#and this convinced me to check the book out idk about you but I'd rather see the version actually told by a lesbian 😊

[bibiana112]

"The handmaiden is male gazey" did you know lesbians like fucking other women sexy style? Did you know that a large theme in the handmaiden was the male gaze and misogyny and if you can't separate explorations of a harmful idea from endorsements of it you may be hopeless?

guys I knew it I knew that would be a comment inflammatory enough to attract my first hate anon cut the cameras we did it bois :D

[mallowstep]

What are your opinions on forbidden relationships in Warriors? I've seen people label it as a "trope" because of how common this is. Some find the forbidden romance aspect intriguing, though others find it extremely repetitive and old

I'd like to know your thoughts!

hm. well, it is a trope. i mean, there's an average of one major one a series, right? greysilver, leafcrow (and others, but that's the big one), heatherlion (and implied others), tigerdove, idk i don't remember anything from avos but violetshine luv her but there's probably something, bristleroot. dotc doesn't count bc well it's dotc.

anyway.

definitely a trope.

but that's not a bad thing.

what i think people don't give warriors enough credit for is that these are not all the same forbidden romance. most of them are handled in different ways and bring up different conflicts. i understand why people are tired of them, but let's not discredit one of the only good things in warriors romance: that they make forbidden relationships different.

like, with grey and silver, it's about loyalty and responsibility. leafcrow is just bad idea central, both heatherlion and tigerdove are about responsibilities and young cats, and they have two different answers, and bristleroot is challenging the whole idea from the start.

so like. give credit where credit is due: we're not doing the same (forbidden) relationships again and again. i don't see enough people talk about that.

okay so it turns out i have um. a lot of thoughts about this. idk i just kept writing and now it's over 2k words. so you know. under the cut: matthew does half-baked media analysis to talk about why the code and cats' relationships to it are misunderstood. while actually staying on topic.

anyway from here on i'm just going to say relationship/romance, and understand that i'm generally talking about the forbidden kind. also i'm talking exclusively within the realm of warriors romance, which is, on average, bad. so when i say "X is good," i don't mean "X is good in general," i mean "given what we have, X is good." just to be clear.

right! basically, this is a tool. it creates tension and drama, and that's fine. warriors is a soap opera, remember. soap operas use secrets and relationships and all sorts of plot devices over and over again. warriors is not Serious. it can be dark. it has serious moments. but it is not a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids. it is a soap opera for Future Theatre Kids. yeah?

from that perspective, i'm a-ok with forbidden romance. (also, as a mini-aside, it creates some much-needed genetic diversity when kits are involved.) and again: all of the major relationships are different, so i think that's better than a lot of people give it credit for.

yeah, heatherlion and greysilver and tigerdove are all about the same general idea (loyalty and responsibility), but they all have different circumstances and different resolutions.

so like? yeah. sure. why not?

plus, like, who's reading warriors for the romance? i separate the concept of "romance" from a "relationship" here: i like the relationships in warriors (ivy and dove tension my beloved), but i'm not here to read about tigerheart wooing dovewing. (yes, i do love the tigerdove scenes in oots. no, that's not because i think they're very good at being romantic.)

but i digress.

if warriors was a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids, i'd have a different take here. having been in an IRL forbidden relationship, i have the Personal Insight and Experience to say they're this weird mash of "very much how it feels" and "not at all how it feels."

tigerdove is probably my favourite bc it's the closest to my circumstances, and i think dovewing is a good pov. i like how she breaks up with him because it's a bad idea, but that's not the same thing as not feeling for him.

(heh. twelve-year-old me reading oots like "this will never apply to my life" what did you know)

but to the point, if warriors was serious, i'd point out that the consequences always seem to be internal. we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions. and so on.

but warriors is a soap opera.

and here's my actual thesis: we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions, because "forbidden relationships" are a normal and expected part of clan society.

like no, fandom-at-large, you're kind of missing the point. okay, you know how like. people complain about. idk. ivypool and fernsong being distantly related?

