Honestly, the complete mishandling of the Dark Forest cats is THE biggest missed opportunity in my eyes, which is saying something, considering how this entire book series is made off of the basis of 'starting out with really cool concepts and then proceeding to completely fumble them'. Like, you're telling me that cats not only go to hell, but cats IN hell are actively recruiting and training living cats to start an uprising? That's cool! I want more of that!

...and then they just. Completely trip and do practically nothing cool with it. Like, you get SNIPPETS of the ways in which the Dark Forest influences the cats mentally, Breezepelt is the obvious one, and that's interesting! I like how they see Breezepelt's insecurities and his issues with Crowfeather, and they use that against him. We also see a snippet of that with Blossomfall feeling like she deserves to be in the Dark Forest for her feeling jealous of Briarlight, and like. Not only is that actually fairly realistic in terms of shitty sibling behavior, I'm interested in what they could do with that! Like, yeah actually, it's REALLY shitty that Blossomfall resents Briarlight for being disabled, she SHOULD be criticized for that, but her going from recognizing that's shitty to 'I should be in hell forever (and never try and improve or work on myself)... and then proceeding to never have this be relevant again. It's AGONIZING.

More Dark Forest trainees should be in positions similar to Blossomfall or Breezepelt, cats who either feel like they're not good enough for StarClan and therefore don't have to try and be good people anymore, or cats who outrightly reject StarClan in favor for vengeance, I want MORE of that, not just 'I want to get more powerful and they teach me how to kill here!' like. CMON. How are we reasonably supposed to expect these cats are going to turn on their living Clanmates and family members when their entire reason for being in the Dark Forest is 'get stronger to protect my Clan'?? The entire thing is just wildly disappointing to me, and I expect it to either continue to disappoint me with Ivypools super edition, assuming she gets another bland 'entire life retelling with nothing cool' like all of the other super editions have been as of late.

Your tag a few posts back, why do you hate the cat books?

Okay so to preface: I genuinely adore warrior cats. I do. It's been my "main" special interest since I was around 9. I have thought abour warrior cats daily since then. However these books straight up fuckin SUUUUCK. This isn't a matter of "Why aren't these childrens book for children appealing to me as an adult?", they are bad AS CHILDRENS BOOKS. I can forgive shitty writing, but warriors tries its HARDEST to make itself as unappealing and godawful as possible through bland worldbuilding and characters, and the absolute RAMPANT myraid of issues, with misogyny and ableism as the two most frequently discussed. Female characters are CONSISTENTLY written as being "unreasonable" when compared to their male counterparts, who may be on their level OR WORSE in terms of bad actions, but get excuses for their actions BY THE NARRATIVE ITSELF whereas the women don't. Disabled characters are treated as less than, once again, not just by the characters, but by the narrative. Firestar literally tells Cloudtail that Brightheart, his MATE and AN ADULT, is going to be his apprentice and responsibility because she's disabled, and that Firestar "knows" she'll never be a "real" warrior. This entire conversation happens with Brightheart present in the scene, yet she is never spoken to by either character. She is an object given zero agency in her own life because she is both disabled and a woman. Fuck, the ENTIRE FIRST ARC ends with the concept of "Our religion makes us moral", as Firestar is DIRECTLY TOLD by Barley that Scourge and BloodClan don't believe in StarClan and therefore don't feed or take care of the sick, young, or elderly. As it stands I refuse to read or engage with the current arc, as it's extreme misogyny is too much for me to tolerate without just pissing myself off.

From a story perspective, and putting aside the actual real problematic elements, the worst part of warrior cats is the lack of follow through on genuinely interesting concepts. We are consistently told StarClan is a perfect utopia and is never wrong (Which is a problem within itself), and then are given an entire arc abou StarClan making a mistake. Instead of an actually interesting discussion of how dead cats are just that, dead cats, and not mystical paragons, the books end with "Well that was sure a weird one-off occurance! Nothing about this system will change." Warrior cats has SO MANY good concepts and ideas and does NOTHING WITH THEM.

