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[pjwarriorcats]

StarClan's Bias: Frecklewish and a recurrent canon/fanon discourse

Despite StarClan being portrayed as an impartial and merciful judge, their decisions (or, rather, the decisions of Erin Hunter made through them) are not always so easily accepted by fans. In a long list of contentious decisions, the most recent is Frecklewish’s fate.

Frecklewish is a ThunderClan she-cat who features as a prominent character in Mapleshade’s Vengeance. In the beginning of the book, her brother, Birchface, is killed in a border skirmish, and it is assumed by the Clan that Mapleshade’s kittens were fathered by him. Frecklewish, grieving the loss of her brother, became very invested in them as a result. When it is revealed that they were not, and instead were fathered against the code by a cat from a rival Clan (the very same cat who had killed Birchface), Frecklewish is devastated and angry, and stands by while Mapleshade and her kittens are exiled from ThunderClan. Supposedly, Frecklewish also follows Mapleshade and her kits to the river, and witnesses the kittens drown while they are trying to leave the territory.

Many fans sympathized with Frecklewish, and many were upset to hear that Frecklewish went to the Dark Forest (basically Warrior cat hell) when she died. Many called out the inconsistencies with this decision: Oakstar, the leader of ThunderClan who exiled Mapleshade, went to StarClan (basically Warrior cat heaven). Arguably, Oakstar caused much more direct hurt to Mapleshade and her kittens, as did Ravenwing, who revealed her trespasses. Neither of them shared her fate when they died.

Really, Frecklewish’s outcasting to the Dark Forest makes little sense at all. StarClan were the ones to send the omen to Ravenwing that Mapleshade’s kittens were not Birchface’s. StarClan was the one to set the entire thing in motion, to reveal Mapleshade, and to have her and her kittens exiled. How is Frecklewish to blame for allowing their will to be carried out? StarClan is far more culpable for the kits’ deaths than Frecklewish is. To turn around and judge her so harshly for it is a far cry from the merciful nature StarClan is meant to have.

More than anything, however, fans wanted some peace for Frecklewish after all she had been through. Birchface’s death shattered her life into pieces, and she never quite escaped that grief. In the end, it was this confrontation that killed her, when Mapleshade later returned to ThunderClan and murdered her at Snakerocks. Surely this was enough atonement? Surely to condemn her to an eternity of suffering (and suffering in the same territory as Mapleshade, her final tormentor, who also went to the Dark Forest) was far more cruelty than StarClan would willingly dispense?

Multiple fan projects have rejected this particular detail of canon. MAPs including Maggot Belly and Graceland Too show the ghost of Birchface coming to retrieve her at the end, rather than a damnation to the Dark Forest.

StarClan’s inconsistencies are obvious throughout the series. In fact, the criteria for StarClan seems to follow little-to-no logic at times. Rainflower, the extremely verbally abusive and neglectful mother of Crookedstar, is a confirmed StarClan member. As is Ashfur, who tormented his clanmate Squirrelflight and threatened to kill her children when she rejected his advances. Hollyleaf went to StarClan, despite having murdered a cat with her own two paws. Whatever your opinion is on the fate of each of these cats, whether they deserved mercy from StarClan or not, it is undeniable that bias exists in their judgements. It’s little wonder that many fans took such a problem with Frecklewish’s fate.

[Alt Text: Frecklewish, a golden cat with darker speckles, drawn in a cartoony style, with her back arched, hissing, and claws out: Artist credit; post link]

[pjwarriorcats]

The Evolution of Warriors Fan Projects

Warriors fans have created all kinds of projects as tribute to the series, but the most well-known and perhaps the most impressive of projects are the animations. Warriors has always had a very prolific community on YouTube, creating shorts, animation, music videos, edits, and more. Unlike many other large fandoms on the internet, Warriors has no film component; there were never any movies made about the books, so all video content on the series was completely handmade, using either original artwork or other fan arts edited together.