(third aside/very long ivyfern rant, i put a nice big "rant over" after it if you want to skip past it: they're third cousins. they share, max, 2.2% of their genetics. they are fine. do you know your third cousins? do you? yeah. and like. they live in a closed society. there is no one new.

i've never seen someone complain about forbidden romance and ivyfern at the same time, and i do generally agree we should have more mystery fathers, altho for a different reason, but like. idk. this bothers me.

their last shared relative was nutmeg. that's so far back. god. i get it, there was a prophecy saying they're related, but if you remember my rant about how dovewing shouldn't be a part of the prophecy because of how distantly related to firestar is, you know how i feel about that already.

complaining they're related and that's a problem is. deep breath here. it requires demonstrating that warriors has kept track of kinship all the way back to firestar's mother. and even if you wave that requirement, you still have to convince me they would care about that. this isn't a "they're cats, harold" situation, this is a "you would not know your third cousin even if you lived in the same town" situation.

i mean maybe you would. some people do. but my hometown has generations of people who married within its borders. you get as far as "cousin," maybe "second cousin" if you're feeling fancy. i'm not trying to make an always true statement, i just. every time i see someone complain about ivyfern being related, it strikes me as not understanding how extended families work?

i know third cousins isn't technically classified as a distant relative, but you have, on average, 190 third cousins. i feel so strongly about this i looked it up.

like i'm not. okay if you say, "I don't ship ivyfern because they are third cousins and that makes me uncomfortable" you are Valid. in general, you are all valid. i do not think you have to, on a personal level, be okay with ivyfern. you are free to do as you wish.

but. if you want to argue "ivyfern is a Bad Ship because they are third cousins" you have a hell of a burden of proof. simply saying "they share a great-great-grandmother" does not meet that, because like. yeah. we're all pretty damn related.)

(ivyfern rant over)

IVYFERN RANT OVER

right so. anyway. if you remove forbidden romance? you're forcing a lot more of those situations.

i've been messing around with modelling some small-scale fan clan-adjacent stuff to double-check the ratios for wbcd, and it's. it quickly becomes a necessity, is what i'm saying.

but i got distracted like. researching how related third cousins are. my point is not about that, that's like. a different topic. that i crammed into here because i have no self-control.

no, no, what i was trying to get to is: oakheart straight up tells us that cats have half-clan kits all the time, it's not a problem, no one talks about it. and that? that is exactly what we see modelled by warriors.

the only reason greystripe and silverstream have a problem is that silverstream dies and greystripe claims the kits. i feel very strongly that if she had lived, the kits would have been born and raised riverclan kits, that might, maybe, one day, guess who their father is.

we haven't had any half clan kits in a while, which yes! i think is a problem, but like. the fact that the three are medicine cat kits seems to be a bigger issue. which feels right.

and i'm not trying to argue what i think should be, i legitimately believe the text of warriors defends this, even in newer books which throw out a lot of the older world building in favour of more human-like conflict.

as readers, we are naturally following protagonists. we are following the interesting story. but imagine you're just a background riverclan cat. minnowtail, if you will. do you think, do you honestly think, anyone cares about minnowtail?

not in a bad way, just. if she's meeting up with mousewhisker at night, do you think anyone cares? of course not! no one cares. she's not a Protagonist. her kits aren't going to be prophesized about.

heck, finleap switches clans! and it's barely a big deal. it feels like one, but when's the last time anyone bothered dealing with it? that's what i thought.

