number 1 scourge apologist

scourge appeared in one book in the main series and was more influential and interesting than tigerstar in his entirety

yknow speaking as a disabled person i have never cared for briar/jay/cinder become warriors au’s. there’s something very unsettling to me about how being a warrior is seen as giving your life “more purpose” or worth as an individual or whatever and it feels a lot like the “disabled people need to be active in their community in order for their existence to have value” narrative and imo the problems with the series ableism run far deeper than just letting disabled cats be warriors because these characters shouldn’t have to hunt or be able to fight just to not be seen as a burden and the insinuation that they do is only driving the issue deeper. warriors being seen as the “default,” the most important thing you can strive for (which ties into deeper issues regarding “clan loyalty” and the entire society of the clans being built upon “war is epic and cool and badass and also just a natural part of life so get used to it” but that’s another can of worms so w/e), is where the innate issue lies. “oh but jayfeather WANTED to be a warrior” yeah jayfeather’s not real and he was written by people who have very twisted notions about how the world is supposed to work

i think ppl need to realize that warrior cats (or any other fantasy animal series) being criticized for anti-indigenous racism doesnt mean that u need to drop them n never consume that content, it just means that u need to keep those citicisms in mind and analyze why theyre bad n why its so common for this genre. its not enough to just go “well indigenous ppl online said this series has anti-indigenous racism in it, which is bad”, u need to actually figure out stuff like why (usually white) authors go for native stereotypes for inspiration for stuff like ‘book about animals living in the wild’

I'm Native too and while I'm glad people are trying to look more critically at the media they consume I think all this warriors stuff may be a little overblown. The Erins wrote this series in a way that made it very clear the setting was probably in Britain or the UK in general. While my tribe has clans in it, I feel like they got the clan thing from the Scottish rather than from Native Americans. The compound name thing I don't think is particularly problematic but I can understand how it makes some Native people uncomfortable. We need to look at the series and our interpretation through fan content critically, but dropping the whole series like the entire thing is intentionally and blatantly appropriating Native cultures is way too much of an overreaction.

I see a lot of ppl say that the "medicine cats can't have kits" rule is dumb and shouldn't exist but honestly. It's not the rule that's dumb, it's the justification. Religious devotees like monks and nuns from multiple religions have been swearing themselves to celibacy to foster a deeper relationship with their deity(s) for CENTURIES. Why the Erins didn't think to use the same justification for medicine cats and instead said "it's too hard to be a parent AND a doctor" will forever be beyond me.