The trends of animation and fanmade video content created by the Warriors fandom have changed drastically over time, and I wanted to go digging for some of these old videos and compare them to the content that is being made now. The evolution of animations from the community is incredible, and with so many of the original videos still available to be viewed on YouTube, a timeline can be tracked of the trends of Warriors fan animations. The best way to see the growth of the fandom is to experience it firsthand, through the projects produced over the 20s since it began.

The first Warriors book was published in 2003, and Warriors fan videos began to appear in the early 2000s. Videos began to pop up under all different channels. Creators such as Alli Kat, Wyeth Cat, DuckFeatherz, Flightfootwarrior, DarkKokiri, tribbleofdoom, bluekyokitty, moonlightnebula, and more quickly began to make a name for themselves creating AMVs (or Animated Music Videos). The early days of Warriors fan animations were also full of meme videos, such as the ever-famous (or infamous) Firestar Doesn't Like Waffles.

[Alt Text: A frame from "Firestar Doesn't Like Waffles," showing Graystripe holding a waffle out to an annoyed Firestar: Video Link]

Meme creators made names for themselves in the community at the time, too. Creators like Mama Tad made a place for themselves in the animation community creating almost exclusively meme and comedy animations, creating gems such as Cloudpaw Joins ThunderClan.

Early Warriors had a certain charm that can be attributed to three main factors: they were created by amateur artists and animators, many of whom were still children (as the source material of Warriors intended for its audience), they were created in the internet culture of the 2000s, and they were created by fans who all shared enough love for this series to dedicate so much of their time to a fan project. The quality of these videos (the video quality itself) is a product of a young fan using any resources they can find to create something. Even in the early days of the Fandom, the animations stood out as one of the most loved aspects.

Another prominent period in the timeline of Warriors animations was trying to create exactly what we did not have: a Warriors movie. These days, this trend has died off significantly (though there is still one major project in the works currently: WCAnimated. More on this later.), but several years ago, numerous animators attempted it. The most famous is the SSS Warrior Cats Fan Animation series, utilizing an iconic anime-adjacent style and lasting an impressive eight videos and over an hour of animation, but it was far from the only one. Tribbleofdoom had an Into the Wild series that lasted at least 48 episodes, though many of these have been taken down and are no longer available to view. Aluriya, one of the animators who worked on SSS Warrior Cats, made about an episode and a half of Bluestar's Prophecy. Nifty-Senpai animated a few episodes of OotS: The Fourth Apprentice, giving the project numerous attempts throughout the years. Fluffy Lovey animated several episodes of Fire and Ice. There was a period of time where it seemed almost all of the prominent animators were trying to create the Warriors “film” that we still don’t have.

[Alt text: A drawing of the main cast from the SSS Warrior Cats fan series, with the logo in the top left: Channel link]

Some animators also created their own animated Warriors universes, following the worldbuilding of the books and animating their own original characters. Urnam7’s series Dimstar's Past was one such project. Icerift Fyera created another, called AuroraClan.

These projects all have a similar feel to them. They are passion projects of an individual person, often a younger person, or a very small team, following a few different artistic trends (heavily cartoon and simplistic, a more anime-like style, the style of 2000/2010s sparkle cats, and adjacent similar styles). They were loved at the time, they are nostalgic for many now, and most of them fit fairly neatly into the box of “old warriors videos aesthetic.”

The Warriors fandom these days has moved away from projects like these a little bit. AMVs, while still a common occurrence, are not so much the go-to form of content creation any longer. Individual projects, in fact, are less commonly seen. Instead, the fandom has turned more towards collaborative projects, containing a large number of animators rather than small, contained teams or individual animators working on their own. MAPs (Multi-Animator Projects) have been a form of animation projects produced here for years, but the community has continued since then to hone the craft of a collaborative project like these; MAPs are now one of the most beloved and most utilized formats currently in use. Early MAPs (such as This Love, This Hate, Alone Without You, Little Talks, and more) often had no script, no set designs, and no real direction. Each part became its own mini animation, standalone except for their arrangement to the same song.

This, largely, has also changed in recent years. Many MAPs now attempt to tell a coherent story throughout. It is generally less common to find an unscripted MAP, or a MAP that does not have set designs to use for its main characters.