(also i forgot like all of avos so that very last point might be a bad one if it is my argument stands i just literally do not remember anything in avos but violetshine. none. zero.)

but it's easy to get caught up with characters like hollyleaf and bristlefrost and forget that like. not everyone cares about the code. most of our protagonists do, because it's become mostly equivalent with being moral. and i have an essay draft titled "the code as religion vs the code as law" where i want to expand on this more, but i think like. that idea, that we as readers should use the code as a way of evaluating cats' behaviour, is flawed.

like, i'm not talking about being inconsistent with how that is applied. if you want to say, "the trial leafpool goes through for having half-clan kits is legitimate because of the code," i still think your approach is flawed.

because the cats themselves don't seem to think that way.

the code doesn't, to me, feel like the ten commandments. it does not feel like "you must do this to be a good cat."

rather, it feels like aesop's parables. "here are mistakes cats made and what we do instead of that."

i don't think the cats know the code the way we do. i do not think they memorize a list of rules as kits. i think they know what is and is not part of it, but i imagine they know the stories far more than the rules.

(i'm working on my lore stories to replace code of the clans.)

and even if that's my thoughts, i do think this is supported by the text. no one ever teaches the warrior code, cats just learn it in pieces. "don't waste food because we don't have enough to spare" is taught, not "there's a rule about food and starclan on the code."

that's why the whole arc of the broken code even works: the reason the imposter is able to manipulate things is because cats don't treat the code as a rigid set of rules and commandments, but guiding principles.

the parts of the code that we tend to focus on the most are relationships, apprentices, and battle. or that's my perception. i didn't do a poll to obtain that. there's also the leader's word, but readers don't usually think of that as a good rule, so i'm not including it.

but the parts the cats focus on most are food, territory, and the leader's word. which makes sense: those are basic needs: food, security, and...i don't want to say authority so much as some kind of social system. explaining it would be a whole thing. just trust with me, if you don't mind.

i don't think we have any real reason to believe cats care about half-clan relationships half as much as we do. yes, apprentices are chastized about it, but that's not really the same thing as being punished.

and it's hard to tell, because apprentices being punished has really fallen off, and that's kind of the problem with any argument i try to make about warriors, but.

wow.

i'm actually still on topic? i'm 2k words in and i'm still on topic? a day i never thought would come.

let's wrap this up. cats seem to care about half clan relationships in that: a) they lead to conflicted loyalties, b) they mess with borders and prey, and c) they are in the code as bad. in that order.

and again, if the code was some high and holy religious doctrine, we couldn't have the broken code as an arc. it does not work if the cats are already following it to a t, and know it word for word, because it's signfiicantly harder to manipulate people if they do.

not to the level the imposter does, at the speed he does.

and yes, you could argue that it's more bad writing, but. i think that discredits warriors. yeah, it sure has its fair share of bad writing, but i don't think that's in the way the imposter works. instead, he seizes on a big important doctrine that's nebulous, and uses that to control people.

and that? that feels much more interesting.

so with that in mind, i don't think the cats would care about your typical, non-protagonist forbidden relationship, and i don't think we should, either.

as far as a plot device, i think we're okay with what we have. don't get me wrong, i understand why people are tired of it, but i think we also should remember that warriors is not repeating itself. having multiple forbidden relationships is not repetitive. now, if medicine cats were having half-clan kits every series, i'd make a different argument.

but all of the major forbidden relationships have different outcomes, lessons, and circumstances, and for me, i think that's signficantly interesting.

i didn't really check sources and quotes for this, so like, if you spotted something wrong, feel free to correct me. my overall point stands, but there's a lot of warriors and i have a bad memory, so i could have missed somthing major.

[spitefulcrepechan]

If that's ok, i'd like to know more about the ocs of yours pictured in your post about unique art styles! They have really cool designs! Also is it ok to check your toyhouse? i prefer to ask before such things, i want to respect potential boundaries

Sure go ahead me TH is available for anyone :0

As for my OCs, well buckle up cuz this'll be a long one

Before I start though, I'd like to note something really quickly-

All the OCs I have are of a closed species called Soultunes, which are basically when souls intertwine with a certain song, which gives them magical powers and a change of appearance, kinda like a Quirk or an Epithet. No you cannot make your own(or at least call an OC a soultune), this species belong to a friend of mine and is kind of a friends-only thing.

