#this is barely warriors its literally just cats

[abrillustrated]

sorry for being cringe on main but hiiiiiiii these are my new warrior cats self insert ocs, in spite of the fact that i have not Touched any of those books in at least 7 years, im here to heal my middle school self. anyway. two gay cats. happy pride to specifically me and my bf

[waywardsalt]

ive been rereading tnp and it’s bothering me so much i need to mention it here; it’s kind of insane how much the erins bend over backwards to make brambleclaw deputy, it’s kind of just nonsensical.

not even him not having an apprentice when he’s picked, though that is kind of wild, he just… there’s basically no good reason other than him being a main pov character and tigerstar’s son. literally any other thunderclan warrior who’s had an apprentice (barring maybe ashfur) would have been a better choice. thornclaw dustpelt sandstorm cloudtail brackenfur- brackenfur is one that firestar explicitly considers and the reasoning why he decides not to is so incredibly weak ‘oh i dont think he’d be right for leader’ number one what are you talking about number 2 then use him being deputy as an opportunity to help him become right for leader are you telling me firestar thinks the cat he once considered letting die in a fire is a better fit for leader than the cat he half mentored. dustpelt is clearly an experienced warrior, sandstorm is someone firestar obviously has faith in, thornclaw is experienced and i’m pretty sure you even see firestar consult him a few times (cloudtail is iffy bc thats cloudtail but he’d really be a better choice, just how he treats daisy and her kits would be an interesting justification for firestar making him second-in-command) but honestly besides the narrative jumping through hoops to act like the other very viable options are either secretly bad choices or otherwise ignore them (why is bramble the only cat we ever see jump to help firestar with stuff they just wrote everyone else to be silent or w/e) but in twilight where he arguably acts the most like de-facto deputy in leaf and squirrel’s pov he’s framed as a jackass half the book??? why would you do that if you intend to make him actual leader?? in his trial run of being kinda-not-deputy you just make him use his semi-authority to be cold and fucking mean to his friend and her buddy??? like i see him being qualified due to having experience being the travel group’s leader and whatnot, but barely anything else is done to make him realistically more qualified than anyone else- he just angsts about his ambitions and gets handed the position because starclan vouched for him for some damn reason even though by his society’s laws he should not be in that position

[siderealcity]

I want to do sort of a deep dive on the character of Wuk Lamat. In a few posts, I've talked about how much Dawntrail parallels Heavensward. But in this case, I want to talk about how Wuk Lamat parallels Aymeric. Spoilers and lengthy rambling under the cut.

When we first meet Wuk Lamat, we are clearly meant to mistake her for sort of a carefree dumb jock. She wanders off before her important introduction because she's too busy oggling the scenery. She thinks with her stomach. She's not paying attention. She's all bluster and talk, but kind of a scaredy cat. This is all just a fun vacation to her. That's deliberate. We're meant to underestimate her. It's why we have that heart-to-heart scene with G'raha debating whether or not we should really be getting involved in her bid for the throne -- literally not a question we have ever been asked about any other political figure we've helped anywhere. We get asked this twice about Wuk Lamat. Once by G'raha and once by Erenville, and then again, later, we get asked our opinion of her qualifications by her dad, the ruler of Tural.

We are meant to feel that she doesn't know what she's doing. Because she doesn't. None of them do.

So, by comparison, let's look at Aymeric's introduction. When he first appears at Camp Dragonhead to meet with Alphinaud we know a few things about Ishgard via the MSQ and the side quests around Coerthas up until that point. The first thing is: Ishgard takes its church deadly seriously. Inquisitor Guillaime can literally just murder anyone he wants with very little evidence and nobody dares question it. The knights of the high houses may be splitting their attention between constant vigilance in their war against the dragons and constant vigilance in their power struggles against the other high houses, but if the church says jump, they're already in the air and falling off a cliff before anyone can ask how high. They haven't been part of the Alliance in decades, they don't talk to anyone, they murder their own people for asking questions. Our expectations going into our first meeting with an official representative of the Holy See, therefore, are not supposed to be positive.

And then the first words out of Aymeric's mouth to the WoL are fanboying at us. He talks circles around Alphinaud for the rest of the meeting, doesn't agree to do anything, and ends by asking us to watch a dead dragon for signs of suspicious activity. A request so baffling that Alphinaud even calls it absurd in the middle of a diplomatic meeting.

We are supposed to have doubts about him. That he knows what he's doing. That he's not just playing us for fools. Aymeric's introduction, just like Wuk Lamat's, establishes him as being kind of questionable as a leader and ally.

Unlike in Heavensward, we have no knowledge at all of Tuliyollal going into Dawntrail. So our first few beats of the MSQ are a high-level crash course in the place. But even before we get off the boat, we know that Wuk Lamat is considered the long shot in the rite of succession. In much the same way that we early on learn that Aymeric attained the position of Lord Commander of the Temple Knights despite his birth not being considered noble enough and over a more popular low-born contender for the job in Ser Zepherin. What we see of her during the storm, however, is that she is not only willing to act when she's so sick she can barely even stand, she will try to protect others, whether they're her people or not.

Our quick tour of the city sets the foundations for what's to come. The aetheryte is the work of her brother Koana, scholar, forward-thinker, techbro, and industrialist. The Landsguard, traditionally led by Tuliyollal's strongest warrior, are led by her brother Zoraal Ja, who has taken over the post from their father, meaning that he has already been acknowledged as being equal to their father in martial ability for three years now.

Wuk Lamat has no accomplishments at all.

And then we get to the bridge. And the Tuliyollal Saga. The legacy these claimants are trying to lay claim to is that of a peacemaker. Gulool Ja Ja actually is the leader that Thordan VII wanted to be. He's unified the disparate people of two entire continents who were at war for centuries, while the Holy See couldn't even unify the people inside one city. He's their hero-king. Almost revered as a living god by everyone you talk to. What Thordan thought he had to summon a primal to do, Gulool Ja Ja just did the hard way.

Here's where the parallels start to get interesting.

Aymeric, an orphan, was contending with the legacy of his father--a man who was related to him by blood, but who had never once acknowledged or cared for him. And that legacy consisted of a divide-and-conquer strategy: Keep the people divided so they can be more easily controlled, keep them tentatively "unified" against a common enemy so they don't have the impetus to rebel. The Dragonsong War was a necessary evil to Thordan because it kept the church in power.

Wuk Lamat, an orphan, is contending with the legacy of her father--a man who is not related to her by blood, but who had always acknowledged and cared for her. And that legacy consisted of collaboration. Between the peoples of Tural. Between himself and them. Between Reason and Resolve. And now his sons are trying to divide it up. Koana, even though he's well-meaning, is an illustration of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." He wants to improve life for his people, but he doesn't actually know them or what they want, or understand the consequences of his choices. Zoraal Ja, the imperialist, wants to be Thordan VII. He doesn't have his father's ability to be a hero-king because everything's already been solved, so he'll invent problems he can heroically solve for them.

Wuk Lamat is the only Promise who has no ideas for the future, because she's already happy in the present. What's wrong with how things are now?