The result of this? The most professional-looking and cohesive projects the Warriors fandom has seen to date. Many of these newer MAPs are genuine cinematic marvels, especially knowing the context of their creation: they were all made on volunteered time, with volunteered effort, by a community of largely amateur and hobbyist artists and animators.

There are far too many of these MAPs to talk about them all, but here are a few that I found most impressive, and that made some of the biggest waves in the community:

StarClan's Chosen hosted by Nifty-Senpai,

Amen - Crookedstar's Promise MAP hosted by Alex Harrier,

Ready As I'll Ever Be - Breezepelt MAP hosted by eighthsun,

Everything Moves - Sol MAP hosted by Nifty-Senpai,

UNRAVEL - 2-Week Needletail MAP and Lullaby for a Princess hosted by colacatinthehat,

The Five Giants hosted by Whiskermoon,

Better Days hosted by Tennelle Flowers,

and many, many more.

[Alt Text: The thumbnail from the StarClan's Chosen MAP, featuring a semi-transparent StarClan cat greeting a silhouetted cat: Artist credit; MAP link]

[Alt Text: The thumbnail from the Ready As I'll Ever Be MAP, featuring bust shots of Breezepelt and Ivypool with the MAP name overlayed on top: MAP link]

[Alt Text: The thumbnail from the Everything Moves Sol MAP, featuring Sol in front of an eclipse drawn in a painterly style: Artist credit; MAP link]

As a community, the Warriors fandom has grown and learned an enormous amount. It is not uncommon to see animations that are a similar caliber of quality to a professional. Ideas and advice are shared between users, and many creators such as Nifty-Senpai and Gekkozilla have allowed others to use their designs for free as inspiration or directly in fan projects. The collaborative nature of the Warriors Fandom now is a remarkable achievement, and has yielded so many incredible projects, animations, and stories that to tally them all up would be an impossible task.

[pjwarriorcats]

Mandated Book Review

Finding an academic source about Warriors is just about impossible; sources like that simply don’t exist. So, instead, I expanded my parameters a bit and read through Fandom, written by Francesca Davis DiPiazza and published in 2017 by Twenty-First Century Books. It is a textbook-style nonfiction work that attempts to explain the concept of fandom, give examples of the types of content created by fans, and explain the motivations of fans behind these efforts. This book touches on many different kinds of fan projects, but, for my purposes, the second and fourth chapters were most important: these were the chapters about fan video creation and fan artwork creation respectively.

Published books on internet culture are on their way to becoming more common as time goes on, but, for now, they still take some digging to find. To some degree, this is to be expected. There is an inherent difficulty in writing books that attempt to sum up the culture online; internet culture changes extremely fast, and it exists in such vast amounts that information is bound to become outdated before long, or to not be able to cover everything that exists. As such, this book is the product of its time that one might expect it to be. 2017 was not tremendously long ago, but, for the internet, this is a much more significant chunk of time. Some of the language and terms used are no longer utilized to the same degree, and some of the fandoms specifically mentioned have waned in popularity. Expectedly, Warriors itself is not mentioned within its pages; however, there are still commonalities to be found in the ways fans consume content and create content of their own.

In terms of presenting the concept of a fandom in layman’s terms, Fandom is a very successful work. It splits its content up into sections that each outline a different aspect of fandom: fan writers, video-makers, cosplay, fan artists, and game-makers. The book approaches each subject completely from scratch, as if expecting a curious but clueless audience that has never been in a fandom, but is interested about the experience. It doesn’t remain surface-level throughout, though. In each section, there is a deep-dive into the origins of the type of fan media, referencing medieval artwork and Bible paintings, Victorian King Arthur fan writings and paintings, and more. Essentially the message here is the very same one that makes this book relevant to my purposes: though trends will always change, there is still shared commonality in all fan culture, whether those fans are from the 1300s or 2023. 

