Honestly, it’s really shameful that the furry fandom/community has jumped on werecat!Selina Kyle and Tygrus from Batman: The Animated Series. Like. There’s only two fics of them on AO3? REALLY? I mean look at them!
Like. Idk if it’s cause of how this episode aired in the early 1990s and so before the real full internet had emerged and allowed for the growth of both furries and fanfiction, but yeah. People need to know about these two.
Hey, op, what episode is this? I’m gonna go home and watch it right now
Yeah! It’s called Tyger, Tyger like the William Blake poem.
That episode was odd, in that the mad scientist was TOTALLY in it as a sex thing (kidnapping Selina, turning her into a literal catwoman, and then trying to have her boink the catman-mutant he’d created from scratch rather than transforming someone) rather than the usual money/power motives of the other evil scientists in that show. Like the reoccurring villain Dr Milo (who was later killed by Doomsday in JLU) who used a celebrity athlete’s desire for performance enhancing drugs to turn him into a science-based werewolf... I think because he knew the treatments were addictive, and he was squeezing the guy for cash in exchange for further treatments lest he turn into a wolfman 100% of the time (which kind of ends up being the case, as Batman shows up while he’s getting the cure, destroys it by accident, with the athlete seemingly stuck as a werewolf for the rest of the show but living in the woods so we never see them).
Admittedly the cat-fetish dude was a Dr Moreau homage, and a common thread in several of the film adaptations of his original novel (the Island of Dr Moreau) attempt to have Moreau trick the protagonist into sleeping with a genetically modified catwoman who is indistinguishable from a regular human (in the Brandon version she’s played by Fairuza Balk, who I think could have made a good Selina back in the day). While the cat/panther-woman was a character in the book, HG Wells never had anyone try to sleep with her, with her being turned into a potential love interest I think being introduced in the 1930s film version.
It’s very clearly an episode of The Writer’s Barely Contained Fetish. But I did find it endearing that Tygrus, once he saw that Selina wasn’t into him and that his “father” lied about how you find a mate, respected Catwoman’s feelings and agency (tbh that made me ship them even harder 😅 boy just wanted to live free in the jungle with her and no societal constraints).
I think it’s also interesting that the whole human/animal genetics blending keeps popping up in the DCAU, cause we end up with Splicers by the time we get to Batman Beyond where it’s a fully available and reversible technology to blend your genetics with animal traits. Like, clearly the writers just couldn’t let go of it.
I mean, in terms of worldbuilding once someone proved that the technology to stick animal traits onto folk was proven to both exist and be replicated (with Langstrom creating Man-Bat, his father-in-law copying his research in a failed attempt to do the same, and the cat-fetish dude all working together), I guess it makes sense that over time it just becomes more integrated with the setting as it becomes somewhat more mainstream. So by the time they get to Batman Beyond’s Gotham some fifty years after the appearance of Man-Bat they’ve gotten the tech down to the point that it’s launched an entire sub-culture, same way that Venom went from being a specialised drug created by the military into being a performance-enhancing thing sold illegally to highschool students or how Mr Freeze was able to replicate the accident that mutated himself as a billionaire worked out that it can man you effectively immortal.
In regards to Timm and Dini being into furry stuff, dunno, maybe? I know one of the things people half-jokingly said about Dini’s pre-reboot Zatanna solo stuff is that it contained a lot of stuff folk on DevArt are into (folk turned into dolls etc.) but I figured it was more a visual use of magic in the setting rather than a fetish thing.
There is definitely a small but dedicated fandom for this ship out there :D
But yeah I too am surprised there is not nearly the amount of fanart/fanfic I would have expected for it
I love that second screencap with Bruce just in the background like “WHAT IS HAPPENING”
Don’t fursecute them, Bruce <3
Bruce, you dress as a bat, I think you might be a furry too. Let Selina be happy and live her best werecat life off in the jungle island with her big werecat lover!
SHE DESERVES THIS
Also its not like this is the only half lady half cat out there.
I do love that by the time Cheetah shows up in the DCAU its not even remotely weird anymore so they just do a throw away line about how she was experimenting on herself and Bam! Cat lady.
“I turned myself into a cat to prove a theory”
“What was the theory”
“Catgirls are hot”
“YES GOOD”
They are! :D
A scientific fact :D
Because she proved it as a scientist!
There are many benefits to being a mad scientist :D
There are! :D Fun, sexy benefits!
THE BEST BENEFITS :D
Bruce: Selina looks kinda hot like an anthropomorphic Cat-woman...... I wonder if Dr. Langston has any of his Man-Bat formula left....
HEHEHEHEHEHEE
Bisexual furry threesome!
The goal we have dreamed of since science existed :D
Note that Bruce flat out seduced Cheetah to escape from that trap. He knows what evil cat-ladies like and how to talk to them.
He knows what cats like
He knows what girls want
He knows what cats like
Cats like
Cats like him O.O
Okay but y'all are sitting on the time Killer Croc and Baby Doll were kind of an item for like one or two episodes