So much of the first half of Dawntrail is an object lesson on what Tuliyollal actually is, and what it is not. That, peaceful as it is now, the legacy of war and conquest has scarred every culture. That the people still have lasting problems. They are not all happy now. Which is why most of them support her brothers -- they want change, and both the First and Second Promise are offering change. Wuk Lamat's kidnapping is the turning point for her in this regard because she is attacked by people who are desperate. Including, ironically, Bakool Ja Ja. She foolishly follows a bandit somewhere alone, when it's pretty obvious this is a bad idea, but it's not like she's ever been attacked by her own people before. The bandits do not know how to change their circumstances except through violence, and she didn't even know that kind of desperation existed in her nation. Even forward-thinking Koana instantly succumbs to anger when faced with them--it never occurs to him to even look for the problem they were facing, let alone solve it, until his sister does it first.

This is not a problem that can be solved with a sword. Or even a train line. You can't fight or technology away generational trauma.

Heavensward has some wonky pacing due to it attempting to resolve plot points from the Bloody Banquet, but it does much the same thing as Dawntrail. We take a road trip across Dravania to learn first-hand what the war is and what it isn't. The dragons are just people, and we meet the first ones who will actually talk to us. These cultures are all scarred by the legacy of war and betrayal and loss, and they don't know how to change their circumstances.

Honestly, Aymeric's sudden insistence on confronting his father after we kill Nidhogg is the weakest point in the plot. It seems to come out of nowhere. He has not, up until that point, demonstrated a tendency to be hot-headed, and this is such a stupid thing to do it borders on suicide. Everyone present in the scene tells him that, but he does it anyway, and this is the tragic mistake that leads directly to Haurchefant's death. But this moment, the moment that he learns the truth that was always there, the lie that his people have always been like this, is just as much a shocking revelation for him as the bandits are for Wuk Lamat. None of this ever had to happen. They were not always at war with the dragons. They were not always divided into highborn and lowborn.

This was never a problem that could be solved with swords or prayer.

Both Aymeric and Wuk Lamat embody contradictions. Aymeric is the leader of the Holy See's military who absolutely does not trust the Holy See at all and kind of hates the pope. He is not a paragon of and champion for the old order, like he's supposed to be. He's a diplomat in full plate armor with a sword, and a revolutionary in the highest position in the church. Wuk Lamat is an axe-wielding princess of peace. She's a nepo baby, but somehow also an orphan. She's not a thinker, she's all feels, and yet she looks for the deeper problems while her brothers settle for the surface precisely because she still feels a problem where reason says everything is fine. The difference between reason and resolve is a big, recurring thing in Dawntrail.

Aymeric tells us after the Shiva battle that he learned early on to see the difference between words, deeds, and beliefs, and that's exactly what Wuk Lamat learns to do over the course of the plot. Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja accept the idea that the Rite of Succession is a contest that can be won, and never question it. They are both competing in a scavenger hunt, and that's all they're doing. Wuk Lamat realizes even before the Feat of Pots that it's a lesson. The point is not just to win a little keystone. And, gradually, she takes the lesson more seriously than the contest, which is why she wins. She stops worrying about how well Zoraal Ja is doing around Earthenshire and starts worrying what her people have to give up for peace. Our big reveal, like the vision we have after killing Nidhogg, is the conversation with Gulool Ja Ja where he admits to us that he isn't going to name the winner successor unless they learn the lesson he's teaching them. The words were "contest" but the deeds were "follow in my footsteps." Koana starts to pick up on this because he sees Wuk Lamat doing so, and it's the realization that she understood the problem better than him that makes him yield his place in the Rite to her.

Reason can find a solution to the problem, but resolve is what finds the problem in the first place.

Aymeric, notably, tells us that he understands the difference between words, deeds, and beliefs, but then still falls for Thordan's speech. He doesn't have an answer when Thordan asks him what he can offer their people in place of a thousand years of certainty about who they are and why they're fighting, even though he feels that Thordan is still wrong. He doesn't have words for his resolve. He still has to learn to trust his feelings more than authority.

The second half of Dawntrail, like the second half of Heavensward, has Wuk Lamat stepping into a position of power that she doesn't really know how to wield, although for Aymeric this comes more in Dragonsong than in Heavensward. The surprise attack by Zoraal Ja on Tuliyollal mirrors the attack by Estinien at the peace summit--someone they used to trust, someone who used to be close to them, is now an enemy and proves it without any ambiguity, and now they're in constant danger of war. Now they're both left struggling to figure out how to pick up the pieces of a terrified nation that just lost its beloved leader. Aymeric is blamed for Thordan's death. The father that he always resented for abandoning him. He also clearly blames himself for Haurchefant's death, making his entire relationship with the Fortemps family extremely fraught. Wuk Lamat is not held responsible for the loss of her own father--who was killed by his own biological son, just like Thordan was, who resented him for not giving him the throne. She is, however, responsible for Sphene's death, and she knows it, even if the people of Alexandria do not. And she is well known to have killed Zoraal Ja, their king... although he was not nearly so well loved as Thordan. She's navigating a much more difficult, if so far less violent situation, caught between her own grief over losing her father, her conflicted feelings about her brother, her nephew, who likewise has very conflicted feelings about his father, and Sphene--the remorseless invader who wanted to harvest the souls of her people as fuel, but whom she nonetheless felt a connection to.

Aymeric, in Dragonsong, has to find a way to bridge the gap between peoples divided by a thousand years of war and lies, and Wuk Lamat has to bridge a gap between actually different worlds and views of life and death so dissimilar they border on irreconcilable.

I am interested to see where that goes, because there's no obvious enemy to fight in Dawntrail. We don't have a looming undead great wyrm waiting to destroy Tuliyollal, so we're not set up (at least right now in patch 7.1) to end this with a climactic battle. (Although maybe we're about to get a looming undead robot queen?)

Either way, this isn't a problem we can solve with swords.

[crazylittlejester]

You mentioned the modern heroes having different body types than canon due to different lifestyles, so how has it affected everyone? (This is a free invitation to yap about their different body types and like lifestyle writings if you'd like to /gen)

Also, since everyone is suffering with them, how do the boys deal with exams? Does the stress make Sky's epilepsy worse, and if so how do Twi and Wars help him deal with it?