When the chapters move on to the modern application of these themes, many examples are drawn together to give the reader a view of how fandom culture works. It pulls quotes from people who have worked in the industry on their feelings toward the fan projects they have seen and been impacted by, as well as from fans themselves, describing their experiences. Specific fan projects are listed in each section, giving a clearer idea of the kinds of content fans produce in their respective fandoms. The amount of perspectives from different people is impressive and gives a very fleshed-out glimpse at the culture of fandom and fandom projects.

Despite being a few years old and being written by a woman whose greatest credibility is her self-proclaimed status as a fan herself, as well as a few other non-fiction works under her belt, the book holds up decently well as an introduction into the world of fandom. My own experience on the internet was always intertwined so closely with the concept of fandoms that I would never think that anyone would not understand it as closely and automatically as I do now, but, for those to which that applies, Fandom acts as a good introduction. The design itself of the book is not the most professional and clean, but the passion that DiPiazza had for this project is obvious; there is something almost more charming about it this way. If anything, the somewhat-haphazard (but no less impassioned for it) creativity of the book design is in and of itself a representation of what fandom is like: the people who create fan works do so out of love for the source material. Rarely are other projects conducted this way; typically, animations, artwork, written works, any creative project at all, are made out of obligation (whether that be to a job, a class, etc.). Fan works are made completely as passion projects, with volunteered time and effort, and Fandom does a solid job portraying this through its text and its design. With all of that being said, anyone who knows enough about the internet to stumble upon this blog likely has little use for Fandom. It is an interesting book, and I learned some things myself about some of the earliest fandoms and some of the projects created by fandoms I was never a part of. But the core message of the text isn’t necessary for most people who spend time on the Internet. For most of us, our understanding of fandom is already solid.

[pjwarriorcats]

Library Scavenger Hunt

This project requires me to use specific methods of research in order to fulfill requirements of the class; this particular week, I was required to find secondary resources within my university’s library system. Unsurprisingly, this has been the most difficult research requirement so far. There are no secondary sources relating to Warriors in a college library system—and why would there be? No academic would research Warrior Cats. So, no Warriors sources to be found, no Erin Hunter sources, nothing. Dead end.

But this was still a requirement for the class, so I switched gears. And then I switched gears again. I ended up moving from topic to topic that was even somehow slightly relevant, moving further and further from the actual series until I had landed on the topic of indigenous cultural appropriation, in reference to the criticism toward the series related to appropriation. This is still a topic I would like to cover in more depth at some point, but, for this research requirement, it wasn’t applicable. It was the only thing so far that yielded any kind of result, but it was not in any way related to my original topic. Back to the drawing board.

With a little bit more direction from my professor, I ended up searching not for anything directly contained within the Warriors series, but instead for analyses of fandom culture as a whole. There would be nothing about Warriors in any of these sources—even being a large community in its own right, the Warriors fandom has never drawn quite so much attention to itself as Twilight, or Supernatural, or Homestuck, etc. None of the especially large fandoms that have garnered attention even from outsiders looking in for their much louder and more recurrent instances of… fandom behavior. However, I’m hopeful that some of the trends of fandom culture will remain the same between fandoms, and some pieces of the books and ebooks I found may prove themselves even a little bit useful. I ended up ordering one promising-looking book for interlibrary loan; it took so long to find and I was so excited by the prospect of finding something relevant that I didn’t even think to note down what it was called. Here’s to hoping it shows up in time.

[pjwarriorcats]

Profile Piece: Nifty-Senpai

Of all of the big names involved in the jumpstart of the Warriors fandom into the colossal online community that it now is, Nifty-Senpai (aka Nifty or Jessica) is one of the few original content creators still posting Warriors related content.

[Alt Text: Nifty Senpai's Icon of a cartoon cat wearing a red scarf. Image credit: Nifty Senpai]

Nifty began their career on Youtube posting short animations in 2009, and continued to grow and improve as an animator throughout the years. In the process, Nifty built a sizable platform, consisting now of 137K subscribers on Youtube and 15.6k followers on Twitter.

