#sorry op i got too high and decided to mourn the non-existence of an alternate warriors series that's actually written well

[bearfrosts]

okay I genuinely haven't read enough of TBC yet to know much about shadowsight yet but I've got a take that may or may not be a hot one (idk, this fandom is new to me): this applies to every single warriors character. all of them. even your most favoritest one that you think has such a deep and complex character arc.

not to totally derail your post, but—

they're all extremely bland with a handful of surface level traits and motivations that never get explored in the way they deserve. this series is a concept bulging at seams reinforced with steel. it's a profit cow series that was never meant to have more than six books, written for children, with a strict limit to word count and arc length, and almost certainly strongarmed by corporate interest at least some of the time.

the books crash through the plot at breakneck speed without ANY time to truly understand the characters or even the setting itself to the fullest degree possible. most worldbuilding is mentioned in passing and much of it is forgotten by the time a few more books roll out. there's that core of it that feels like a cohesive narrative, but it feels like you're being grabbed by the neck and punted into the atmosphere at escape velocity because there's literally just not enough space to do it justice.

i tried to get my friend to read warriors recently, just to see how it reads to an adult that never read it as a child and therefore is not tainted by that nostalgia that really drew me back to the series at this age. he basically told me that it had potential but it never went deep enough. there wasn't enough time to get to know characters or actually understand the extent of what was going on. i absolutely agree; and i think i've realized now that the reason i'm still such a fan is because as a kid i got really attached to these characters and now i've built them into something more complex in my mind.

this series is poorly written and quite grievously restricted by the length of each book. with all the possibilities in the series you could easily write an endlessly continuing series of epic fantasy novels, like a song of ice and fire but following generations and generations of characters through books that thoroughly explore the psyche of the characters, their environment, their relationships, and the setting itself. and that isn't to say that i think it should mirror the themes of a song of ice and fire, to be clear, it was just an example—the story doesn't need to be any darker, any grittier. it's fine! all it needs is more time. it just needs more space to grow and expand.

so i guess my point is that yeah, all the characters are bland as hell. i personally think that's why people in this fandom find it so easy to "hate" on characters—because they're basically shells that are suuuper easy to project wildly varying interpretations of their actions onto because we're simply not given enough canonical exploration of them as a character. but in the end...it doesn't really matter? we all have an idea of these characters, whether we like them or love them, that is expanding infinitely beyond what we are given in canon. and since there's not much to go off in that regard...well, we all latch onto different characters, and build our own versions of them in our heads that we can appreciate. that's the thing about being in a fandom for terribly written media, yknow? it's all about the potential.

90% of shadowsight fans are annoying about him im sorry. your "uwu sad anxious little boy who lost everything" is incredibly bland as a character