Answering your second question first because it’s shorter alskkdkd (also my bad for spelling errors or weird grammar mistakes my brain is friend from finals)

Yes, exams make Sky more likely to have a seizure because one of his triggers is stress, but over the years he’s gotten somewhat better about not letting everything stack up and overwhelm him. Its not the easiest thing in the world to get Sky to stop and take a break, because if he thinks he’s being treated like glass he’ll get snappy towards people (he knows War and Twi don’t treat him ANY differently but years of teachers being like “why don’t we take a deep breath honey?” in a real condescending way have kinda just made him likely to lash out when people try to help him), but War is a good buddy for him during exams because they keep each other on track and well cared for. Apart from being friends throughout high school, they were roommates those first two years of college in the dorms before they got the apartment with Twi, so War is JUST as familiar with Sky’s epilepsy as Sky is with War’s anxiety attacks (which is the whole reason he has his cats, they were therapist recommended emotional support animals). They keep each other from getting too overwhelmed, and Sky is more likely to let War drag him away from studying to take a break and a lap around their block than he is Twi because Sky knows War most definitely needs the break too. These days they can get through exams with one anxiety attack from War and only a couple more seizures than normal from Sky

As for the others: Wind is the least bothered by exams (he’s in high school still), Four isn’t at their university technically, Wild gets so far past the point of stressed that it loops back around to being COMPLETELY calm and he sometimes needs reminders to even do his work at all, Legend wait till the last minute and then has 2-5 days where he just doesn’t leave his room because he has so many projects to wrap up, and Hyrule is in the same boat as Twi where he’s stressin’ but he’s making it out okay

NOW FOR BODY TYPE DIFFERENCES:

Time is the BIGGEST difference. In LU i hc him to be roughly 5’10 and 170lbs, a fairly big and muscular guy, but my modern au he’s 5’10 (just barely) and around 135lbs. He’s got a few chronic health issues that make it a bit harder for him to gain and keep weight, but he’s by no means weak and he’s within a healthy weight range. Malon is the one lifting and carrying shit around the ranch more often than not (with Twilight helping as well whenever he’s over), and Time can still help her carry heavier things but Malon IS stronger than him and more often than not its HER helping HIM, so he focuses more on feeding and caring for the animals

Twilight is 5’10 (closer to 5’11) and around 180lbs. He lives in the city now because he’s moved in with Sky and War to be closer to his college, but even though he’s not doing ranch work he still works out a good few times a week. He doesn’t have clearly defined muscle like i hc LU Twi would, he’s got a bit more body fat on him, but he’s very fit and he’s the friend people call to help them move shit

Warriors probably has the most similar body type to his LU counterpart (and that fact is literally the reason this whole au came about because that man has a dancer’s build and well. here we are aldkdkd), though he too is a little taller. Theres a running joke that he can’t admit he’s not taller than Twilight, which started from the fact that freshman year of high school, he WAS taller than Twilight. It’s painfully obvious now, because even with War at 5’8, Twilight is almost 3 inches taller than his ass, but Warriors has never said out loud Twilight is taller so theres a whole joke about him still being in denial. Like my hc for him in LU, modern au War has incredibly low body fat, he is mostly muscle and bone. His weight is usually around 120-125lbs and he spends nearly every waking moment basically working out. On week days he wakes up, has a protein shake, hits the skating rink for two hours, eats more for a real breakfast at 8 on his way to class, spends most of his day dancing and takes breaks for snacks and lunch, has dinner, goes to dance rehearsal, has another snack, and then goes to bed and does it all again. Even on weekends he spends like 8 hours dancing and skating, he’s CONSTANTLY moving and running around (he really needs to take a break, one of these days Sky is going to tape him to the couch)

speaking of, Sky is around 5’5 and 140lbs, his epilepsy meds mess with his weight which made him really upset when he first started taking his current medication, and he’s significantly less muscular than his LU counterpart. He runs sometimes (when Twi bullies him to), and he does love going on walks, but his version of working out is NOT hitting the gym. He goes for strolls with his gf in the park and they have a very lovely time

Hyrule is 5’4 (a bit taller than i hc him to be in LU) and around 115lbs with a small but solid frame, he spends his days running around looking for rocks and hiking. People who don’t know him or what he does in his free time are genuinely shocked when they discover he has a decent amount of muscle because he spends so much time climbing things (both trees and also the climbing wall in the gym)

Legend is 5’2 bless his heart and around the same size as Hyrule, which would be nice if they had the same clothing style because then they could share but they most certainly do Not. He has a lot of issues with chronic pain so he’s not someone who can always get up and work out or even just walk around easily, so he is usually asking Twi to come down a floor and help him move the new trinket shelf he’s bought

Wild is significantly less muscular than i hc him to be in LU, and also a bit taller (5’4). He can’t work out super easily because of his hip and he lost a lot of muscle when he had to quit skating, and he now weighs around the same as War (Which makes War’s ability to lift him when they mess around skating on Wild’s good days really impressive because War does not look like he’d be able to lift 120 so easily but he sure can)

Four is 4’11 and a liar, because you will never hear him say he’s anything other than 5’1. The others know he’s not but they let him have it because he’s the shortest so it’s not like he’s lying to be taller than someone else aldkdkkd 😭 he’s around 110 lbs and has a decent amount of muscle in his arms from being a blacksmith’s apprentice. he doesn’t really work out much, he’ll mess around and play games with Wind that require running but that’s about it

Wind is pretty similar to how I hc him in LU, (though he’s an inch taller at 5’3). He isn’t done growing and he’s a bit thin for his height currently (at around 100lbs) because he hit a growth spurt and hasn’t had the time to adjust to suddenly being taller. He’s INCREDIBLY active, he plays soccer, he begs War to take him skating and play ice hockey with him, he will go on runs with Ayrll, he LOVES going fast and just moving around CONSTANTLY. He won’t get too much taller (he’ll stop at 5’5) and he’ll grow into his height in the next few years

[halogenwarrior]

Now, I don't want to make this sound the wrong way - I love stories where the human/mortal world is deeply symbiotically connected to the supernatural/afterlife etc. such that the supernatural is shaped by human belief and vice versa. I also love stories where humans face a universe or supernatural forces that's vast and uncaring and fundamentally other, or if it does care deeply (such as Abrahamic religions' idea of a personal God) does so from a place of being incomprehensibly greater than humans, giving but not taking, rather than mutual symbiosis. Both can reflect truths about the world (the first that humans are interweaved with our ecosystems and deeply connected to history of our families and societies, and even those things we romanticized as other and purely "natural" often depend on humans as much as vice versa, the latter that humans are nothing compared to the universe, that even in our own planet there is so much we don't understand and that is alien to us, and what we think is objective truth is often barely scratching the surface). But however you choose to frame your story's universe has to match with the story's themes.

On the one hand, you have the issue with series like Warriors (the cat book series), where the series presents an ancestor worship type of religion but due to the author's background, it's thematically treated like Christianity (i.e ideas of "why do bad things happen with a good God" that seems strange when you are talking about a group that was obviously once living flawed beings). To fix that discrepancy I've seen a lot of rewrites and AUs lean more into the afterlife and supernatural aspects not being something above and incomprehensible but depending on the living world and vice versa, influenced by cats' beliefs. And I think this is a good call for the themes of the series being more consistent.

Then on the other hand you have a lot of cosmic horror stories, which are supposed to be all about humanity's helplessness before an uncaring universe, but the recent trend seems to be to make it so actually, humans are the most important things in the universe and human emotion has some kind of power that makes supernatural entities inherently shape themselves around them and feed on them/need them for power (i.e The Magnus Archives, Puella Magi Madoka Magica). I know these franchises are pretty beloved, but I feel like this thematically clashes in a way that mitigates the horror: instead of a universe that is as vast as we know it is with uncaring processes beneath the veneer at the surface that would devour humanity unknowingly, we have a universe that is arbitrarily designed by the hand of the author to hate humans personally, and it winds up just feeling like when a story throws so much suffering at a character that is personal and directed that it becomes contrived and loses its pathos. I get why people do this - it's hard to write things with totally uncaring motives that nonetheless have disastrous consequences for the people in the story and their world, and the easier to write explanation is that it's not incomprehensible, it's specifically controlled by human belief or powered by humanity's negative emotions or something similar. But you lose a lot from this easy shortcut - it no longer feels like something that can really happen, not in terms of the literal existence of a supernatural being but in terms of a figurative truth about the universe, and I think good horror should always feel real in this way. I wish that the cosmic horror genre could have more threats that genuinely threaten people only incidentally for this reason.