Nifty is responsible for a number of well-known and well-loved MAPs (Multi-Animator Projects) and MAP parts, PMVs (Picture-Music-Videos), and animations. Some notable examples include their "Little Pistol" Bluestar animatic, the "Everything Moves" Sol MAP, the "Always Gold" Gray Wing and Clear Sky MAP, and, most recently, the incredible StarClan's Chosen MAP. All of these projects made waves in the fandom and were highly anticipated from their very first announcement. Nifty organized and took part in all of these projects, producing extremely high-quality community creations on-par with professional-level 2D animation productions. And all of it was done on volunteer time and effort. The escalation of skill and quality, as well as Nifty’s ability to direct so many animators and keep everything so coherent and readable to the audience (the StarClan’s Chosen MAP had an extraordinary number of 121 animators all working together under their direction) from their start on Youtube to now is incredible. I highly recommend giving any of these animation projects a watch if you haven't seen them already.

Nifty’s MAP projects have been able to attain a very impressive level of coherency and consistency, thanks in part to another project of theirs. Over the years, Nifty has drawn and posted a hugely expansive archive of Warriors designs, both character designs and location designs, that is completely free to access and utilize with credit. There are hundreds upon hundreds of resources created by Nifty that they have made completely free to use as reference in anyone’s Warriors fan project. This remains one of the most massive and impactful contributions to the fandom to date; Nifty’s designs have been used in numerous other projects, including certain parts of The Time Machine MAP, certain characters in the yet-to-be-finished "How to Save a Life" Medicine Cat MAP, the "Let Go" Grey Wing and Clear Sky MAP, and more. Many artists have created designs for the Warriors characters, and many allow others to use those designs for free, but no one has made such a vast collection as Nifty. I’ve included a few of my favorite designs below!

[Alt text: A drawing of a calico cat with a fluffy ginger tail lying down. Image credit: Nifty Senpai; post link]

[Alt text: A drawing of a golden-brown tabby cat with a crooked jaw. Image credit: Nifty Senpai; post link]

[Alt text: a drawing of a grey tabby cat with a reddish-ginger tail and ears. Image credit: Nifty Senpai; post link]

[Alt text: a thin greenish-grey cat with pointed markings and spiky fur tufts. Image credit: Nifty Senpai; post link]

[pjwarriorcats]

Current Events: Sagutoyas

No community is immune to problematic people, nor will every creator prove to be deserving of the platform they occupy. Such is the case for Sagutoyas, a once-popular creator in the Warriors animation community, now revealed to be completely undeserving of it.

[Alt Text: Sagutoyas' YouTube profile picture of her fursona Sally against an electric blue background: Artist credit]

Sagutoyas (or Sally) is a 25-year-old Swedish self-proclaimed artist, author, and animator. She began her career creating content on Youtube in 2012, posting speedpaints of primarily her own original characters. She wouldn’t post her first Warriors-related video until 2016, a work-in-progress of a Multi-Animator-Project (MAP) part for Sparrow’s World’s “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” MAP. In the following years, Sally’s expressive animations would quickly rise to popularity, and she would continue to find success and growing support making MAP parts, animation memes, and even hosting projects herself.

Sally’s content was not limited to Warrior Cats animations and artwork, but she quickly became well-known within the fandom specifically. In only six years, she amassed a subscriber count of around 154k on Youtube. However, in light of recent events, that count has dropped by several thousand subscribers in the span of only two days.

Before we continue, this is a good time to dispense a quick trigger warning. The following paragraphs discuss allegations of grooming and the sending NSFW content to minors. No explicit images are shown, but they are mentioned, and censored versions are contained in some of the linked documents. Please keep yourself safe.

Earlier this week, a Google Docs document was released on Twitter regarding events that took place primarily in 2018/2019, outlining allegations against Sagutoyas for grooming, dating an underaged person, and behaving inappropriately in a chat that contained minors. The original document was taken down due to Google’s TOS, but an archive of it can be found here. (A further trigger warning for that document can be found within.)

