#cloverkit project

[mika-chaos-bean]

any of my buddies know what project cloverkit is?

i was already on the internet when that happened (it was around 2015 or 2014 i think), i didnt have any accounts, so i never interfered. but dang. what was supposed to be a happy "support young artists" movement turned into a huge trainwreck and even lead the creator of cloverkit to deactivate their account.

anyone remember that?

[god-inside-me]

I FOUND IT

it was project cloverkit

[gayjayfeather]

8 years ago project cloverkit took the warriors community here by storm before promptly crashing and burning, 7 years ago i bought him from a previous owner on deviantart that i happened to following, and NOW…HE IS COMING TO AN ANTHRO NEW ENGLAND NEAR YOU!!! ☘️☘️☘️

headbase by tepiddreamer, paws and tail by shaydestuckk, and furring/finishing by pastelcroc!

[luneyverse]

Thank you to Soleil for featuring my old old old art in their Cloverkit Project retrospective :)

8 years later, as so much has changed, I am still incredibly proud of this drawing. Especially for what it represented for me back then and compared to now.

If it weren’t for the Cloverkit Project, I would not be the artist I am today. I was scared kid who witnessed and endured intense bullying both on the internet and offline. The thought of creating something out of love and having my work and therefore myself be shamed for existing was extremely terrifying to me.

The inspiration I gained from Project Cloverkit taught me that art created at any level of experience is worthy of praise, even my own. I have a lot of pride in my 14 year old self for recognizing that at such an early age. It allowed me to work to improve my art, share it with other creatives who I would have the pleasure of growing as artists along with me, and allow myself to be absorbed in the creations of independent other artists who inspire me.

Everyone is entitled to the joy and emotional healing that comes from the creation of art. Quashing that entirely for another person, especially one who is only starting out, will be fatally detrimental to their will to improve. All art is expression, and disallowing that expression is a loss for culture, for the individual and their community.

So I do think some good did come out of the whole thing. The online art community I found myself in grew to be more encouraging to younger artists and start to condemn those “deviantart-cringe” blogs. For as overzealous as people were, as in not really thinking twice about what was actually best for the creator with all of that unwanted attention, I still think that the impact years later was generally positive. At least I can say it was for me.

Support young artists.

The greatest medicine cat there’ll ever be.

This project really hit home hard for me. I’ve been living in the shadows of the warrior cat fandom, just mainly looking at people’s creations and admiring many of them. But I do admit, I looked down upon younger artists’ ocs for their “poorly drawn and unnatural” works. I never actually bullied anyone, but I thought less of these artists. Honestly I was doing this because I have really shitty self esteem regarding to my artwork and ocs. I constantly try to make my ocs as legit as possible (I have mainly ocs with natural colors) so I won’t have to go through any bullshit that I see other people going through, even though I never posted anything because I was too afraid. When project cloverkit came around, I was just amazed how artists really gave attention to the issue at hand and freely drew amazing artwork of this oc. I know if I had my oc drawn, I would seriously be in tears and comment on each one. Anyway, being still youngish in the community myself (at age 14 currently), this just really inspired me to come out of my shell and post some art. I try really hard in what I do and I want people to actually see it now that I’m ready. I’m ready to share what I’m proud of, and I really hope many other artists do too.

[the-owl-tree]

remembering project cloverkit. i still think it's funny some people put "it's okay to be dogshit at drawing" and thought that was gonna leave a positive mark

[lockandkeyhyena]

I randomly found a video about "project cloverkit" and I just wanna ask

what's happening in the wc fandom

bad things

[canon-notcanon-warriorcats]

Iceberg maker here(I don’t wanna be anon anymore) as someone who’s reading the books since around fifth-sixth grade I have tried to be as through as can be!

For the surfaces we have Clan Terminology, Maps and Amv’s, old ships(Ash x Scourge and Jay x Stick), gay cats, shipping, Jake is everyone’s dad, horrific age gaps, and Scourge and Dovewing’s respective color debates and many many more.

Middle includes Evil Spottedleaf, weird/bad people in the community(Su Susann and the terf author) , Project Cloverkit, and Rabiestar. And many more. Gotta narrow it down.

The final levels include things that are… REALLY disturbing and disgusting. This includes screwed up things from Warrior cats Fact videos, horrible fanfic, and the whole “Ashfur is Dovewing and Ivypool’s dad” thing because it’s so disgusting.