[wormstar]

no no wait keep spitting facts whats your hated tropes in these rewrites

where do i begin..... ill format this as a vague list of 5 so that i dont just ramble on in circles, not necessarily numbered in order of hatred

5 "all the clans actually unite and live together at the end! and nobody has any problems ever"

this is like the most naive liberal bullshit plot point i constantly see people do and its like. something on the level a 13 year old would come up with. like yes i get it people like to do this because it is a conclusion to the first arc and the last hope and a bunch of other subplots but people always approach this idea as a magical solution to all problems of clan society as if the only thing wrong with it is the fact that interracial marriage is not allowed and not like, that every fundamental facet of cat society is war hungry, hostile to outsiders, panopticon-y and of course, broadly fascist. i cannot suspend my disbelief that every cat would come together and agree on living as one unit (or even between open borders) because there are multiple cats in the books that are canonically bigoted as hell and i think that is more interesting than making everyone milquetoast hippies as these rewrites seem to do. theres also a strong attitude about either a) starclan being right and awesome and cool b) starclan being completely abolished which both suck. i want to see the eternal torment of the clans at the hands of the literal personification of their own history.

^ admittedly ive only skimmed through the books and listened to her own videos about it in the backgorund, but its why i cannot vibe with s/unnyfalls oots rewrite whatsoever, trying to put a bandaid on all the weird fascist implications that are in the books by going "no see all the fascist parties are friends and any child can CHOOSE which kind of little fascist they want to be" like thats the kind of thing that works for a children's book series Base Setup, but warrior cats does not have that base setup, and rewrites like hers are very much attempts to make the series way more "deep" which just tremendously fails when paired up with that idea. sorry

one last comment i want to make is that these kinds of conclusions, especially if its a development that occurs after the last hope, it reminds me of a lot of very liberal ideas like "we are all one race the human race.... we are all. one nation. wwe are all the saame" which is just like. Lmao.

tangentially its why i disagree with the idea of having wildly different cultures between clans because i've grown to really like the redundancy in clan tradition and structure while still having the clans be very territorial and antagonistic to each other – thus i think its more poignant that in theory/for short periods of time, the clans CAN unite because they operate in practically identical ways, but they always drift apart in the end due to a sense of righteousness, ego, and the weight of "legacy" and all that bullshit. its not a trope i necessarily dislike though, i actually quite enjoy fleshing out cultural differences between clans and i actually like using it as a in-universe justification as to why the clans cannot ever find peace as a cohesive unit, with cats falsely playing up the differences between the clans as reason for why theyd never get along, etc. i like depicting all the clans as clearly having the same origin point with shared basic mythology, laws and beliefs, but each bearing little minute variations on them due to regional separation. in a sense i want to view the differences between clans as more akin to differences between languages or neighboring countries' folklore rather than completely distinct units

4 "character x randomly gets with character y"

the title of this one is very vague, but i think i can just say "you know when shipping squirrelflight with the dead kid shrewpaw who she was barely best friends with was a big thing, because they talked once, and because people thought that a child getting hit by a car in the midst of a massive starvation event was really sad and the only solution was to retcon his death?" yeah. stuff like that. i suppose with that example it delves more into the "a character's death is erased because people like to delude themselves that so-and-so is more important than they actually are, when the character's death is actually the most impactful and interesting thing about them" which i've complained about in the past with swiftpaw in particular (and i especially do not like retcons where he becomes disabled in lieu of dying, because at that point if youre going to explore that, brightheart literally exists! think of her as a character with her own trauma instead of just as an accessory to cloudtail)

anyway, this was actually kind of a bigger thing a few years back and i think people tend to be more thorough with their headcanons (that are still bad, but at least theres thought put into them) nowadays. it also mostly haunts cats from early arcs now that i think about it. i dont see much of it for like, violetshine or whatever lol

as a tangential thing, this extends to people just making relationships between cats "perfect" and ironing out all the weird implications of them just because it intrudes on the 'wholesome' idea of cats popular to fanon. like biggest example i can think of is yet again brightheart and cloudtail. cloudtail kind of sucks and never listens to her and i think thats interesting to explore instead of being like. Oh yeah. I made this ship GOOD and better than canon because theyre he/him lesbians and nice to each other. Like keep them dysfunctional at least

3 tangentially related to the last one, "character x who is a good good character is now deputy!"

i dont like brambleclaw either. i hate him. but within the intent of the series, he has so much more going for him narratively as a son of tigerstar who succeeds firestar, his literal enemy, as a similarly benevolent leader. i prefer to chip off the earnest expression of him as a good person and make him much more troublesome akin to the fanon depiction everyone agrees on where hes manipulative and abusive, because that keeps the major part of his narrative purpose intact while also not dodging the implications of his writing (thus my ideal bramblestar is: son of tigerstar who succeeds firestar, his literal enemy, as a leader who succeeds in warrior cat society and seems overall progressive and kind, but is deeply bitter and unable to maintain healthy close relationships, thus still reflecting tigerstar's treachery in a light different to the one firestar saw him in at any point in time. this is because irony is good.)

anyway. that is a preface to say, i think anyone who starts up their rewrite and is like Alright. you know who should be deputy of thunderclan? brackenfur. sandstorm. fan favorite character #89. i literally dont think there is a character more interesting than brambleclaw to immediately succeed firestar's leadership due to the way the first arc builds him up so anything else just feels fanservice-y and skinny in a narrative sense. just like. Oh yeah. this cat could be passable at leading and thats the only qualification we need. people forget that warrior cats is a story and they get way too into the head of how a deputy would be rationally picked by the characters. so they make boring choices.