For several months in 2018-19, Sally engaged in a non-platonic relationship with another creator (now going by the name “Sol”) when she was over 20 and he was 17, but the majority of their interactions would begin when the victim was only freshly 16, including a confession of feelings for each other. Sally would continuously ask Sol to keep their relationship on the down-low; she knew what she was doing would have consequences for her reputation if she was found out, and she wanted to avoid them. Furthermore, Sol was a fan of Sally’s, and as such, even without an age difference, there was already a power imbalance between the two. Sol himself wrote in his own document on the subject: “as it turns out, maybe I was just some fanboy all along. I felt “special” feeling like Sally’s “sidekick”, being treated in a way other adults wouldn’t treat me[...]”

Several others have also come forward, all members of the same chat with Sagutoyas (named, distastefully, “YaoiClan,” following the naming conventions of the Warriors books), to corroborate this story and offer points of their own. One mentioned that, despite the chat consisting mostly of minors, “NSFW posting was very common in the server” (Chikki). Others still came forward with other red flags and problematic behaviors that were missed—like stream clips that were lost due to unlisted VODs, including one where Sally read “bad yaoi” live on her channel. This was something that apparently happened on multiple occasions, according to this Twitter thread written by another former member of “YaoiClan.” NSFW artwork was also created and shared by Sally.

With all of this said, I encourage you to read the documents in order to understand and be aware of all the details of the situation, but I also want to call for kindness and consideration toward any of the victims involved in Sagutoyas’s actions, and especially for those who were minors at the time. It was not the fault of anyone who was underaged and engaged in it; it was Sally’s responsibility as the adult in the situation to put a halt to it, much less instigate it herself. Already victims have asked to be left alone, and their wishes deserve to be respected.

The Warriors fandom has made impressive strides as a community on the internet. There have been countless extraordinary collaborative projects, animations, artworks, and otherwise fan creations made by the people who occupy it. However, while many do, not everyone deserves a platform here. In light of this new information, it may be a good time to reevaluate who you choose to support.

[pjwarriorcats]

Another nostalgic website for me, and perhaps many of you! Believe it or not, Warriors fans created a little niche for themselves on Webkinz, too. They probably weren’t as prominent here as they were on other sites (though it would be difficult to tell for certain, so many years later and after a complete overhaul of the site). In my experience, Webkinz was meant for a slightly younger audience than Warriors readers, so the overlap likely wasn’t as great. I only started building Clan camps in my Webkinz den at the tail end of my time on the website. It was also a little harder to communicate with other users and find a specific interest here than it was elsewhere. Still, there were several members I met on the online chatrooms who had given their pets Warriors names, and a few lucky folks who had KinzChat Plus and were able to talk to me about the series (and I would respond in whatever limited way regular KinzChat allowed me to, haha). There was also Warriors content made with the stuffed animals! I distinctly remember watching recreations of the books using the Webkinz cat plushies as puppets, and I myself would save up all of my birthday money to buy as many Webkinz cats as I could and create my own Clans and OCs. (Shame about the new revamped website—those 3D models are kind of cursed. The new stuffed animals are a huge downgrade, too.)

Logging In...

Have you ever spun The Wheel of Wow? Gone gem mining in hopes of achieving The Crown of Wonder? If you have, then continue on to reminisce with me. If you've never heard of a The Wheel of Wow or The Crown of Wonder, log in with me to learn about my favorite childhood game Webkinz. 

Webkinz is an online children's game that has real-life counterparts. Players would access the game by purchasing a stuffed animal that has a code on the tag. The child would then go to Webkinz.com and start their journey of being a virtual pet owner.

Players would open Webkinz and meet Ms. Birdy at the adoption center, a motherly penguin who has her hair in a bun. Players would either redeem their code or select a free pet. Free starter pets are a newer addition to the game, originally you would have to pay about $25 for the real-world plush. With the free starter pets, there is less access to different areas of the world. Once the player’s pet is on screen an adoption certificate would pop up and players could fill out the name and pick the gender of the pet. 

After the pet is ready the screen would change to the player’s customizable pets room. There they would be guided through the controls and how to care for the pet’s hunger, sleep, and happiness levels. After the tutorial, they would be given a gift box and a list of challenges. Dragging the box to the room would open it, revealing some food, a piece of decor based on their pet, a welcome balloon, and 2,000 Kinzcash (Webkinz currency). The list of challenges is simple tasks meant to show the new player around Webkinz world. From there they start actually playing the game and seeing around the wonderful Webkinz world which we will discuss in later posts.

