Rewriting Warriors

Falcon/Falconfeather - He/they/it

[outof--theshadows]

OTS Masterlist!

Kittypet culture masterlist

K'raal (language)

[emptyblissdotmp3-deactivated202]

also there's no one stopping you from loving a badly written woman. in fact sometimes a badly written woman will crawl inside your brain and live there forever.

[emptyblissdotmp3-deactivated202]

tags i have gotten on this post within less than a week;

• taylor swift. who is not a poorly written woman because she is from real life.

• various people tagging themselves. you are not a poorly written woman because you are from real life.

• unreality. i do not think any mention of fiction ever constitutes unreality.

[mezais]

Did you read DoTC

Yes and I liked it

Yes and I’m neutral

Yes and I disliked it

Started but never finished

No

Voting ended onAug 27, 2024

[mezais]

A lot of strong feelings in the tags, keep them coming

[scuffedfur]

world’s worst dad

[scuffedfur]

guys i can’t do this

[best-murdercat-tournament]

Best Murdercat Tournament: Bumble vs Leafpool

Bumble

Leafpool

Voting ended onAug 25, 2024

FINAL POLL!!!

[nightcallerdraws]

Critters

[roseate-felidae]

I'm really tempted to read Warrior cats for the first time.

I love cats (special interest), xenofiction and enjoyed Watership down (second favourite book).

I'm intimidated by its sheer size of series. Maybe I should try audible first? I would have to get audible though.

Is felidae good? I know nothing about it.

@lepurcinus @amber-tortoiseshell you two know about these books. Is it worth it?

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Oh well. I'll tell you my experience: Watership Down is a good book. Warriors is not good. It can have good moments and interesting characters (often by accident), it's easily readable, sometimes funny and, you know, it has cats, which is definitely the main appeal for me; but it's not really... satisfactory in any way. (Except for cataloguing all the cats like i do in my genetically accurate family tree)

I think what most people in the fandom love about it is how easy to play with the setting. Even if the story itself is not that compelling, the world is entertaining and flexible and you can do anything with it you want: make oc cats or clans, rewrite the entire canon or build on it to make your own stories, explore characters the books neglected and so on.

Good news: don't be afraid from the size of the series, you definitely don't have to read all of them! Don't even have to start at the beginning. (Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I don't think the first arc is that good, y'all are just nostalgic. I, for one, enjoyed Dawn of Clans (the prequel arc) much more.)

I think you could try reading one or two books (they are not that long in themselves) and decide if this series is for you or not.

[outof--theshadows]

The first arc is fantastic. The next few are okay, once you finish OoTS it goes downhill.

As Amber said, it's not good. Like it's really not good. The worldbuilding sucks. You can make the characters any sort of animal and the story won't change. You can make them humans and the story will hardly change. It just is not written well. The biggest draw for me nowadays is rewriting it. Warriors is a great book series to pick apart and rework if you like that sort of thing, but honestly it holds little value it and of itself.

And as the books go on, the writers get more and more careless. You may have heard about the Moonpaw incest controversy - Moonpaw, the protag of the next upcoming series, her parents are cousins. This happened because of a few factors. One, the writing team doesn't keep track of familial lines. Two, they pair up any two cats at random because they're very Christain and that reflects in their work. Three, they don't care enough to keep track of things. Afaik it hasn't been changed yet. (This also lead to an outstanding surge of disgusting behavior in the fandom towards children of incest)

But it's really what you make of it. I adore the first arc. I think it's pretty solid on its own (though the prose leaves a lot to be desired) and it has some great characters, interesting ideas, and a solid story to be told! Granted, there are many issues with it, but it's quite fun to read : )

[sorreltail]

my favourite thing about every warrior cats fan who is the number one stan of some random unimportant background character is that almost without fail they will be convinced that their guy has right of succession. they’ll have a whole au where secretly their fave character is the main character of warriors holding the whole story together and it will be convincing as HELL and you’ll go fuck….. smallear should have been the one to save thunderclan you’re right….. I eat it up every time

[sorreltail]

delighted by everyone tagging their presidential picks in their reblogs. does anybody actually care about canon warrior cats or are we all living in our own fantasies where our favourite background character is living their potential

[sorreltail]

a nice lady

[mommyclaws]

He wants Ravenpaw to die so bad hes not even pretending to hide it

[mommyclaws]

The reason they didn’t give Ravenpaw canon parents is because they couldn’t have a character ask “heyy… Tigerclaw….? why did my son tell me you made him cross the thunderpath blindfolded and triple dog dare him to eat deathberries to prove his loyalty?”