Now, the question is, why do I still enjoy warrior cats if I hate it so much? Well, frankly, that's because 90% of my engagement is taking the skeleton that is warriors worldbuilding and make 5,000 OCs. That and, there are genuinely really good aspects of warriors. Yellowfangs death scene, I feel, is actually an emotional and well written scene, and the forest fire directly beforehand is legitimately tense. Squirrelflight is a fantastic character! While I'm not a huge fan of her character in general, I think basically every concept behind Hollyleaf is incredibly interesting. There IS a lot there, its just gritting your teeth and sitting through a million pages ranging from "mediocre" to "ungodly boring" to "downright rage inducing".

Unfortunately all of my favorite OCs are also warrior cats and I own the official Squirrelflight plushie so uh. I'm not going anywhere!

I'm not kidding when I say "But I was his mother" hits harder than any other line in all of warriors. There is absolutely no emotional scene in warrior cats that works on a level Yellowfangs death does and I will die on this hill

I genuinely think this arc is the least interested I've been in warrior cats, maybe ever. I can't even muster up the energy to angrily talk about the blatant misogyny. I just. Straight up don't care. Wake me up when the next arc starts and/or the series crashes and burns harder than usual

Scrapclaw!! She's a HollowClan warrior, a Clan that lives in an abandoned grocery store as part of the Mall Clans. She's also going to bite you <3

Every few months I consider posting about my OCs on here occasionally but psych myself out because "ohhh they're cringe" as if I'm not running a warrior cats themed tumblr blog. This is cringe central and thats the fun if it

As a kid I read Mapleshade's Vengeance before her introduction in the main series or Crookedstars Promise, and I was so unbelievably excited with the idea that there was just this one random standalone book about a cat with seemingly no relevance to the main series, only for her to make her appearance later, and straight up warrior cats should do that for real. The only reason I got that experience of "Oh fuck, I know her" was because I didn't know what books came out when and just read whatever I could find under the "other books from this series" part in the back of the books, but I think they should do that intentional, just once. There was something at least somewhat similar with Hawkwings Journey, since it was Hawkwings introduction, but it ends with it all connecting to the main series again. I want "Mapleshade's Vengeance" with a character we don't know yet, and won't know for a while. I want that suspense of "when will [this character] arrive?" and theorizing what will be their main arc introduction, and how the main arc characters perception of them will be compared to what we, the audience know about them.

Hey remember when Greystripes Vow ended on a note of Greystripe saying that he had faith in the Clans, that if StarClan never returned, they'd learn to keep living and survive? Yeah and then remember when that actually meant jack shit because StarClan came back and made no changes to the system whatsoever? Anyways I hope cat heaven explodes

Bored, anyone want to send some asks about Literally Anything? Canon cats, my OCs, your OCs, non-warrior cats topics, ect? Anon is on

So like did Ivypools "spying" on the Dark Forest ever like. Actually achieve anything? Like. Other than someone going "yup the dark forest is training cats" (something that OTHER cats, AKA Leafpool had already known beforehand, albeit just in smaller cases), was it like. Necessary. Also, why are the Dark Forest cats only doing stuff then?? Because we KNOW cats like Thistleclaw trained in the Dark Forest when he was alive (though of course, this is 100% a retcon), so why is the Dark Forest choosing to attack now? To gather forces now??? Why is the entire concept of "cat hell manipulates living cats into siding with them" underutilized to such an extent? Why was Breezepelt the ONLY PERSON who didn't change sides

What if Bluestar was close to pulling a Pinestar when she brought Firepaw into ThunderClan. What if the reason she knew and trusted Barley, the reason she thought to bring Rusty into ThunderClan in the first place, was entirely because Pinestar set rhe precedent that you could just leave.

One day I'll start posting my warrior cats OCs on a regular basis and then you'll see the depth of how much these dumbass cats haunt me. I haven't gone a day without thinking about my warrior cats OCs in upwards of a decade and I'm not exaggerating even slightly

Hey I'm bored, anons on if anyone wants to come send an ask with a warrior cat name and/or ship and I'll give you my opinion on it

Nothing here but a pair of girlbesties who are such good friends <3

Might change my URL so its a warrior cats OC I actually care about