, its also true of all three that they are large and hairy humanoids.Gimmiet 18:32, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Vampires were once human, as were many demons and other creatures. Lycanthropes are humans who change into an animal shape, not gigantic humanoids. Also, most of the Wendigo stories feature beings of ice or stone skin, not hair. But even if it were hair that doesn't make them a lycanthrope. Only modern fiction and a few stray modern white man versions of wendigo tales mention a werewolf connection at all, and that stems from a gross misunderstanding of the original stories, along with an obvious attempt to use the figure in stgories ina way familiar to most readers. The statement that "it also holds simmilarity in that if you kill one, for all three , you become one" is complete nonsense for all three figures and has no bearing on the topic of this article anyway, as that's not how lycanthropes are formed at all, and even if you reverse it to being killed by one makes one it's still irrelevant for lycanthropes (except in bad modern fiction) and completely wrong for wendigos as well.
If you are sick of people removing your work, perhaps you should make a greater attempt to create additions that are factual, verifiable and NPOV (speaking of edits moreso on other pages here). This is all within your control. Complaining about people removing your shoddy, poorly-worded and researched additions is like the guy who killed his own parents begging for mercy because he was an orphan. DreamGuy 21:21, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Vampires are not lycanthropes.. this article is unclear to me.. and there is confusion with the terms 'therianthrope' and 'lycanthrope'. And vampires are human. Not "once human".. Loocifah 18:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Vampires are not human, they were formerly human. I hope you are not Gabriel back under a new name trying to raise old complaints you lost on after you were permanently banned from Wikipedia. DreamGuy 03:27, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Side note: that's not entirely true. "Vampire" can be interpreted to merely mean something that sucks life-force or blood; ranging from the real-life vampire bat, to undead humans in folklore (who are, technically still human, not "formerly". A human corpse is still a human, just a dead one :P). Additionally, in today's Romanian storytelling (based on older folklore), the moroi or moroii is a type of vampire that is alive rather than undead, sometimes portrayed as one born (or so sayeth the Wiki) from two (undead) strigoi, who themselves aren't necessarily going to be human or inhuman, it all depends on the folklore it was derived from. Runa27 07:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Were-people"

In "Lycanthropy in South America" there are mentioned were-men and were-women. Since it is a fact that "were" means "man", and that the compound words like "werewolf" or "were-animal" mean "man-wolf" and "man-animal", this form is misleading, since "were-man" would actually mean "man-man". I know "were" is widely used and popular for any kind of "werecreature", but something else should be chosen here. --Arny 03:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The English language is filled with things like that, but that is how it evolved and how it is used now. It doesn't have to make sense to be understood. image:Smile-tpvgames.gif Image:Tycon.jpgCoyoty 00:44, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, it should make sense anyway. Were-people is just bad and inaccurate. It's not a question of English being like that because "Were-people" is not an English word, it's a made up neologism by ignorant people. DreamGuy 03:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved mythology here

My mythology additions were removed from therianthropy because they supposedly belong in lycanthropy, according to DreamGuy. I guess therianthropy is being shaped as an article that is entirely resistant to mythology about therianthropy, so I moved my therianthropy mythology section here. All of my sources are cited. I'm writing about this here because I don't want to be accused of being "sneaky" again. Yes, I'm totally honest about what I'm doing.Blue Milk Mathematician 01:43, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation

I find myself firmly disagreeing with DreamGuy's removal of the Lycanthropy (film) disambiguation from this article, and figured I should bring it to talk to see what can be done with discussion. Under Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Confusion this seems like a clear-cut case to me; the movie's name is "Lycanthropy" so anyone looking for information on it is going to wind up here on this page. The fact that the movie is a fairly minor topic compared to lycanthropy in general is irrelevant to that - for example atheism, an article on a major philosophical and religious topic, has a disambiguation to a three-album death metal band Atheist (band) at the top. The only reason I can think of why there shouldn't be a disambig link is if there shouldn't be an article about the movie at all, and even direct to video it seems to fit in with the prominence of some of the other movies with articles in Category:Werewolves in film and television. Bryan 07:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This "film" is not a real film at this point, but an IMDB report of an announced direct to video release by an editor/writer with no real professional background. IMDB lets people edit their database and submit info about personal films by people working out of their garages. This "film" does not meet the standard necessary to be listed in this encyclopedia at all. When (or, more importantly, IF) this ever gets released, then maybe it could be listed. "Films" without articles at all should never be mentioned in a disambiguation setting (without an article, there is nothing to disambiguate) and this film was not listed until you took it upon yorself to make an article for it based upon IMDB data that has not been verified.
Furthermore, if films in that category you mentioned are less prominent, then those should be delisted. This encyclopedia being open means that lots of people come here to list things that shouldn;t be listed. The presense of massive amounts of spam in certain articles,for example, in no way justifies further spam elsewhere. DreamGuy 08:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] howllll

I wish to add one could be manny were-beasts as my werefox

[edit] Lycanthropy as a condition

The opening paragraph implies that people with lycanthropy can choose to turn into a wolf, but in many or most stories lycanthropy is a condition that forces one to transform. Should the opening line be changed to reflect this? --Arctic Gnome 22:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lycan Merge tag

"Lycan" is a slang word used almost entirely in fiction. I've never seen it in folklore. Plus, the Lycan article is almost entirely about the brand of werewolves in just one film. I vote for "No Merge."Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 16:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I vote no as well, and only added the tag to get some sort of finality from the merge request. Radagast83 16:50, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
They're gone now.Radagast83 05:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "A Zeus"?