Heck, Hecate, and Hecatia Helloh

So these 3, for starters, are demons. They were all one person before falling into hell, and when they got their Soultune, HELLOHELL, they splitted into 3 people. Then they were appointed to be one (or rather 3) of Fimimi's many Arbiters(which are basically Hell's law enforcement)

The 3 are semi-hive-minded, usually having the same thoughts and speaking at the same time, though They're capable of acting independent and can be split apart with no consequence, even sharing different moods.

Heck is the mom friend of the bunch, Hecate is the hothead, and Hecatia is the calm and sadistic one.

They're all pretty aggressive and violent, but also stick to their morals and make sure every sinners get their well-deserved punishment.

Their soultune lets then manifest magic and weaponry based on the sins of the person that's infront of them or the person themselves. Like sins against a child would allow them to create giant raddles or a person who likrs snow gives them snow powers. They can even turn minor sins like picking your nose into raw godlike energy.

They a force to be reckoned with.

Theodora "Thea" World

I honestly have nothing much with this character, not even a soultune- She just exists.

All I have is that she's a human-turned cyber diva and her soultune is Tell Your World.

Kitaa

Haha angela knockoff

So with Kitaa, they're from an alternate universe/timeline, made solely to entertain a god of the main soultuniverse. They were a robot made to solve all of humanity's problems, which they soon realized was due to humanity's inability to have their wishes granted.

So they became a force that rebelled against God and Death, trying to find a way to make everyone the authors of their own everlasting stories.

Grim Reapers attempted to fight back, one foolishly gave them a soul in hopes that sending them into the cycle of reincarnation would permentally destroy them, but all that did was allowed them to attain a soultune. They gained the soultune, String Theocracy, and proceeded to convert their whole universe into an infinite, reality bending library and successfully granting humans the ability to achieve their desires via connecting them to magic books.

They now set their eyes on the current universe in order to "salvate" the rest of existence. Knowing that the gods there would be capable of destroying them, they went under the guise of a mafia boss, with their highest ranking members being the ones with the books.

April Loop

(With and without her capelet)

So I haven't really planned out a backstory for her explaining exactly why she has a soultune, other then that she was dismissive of her own emotions and felt that every day was just a constant repeat of the same old day. She eventually got her soultune and practically used it on herself, trapping herself in a Groundhog Day Loop until someone by the name of Irse convinced her to end the timeloop and now they're besties with a bit of a shipping thing going on dhhdhdhdh

She kinda laidback and awkward, sorta cocky as well, but other than that she's just a plain normal girl.

Apriloop, her soultune, let's her create cherry blossoms on her body which allow her to manipulate time. Having sakuras bloom out of your body can be kinda painful, and she has no control over where they bloom soooo-

Aaand Lastly

Bristol Kakumei

(Ft an alternate outfit)

Bristol's from a very old time(still wondering where, thinking its prob Egypt but idk). And we all know during that time, women weren't considered human beings. She got tired of men treating her like trash, but due to the mentality she was set upon, instead of fighting for female rights, she decided to prove to every incel in her neighborhood/kingdom/town that she was more valuable than any girl they've ever seen. So she had her servants kill her, turn her corpse into a statue, then place her in a vat of amber, literally turning herself into a piece of art. Centuries later, scavengers found her vat and placed her in a historical museum, where she remained for years, even when she gained a soultune that reanimated her, she admired people seeing her as a work of art. Theeeeeeen a thief by the name of Ramona broke into the museum, not with the ambition to steal her, but rather to let her know that woman aren't oppressed(as much) anymore and she can live a free lady. She was easily swayed and convinced by Ramona, so she allowed herself to be taken away by her. Now they're GFs. [Cough]

As for her soultune, well it's Brain Revolution Girl. Prob not that fitting, I honestly think Pyrite Girl is a better fit but eh too late I made her before Pyrite Girl even existed so R.I.P. [badum tsh]. Her soultune just gives her the Midas Touch, albeit controllable so she isnt going around turning everything into gold. Also she's practically unkillable, being a golden statue n all

And this only scratching the surface of all me OCs, you can learn more about them on me TH.