^as a positive aside, its why i rather like the idea of twigbranch becoming squirrelstar's deputy and its why i was campaigning for that back before ivypool (yuck) was announced. twigbranch had plenty of setup as a cat who switched between clans numerous times, was an apprentice for an extended period of time almost as punishment, tends to be very benevolent and 'outside' of all the conflicts her peers seem to freely jump into.... would she be a perfect candidate? no shes young and uncertain and inexperienced but that wouldve made her more interesting, and i dont think squirrelflight knows ivypool much more than her, so itd still make sense in the story. ivypool was very much a fan favorite pick. and she is very boring as deputy. the only way they can redeem it is if she gets hit by a car in the coming arc and never gets to be leader

rapid fire round foir the last two because i havent eaten yet and ive been staring at a burger i made for the past 20 minutes of writing this

2 rewrites that "fix" genetics to make them accurate to real life cats or go heavy on the traditional naming

you people are boring

1 views of starclan

this gets broken down into a smaller list of Annoying things people do

making starclan good and benevolent wholeheartedly

making any starclan cats apologise for anything

making starclan cats rational and sensible

anything that focuses on arcs 1-4 view of starclan and makes them overly ethereal and mysterious and not as vital to the living cats' daily lives, which is simply very boring, because i like focusing on starclan as an extended limb of the living that is naturally flawed for giving cats that have barely just died the privilege of dictating the laws of eternal incarceration and interference with the living, because these cats are still reflections of the culture they were raised in and inherently cannot be free of bias, and the idea that magically traversing into starclan rinses you of all the systemic cat racism in your mind is laughable and indicates just how stupid and white the average warrior cats fan is

"we reject starclan" narratives because thats too happy for warrior cats. as i said i want eternal torment at the very physical hands of your ancestors and history as an extended allegory for society and politics and the dominoes that fall down to get a person in the place they are now. you dont get to run away from it unless you run away from your society. simple as that

making starclan too close of an allegory to god or jesus or whatever, i think a very fundamental part of how starclan operates is that yet again it is a collection of previously living people who are simply now dead people with all the biases that come with formerly being alive in a society, and i cannot stress this enough, the fact that it is a collective force that disagrees with itself and sometimes makes the wrong decisions simply because not enough reasonable people were there at the right time. this is why i think things like the trial in squilf's hope and ashfur's takeover of the dark forest in tbc are delicious plot points and very good pointers for the ideal depiction of starclan. the new team is doing awesome with them. thumbs up.

[upon-deaf-ears]

also been seeing sm mlp infected au and i CANNOT stop thinking about that in warrior cats (old territory tho, not new)

cw: death, gore, self mutilation

the outbreak starts in thunderclan first because they’re closest to the twoleg place, right? one day firestar is leading a border patrol w/ cloudtail, thornclaw & shrewpaw because apparently kittypet scent has been all over the border and there have been really weird noises. they’re approaching and they see this kittypet, maybe apprentice-aged — not even an adult yet, collapsed at the border in what looks like a bear trap.

this rancid scent is in the air, like blood but somehow wrong. firestar is obviously cautious but they approach because its clearly dead.

it’s completely disfigured. fresh blood is coating its face, paws and chest, but even worse it’s eyes are stretched so wide and freakishly that it looks like the cat has gone completely blind. it’s bones look almost out of place, fur ragged and, upon closer inspection, seems to be completely rotting off in some places, but theres no way its veen dead for even 24 hours because they have regular patrols.

the whole patrol is put off, and firestar sends shrewpaw to fetch cinderpelt to figure out what the fuck happened.

thornclaw, squinting at the dead kittypet: "hey, uh.. firestar, i think hes still alive. can you hear us, kittypet?"

they all gather around it, and sure enough, its paws started to twitch. unnaturally, though, bending the wrong way. thornclaw prods it with a claw and it blinks.

it doesnt do anything at first, but its jaw cracks open wide and starts to let out the most blood-freezing noise, almost clicking and groaning noise that should be impossible for a cat.

they all back the fuck up, and it starts writhing. doesn’t even notice the teeth of the trap ripping and shredding its skin, bones cracking beneath the strength of it. the groaning noise is louder, almost like a scream, but still so un-catlike that the three are all frozen staring at this kittypet literally rip itself apart trying to get out.

cinderpelt can’t figure out what the fuck is wrong with it because none of them want to go anywhere near that thing, so she organizes an emergency meeting with the other clans' medicine cats and

firestar posts a guard— thornclaw— to watch it, only telling him to not touch it under any circumstances (per cinderpelts demand). he also informs the rest of the clan to keep an eye out and be extra cautious.

things get weirder. not even three days later, sandstorm and sorrelpaw come back early from training, reporting that there was another foreign cat walking just outside the border and making that same sound.

"firestar.. it was wrong. you should’ve seen it. it’s legs were freakishly long, and it’s back seemed to be permanently hunched. it was walking like it was.. i dunno, i can’t even explain it."

"and the smell was awful, like it'd been dead for weeks. we weren’t close, but i swear it’s skin was rotting off, and it’s jaw was completely broken."

thornclaw comes back from his post because he can’t seem to stay on his feet. tells firestar he’s exhausted and needs a break; plus, the kittypet stopped moving. firestar of course agrees and has him rest in the medicine cat den for some peace and quiet, but in the next few days cinderpelt tells firestar that thornclaw has been completely restless at night. she can see the bags under his eyes, and his pupils seem to be… smaller? it’s unlike anything she’s ever seen.

out of precaution, she quarantines him in the old twoleg nest. her reports get increasingly concerning.

first, it’s that he seems like he’s.. almost growing? hes been complaining and writhing at night, his legs apparently aching so bad he can’t sit still, even poppy seeds don’t help, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. he‘s also been anxious. there have been times cinderpelt comes to check on him and he whips around, claws out, fur bristling. she catches him staring at the doorway all night, barely blinking, hunched over himself. on multiple occasions.

things start happening quickly. thornclaw ms ribs started showing, and he began getting snappy with cinderpelt. she also tells firestar he’s been scratching and biting his legs to the point of self mutilation, but when she tries to get him to stop, he flips out.

she doesn’t know what to do. he’s definitely taller now, and his fur seems patchy. thornclaw began coughing up blood, and his paranoia intensified, making it unsafe for cinderpelt to even be there. his weightless was even more rapid, despite eating far more than normal.

the second night, she wakes up to shrieking. she finds thornclaw writhing on the ground, screaming to make it stop, that his body is on fire. his eyes are glazed wide, just like the kittypet they found, and she can hear his this gut wrenching cracking sound. blood is leaking out of his eyes and jaw. he lashes out, and she’s forced to flee, alerting the clan.

they come as soon as they can with warriors, but thornclaw vanished.

MORE ON THIS LATER WHEN ITS NOT THREE IN THE MORNING… warriors cat brainrot has me in a chokehold.

[pilot-boi]

What is up with Jaune Arc?

So I have a theory about why Jaune flinched from Ruby's eyes and several other mysteries about our favorite banana noodle

So I was a strong proponent of the Jaune is a descendant of Salem theory a while back during volume 6, it just made sense. It explained the flinching, Tyrians weird interest, and even why Ozpin allowed an untrained nobody to enter Beacon when he saw Pyrrha unlock his aura during initiation

(Seriously, why does no one bring that up!? Every betrayal fic, expulsion au, and complaints about Jaune sneaking into Beacon seem to forget that Ozpin straight up saw Jaune unlock his aura. Like Bruh...)

Anyways once that theory was said to be false by the show writers I was stumped

Why can a boy with no training and having his aura unlocked 5 minutes ago be able to hold back a fully grown deathstalker with one arm and have the aura control to walk away from a 100ft drop with barely a bruise?

How is his able to at least be passible for weeks with no proper training during the Jaundice arc? How is it that he is able to catch up to warriors who have been training for years in a matter of months? Why did Tyrian have such an interest in him during volume 4?

