dreamkitsworld

[dreamkitsworld]

you know...considering how intimidating jayfeather comes off to other cats it would be interesting if there were y'know, consequences to that. imagine a kit hiding green cough symptoms because they're terrified jayfeather will yell at them for it, or a apprentice hiding a small injury like a thorn getting stuck in their paw because they're uncomfortable with how unsympathetic he tends to be. imagine warriors asking for alderheart, even when he's out doing whatever because they don't want to deal with being berated

[dreamkitsworld]

Mistystar is my favorite character in Warriors. I find her story genuinely inspiring. She went through so many experiences that can shake one’s faith and loyalty. She loved RiverClan so deeply, and had such a strong faith in her clan mates ability to grow. She shows a strong moral conviction throughout the series. Even as a leader she’s pretty calm, with the exception of The Broken Code, but i think this stems from her unwavering belief in the warrior code.

Anyway, I love this character. I can’t wait to finish the song I’m working on that was inspired by her story of faith, love, and loyalty. This art is amazing!

Here's my annual reminder that I'm still emotionally invested in maybe the most irritating and inconsistent character of the 7th arc.

I feel like Mistystar is one of the most unexplored characters in Warriors, especially in regards to how her various traumas affected her perceptions of clan loyalty.

I mean, being given up by a parent for a deputy position and then returning to the clan that publicly executed your brother for that same position suggests some pretty unhealthy ideals, hopefully this illustration communicates this in some ways!

[dreamkitsworld]

Warrior Bites: Clan Tools

[Image ID: Reedwhisker, a black RiverClan warrior cat, sits behind two terracotta pots, some strips of willowbark, a traditional wooden pot called a firkin, and a rock. He has a stick in his mouth.]

Warriors of the Clans are shown in-canon to be able to weave, dig tunnels, decorate with shells, and do whatever it is that BloodClan’s got going on with those collars and manicures. Have you considered what other tools a semi-realistic warrior could handle?

A guide to the various tools and methods that the Clans can use to prepare complex dishes, including the equipment needed for smoking, baking, pickling, and so on. Part of the Warrior Bites series for Bonefall’s Clan Culture.

(The art in this guide was once again provided by my partner who hasn’t read a single page of warrior cats in their life but so help me god I’ll drag them down with me)

Tools + Equipment

Fire Starting

Containers: Twine + Baskets + Buckets

Cookware: Smokers, Ovens, “Grillstones“

1. Fire Starting

Flint can be used to start a fire, especially for Clans that lack lumber. Because flint is most easily found around the Mothermouth, it’s associated with StarClan’s glow and considered somewhat divine.

But for those situations without a flint starter, the Clans generally teach their apprentices the paw-drill method using a spindle. But these days, SkyClan uses stolen Glass to start fires quicker and easier than any other Clan…

Except on cloudy days, where some unfortunate apprentice still gets saddled with spindle duty.

[Image ID: Reedclaw, a brown tabby Warrior Cat from SkyClan, sits on his haunches and spins a long stick called a ‘spindle’ with his front paws. Smoke is rising from the board the spindle is spinning against.]

2. Containers: Twine + Baskets + Buckets

RiverClan has the easiest access to twine; Willowbark can be peeled right off the tree and used without any processing for simple string to tie things with. WindClan uses woven grass as twine. ShadowClan, SkyClan, and ThunderClan are able to make cordage from Blackberry brambles.

Once the cat has twine, it can be woven into a simple basket to gather things, like berries, clams, or insects. In order to carry liquids, forested Clans can create firkins– a small wooden bucket that requires some carpentry ability, namely creating wooden nails.

But these tremble before the value of pottery, which is needed to store liquids, ferment and pickle food, and create stew.

Pottery is made from clay, which has to be baked in order to go from wet mud to terracotta. RiverClan is responsible for making the majority of new pottery because of the river, and ShadowClan’s marsh gives them lots of access to low-quality clay.

WindClan was once unmatched in the quality of their pottery thanks to tunneling leading them to the finest clay deposits known to the Clans. Though SkyClan is now rivaling the finest ancient WindClan pottery, due to their willingness to steal buckets from twolegs.

