#fireheart learns to code

[redux-iterum]

Is Fireheart aware that, technically-speaking, the Sunningrocks are neutral grounds? Could you imagine his outrage learning that the territory they keep bleeding over isn’t even legally theirs?

He does not know! In fact, most of ThunderClan doesn't. Legally, somewhere in the code, it does say that, so some cats are aware that technically it's meant to be shared. That doesn't matter much to them, though. They want the stupid rocks. The code's been bent before. It's fine.

[shummthechumm]

i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about fireheart and cloudtail's relationship through arc one.

rusty being indoctrinated into the clans only because of a prophecy and an innate need to feel like he's part of something bigger. ironically triggering like at least five other prophecies surrounding yourself and your lineage, far outliving you yourself (how big is that?). fire constantly being singled out and shunned for his origins and for ever questioning/going against the code. the taunts and microaggressions never really stopping even after you assume the role of leader. all of this because of a choice he made when he was a child.

then you have cloudtail. fireheart bringing his infant nephew into a cult, removing him of that choice and then later shunning him for not "acting like a warrior". like yeah no shit this child is acting out and ignoring authority because that same authority is constantly bullying him for his heritage.

that scene where fireheart learns that cloudtail doesnt believe in starclan...and fire is horrified. enough to the point where he wants to intimidate/frighten his own kin into believing???? like his own mentors and clanmates had been doing to him ever since he joined??? (btw can totally feel the white british Christian woman influence seeping through, there....)

cloud being kidnapped by twolegs is framed as the final nail in the coffin for cloud to see the "error of his ways" and truly commit to his warrior role. idk something about that strikes me as...odd (again yt middle aged women wrote these books)

i could go on and on really. again, im always eating up any "firestar is a deeply flawed character/possibly a failed prophet who was brainwashed into containing the clan's status quo" content i can get. especially if he reflected on his role later in life and realized that he's directly responsible for forcing cloudtail into a similar position despite believing it would do him good?? midlife crisis firestar???

[hatsbattlecats]

The Lore pt 1

So my idea for the Tinysnow au is that after being attacked by Tigerpaw and running away, Tiny winds up in Windclan where he’s found by a patrol. They take him back to camp cause the warrior code says you gotta take care of kits even if they aren’t yours, and also this poor kid is hurt and scared out of his lil mind. Besides, sure he’s a kittypet, but he’s little and its dark.

Talltail, upon meeting this kid, notices he’s got some similarities to Jake, (with my versions of them for this au, him and jake have the matching white paw, and Jake has blue/green heterochromia, his blue eye matches Tiny’s) and after hearing his story, decides to adopt Tiny as his son, naming him Tinykit, later Tinypaw (Tall dad his Tiny son)

Theres some pushback from the clan, but Talltail refuses to back down on keeping Tinykit. Tinykit/paw deals with a fair bit of bulling and hazing from the other apprentices and older warriors, but that just pushes him to prove himself even more. He eventually earns the warrior name “Tinysnow” and later mentors Onepaw/Onewhisker instead of Deadfoot.

He goes with windclan when they’re driven out of their territory, and harbors a resentment towards shadowclan for many moons to come, much like how he’s harbored a grudge against Tigerpaw/Tigerclaw since their meeting.

When Fireheart and Greystripe come to bring Windclan home, Tallstar confides in Tinysnow that he’s certain Fire is also Jake’s son, like Tinysnow is. He walks with Fireheart and Onewhisker on the way back, wanting to learn more about how Fire came to join Thunderclan.

When they stay in Barley and Ravenpaw’s barn, Tinysnow is confused why Ravenpaw is there (seeing as he's the "great and powerful tigerclaw's" apprentice), and ends up prying the story out of the trio (Raven/Fire/Grey). He tells them he’s not surprised, and recounts his own Tigerclaw story to them, reassuring them he’ll have their back if Tiger ever tries anything else.

He also goes with the group to bring Fire and Grey back to Thunderclan territory, and gets in a fight with Riverclan before heading back with Deadfoot and Onewhisker. After that, Tinysnow and Fireheart meet up at every gathering to share news, and sometimes extra times since Tinysnow never had any siblings other than Ruby and Socks who always mean to him, and Fireheart never really got to know his siblings other than Princess.

[talonslockau]

my fav charries are mousefur and longtail,,, can you talk about them in talonslock???

Ah, Mousefur and Longtail, the young background cast of arc 1 that turned into the elder cast of arc 2. No hate towards you, anon - I think they're fun characters, I just wish the Erins would have done more with them, y'know?

(Possible light spoilers below the cut - nothing that explicitly covers future plots, but which may explain some cats' reactions in the future!)