I assumed that these were just plot holes that I would never get a good answer to. Until volume 9 that is

We now know that Jaune Arc is the Rusted Knight, a storybook character who in the very least predates the Great War and is known across Remnant. This means for all of Jaune’s existence upon Remnant he has simultaneously existed in the Ever After. Which means that the minute Jaune was born, he had already been a fully fledged combatant for decades, if not centuries

My theory is that the reason Jaune is so "special" is because of his paradoxal nature

Jaune Arc knows the basics of combat and how to fight off of muscle memory that isn't his yet. His aura control is stellar upon being unlocked since he's been using his semblance for years now. His aura size is so large because he now literally has double the amount a normal person should have because there are two of him. He is a being who shares a soul with another, himself in a world parallel to Remnant

Tyrian is interested in him beacause he can see somethings weird about his aura. A popular headcanon about Tyrian is that he has poor eyesight like real scorpions but can see aura just fine

So when he takes a close look at Jaune he can see a faint overlay of something, or someone else. A much older, stronger aura than this novice huntsman should possibly have

Its why Jaune flinched during Rubys silver eye blast at Haven. For a brief moment he was exposed to the pure essence of a being from the Ever After, the essence of the God of Light. And during that brief moment, the two parallel worlds were bridged, and the Rusted Knight and Jaune Arc felt each other for the first time

A tiny jolt, one that was soon brushed off but a feeling of suddenly not being alone in your very soul coming and going like a flash would cause anyone to flinch. Makes me wonder how Rusted Jaune felt during that moment

I know this is a long shot but notice that the only times Jaunes aura has broken was after being slapped by a mech while boosting Nora, on the bridge during his fight with Cinder, and in the Ever After from the Curious Cat. One of those times was after he pulled off a truly absurd feat, and the other two both happened above and within the other world, where the rest of his soul resided

Coming out of the Ever After Jaune might no longer have absurdly large aura, since he now is whole once more and only has as much as one person should have

Sorry for the long post but this has been bugging me for awhile and I thought this might be a good theory for why Jaune is the way he is.

TLDR; Jaune Arc is connected Rusted Jaune and both share a soul causing weird things about Jaune

————————

Formatted for ease of reading

Okay but this is a BRILLIANT freaking theory about all the nonsense going on with Jaune, and it would honestly make a lot of stuff make sense

Why was Tyrian interested in him? He has more Aura than any one person should be able to hold

Why did Jaune flinch at the silver eyes when no one else did? He very briefly was connected to the version of him in the Ever After

Why did his Aura break so quickly on the bridges when before it took being bitchslapped by a mile high mech AND boosting Nora? Now he was “in” the Ever After and only able to draw on one pool of Aura

It even explains pretty mundane stuff like how he was able to catch up to his friends after only a year or two of training. It’s the same reason Oscar was able to, he’s pulling on “someone else’s” muscle memory

Even his symbol! TWO arcs, not one, TWO Jaune Arcs, not one

God this is a really cool theory, I REALLY love this idea. Thank you for sharing

[everybody-loves-purdy]

On one hand there literally no foundation for frostwhistle i would barely call what they have even a friendship and the ship really only exists for the sake of it existing, mightas well have pulled any other two random shecats out of a hat. On the other hand I can say the same thing for most of their straight couples.

But I think its just someone on the website team acknowledging the fandom, I would not at all use a word like queerbaiting for it, all theyve ever done is say it exists in fandom and sound mildly surprised by this fact.

I would personally argue there is a fairly significant backing for Whistlefrost, namely the trust they have in one another and how they saved each others lives, with Whistlepaw helping to fake Frostpaw’s death in the process and keeping her secret safe for her. That’s my personal opinion at least, I would have agreed with you when the ship first became popular in River, but now I am very much a Whistlefrost shipper thanks to the events of Thunder and Wind.

The thing about warrior cats is that they seem so insistent on wiping anything remotely gay off the face of the earth, the fact that they have directly acknowledged Whistlefrost three times is huge, the standards are so low lol. The current editorial team has never done this before. I think it can count as bare bones bottom of the barrel queerbaiting just by acknowledging it as something that might actually end up being possible, and I have no doubt that from now on they will probably tease things in the books and never actually commit in order to keep the attention on the ship and therefore the characters alive, but that is just speculation. And purely my own opinion on the matter, if it was other media that’s any more lgbtq friendly I wouldn’t count it as queerbaiting, but this is warrior cats lol

[ihopesocomic]

When exactly did this comic start and what led to it? It's just that I've seen people say all over the place that you started this comic just to sneer at My Pride or w/e and I thought the comic started around the same time as My Pride? Not that I really care but I'm just curious about the actual timeline of things.

For starters, this kind of thing about us making this comic just to dunk on My Pride always makes me laugh because of several reasons:

We literally have a video out there that is nearly three hours long that puts everything on the table. We don't need to be pursuing a comic for nearly four years just to deliver a hit piece. We've summed up things quite well years ago.

The idea that we can't reclaim a concept as marginalised creators from a bigot who misappropriated our oppression for entertainment value is a bad faith argument as to why folks just don't like us/the comic at best and reductive gatekeeping at worst. We're not the first or only people who have tried their hand at reclaiming a problematic entity and doing a rewrite/reshaping of it (i.e. Warrior Cats) so why this is a foreign concept to some people, I don't know. I'd rather people just say they don't like us or the comic like adults instead of harping on about how I can't have my own disabled lion story as a disabled creator because I think that's just such a weird hill to die on. lol

But to answer your question: we began the AU story that became I Hope So around the summer of 2020 when we decided to disassociate from My Pride due to controversy surrounding it and its creator.

We quickly changed it into our own thing because it did not take long for it to dawn on us that doing what we wanted to do would be very difficult and limiting without using our own characters and worldbuilding.

We had also pretty much nailed down a solid outline of what we wanted to do because we obviously did not want to be exactly the same as My Pride. Hope gets bad name, Hope drops bad name, Hope eventually leaves abusive family, we try for better disabled/LGBT+ rep, we meet other animals besides lions, Red Stone, Edge's family, among many other differences.

We then began serialisation in October 2020 while My Pride was still ongoing and before we even published our review of the show, which did not come about until the following March... because the show was barely half done and we had to wait for episodes before reviewing it. oof

Hope my rambling clears up this issue for you, anon. - RJ

[jayfeathersstick]

@wolfielu123 asked me what fandoms im in so i made a list

This took way too long but here you go

A list of all the fandoms im in that i can think of + my favorite character and meme, and why i got into that fandom

Stray kids

Minho but han has been bias wrecking

"Ya know what else is big😀" or BOOM SHAKALAKA

Felix's voice but also the back door performance they did when it came out

Enhypen

I say niki and jake but really its ot7

Next... Enhypen era will be BOOM

Skz started it and i got sucked into he kpop world, they just happened to be the next group that caught my eye

Txt

Yeonjun... And soobin

BYE GUYS HI LADIES MMMMWHA

Same as enha but im not as into them anymore

Harry pottah

Fred + the marauders - peter

"HARRYDIDUPUTYOURNAMEINDEHGOBLETOFIRE" or the mysterious ticking noise, its hard to choose

My sister, she got me into reading (you'll notice a trend of this soon)

Star wars

Anakin, obi wan, and asoka. Also jar jar-

I dont like sand😔 its coarse🙄 and rough😑 and irritaring😤... But not like you😀

Technically my dad but i kinda went off the rails and went crazy over it

Percy jackson

Percy, nico, magnus, leo, anibus

Technically not a meme but that one haiku in toa where it was literally all screaming: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, or the dam french fries

My sister

Attack on titan

Levi (yes im taller than him)

Aot in 9 minutes (there was a point in time where i had it memorized)

Uh, i actually don't know, bc i watched naruto i guess?