As of now there are about 40 entries in total. Thanks to everyone who also sent in ask recommendations!

starclan speed my dude

[not-semi-perfect]

I will never forgive the fandom for project cloverkit/paws

[radiozap777]

oh! this was a discourse thing in the warrior cats community for a while, too! at least on early 2010-ish deviantart it was. in this circle, they were usually referred to as "sparklecats" because, you know, cats. literally any oc could qualify as a sparklecat as long as they weren't strictly designed with natural colors in mind, and mocking got pretty relentless, although the term has been largely reclaimed nowadays by the warrior cats community too (which thank goodness, those designs are so interesting)

the reason i'm adding on to this post instead of keeping it in the tags is because i have a really interesting story in relation to this. disclaimer: i think it went wrong in the end, but i can't find sources as to what exactly happened. either a character was stolen, or the artist (who was not a character thief) just got overwhelmed by what happened. i've heard both stories.

meet Cloverkit. i was going to post an image, but for the sake of the artist's privacy, i won't, and i'll instead just describe him: a grey cat with white hair and paws, as well as green highlights, back, tail, and a four-leaf-clover on his chest.

here's the thing: this character was not only considered a sparklecat (much to the chagrin of some), but also designed by a definitely young artist. god, cringe blogs had a field day with Cloverkit.

so, some people decided to show support to the young artist.

again, for the privacy of artists, i'm not going to post pictures, but go ahead and google "Project Cloverkit." and even that doesn't even come close to covering the amount of support Cloverkit received! for a while this cat was everywhere! artists from all sorts of skill perspectives drew him!

i mean, like i said, Project Cloverkit didn't end well for one reason or another. but at the time, it was so touching to see all this support for young artists. Cloverkit became a symbol of just that. i don't remember if i saw much bickering about sparklecats in the warriors fandom ever since Project Cloverkit.

i don't know much about the history of sparklefurs in general, i'll admit. but from what i know, i'll happily attribute the normalization of sparklecats (if not sparklefurs as a whole) to Project Cloverkit.

TL;DR: A young artist got bullied online for their sparklefur OC, thousands of artists drew their OC in support, I have rarely heard a peep from people mocking sparklefurs since.

what is a late 2000s sparkledog???

oh god ok. So like. "Sparkledog/Sparklefur" is a term people use to describe a really specific Flavor of fursonas/animal ocs (usually dogs) that were popular among teens on Deviantart in like... The late 00s/early 2010s. It was initially an insult bc there was DEEP fucking discourse ab what constituted a "good" animal oc design (people in 2009 were VERY split on the Very Serious Issue of What Colors Anime Dogs Should Be) but people use it more as a descriptor now.

The ocs themselves were typically REALLY fucking colorful (usually either being entirely neon or black w neon markings), and more often than not dressed in like scene/emo fashion w TONS of piercings/accessories/etc. The criteria is a little broader now but THAT's what I'm referring to when I say like. Late 00s.

Anyway I don't wanna link to anyone's 10-year-old art (i think sparkle ocs rock but a lot of ppl r embarrassed by their old art) so here's my best replication of the designs n popular art style at the time for a visual.

[cloverkitarchive]

https://www.deviantart.com/artsythepony/art/Project-Cloverkit-506175093

[majoraslion]

Hey, On response to "Project cloverkit". Way back in the warrior cat fandom- A bad art blog (which honestly will delete the post if you ask) posted somebody's art (sourced) and said "Look how silly this is". And somebody, SOMEHOW took that as an offense, and made the fandom start "Project cloverkit", then "Project paws". It was ALL directed at one kid. It WAS to help other younger artist. BUT- when the kid left DA, the project dropped.

Oh...makes sense! Thanks I didn't know

[mistressbirb]

Never put an artist down! Every great artist started somewhere.

[my attempt at cloverkit. also the only art I've ever uploaded since I'm not so great. ; w;]

[i-am-niche-kepler]

Okay. So I'm basically going to explain what I can to the best of my ability? I don't have answers for everything, and I'm not claiming to be an expert, I just kind of want to try to help people understand what I think I understand. Spoilers will follow, and this is a very long post.

I'm going to leave out the very tip of the iceberg because I feel like most of that is talked about often in the fandom. Otherwise, I can definitely try to explain that too in another post or something.

Starkit's prophecy is a warrior cats fanfic that was written I don't even remember how long ago, and got semi popular again when a YouTuber named moonkitti animated the fic. The fic has a lot of grammatical issues that make it hard to read, and has homophobic and very religious based (christianty) themes throughout so please read with caution.

For the life of me I can't remember where I saw it, but sorreltail and brambleclaw are based off of two real life cats, and like lowkey had feelings for each other or just sorreltail liked him or something and then yeah, sorrel dodged a bullet by getting with brackenfur.