(Leafstar says, “if you cant make a firkin, store-bought is fine”)

[Image ID: Leafstar, the brown tabby-and-cream Warrior cat leader of SkyClan, sits behind a counter in front of an audience presenting a man-made firkin, parodying shopping channels. A speech bubble says, “Meow meow meow meow meow, storebought is meow.”]

3. Cookware: Smokers, Ovens, “Grillstones“

A smoker is very easy to construct, all that’s needed is some straight branches, twine, and fire.

First, a round pit is dug into the ground and filled with soaked woodchips. It is important they’re damp, because wet wood gives off more smoke than dry. Then, three beams are set and tied at the top, like a triangle. From there, a shelf is made inside of the beams. Multiple shelves can be made if a lot of food is being smoked at once.

ThunderClan wraps the smoker in a leather pelt, to keep the smoke in. Their prowess with smoking and seasoning a wide range of meats gives them the title of BBQ champions.

[Image ID: A primitive smoker setup, made of three sticks leaned against each other in a triangular shape and tied at the top. Two shelves are tied into the structure, the top row with minnows and the bottom with hanging strips of meat.]

An oven is a large construction. Capable of cooking several meals at once, each clan would have just one to use communally. Because the communal oven is such a big project, each Clan would have one that looks unique to their environment.

ThunderClan’s, for example, is flat and made of stone, simple in design but very sturdy and capable of cooking a lot of meat at once.

[Image ID: A stone oven made of flat, piled rocks. A fire is lit at the bottom and meat is browning on the top shelf. A stick leans against the side.]

For the quickest and easiest way to make a hot meal, meat is roasted on a spit or loose stick over an open fire. The best sear comes from a large, flat slab of rock propped up over a flame, known to the clans as a grillstone.

[Image ID: Firestar, ginger tabby warrior cat leader of ThunderClan, watches bacon sizzle on a large, flat rock placed over a fire. His daughter, Squirrelkit, sits beside him. A thought bubble above her head contains a waffle, and a question mark.]

(Clan blood be damned that kittypet can work a grill)

[dreamkitsworld]

The Tumblr Code:

1. Defend Tumblr, even with your life. You may have friendships with users from the other social media, but your loyalty must remain to Tumblr, as one day you may meet them in battle.

2. Do not repost or steal from another site’s territory.

3. Fandom elders and smol beans must be fed before reposters and girlbloggers. Unless they have permission, reposters may not post until they have hunted to feed the Fandom elders.

4. Posts are made only to be reblogged. Give thanks to FandomClan for their life.

5. A new user must be at least thirteen years old to become a blank blog.

6. Newly appointed girlbloggers will keep a silent vigil for one night after receiving their url.

7. A girlblogger cannot be made a popular user without having made at least one banger post.

8. The popular user will become Tumblr leader when the leader dies or retires.

9. After the death or retirement of a popular user, a new user must be chosen before moonhigh.

10. A gathering of all users is held at the full moon during a truce that lasts for Out Of Touch Thursday. There shall be no fighting among users at this time.

11. Boundaries must be checked and marked daily. Challenge all trespassing blank blogs.

12. No girlbloggers may neglect a little meow meow in pain or in danger, even if that little meow meow is from a different fandom.

13. The word of Evil Mario is the Tumblr code.

14. An honorable girlblogger does not need to kill other bloggers to win their battles, unless they are outside the Tumblr code or it is necessary for self-defense.

15. A Tumblr user rejects the soft life of a Twittypet.

[dreamkitsworld]

How old are apprentices? 

Very light spoilers with warrior name and protagonist reveals.

How old are apprentices? 

What I mean here, is how old are the characters in relation to human ages. Because there are several ways you can go about figuring this out. 

I’m getting this out of the way now. There are a lot of charts comparing human ages to cats, like this one from Pumpkin Pet Insurance, that shows that at 6 months old, cats are roughly 10 and at 12 months they’re 15. In my experience with cats, this is fine. A one year old cat tends to go through a moody teen phase that they seem to age out of by the time they’re 2, and this goes along with the chart nicely.  

