Famous folks in on 'The Secret'.

[Les]

Just wondering... in the PitW universe how many famous people were Weres, or were 'friends of weres'.

I mean, Metallica's 'Of Wolf and Man' should be a dead giveaway.

[bar1scorpio]

Metallica has yet to be informed, formally, of the existence of Therianthropes.

But Vincent Price? Hells yeah. He was just awesome that way. And Alice Cooper. And Mark Hamill.

Okay. Weird Coincidence? EVERYONE who was a guest on the original run of the Muppets Show was in on the secret.

[Happygun]

Here's an easy one: Rasputin

When they later figured out he was a lycanthrope they spread disinformation about how they put the cyanide in the cake BEFORE cooking it or how he self-administered small amounts of poison over the years and other such nonsense. After all, a lycanthrope becoming an adviser to one of the greatest rulers in the world...

[stormydragon]

What about ?

[wysiwyg]

Johnny Cash. Because he was just that cool.

[wysiwyg]

Plus this.

>Okay. Weird Coincidence? EVERYONE who was a guest on the original run of the Muppets Show was in on the secret.

[Kris@WLP]

Maybe not -everybody- who guested on the Muppet Show knew about lycanthropes, but quite a few did.

Without giving everything away, here are some guidelines:

* Anybody with an animal nickname in the modern age is almost certainly NOT a werewolf, and further is unlikely to be told the secret. Wolfman Jack might well have been in on the secret, but if so it was from BEFORE his DJ persona took shape.

* Anybody incapable of keeping his mouth shut, or prone to verbal tics, slips, or malapropisms, is not going to be told the secret. VP Joe Biden, for example, is one of those in DC who knows nothing of lycanthropes. (If he became President he'd have to be told, but the Washington lycanthrope community hopes Obama stays REALLY healthy and safe...)

* Anybody who appears prone to use the secret to make a quick buck (or a quick million) is on the Do Not Tell list. Mark Hamill has been mentioned as someone who almost certainly knows the secret... George Lucas, not so much. (Although, as best I can recall, Lucas has never done anything with werewolves as such in it... it's possible he might BE one, and come into the secret that way...)

* Religious figures, and people with strongly and loudly stated religious beliefs, are EXTREMELY unlikely to be told the secret... although, in many cases, they might know already. The higher levels of the Vatican know, and disapprove of, weres. Most low-end Catholic priests don't know, and such priests will have to demonstrate a general objector status with the pontiff before any were will tell willingly. Protestants are a bit of a mixed bag, but generally speaking Lutherans, Mennonites, Pentecostals, fundamentalists and evangelicals are kept shut out; Anglicans/Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians are more likely to be trusted. In general, though, if a priest knows the secret, the odds are they're either a lycanthrope themselves- and the second most likely probability is they're associated with werewolf hunters.

And finally:

* Lycanthropes are a bit more likely to reveal themselves to people who, even if they blurted out the secret, will NEVER be believed by ANYBODY about ANYTHING they say. Note: this is not a guarantee. Also, part of "never be believed" includes making sure that the person in question will not seek out proof positive to defend his or her claims. Obsessives like Sarah's dad Arthur, for example, are absolutely O-U-T.

I can't think of anything offhand that disqualifies anyone on the Muppet Show guest list. Mark Hamill is a sentimental preference. Zero Mostel almost certainly knew; ditto Harry Belafonte. Spike Milligan and Marty Feldman were nuts enough that telling either of them the secret was no danger at all. I lean against Peter Sellers, though; although even less connected with reality than Milligan and Feldman, he was prone to violent fits and temper tantrums, and was very difficult to work with most other places- though word is he was a lamb on the Muppet Show set.

One other note: I am NOT saying Jim Henson was a were. I doubt it much. If he were, though, he would have been a werebear- one not so much antisocial as painfully, painfully shy, who used puppets to both insulate himself from and connect himself to the rest of the world. (Hal's not going down that road, by the way.)

[stormydragon]

Okay, here's a tough one....

Is Andy Kaufman in on the secret?

[Kris@WLP]

In the PitW universe Andy is alive, well, retired to Miami under an assumed name, and being paid a modest stipend to avoid cameras henceforth and forevermore.

Oh- he's a wererat. The cancer thing was both a cover to help him vanish and, also, his way of going out with the biggest gag he could think of at the time.

[stormydragon]

My personal theory is that he's still alive in our world too. He had a sex change is deep undercover as .

[Fionn the Otaku]

[Kris@WLP]

[Les]

Doesn't the story go that with Hemmingway his mother spent most of Ernest's youth pretending he was a girl and treating him as same?

[Travelerr]

First off Mark Hamil as a were? Yes. Why not only am I fond of the guy (Hell when my sister lived in Cali she babysat his daughter and lost my AUTOGRAPHED comic she intended to bring back for me x.x) But the man is fairly calm and I've not heard a bad word spoken about him. See's to enjoy his fans and his privacy. Someone you could see being one or if not. Keeping it a huge secret.

You know who I think either is one or knows the secret? Bob Hope. Thats right. Bet ya didn't see THAT coming.

I think there are far more Weres that are teachers, nurses, Book store owners, (Oh come on you just -know- one or two of those Used book stores or gaming stores is ran by a were or some kind) and otherwise plain ordinary folk. ... Okay. I secretly believe more than a few might be some chefs. But thats due to the heightened sense of taste and smell that would help out in the kitchen. If they aren't chef's you can bet there's more than a few backyard cooks amongst them that'll make you drop you your knees in gratitude.

[Kris@WLP]

To clarify:

The rough guess as to were population density is 1 were for about 1,000 humans.

At the very, very top of the social pyramid- national leaders, A-list stars, etc.- the number is LESS, because weres are strongly discouraged from the spotlight beyond a certain point.