Speaking of which

Naruto, mha, and hxh

Im not really in any of the fandoms anymore but i was at one point and aot is the only on ive stayed in

Hermitcraft

🇬‌🇷‌🇦‌🇮‌🇳‌

I don't really have a favorite meme, they're just always memeable

Dsmp... (im not gonna add this one but i did go through a MASSIVE dsmp phase during covid)

Warrior cats

Jayfeather, obvi

Firestar dosent know what a waffle is

My sister handed me itw and it was over from there😌

Marvel

Not really in this one either but it does peak my interest

I see black widow approximately 20 times a year bc my sisters obsessed with it

Also technically not marvel but i went through a really big x-men phase and the deadpool x wolverine cameo in chk chk boom int helping it go away...

Idk the x-men and marvel universe crossover thing has always confused me but interested me

Kotlc

Tam, AND KEEFE OMG-

None bc ive barely interacted with the fandom💀

Sister

Hunger games

Finnick...

Sister

YIPEE I CANT THINK OF ANY MORE

Part 2

[blimbo-buddy]

im kinda surprised warrior cats hasnt had more refrences in other media but then again its like, not too popular of a media if ur not into the """gay neurodivergent""" side of the internet

Some of the references I can think of off the top of my head:

One of the books appearing in the background of an older live action show

A scene in the ghost and molly mcgee where one of the characters is seen reading a parody of the book called "Defender Felines"

A We Bare Bears episode where they think of names for a puma and one of them suggests "TigerClaw"

That one Garfield parody of the Into the Wild cover (I think this counts as a reference since it was posted by the official Garfield account

World of Warcraft having npcs that are quite literally the warrior cats characters themselves

I dunno though maybe until the series gets a world renowned movie series then we won't be expecting many big references to warriors, keeping itself to just background appearances or small mentions

[urcadelimabean]

(extremely late to the party, this is a pretty non-spoilery review)

I just watched The Woman King starring Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch and John Boyega. I cried. I screamed. I barely survived. I had to pause the movie over and over to collect myself because of Lashana Lynch's shoulders, the warrior women's abs and John Boyega's beautifulness, and the many times Viola Davis as Nanisca literally took my breath away. Nanisca had so much gravitas that I don't think anyone else has any LEFT. SHE WAS PHENOMENAL. I'm reeling. I don't cry often during movies and I CRIED cried four times during scenes with Nanisca and Nawi and a fifth time when someone died. The acting. The history. Watching the Agojie being revered by their kingdom. Nanisca's pain and beauty and courage and determination. The beauty of the film. The gorgeous costumes, especially John Boyega's. (We saw like GOOD portions of his chest, okay, and girl, what a chest.) The martial arts, the throws, the swordplay!!! The sisterhood among female warriors was so moving and inspiring in a way I can't put into words. There's a way I feel as a woman who does martial arts in a male-dominated world about the more experienced battle-hardened women that I admire, that's basically that picture of the cat screaming as hearts pour out of its mouth, and a desire to make them proud at any cost. I felt that a lot. If it wasn't for my fear of death, doing martial arts with other women all day sounds like THE dream. I'm sad that I won't get the chance to run through thorns to impress Nanisca. This will be one of my favorite movies of all time. Sheila Atim was incredible as Nanisca's right hand woman and I loved what she and her friendship with Nanisca added to the film. Thuso Mbedu was so incredibly good as the young, impulsive and rebellious Nawi. There were no weak actors. Thank you Gina Prince-Bythewood for giving us this masterpiece celebrating Black women heroes and Dahomey culture. Thank you Gina Prince-Bythewood for personally making me bisexual.

I know some have questioned the historical accuracy of the film but it seems based on this quote from Wikipedia, that the Agojie and their civilian allies advocated for "stronger commercial relations with Britain, favouring the trade of palm oil above that of slaves." The movie acknowledged the historical participation of the Agojie in the slave trade while delving into the idea of Dahomey warriors turning away from the slave trade. I'm also not the person to make a judgement on this because all I know about the Dahomey kingdom I read on Wikipedia recently. But I do know that the portrayal of the Agojie was historically accurate! For example, they really did have high status and political influence, and they really did run through acacia thorns to increase their pain tolerance. What, like it's hard?

Jesus Christ, why a fantastic movie. Everyone who hasn't seen it, GO WATCH IT!!!! I am dead but also ready to ride into battle.

Yes, John Boyega is eye-wateringly attractive but Viola Davis and her warriors easily stole the ENTIRE show.

[autisticgirliesbracket]

What makes Nepeta Leijon from Homestuck the autistic girlie ever of all time? Here's what the people have to say:

Nepeta-related asks/reblogs: x This post will be updated after each round!

Image ID in alt text and under the readmore.

[Image ID. White slide with a screenshot of Nepeta in the bottom left corner, she is biting her hat. She is surrounded by text boxes which read,

"I have the tism and i gave it to her. Her special interests are relationships and hunting!!! Also cats!!!! Cat girl! Beloved!"

"Nepeta has multiple special interests, most notably roleplaying as a "purrbeast" (cat) and analyzing every potential quadrant pairing between her friend group (shipping but hard mode). She always wears an oversized coat and a cat face hat. She openly mentions that she doesn't really get or care about social rules, especially ones pertaining to the blood color caste system. And most importantly: I love her. Therefore she has the Tism."

"feral cat girl who lives in a cave. she roleplays 24/7 with all her friends (many ungrateful of her epic roleplaying skills) definitely a furry. pretends to be a cat all the time. the most autistic behavior if ive ever seen it (/positive)"

"she's obsessed with shipping, paints on her walls with her bare hands (fun sensory experience) she loves playing with yarn and string, she's literally referred to as autistic by another character at one point"

"Constantly dressed as her favourite animal (a cat, which is a very 'tism favourite animal to have as a previous Warrior Cats Autistic Girlie myself). She types with :33 at the beginning of every message, uses cat puns, and roleplays with others obsessively to communicate even if they're not necessarily playing along. She even uses claws as her weapon. One of THE most cat-obsessed Autistic Girlies ever. All my Autistic convention friends loved cosplaying her. The call of the 'Tism was too strong."

"she's a shipping-obsessed catgirl who roleplays all the time and has like one actual friend, who's also autistic (talking about equius). i'll be honest, it's a good thing you said "only one per piece of media" because otherwise there'd be a lot more homestuck characters (like almost a third of the characters, it's insane). but i had to choose the *most* fitting one so nepeta it is!"

