All the other mentors have sense put into them- Nobody knew how violent Ashfur was back then, and he SEEMED like a calm, sensible cat with a slight gruff side, which wouldve been perfect for a ball of stubborn energy like Lionpaw- Hollypaw was behind, and Brackenfur complimented her thoughtful energy while also pushing her hard enough to keep up. And the thoughtfulness of mentors continues, with Foxpaw and Icepaw both getting good mentors- Squirrelflight is energetic and confident to match Foxpaw, and Whitewing has experience hunting with a pure white coat along with being calmer like Icepaw. Mentorship choices seemed to have a genuine level of thought of who would be best for that specific apprentice.

Brightheart though? Shes not a bad mentor, but shes a sensitive, quiet, blunt, thoughtful cat with ptsd. Nobody in their right MIND would pair her with a sharp, stubborn, easily upset Jaypaw- Unless you only paired them together because they were both disabled. And Firestar couldnt even do that right!!

Brightheart had to ADJUST to her injury, and it was a very traumatic part of her life she had to move past and learn to cope with, while Jaypaw was BORN BLIND. She constantly treats his blindness like it was something hard for him, like hers, when thats not what its like for him at all! She gives him 'blindness lessons' with longtail, ANOTHER CAT BORN SIGHTED and just repeating things he already knows. Hes a jerk to Brightheart, all the time, in his head and out loud. But i cant blame him for that when its Firestars fault for pairing them.

This is exactly what I didn’t want. Chimera cats happen when two embryos fuse together in the womb. We’re not about to say that an embryo counts as a living person. That’s along the same lines as the kind of shit that anti-abortion people say.

because we KNOW ashfur was physically and probably verbally abusive towards Lionblaze. but he was his mentor. in this culture your mentor is someone to look up to, your guide, your role model, despite how they treat you (bc as we know wc is very bad at avoiding objectively toxic scenarios).

AND ON TOP OF THAT, Lionblaze's power is physical strength. he hurts people. that's his skill.

ashfur's carelessness to teach lionblaze proper morales, on top of physically lashing out on him, would absolutely result in him not understanding going too far violencewise, leading him to becoming even more violent and unreasonable since there was no one there to guide him.

but he would feel awful. ashfur telling him how he's weak and pathetic so he tries to make up for it by fighting harder only to hurt the people he cares about? yowch

Warriors/Warrior Cats is one of those franchises that I have basic knowledge of and I was an avid fan of at one point, but now I'm mostly in it for the fan content. But I was thinking about the Clan names recently and I just had to rant about them because some of them genuinely piss me off to an extent. I'm not too mad, but I feel a little miffed.

I decided to discuss this (and rate the names) using context given throughout the series, albeit mostly without the context given in the Dawn of the Clans arc, for a few reasons. Even though I'm using some retroactively-added details, we don't see any of this until arc 5, and by the present day it's basically the ancient past.

Full rant under the cut, but TL;DR Riverclan (and BloodClan, as an honorable mention) are mostly a non-issue, WindClan is a slight issue, SkyClan is more of an issue and ThunderClan and ShadowClan I have some Thoughts(TM) about.

I think it would have been super cool if Sharptooth was seen as a God instead of just a predator.

The Clans already view big cats--Tiger, Lion, Leopard--or at least whatever they imagine those big cats to be as these almost sacred, possibly spiritual, beings of the past. How come when an actual big cat showed up in the series, no one thought it might be something spiritual?

--

The Tribe cats are already treated as a group of..to put it plainly, idiots that always need the Clans to help them. What if their first encounter wasn't of being saved from Sharptooth thanks to the Clans?

What if instead, the Tribe saw Sharptooth as a god, who comes to take their tributes (sacrifices) once every [blank]. Like Someone might be close to dying--elderly, sick, just wanting to pay tribute--and they send them to a place where Sharptooth comes to get them (away from the cave so that he doesn't actually become a huge issue in the way that he did in the books). They see it as his guiding spirit leading them to the afterlife.

It would also allow more cats to eat because their numbers can remain steady, so they don't run into the problem that caused half of them to leave back in DOTC.

Remember how the Tribe was meant to show how groups can be different and unique, but also good? Wasn't it a thing for 9/11 or was that made up? I'm tired it's 3 in the morning

What if they leaned more into that idea? The Tribe of Endless Hunting is too similar to StarClan imo, so what if instead of a entire afterlife of cats that guided you, it was Sharptooth that was the leader? And those that sacrificed their lives for him was believed to be granted a high position in the stars?

What if the Clan cats think that this is wrong and try to stop it, but by the end they realize that they cannot control other cats' lives, and that these cats are happy with their beliefs and lifestyle, and it would be wrong of them to force them to change?

So instead of the Tribe being helpless and always needing the Clans' help, they are instead shown to be a group living differently and believing in different things, but who also have mothers just like the Clans, fathers, kits, friends. I don't know, my brain's too tired to formulate the words I want to say right.

Just...There was so much missed potential. I'm pretty sure the Tribe was made because of different ways of living and different groups irl, so it sucks that one of these groups in their books are, for one, so similar to the other in their beliefs, and for another they're so bad at taking care of themselves without the Clans coming in to save them. It would have been so much better if we instead got a moral of getting along in spite of differences and beliefs.

Maybe they don't accept each other at first and believe that the other's way of living is wrong but then there's another enemy or natural disaster that makes the two groups work together and make them realize how similar they are, and that it's okay that they are also different?

PLUS just imagine God-Sharptooth.

if not for the fandom, warriors WOULD and SHOULD HAVE been dead long ago, most fans don't even consume the book as is anymore, they just live off AUs and ocs.

i resented warriors A LOT because growing up it was a great obsession of mine. part of my identity. then the series got so bad i forced myself to distance from it. in fact now that i think about it not one good thing came out of warriors except for people who got inspired to do art (like me! i started drawing because of warriors).

It is super easy to make a trivial mistake like design, especially if you are so engrossed in the writing that it’s just that one document and no other that you’re looking over.

Not defending or criticizing any authors (although this is a warriors blog, so you have probably guessed who I’m mostly talking about). I mean, there’s a difference between forgetting eye colour and forgetting a character has already died three times. 

But I think it’s also important to remember three things:

1) writing is tough as FUCK. Not even saving information can save you.

2) writing with a team of other people is (probably) pretty tough.

3) the editors are behind a lot of mistakes, too. I think(?) that the authors tried to get them to get a character out of the allegiances after he died, and they didn’t do it for several books or something.

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Again not defending, but as a writer, more specifically as a writer with some memory issues, these posts can be very irritating, and then I get anxious that I’m going to make a mistake in the book that people on Tumblr will criticize.

I’m not saying that you should stop making those posts, I’ve just been wanting to say this and get it off of my chest.

Yeah, I have memory problems, but that doesn’t speak for each of the authors. Maybe some do, maybe some don’t. Maybe some are better writers than others, maybe some editors are better.