I’m setting aside the real cat ages charts, though. I think that that they’re really not helpful in figuring out ages of these characters. The cats in Warriors really don’t resemble their real-life counterparts at all, and I don’t think that Warriors is sending out child soldiers here. 

Instead we’re going to solve this puzzle by talking about a super exciting topic… Marketing in the book industry! 

If you're feeling impatient you can jump right to Tl;dr at the end.

Marketing and Children’s Literature

Warriors is marketed as a middle grade book series, but what does that mean? 

First, you need to understand that until very recently, children’s literature was all under one umbrella. Also, there were very few teen books running around. Teen Librarian Toolbox has a good info graphic about the history of YA literature, and how it became a branch of its own. This was a slow progression, but I feel pretty confident that YA didn’t come to full maturity until the early 2000s. For context, Into the Wild was released in September of 2003. This was right as Harry Potter was becoming seriously popular, and just before the really big boom series of the 2000s. As someone who was 13 in 2003, I’m telling you from experience the teen fantasy section was sparse at my local library. From 2003-2010 the section really exploded into a lot of different books, but in 2003 specifically there wasn’t a lot going on.

In publishing, and writing, marketing is absolutely everything. You need to identify a target audience, so that bookstores and libraries know where to put the book. Warriors came out kind of in the middle of the Redwallseries being published. In the 1980s, when it was first released, it was marketed as Children’s Literature. Warriors has a lot in common with Redwall, enough that the two series would be targeting the same audience. Redwall was Children’s Literature, which by the time Warriors was released in 2003 has split into Middle Grade and YA. 

So, if you’re a marketing director and you’re publishing books in the early 2000s, your options are publishing a book aimed at the same demographics as an already established series in a genre that was more established, or taking a risk on the new YA field. The obvious choice is to go with the first option. 

 So, how do you know if a book is middle grade? 

The Novelry has a great article that discusses how to tell if a book is for the YA or Middle Grade crowds. If you scroll down and take a look at the chart they made, Warriors is a very interesting series. Let’s take a look at some stats. 

Criteria 1: Word Count

Middle Grade books are 30k-50k words

YA: 50k-75k words

The Prophecies Begin: Average of 70,627 words across the whole arc

Point for YA. 

Criteria 2: Romance

Middle Grade: Romance is light and fluffy. Some crushes and first kisses. 

YA: Range of possible relationships, explicit sex is often off screen. Complex romance is possible, including cheating and forbidden love.

I think it’s obvious The Prophecies Begin have a lot of messy romantic things going on. It does still skirt around the issue of sex, but it was 2003. 

Another point for YA. 

Criteria 3: Violence

Middle Grade: Vague, limited violence that isn’t too graphic. 

YA: Well, yeah. YA can get dark. 

I think it’s obvious Warriors falls into the YA category here as well. 

In all 3 cases, Warriors is clearly a YA book. But, it’s not marketed that way. They can get away with this because… 

The Characters are Cats

I once had the opportunity of meeting Tui Sutherland at a literary convention I had attended, and during her panel and my conversation with her afterward, she talked about her Wings of Fire series. She commented that one reason Wings of Fire was able to do the things it did, was because the characters aren’t human. This is a really important detail, because of a 4th criterion I purposefully left out. 

Criteria 4: Age of Characters

The general rule of thumb is that kids read up. Meaning that they like to read books about characters that are slightly older than themselves. If your target audience is age 10, then you need characters who are 12. If you are aiming for 14, your characters need to be 16-18. 

Tui Sutherland’s point about Wings of Fire was that age didn’t matter because her characters were dragons, and so didn’t need to follow the normal rules of character ages. 

At a different convention, I had the opportunity to see Tamora Pierce in a panel discussion, and she made a really interesting comment about her own Tortall series. Back in the 80s, as I mentioned earlier, there was only children’s literature. You didn’t have the same marketing divides. Her character Alana, who at the start of The Song of the Lioness quartet was 10, was free to grow up through the series without having issues. She also could include some heavier themes, because there wasn’t a hard line between ages yet. Pierce during the panel mentioned that Song of the Lioness couldn’t have been written today as-is because of the new marketing landscape. Harry Potter kind of slipped into the same category, since the series started in the early 1990s. 

