#ferncloud definitely deserves to be mentioned because the early fandom fucking needs to apologize to her

[thornquillthefiendish]

yoyo!!

random question but which wc character do you think has been ruined by the fandom?

Hmm.

There are. A few.

I think one is Spottedleaf, I just never jived with the fandom perception of her though it constantly changed and evolved, it was all still so hyper focused on Firestar and that’s definitely because of the books connecting her existence so heavily to him, but I’ve disliked a lot of the different presentations of her character in fandom. She’s definitely been ruined for me for a large part, definitely just rebuild her in my head ignore most things about her.

Then there’s ashfur. I think this is definitely concerning earlier ashfur but. There is a great amount of discomfort in how much people openly attempted to relieve his character of guilt and at times — how people still do this (though it’s rarer ofc). Most of his character modernly in fandom is based on this old fandom version of ashfur that I don’t think represents the image in my head as clearly, it’s based on this really twisted way we looked at him that definitely was influenced majorly by our adolescence for those of us around during the hype phase, and I don’t think he exists outside of that lens anymore, at least I don’t think there’s any turning back. I’m kinda neutral to how the fandom looks at him today, it doesn’t appeal to me, but I guess it’s not really my business tbh, but in a way he has been forever ruined; mostly by the sincere defense made for him early on that has modernly completely altered him to fit into that phase in the fandom, to the comedic elements of it often. I don’t know if it’s ruined in an actual bad way, of course, and I don’t think it has been, it’s definitely interesting to have experienced the change in his character from gradeschool to now, but it’s definitely been forever altered in our eyes, nobody will ever view ashfur without thinking of melodramatic breakup songs and self pitying emo-esc poetry.

My own emotions on it are a desire for an added intimidation to him, which I’ve actually seen a lot more recently and I enjoy a lot of that, I definitely have ideas on what I want his character to represent in my own rewrite, but I think as someone a little bit more out there in terms of interests in the warriors fandom that of course my views are not shared by everyone, admittedly they’re based on things definitely exiting the scope of genre or even just things people would normally come across. My tastes are definitely a bit odd, especially when it comes to writing and characters and stuff, even in other spaces, not exactly sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign, but oh well.

There’s likely other characters I can think of that I have/have had issues with fandom consensus; Hawkheart, Nightcloud, bluestar, squirrelflight, Sandstorm, a lot of female characters in general, but that’d devolve into me ranting for too long so, I’d say these two are the ones I think of the most when I think of characters the fandom “ruined” for me (ashfur isn’t even “ruined” modernly so to say he’s just. Transformed completely)