"was turned into a ravenous wolf in retribution for attempting to serve human flesh (his own son) to a visiting Zeus in an attempt to disprove the god's divinity."

I was wondering whether this is a mistake and should be corrected to read:


"was turned into a ravenous wolf in retribution for attempting to serve human flesh (his own son) to visiting Zeus in an attempt to disprove the god's divinity."

[edit] Vandalism edit

I am going to edit the following material I descovered in the article, due to vulgarity and false information.

The word lycanthropy is often used generically for any transformation of a human into animal form, though the precise term for that is technically "therianthropy". Sometimes, "assholethropy" is used instead of "bitchhoethropy" (Guiley, 192). Folk-etymology also links the word to Lycaon, a king of Arcadia who, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, was turned into a queer as fuck wolf in retribution for attempting to fuck male human flesh (his own son) to visiting Zeus in an attempt to disprove the god's masculinity. There is also a mental illness called lycanthropy in which a patient believes he or she is, or has transformed into, an animal and behaves like a dick. This is sometimes referred to as mental retardation to distinguish it from its use in the real worlds.

,Facade

______________________________________

When I attempted to repair the miswritten information, the article had repaired itself. I will make no further attempts.

[edit] External links

I continue to run into a problem with User:Mermaid from the Baltic Sea wikistalking me around to blind revert my edits. In this case he once again restored a long line of links to horribly unencyclopedic sources that do not meet WP:EL guidelines in the slightest. Instead of actually bothering to find links that meet Wikipedia standards, this guy likes providing links to personal websites where people just make up whatever nonsense they think of off the top of their heads. Instead of just blind reverting some badly needed changes, if he honestly thinks any of those links deserve to be here he should provide arguments that match the guidelines on WP:EL to justify their inclusion here and not just try to prevail with edit warring and harassment of other editors. DreamGuy 22:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Stop this nonsense and just adhere to WP:EL and people will stop reverting you. It's that simple. And if you really feel like I'm stalking you, get an admin instead of continuing name-call me everywhere you go. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 22:49, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
No, sorry, it was following WP:EL that made me remove those links as nonencyclopedic. And it's not "people" reverting me, it's you, and you alone, out blind revert edits I make to all sorts of articles, many of which you never contributed to before.
Bottomline, if you think these links should stay, you need to give a justification for them. If there's a dispute, the person who thinks they are appropriate has to explain why, otherwise anyone could link anything they damn well pleased with no justification. DreamGuy 23:30, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you want me to repeat the same points on every single talk page where you've been trying to pull the same mass evisceration of links, but here goes the relevant info from WP:EL for what meets the criteria for external links:

What to link

There are several things that should be considered when adding an external link.

  • Is it accessible to the reader?
  • Is it proper in the context of the article (useful, tasteful, informative, factual, etc.)?
  • Is it a functional link, and likely to continue being a functional link?

Each link should be considered on its merits, using the following guidelines. As the number of external links in an article grows longer, assessment should become stricter. When in doubt about the appropriateness of adding new links, make a suggestion on the article's talkpage and discuss with other editors.

What should be linked

  1. Articles about any organization, person, web site, or other entity should link to the official site if any.
  2. An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a copy of the work if none of the "Links normally to be avoided" criteria apply.
  3. Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks) or other reasons.
  4. Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as reviews and interviews.

Links to be considered

  1. For albums, movies, books, and other creative works, links to professional reviews.
  2. Very large pages should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Worldwide, many use Wikipedia with a low-speed connection. Unusually large pages should be annotated as such.
  3. Long lists of links are not appropriate: Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links. If you find a long list of links in an article, you can tag the "External links" section with the {{linkfarm}} template. Where editors have not reached consensus on an appropriate list of links, a link to a well chosen web directory category could be used until such consensus can be reached. The Open Directory Project is often a neutral candidate, and may be added using the {{dmoz}} template.
  4. Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources.

(you should note that the external links you deleted meet these requirements, can you point out any points under what should not be linked that apply? If not, then you're just pretending to argue WP:EL when you're actually arguing according to personal likes and dislikes). Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 23:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

And you can't keep just posting a clip from the guidelines and assert those links meet those guidelines, when I say that they don't. If you disagree and want them to stay, you must present an argument for each link you wish to keep or else it can't stay. DreamGuy 07:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Therianthropy vs Lycanthropy

Since the term lycanthrope practically translates to "wolf-man", shouldn't it be more appropriate that the information about therianthropes that do not transform into wolves be moved to the page for therianthropy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.176.127 (talk) 01:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The term lycanthropy has been used quite frequently for transformations into forms other than wolves. Whether this is technically correct for the source words doesn't change the fact that it is used this way. Lots of words have current meanings that actually don't match the root words anymore. DreamGuy (talk) 17:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Werewolfs in South America

I've added in the article, that in Brazil, to belief that the seventh son will also a wolf. I would also like to state that I am Brazilian, and that I am familiar with my country's folklore, and I would like to say that there is no believe related to a human turning into a pig. That derives from a indigenous tribe belief, related to the dolphin-man tale, and is not related to the commom European - Brazilian folklore of the werewolf legend, wich appeared in Brazil during the portuguese colonization, and so, cannot be assimilated with Native Brazilan legends and beleifs. I would also like to ask, that my correction weren't erased, since it's not wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.24.51.204 (talk) 15:35, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Someone removed all correctins made by 201.24.51.204 but they are all correct! Before removing someone else's work you should at least verify. There is no pigman in Brazil, and the werewolf myth is not related to indigenous myths. jggouvea (talk) 21:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)