The point is, the other criteria don’t actually matter that much. At least, not when compared to age. The age of the characters drives the rest of the book, and forces it to fall in line with the other criteria I discussed above. 

But, like Wings of Fire, Warrior exists outside of the normal rules because the characters aren’t human. Warriors is basically a YA series that is masquerading as Middle Grade so they could snag the Redwallreaders and have a safe market to sell books. It’s a loophole in marketing.

Which brings us back to the original question…

How Old Are Apprentices? 

Tl;dr: I’m pretty confident that apprentices are about 13-14 years old in human terms.

In order to be convincing middle grade books, the characters need to start their journeys at the correct middle grade ages. The content of the books is clearly edging into territory that is not suitable for young readers (think age 8), so they’re really trying to target the 11-14 crowd. Since kids read up, the characters in the beginning need to match that expectation. 

Which is why every new arc has an apprentice floating around in the first books. It’s the character designed to draw in the middle grade readers. They’ve also, if you’ve noticed, had protagonist point of view characters shared with very young warriors. 

Hmmmm?!

Yeah, that’s to catch the YA crowd. I think that young warriors are something like 17-18 years old.  

To prove my point, here are the main point of view characters by arc: 

Arc Two (The New Prophecy)

Apprentices : Squirrelpaw, Leafpaw

Young Warriors: Brambleclaw, Stormfur

Arc Three (Power of Three)

Apprentices: Lionpaw, Jaypaw, Hollypaw

Arc Four (Omen of the Stars)

Apprentices: Dovepaw, Ivypaw

Young Warriors: Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Flametail

Arc Five (A Vision of Shadows)

Apprentices: Alderpaw*, Violetpaw, Twigpaw

Young Warriors: Alderheart

Arc Six (Broken Code)

Apprentices: Shadowpaw, Rootpaw

Young Warriors: Bristlefrost

There are only two notable exceptions of the series starting with both apprentices and older cats, and that’s Power of Three and A Vision of Shadows. Power of Three is a bit unique in that I think it was attempting to do a sort of soft reboot with a new cast of characters and get new readers. A Vision of Shadows is kind of interesting, because most of Alderheart’s characters arc is actually in book one of that arc. After that he serves as the young warrior. I actually think that this is a 5 book arc with a prequel. The arc really gets going in book 2 with Violetkit and Twigkit. 

In The Broken Code, Shadowpaw and Bristlefrost start the series as either nearly warrior age or already a warrior-age. Shadowpaw’s siblings are both warriors at the start of this arc. 

The fact that these are cats, allows them to age up into adults. With a normal human character, this just wouldn’t happen. And not just because of the time skip issues, because as we see with Song of the Lioness, a series can allow the characters to grow and even have children of their own. As Tamora Pierce and Tui Sutherland pointed out, today’s marketing landscape just doesn’t allow for human stories like this now. And that’s a shame, because I think we’re losing out on some great stories due to these arbitrary marketing rules. 

[dreamkitsworld]

Porn Bots quick! What’s your opinion on the current sociopolitical climate of Thunder clan

[dreamkitsworld]

okay tumblr’s exclusion from the twitter social media ban list is hilarious but genuinely we do not belong on there. if a real human person asks “where can i find you on social media” and your choice is a swift death or revealing your tumblr, most of us would simply expire. half of y’all change urls every week like you’re in witness protection. just imagine for one second attaching your wholeass government name to your latest two am clownposting and tell me that didn’t send a cold chill down your spine. the only place i ever want to see the words “connect with me on tumblr!” is on the ao3 profile of an author i’m actively stalking. anyone in the world can follow me except anyone i personally know. antisocial media.

[dreamkitsworld]

This series has a really bad habit of disproportionately punishing female characters for forbidden relationships. The “no kits” rule technically applies to all genders but in reality it skews toward punishing female cats more harshly.