"multiple characters do refer to her as autistic (derogatory), for one, but she lives in a cave and everyone thinks she's strange and she likes to think about what kinds of relationships her friends might have and draw them on the walls and she wears a big comfy coat and kitty paw slippers and a comfy blue hat and she likes cats and her mom is a cat and she loves rp and has one best friend who nobody else really gets but her"

"her special interest is shipping and also she has weird girl swag . she has fun doing silly rps with her online friends and also she lives in the woods and is a skilled hunter but that doesnt have anything to do with the autism i just think its cool. she stims by chewing on her hat :3 also shes a cat girl 👍 shes canonically autistic btw :D"

"Stims via hat, flapping and pressure hugs from equis. Hyperfixated on shipping (me too) is a cat girl (cats are autistic creatures) and also lacks a lot of social skills (i.e her insistence on roleplaying despite other trolls being annoyed by her)"

"nepeta is unaware of social cues, has an obsession (read: special interest) with romance and shipping, is a literal catgirl, “:3”, and she always wears her blue comfort hat!!!"

"Biting! She loves cats so much that she roleplays as one and dresses like one and incorporates it into her personality and typing quirk! Look at how she dresses... comfy.... !!! She's also got the sort of vibe where other people treat her as annoying for her interests but she has trouble picking up on that (sorry nep they're being mean to you 😔)" End ID.]

[spottyissleepwalking]

Hello, sorry to bother you but can I ask a question about the warrior cats disability post you reblogged earlier? And I mean this in good faith, honestly, I want to understand.

I haven't read warrior cats, but just from what was described in the post, it sounds... realistic? Since not everyone bounces back from becoming disabled. For example, a coworker and I (in a labor intensive field) have the same injury to our knee. He, I guess you could say has responded "well" to his injury. He has a higher drive to push past pain, not let it limit what he can do, and is able to work as hard, or harder, than non-disabled coworkers, but he is still absolutely disabled. In his case, he often overworks himself and thus ends up having to take off several days to recover and is on a lot of pain medication, both Rx and self medicated. In the scenario presented in the post, he would def be able to stay in the warrior class. But I didn't respond well to my injury, and don't react well to pain. I fell into a deep deep depression that took almost 8 years to crawl out of. Doing the exact same tasks as he does, I work slower and more carefully, avoiding pain at all costs rather than pushing past/despite pain. I'm slower, not as effective. But I don't need to take time off or frequent breaks to recover, and though it takes a little longer, I do just as much work as he does at the end of the week when accounting for the time he takes to recover. I like to imagine that I've reacted to my injury well, but can't help feeling inadequate and worthless when compared to coworker. Especially on days that we work side by side and he's running quite literal circles around me. And remember, we have the exact same injury with very similar causes and only a few months time difference.

From what I understand of the culture of Warrior cats (which is admittedly very very little) I imagine I'd end up in a healer class as well, even if I wished I could be warrior class. I would give almost anything to work as fast, as effectively, as hard as coworker does. But I can't.

So I guess what I'm asking is, what am I missing from the narrative, as someone who hasn't read warrior cats, that makes a character, who has not returned to their former glory after an injury, a poor representation of disability? As the post stands on its own right now, it just feels like it's kicking disabled people when they're down for not acting like they're still fully abled. Like shaming a paralyzed person for not joining a sport.

I have to assume that it's just poorly worded for anyone outside the fandom, but it really does come of as... well... ableist. Which is what drove me to ask, since making assumptions of ableism is generally kinda shitty, and I am curious about the source material.

I hope I didn't come off aggressive or let my emotions on the subject get carried away here, genuinely sorry if it does come off rude. I promise am asking in good faith because I want to understand from a creative standpoint if the narrative actually handled it poorly, and how-so, to help myself and others potentially avoid making the same artistic mistakes.

Thank you for taking the time to read this wall of text, and again, so sorry for bothering you!

No no!! Not aggressive or rude or anything of the sort :D

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the full text, but I got the gist of it so I’ll try to answer aptly ^^

The problem with Warriors isn’t that there isn’t disability representation - there is, it’s just. Awful. Why? Because almost every single disabled character, sans THREE, in a series that has thousands of named characters, is FORCED into a role they don’t want - or KILLED. Solely for being disabled, solely for being “different”.

It’s not that they necessarily chose that life for themselves, it’s that it was forced upon them, which is where so many fans (reasonably) draw issue with. Disabled characters are offered the bare minimum in Warriors canon. Either they’re essentially forced to become a doctor, with the trope of “the broken-bodied healing the able-bodied” (which personally unsettled me greatly), or they’re shipped off to the elder’s den, which is a place where cats retire due to old age and are cared for by their Clanmates, usually without ever having the chance to prove themselves, and display both their abilities and weaknesses. They’re just automatically shoved into this corner.

There was a Deaf character, once, in the decades-long span of this book series, that was told he would never become a warrior solely because of his deafness - and then was immediately killed off in a manner that was almost never used again as a device to kill a character.

There was a character who was hit by a car and, as a result, ended up losing the function of one of her back legs. Prior to this, she was training as any other young member of her society would. Immediately after? She became a doctor.

There was a character who became blind due to an outside force, and, despite being the equivalent of maybe a thirty-year-old, immediately retired to the elder’s den.

There was a born blind character who fought to train as a warrior, under a half-blind warrior. He was doing well in his training - until the in-universe religion came down to him and forced him to give up his dreams in order to become a doctor. Granted, his case was a little more complicated and intermingled with plot, but it still stands.

There was a character with anxiety who was a poor hunter, and was pressured to become a doctor because of his lack of skills.

There was a character who was paralyzed, and was dismissed as dead, or “better off dead”, by almost everyone around her - INCLUDING HER OWN FAMILY - except the blind character, who found kinship with her and fought tooth-and-nail to keep her alive and healthy.

And the thing is? These characters are CATS! Cats, who have been documented living alone in the wild with these sort of disabilities and thriving!! Which makes it all the more frustrating to see a narrative built around the appeal of cats, have them have this whole support system and community, and that community actively turn their backs on them.

It’s not about them choosing. It’s about them being forced. Not having any opportunity to grow, or learn, or allow others around them to do the same in regards to them. There’s no acceptance here. In universe, it seems like they’re just shoved into the shadows so the able bodied characters don’t have to look at them or think too hard about them, unless they’re healing their wounds.

The characters themselves are not the poor representation. It’s how the authors have handled them - by shoving them aside, to the shadows, to the dogs. It’s frustrating and disheartening.

[blightsending]

Many moons have passed since the clans first discovered their missing clanmates' bodies piled in the Fox Lands; more cats have disappeared, and the hope to find their loved ones is dwindling. The Leaf-Bare has begun to thaw, and New-Leaf is on its way...perhaps with the change of season, the clans may yet find both their loved ones and new faces to fill their camps.

Hello, Runners! Just a reminder that our newest GladeClan opening will be this upcoming Monday (03/27/23). The Salmon Runners are an adventurous group of cats just waiting for the right home - you can learn more about them here!

We'll be taking on eight new members, four original characters and four adoptables, who you can meet here!

We are a literate, 18+ Discord Warrior Cats roleplay with tons of lore, fun clans, and we hope you're as excited as we are for this opening! See you Monday.

Promo art by @jambiird !