[mommyclaws]

Queens were soo crazy protective in the first arc, if Tigerclaw McChild Endangerment had to deal w Ravenpaw’s momma I promise you he would be giving him lolipops and shit for doing the bare minimum

[skinwretch]

the one scene where jayfeather briefly wonders if leafpool had been in love with ashfur got me thinking if leafpool’s rendezvous with crowfeather isn’t gonna happen in your au…….. i think it could also work with ashfur. like. ashfur is trying to force himself to get over squirrelflight and to him, leafpool is the closest thing to her in his proximity, so he projects her sister onto her. he also at the same time wants to make squirrelflight jealous, wants to make her realize what she missed out on, which is why he proposes that he and leafpool run away together. leafpool believes that she reciprocates and agrees to leave with him for the same reason she does it with crowfeather; she craves the intimacy her position in the clan forbades her from having and is increasingly frustrated with the constraints of her designated station, but she does not have the tools to adeptly identify these feelings and where they come from so she assumes that they must be love. it can play out pretty much the same from there where they spend a few days away from the clans and then midnight tells them to go back (ashfur particularly feeling encouraged after learning that squirrelflight is in danger, seeing this as an oppurtunity to show squirrelflight that he loved her enough to return to thunderclan for her and ultimately “chose” her over her sister. this does not stop him from dropping the same passive aggressive remarks about how leafpool also eventually abandoned him by valuing her position as medicine cat over their love of course, because he’s still bitter over having another failed relationship) at which point they terminate the relationship. them being clanmates would pose a different dynamic than if they were from different clans but i similarly think leafpool’s interactions with ashfur from this point on would again be similar to the ones she had with crowfeather, with her attempts to engage him starting out amicable enough only to end with ashfur simply stating that they have both moved on and leafpool would never be able to have loved him as much as she loves the clan anyways etc etc. and of course: the drama of the fire scene playing out with squirrelflight being like “these aren’t my kids, they’re yours”

[skinwretch]

addendum: now that i think about squirrelflight probably would not tell him the kits are his for leafpool’s safety, so they’d probably find out when leafpool tells them after ashfur has already been killed. it is only after the deed is done that hollyleaf discovers not only that she’s murdered her own father, but also that her own father wanted to murder /her./

[skinwretch]

thinking about this again. adding on: i think if hollyleaf was aware ashfur was her father her perception of him after the fire would have played out much differently. she’s the kind of person who instills endless faith in the systematic structures the clans are built upon. she would want to believe that ashfur would have had a change of heart, that their biological connection tethers him to morality, that surely he knows how important family is and would not possibly be able to harm his own children. in the case of her not yet knowing who her mother is and believing she still might have been born under unremarkable circumstances this would be especially so. if she did kill him it might actually play out like brambleclaw’s made up story where she simply tried to approach him and he attacked her and she only acted in self defense. you could argue she had no qualms about attempting to kill leafpool, but not only is it important to note that hollyleaf didn’t actually go through with that, i also genuinely think hollyleaf would be unfairly biased in her judgment towards leafpool in particular. she would think that because leafpool is the one who was bound by the restraints of the medicine cat code, and because she was the one who knew the truth about her children’s parentage and deliberately obfuscated it, she alone is responsible for the fallout. i think she’d even blame leafpool for “turning her own father against her” and “making her kill him,” especially in the case of her not finding out ashfur is her father until after she had killed him, where she would be able to tell herself that if he had known it wouldn’t have had to come to this

[clanborn]

when i was younger i imagine purdy as purple because the “pur” in his name evoked a purple cat in my head

[w-a-r-r-i-o-r-s]

Taiwanese Warriors site intro (2008)

[skinwretch]

"it's so important to teach kids that it's ok to move on 🥺" yeah between graystripe and firestar and crowfeather and berrynose and clear sky and gray wing and thunder and all the other times the wc universe has graciously provided a guy character with a woman who fawns over him and licks his wounds as a consolation prize for being sad this is definitely a groundbreaking writing choice. meanwhile can you name me any female character in the series who notably 'moved on' after being widowed? oh there was tallstar's mom who tallstar expresses discomfort towards for not staying loyal to her late husband? the one that also is on the whole written as an inadequate parent who emotionally neglected her son in being unable to stop grieving for her dead daughter? there's her and no one else? damn that's soooo weird. probably doesn't mean anything though

[the-owl-tree]

i remember the classic den dad fernsong scenes that definitely happened. the ones we all know and love that the authors took the time to actually show instead of making a one off line about how he was gonna do it and then never actually showing it. it's so awesome about how we all read about this definitely happening.

[the-owl-tree]

im a simple man i love firestar so much

[copepods]

just opened twitter this is the first thing i saw