If you flipped their roles, and Crowfeather was the medicine cat, nothing would have happened. Leafpool would have had kits and just not revealed the father. She could tell the kits when they’re old enough, but otherwise nothing would happen. We have strong evidence that looking the other way is a thing as long you don’t get caught. It’s way easier to not get caught as a Tom.

The most famous cross-clan relationships are Silverstream/Greystrip, LeafCrow, Bluestar/Oakheart. Every one of those she-cats gets punished for those choices. The toms just carry on.

crowfeather gets an entire book about his wife and child forgiving his selfish mistakes meanwhile circa tbc lionblaze and jayfeather still haven’t shut the fuck up about how leafpool and squirrelflight betrayed them by keeping their parentage a secret for their own benefit you really do love to see it

[dreamkitsworld]

girl why do you look like that

[dreamkitsworld]

tired of one million hollyleaf or ivypool maps theyre boring and done to death atp. give me dovewing maps pleasee (also a good chunk of songs related to ivypool usually fit dovewing better imo)

[dreamkitsworld]

Warriors' Fatal Flaw isn't Because it's a Children's Book

I unapologetically love Warriors by Erin Hunter. I have loved Warriors since I read Into the Wild when it was first published. But I need to make this clear.

Warriors is not particularly well written. And this is absolutely NOT because it's a children's book!

There are phenomenal children's books out there that have depth and show the nuances of complex relationships and topics. Warriors just isn't one of them, and it's that way by design. Or, really, the lack of design.

The Erins don't seem to have any kind of documentation for their own book series. This leads to odd continuity problems or cats suddenly changing genders (looking at you Rowanclaw). This is honestly just poor planning for a book series this expansive. You see this in the world building as well. A strong example of this, I think, is how characters age. I foster infant kittens, so I'm familiar with how kittens age. Kits are shown to be walking and talking at 1-2 days old (Bluestar's Prophesy), and then we have a different scene in The New Prophecy where Birchkit is several moons old and still nursing. For reference, kittens are experimenting with solid food by 4-5 weeks old. Kittens also don't open their eyes until they're nearly 2 weeks old, and they can't walk until they're 3-4 weeks old.

"But it's not a nature documentary!"

Correct, it is not. The point isn't that it's inaccurate. This is a world where they have magical plants that can cure wounds, and leaders have 9 lives. These are cats living in the woods with complex societies. Readers could accept just about anything as long as it's consistent, which is exactly where this series really falls apart.

When you have multiple authors, if you want to make a big project, you have to plan it all out. From start to finish, you have to know where everything is going and all agree on characterization. Planning is also crucial, just in general, for projects that span over 100 books. Everything needs to be plotted and documented. Characters all need to have their own timelines that authors can quickly reference.

Without this structure it's simply not possible to develop deeper story lines with character growth that spans multiple books. Things get lost along the way.

But, just in case for those of you in the back, the flaws in the writing of Warriors is ABSOLUTELY NOT because it's a children's book.

Tl;dr: Warriors' fatal flaw is a lack of ability to coordinate and plan between the authors. Not because it's in the children's section.

[dreamkitsworld]

it’s really something how warrior cats, even putting aside the authors’ own subconscious patriarchal biases that constantly seep into how they write regardless of how aware of it they are or not, occasionally implies that the characters themselves are aware of some in universe structural inequality with how she cats are viewed vs toms (lizardstripe being like “don’t you think it’s unfair how toms can do whatever they want in life while she cats are just expected to give up their hopes and dreams to raise kids” only to be met with “that’s so mean having children is the greatest purpose you as a womancat can fulfill,” cinders’ mate telling her he’s leaving her for someone who doesn’t complain as much and won’t get mad at him for not paying child support, berrynose literally making an “ugh women” quip at one point) but never does anything to challenge this or deconstruct why it’s unfair. but they can write an entire novella based on the premise of “in a world where men are oppressed by women” played completely serious without a modicum of self awareness. you just can’t get writing like this anywhere else

[dreamkitsworld]

Realized nobody else pictured Dovewing the way I pictured her and alas...

[dreamkitsworld]

Shadowsight and littermates have more thunderclan blood than shadowclan blood.