Rowanclaw being trans is more recently a headcanon that a lot of people have, including myself, due to the fact that Rowan has been listed as a she cat in the past and then became a tom when tawnypelt joined shadowclan so he could father kits.

Heavystep having multiple lives (he died 3 separate times) was some kind of like mistake at first. But supposedly Kate likes to think StarClan gave him multiple lives for a 'special' reason.

Ballgate refers to a warriors map/animation I'm not sure which, where there was a clear shot of the backside of a tom cat/exposing ya know, that part. And basically people had a panic attack even though it wasn't anything meant to be sexual and the warriors series doesn't treat that kind of thing negatively anyway/it's never mentioned outside small hints about 'the cutter'.

Graystripe’s parents is another one that I consider to be more well known. For the longest time it was confirmed that his biological parents were Patchpelt and Willowpelt, who are full siblings. Absolutely whack, I know. Recently however, Graystripe’s father is no longer listed or even mentioned, not even in his super edition.

Turtle Tail being hit by a Ford model T is just something that Kate likes to think happened/she posted it on her blog.

The rabies theory is about Bramblestar, and basically people thought that when the synopsis for The Silent Thaw came out that maybe that was causing all the crazy imposter stuff but it was debunked.

I'm pretty sure that the Su Susann piece refers to her Facebook series "missing kits" which is entirely retconned/not exactly canon. Basically it was a long string of posts that assigned parents to kits that formerly didn't have any listed, but when I tried to construct family tree the missing kits posts just made stuff worse and more complicated.

The fire gray fanfic was written by Kate Cary and is Christmas themed/introduces a warriors version of a Christmas called the longest night. Firegray, if it wasn't clear, is the ship between Firestar and Graystripe.

Cloverkit refers to something called project cloverkit. It started with a piece of fanart of someone's warriors oc, Cloverkit, and people sent the person who posted it tons of hate about it not being realistic. Then others started redrawing the character and sending more hate, and basically the original picture was stolen and the person getting all the hate mail just completely left their socials.

Cleavepool is an unfinished deviantart fic about Leafpool finding a twoleg cleaver and renaming herself as she goes on a murderous rampage killing brambleclaw, squirrelflight, cloudtail, and berrynose in terrible terrible ways. Long descriptions of torture and gore, viewer's discretion advised.

The Twigbranch thing spouted from someone asking Kate who she thought the most "chickeny" warrior cat was. I am choosing to assume it meant something more like personality wise or looks? But anyway it spiraled into Twigbranch tasting like chicken.

The honey scene reprint wasn't that big a deal compared to some of these other ones in my opinion. There was a scene about some ThunderClan apprentices eating honey/honeycomb and commenting on the sweetness, but it was changed because cats can't actually taste sweet things.

The Mapleshade backstory is to my knowledge a theory. The writers were hesitant to release Mapleshades Vengeance due to how much darker it supposedly was. A lot of fans assumed the worst and cannibalism was a popular theory prior to the books release.

Alderheart's Regret was a fake super edition leak that someone posted on goodreads/someone else then shared on the BlogClan website, and it basically got spread pretty fast. It was debunked, but a lot of people seemed disappointed with the concept/assumed it would revolve around Alderheart and Velvet.

Brambleclaw was planned to run away following the events of the last hope/Squirrelflight was intended to become leader in his absence. Ultimately this didn't happen however. From what I read, Brambleclaw would've left due to some doubts about his Kin and his relation to Tigerstar. This draft idea was also popular with fans due to the writers originally saying the next leader of thunderclan would be someone unexpected, meaning not its deputy brambleclaw.

If you're still here, thanks for reading. This is the bulk of my knowledge of what's on the iceberg. If you have questions, corrections, comments, or anything else feel free to let me know.

saw some people trying to pass around warrior cats icebergs but i felt they weren’t nearly thorough enough. so here’s my Take

[canon-notcanon-warriorcats]

the person who mentioned cloverpaw mightve been thinking of project cloverkit? where people saw a bunch of hate getting thrown at some kid's oc Cloverkit so they started a whole thing to make a bunch of positive fanart for Cloverkit to drown out the hate and then the person who made Cloverkit got so overwhelmed they told everyone to stop drawing Cloverkit

was that it

maybe i dunno

[not-semi-perfect]

I remember "Project PAWS" and all you guys did was suffocate a kid with "support". And they left.

[entity56]

(is this gonna be another Project Cloverkit)

Here’s a way to spite that Hate Anon, do shitposts with Xander, Hajime and Aliza’s OC, sorry I don’t know their name.

//Fan art is also a possibility

//Artist friends, get on that, Aliza deserves nice gifts ^^