#im realizing these are like 50% just 'expand on stories from the field guides.' since thats kinda barley as well

[pleckthaniel]

I agree with you about the se options being underwhelming. If it was up to you, which cats would you give an se to?

My shortlist would be:

Harestar - like I've said before, he has a lot going for him as a character already, being a DF trainee and Onestar's successor, as well as the fact that he has sort of inherent narrative importance as WindClan's leader but no real arc to speak of yet. Also, if the Erins adopted the fan theory that he's Onestar's kid, that would give them a LOT of narrative gas.

Barley - Gives a good chance to flesh out life in BloodClan, and his backstory in the city as told in the field guides is well-structured for a standalone. Additionally, it would be nice to see the early development of his and Ravenpaw's relationship. You'd have to do some narrative trickery to structure the story in a satisfying way without retreading Ravenpaw's graphic novels & novella, but I think it could be done.

Monkeystar - She's incredibly popular, and WarriorClan is a unique narrative opportunity for exploration and experimentation. It could be a breath of fresh air, honestly. However, I would very much want this to be a plot-based SE, not one of the slice-of-life character development ones.

Darktail -I wanna see how Smoke raised him, I wanna see what he did after she presumably died, I wanna see how he actually developed a personal hatred for the Clans (he took their existence way too personal for him to just be carrying out his mom's grudge), I wanna see the development of the Kin. Also would give a great opportunity for developing Onestar, especially young Onestar, without just doing a Onestar SE (see footnote). Plus, it would be a rare villain POV. We need more of those.

Morningflower. I mostly think it would be really interesting to get a WindClan POV during the period when they got driven out. They were gone for a long time, let's hear more about it! Also, her arc in TPB is compelling enough to work as the central conflict of a standalone but also off-screen enough that doing her SE wouldn't feel like too much retreading of ground.

Mossheart. Since the field guides are dubiously canon at best, I think the Erins should just start blatantly cannibalizing the interesting parts into more-canon books, and abandoning everything else to the wind. Mossheart is one of the interesting parts. I feel like her story could be easily expanded out into a full standalone, especially if you focus on the interpersonal conflict aspect of her attempt to change the code.

Daisytail. Same as Mossheart mostly, but I would only want this if her alliance of queens was written as a blatant, direct allegory of labor unions.

Flowerstar. Again, similar reasoning to Mossheart and Daisytail. The story included in the field guide could be either the midpoint or the beginning of the story, depending on how you wanted to structure it; it would focus either on her developing into a leader or on her attempts to rebuild ShadowClan after they were so totally devastated.

Being honest, though, I doubt most of these would ever happen. They either feature characters who are not marketable or popular enough for HarperCollins to invest in a standalone novel about them (Harestar, Morningflower, the field guide ones, kinda Barley) or would be too gruesome or dark to be considered marketable (Barley, Darktail, Mossheart, possibly Harestar and some of the others depending on where you focused).

Footnote: I would not be, like actively opposed to a Onestar SE. That feels inevitable at this point, and I think it's a okay move to make. My main doubt about it is that I feel like Onestar is one of those characters that work much better when you're seeing them from the outside looking in, rather than actually getting into their head. To successfully capture Onestar from his own point of view would be a difficult task for an actually accomplished writer, which the Erins are not. So, I would overall prefer not to have a Onestar SE, but I'm still probably gonna be happy when it inevitably happens because we do in fact need more Onestar in our lives.