However, on the tier just BELOW the top, the number is a bit greater- as many as 1 in 200, possibly- because weres tend, as a rule, to be driven achievers with an average level of charisma and capability higher than that of humans.

Before weres were hunted down, remember, they were natural leaders among humans- warriors, chiefs, even "gods".

But even so... 1 in 200 still means not damn many.

And Bob Hope, in particular, is a very poor candidate for being a were; he just lived too long, and was too much in the spotlight. It's quite likely he knew the secret, true, but he wasn't one himself.

[Happygun]

[bar1scorpio]

Next week.

[Kris@WLP]

No- the page came in yesterday afternoon, after I'd announced updates and that PitW wouldn't have one. There definitely WILL be a page next week, though, and then a bunch of fun filler stuff.

As for "better"; don't underestimate the effect of physical factors (health, looks) on economic outcomes. Lycanthropes tend to have extra confidence in themselves that comes with physical health and strength. (Peter, despite being a runt, has a bit of this advantage, too.) Weres almost never have to worry about the million-dollar illness that could (and often does) bankrupt them or leave them unable to earn. Most weres (especially werewolves) are better at socializing and networking (and come with a built-in base network in were society) than a lot of humans (like yours truly). And regeneration to keep youth lingering even in human form puts weres on the good side of the basic trend that ugly people earn less than pretty/handsome ones.

And so, when you spend little on health care, and when in tight times you can go to the woods and *ahem* find your own food, two significant drivers of poverty in humans come off the boards for weres.

It's worth noting, though: being a better achiever does NOT make you a better person. There are a lot of rich weres who are dicks- and by no means are all weres, or even a majority of them, rich as such.

In fact, let me do the math, using economic figures as a baseline:

Start with US as a whole: 300,000,000 people

1/1000 of whom are lycanthropes of various kinds: 300,000

1% of America (the ultra-rich) control 40% of total national wealth: 3,000,000
Of whom only about 1/2000 or lower are weres: 1500

19% of America (the rich-but-not-ultra) control an additional 35% of total national wealth: 57,000,000
Of whom 1/200 or thereabouts, MAXIMUM, are weres: 285,000 ...

.... ooooookay, I goofed. This math says no poor weres exist anywhere in the US. Um, no.

RETCON TIME: the 1/200 number is political leadership ONLY (reflecting the advantage of were society and especially werewolf social instincts), and is a lot lower on entertainment, economic, etc- call it 1/500 overall...

... which, applied to economic tier, produces a number of: 114,000.

Which leaves (300K - 1.5K - 114K) = 184,500 weres who are in the lower 80%, which means middle class or lower.

The numbers still seem wonky, but I'm going to excuse it on the grounds that: (a) I am not a mathematician; and (b) just as I'm doing this off the top of my head, so would be anyone in the PitW world; there are no actual surveys of were income or wealth levels, for obvious reasons.

And finally, I'm trying my damndest to AVOID Beethoven was an Alien Spy.

Beethoven was human. His AGENT was the alien. }:-{D


(That last was only a joke.)

[Kris@WLP]

One other point: there are enough more humans than weres that, despite the average advantage weres have, the odds are very good that there are one or two humans who can outdo anything any were can do (in human form, anyway).

Usain Bolt is human.

Eli Manning is human.

The Stig is... well, we don't know what he is, but he's NOT a werewolf...

[Happygun]

Yes, you've more or less repeated what I said with unnecessary elaborations: in the PitW universe lycanthropes are better than everyone else on average; Becca's dad is justified in that regard at least. There's still that subtle connotation that many great leaders, artists, thinkers, etc. throughout history wouldn't have been able to reach their full potential had they been mere humans. The only thing that keeps the series from descending into full-borne, Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Witch Girl Adventures* Beethoven Was An Alien Spy territory is the fact that the only difference between a lycanthrope and a human is a nip or a one-night-stand and a six-month adjustment period.

*Two media franchises I would gladly annihilate with extreme prejudice given half a chance.

[Kris@WLP]

[evilsasha]

There is evidence that suggests Ludmilla Palichenko, soviet WW2 sniper, was a were-rat.

Fellow russian sniper Vasilli Zaitsev was aware of the existence of lycanthropes (one of his childhood freinds was a were-snow leopard) but was not a were himself

Theodore Roosevelt is the only Known U.S. president to have been a werewolf or a were of any kind, surviving that assassination attempt had nothing to do with the contents of his pocket.

Know why they can't find Hoffa's body? He knew. He attempted blackmail. *sad trombone*

[rdfox]

Actually, it *reduces* the odds of great artists being weres, since it's widely agreed that to be a truly great artist (in any form of art), you have to suffer, usually in the form of social isolation. If weres are more socially adept, in general, they're *less* likely to have that deep inner pain needed to create fine art. (Note, this is no slight against people who DON'T have said inner pain; it just seems that the vast majority of those who are seen as great masters of some form of art tend to have a life story of pure misery...)

Of course, this might make werebears who are stuck by circumstance in densely populated areas ("I was born in Harlem, and I'm gonna be stuck in Harlem for the rest of my life!") end up becoming great artists, but that would probably be a rather recent development--last 150 years or so, as urbanization took place.

As for the Muppets, I expect that just about all of the classic Muppet Show crew were at least in on the secret; I could see Steve Whitmire maybe being a were-rat (making his playing Rizzo somewhat ironic), but I think Richard Hunt (Scooter, Sweetums, etc.) would be the most likely lycanthrope among that crew--and that the HIV-related pneumonia that killed him was actually the unusually early onset of lycanthropic senility, with his heading out to the woods to preserve the secret...

[Kris@WLP]

[Happygun]