I joined in 2008 so some of the procedures and gifts have changed, but for the most part they are similar. When I joined I was six days into being five years old, so my memory of the first tutorials is basically nonexistent, but my joy is not. I made a new account for the purposes of this blog and it was interesting to see how a new beginner would see the world. New players now are given a trial deluxe account for three days, unlocking most of the world. (I was a little bitter when I saw that since it cost me seven dollars when I had it, but c'est la vie)

Webkinz is a nostalgic and interesting section of the internet that I hope to explore with you. I will go into the history and updates of the game, as well as its impacts and controversy. I hope you continue to log in with me to explore this bright virtual world.

[pjwarriorcats]

Into the Wild

So… what’s the deal with these cat books anyway?

If you’ve spent a decent chunk of time on the internet, you’ve probably encountered them in some form at least once. While by no means the largest fandom on the internet, nor even the largest book series fandom, Warriors fans are pretty prolific, particularly on art-sharing websites and on YouTube. 

The series itself began in 2003 with the release of Into the Wild. Since then, the series has only grown tremendously, with over 90 additional chapter books, graphic novels, super editions, guide books, ebook exclusives, and more (quick note for your own reference: I myself managed to read an even 60 of the main series books before I finally gave up). The children’s book series is written by Erin Hunter, a pseudonym shared by a team of writers and editors, currently consisting of Victoria Holmes, Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui Sutherland, Inbali Iserles, and Clarissa Hutton, and formerly Gillian Philip (fired after a run-in with what she called the “woke warriors” of publishing—more on that at another time). Different books were worked on by different members of the team, so the pseudonym was devised in order to keep them all organized together when placed on a library shelf.

[Alt Text: The cover art for the first Warriors book, with an orange cat sitting in a separate box, against a forested background where two more cats approach each other: Artist credit]

The books are about feral cats who have created an organized society of four Clans (each with around 15-20 cats) for themselves in the woods, complete with traditions, customs, a code of rules to live by, and a religion to follow. Built around this general premise, the series has since followed multiple plotlines, and many different characters have starred as the reader’s point of perspective in each book or arc.

These books hooked their claws into multiple generations of young readers. People found enjoyment in discussing their favorite characters, predicting future events, creating fan artworks, arguing over their favorite Clan and territory, and so much more. Furthermore, the basic premise outline left plenty of room for people to devise their own characters, Clans, and stories. Communities popped up around the internet, filled with people’s original Warrior Cats characters, sharing them with each other, creating artwork and animations, writing fan fictions, drawing comics, and developing stories. Roleplay forums related to these original characters (OCs) began appearing everywhere that they could, anywhere that had even the barest technological capability for it: DeviantArt and Wattpad comments sections, Minecraft multiplayer servers, online MMOs like Animal Jam, even MIT’s Scratch programming website. It was everywhere.

And it still is.

I can’t account for DeviantArt or Scratch anymore; it’s been a long time since I’ve traversed through those forums. But I can say with certainty that the Warriors Community has not stopped talking and creating and sharing what they’ve made since it began. The books are one thing, but it’s the fandom I really find fascinating, even all these years since leaving it.

There’s not really any way to consume every single bit of content created by the fans of the Warrior Cats books; there’s just too much of it. I’ll give you as big and as varied a sample as I can at a later time. There’s some extremely remarkable things out there that they’ve created. But the truth of the matter is that not every piece of media made in Warrior Cats’ honor necessarily deserves to be consumed, nor every creator supported. The series is not free from controversies, ranging from accusations of cultural appropriation, to zoophilia, to ableism, and more, and I hope to discuss some of those, as many as I can, as well.

Long story short: there’s a lot to say about the Warriors fandom. Let’s get into it!

[Alt Text: A digital painting of a large cream cat and a small grey cat running together through a birch forest. Artist credit]