Jay Cate
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Participatory lycanthropy
Female werewolves in Werewolf: The Apocalypse
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This chapter explores the content of a role-playing game (RPG) by White Wolf Publishing, one of the games in their World of Darkness series, and examines the role and presentation of the female werewolf within this game. It suggests that the corebook for Werewolf: The Apocalypse integrates tropes of femininity and femaleness into a construction of lycanthropy in a uniquely sustained and complex way. Apocalypse offers a counterpoint to the assumption of male identity in the form of the Black Furies, a tribe 'composed almost entirely of female Garou'. Regardless of individual story and character creation, the narratives of this particular RPG posit an undeniable relationship between werewolves and femininity that both draws on and subverts the tropes of each category. The trope of lycanthropic transformation being determined by lunar influence is, largely, a creation of twentieth-century cinema, with few earlier literary narratives making this specific connection.

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She-wolf

A cultural history of female werewolves

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