To start off with, they're siblings with Quickflash (Runningwind) in my AU - One-eye being their mother. They're not especially close by sibling standards, but they do care deeply for one another (as seen by Longtail and Mousefur seeking revenge for Quickflash's death on Brokentail and company). They were born basically at the same time as Willowbranch, Mistspring, and Nightwish, so they were all essentially raised together, and in time they all kind of became pairs of friends- Quickflash and Willowbranch, Mousefur and Mistspring, Nightwish and Longtail. Quickflash and Willowbranch went on to become mates, as we know...

I won't cover Longtail's feelings over Nightwish in depth, but suffice it to say that he was devastated when she died. He was offered the apprenticeship of her son, Ravenkit, but refused it - he couldn't help but see Nightwish every time he looked at her son, and thought he wouldn't be fair to Ravenkit. (An interesting timeline would see him as Ravenpaw's father - it's interesting to think about how things might have changed then!)

He was apprenticed to Redtail at the same time that Darkpaw was apprenticed to Tigerclaw, and the four of them were all quite close before Redtail's death - they would often spar together, even after Darkstripe and Longtail became warriors. He was extremely close to Redtail, who taught him everything he knows today about the code. From Tigerclaw, his 'second mentor', he learned a great deal about fighting - but it was Redtail that taught him when to fight, and when to choose peace. Even after he became a warrior, it wasn't uncommon to see him eating with Bluestar and Redtail.

I think he's a very interesting character, especially since in my AU he wasn't the one to attack Fireheart because he was older and Redtail taught him to be less headstrong (that role went to Dustleap instead). He's previously had a very black-and-white outlook on things - either you are for the code, or against it. This lead to his strong dislike of Fireheart (a kittypet, and therefore against the code), as well as susceptible to the manipulation of Tigerclaw, who has always portrayed himself as a loyal, Code-abiding warrior. Recent events have turned all of his previous thinking on its head, and in the wake of Tigerclaw's destruction he has his own inner reckoning to deal with...

Mousefur, on the other paw, has always felt left behind by those around her. Her brother, Longtail, was apprenticed to the deputy himself (an honor normally reserved for leader's kits). Her other brother, Quickflash, eventually became deputy, after mentoring the deputy's kit Dustleap. Even her best friend, Mistspring, got an apprentice before her. Willowbranch and Nightwish were always considered the pretty mollies of the group, leaving her dead last in everything.

It's perhaps for this reason that she's poured every bit of herself into everything she does, which can sometimes have disastrous results. Prior to Rusty joining the Clan, she injured herself badly over a fight for Sunningrocks - a fight they lost, a loss she blames herself for. She's considered one of the best hunters in the Clan, alongside Dappleshine, Sandstorm, and Peppermask, but even then she's only 'one of' the best - she longs to be the best, to have something no one can challenge her on.

Now that Mousefur has an apprentice at the same time as her brother, as well as the deputy and his kits, she's started to feel like her life is finally going somewhere, and she's subsequently done everything she can to be the absolute best mentor to Cherrypaw - to the point Cherrypaw almost sees her as a third mother. She often goes to Dappleshine for tips, and Dappleshine (having previously gone through much of the struggles that Mousefur now deals with) is happy to help. Mousefur just wishes that someone, anyone, would notice how hard she's working, and care for her just because of her... but is that too much for her to ask?

(A bit long I know but I hope that satisfied you, anon! I'm open to doing deep dives of any character if any of y'all want to send an ask/comment - I have a lot of these characters rotating in my head when I'm bored [always] so I think about them a lot and have a lot of headcanons for them XD No spoilers though!)

[defensivelee]

i don't know how much of a stretch it is to say this, but since the erins (the authors of warrior cats) are british, i feel now and then like some of the plot points in the two earliest series are HEAVILY inspired by the misadventures of our stuarts. there might be some other stuff from history they've taken inspiration from, but obv i've only ever caught this stuff bc i unfortunately do like the stuarts best. tragic i know

even if they're not directly inspired by it, some events feel uncannily similar to history, as well as some character arcs! there's no super obvious direct parallels, but i will say that, just maybe:

-Tallstar, the leader of WindClan, has a whole situation in The Prophecies Begin series that kind of echoes the English Civil Wars and the subsequent Restoration with how he and his loyal Clan are driven out of the forest, but then return, and Tallstar has to fight to keep his territory and prove himself to the other Clans.

-surprisingly, Tallstar has TWO Charles II moments! as he lies dying, he names someone else deputy, meaning he chooses someone else to replace him after he dies... which obviously makes the former deputy, Mudclaw, furious. he'd been preparing to replace Tallstar, he had served him well as deputy, and now some other cat gets the honor? now this would be kind of a tenuous link to how Charles refused to make Monmouth his heir, but he didn't decide that on his deathbed... however he DID decide to become a Catholic, in a sense taking his brother's side, as always, in the end. it's just... the parallels of some odd decisions made right before you die.

-now Mudclaw gets his own Monmouth arc! like Monmouth, he ends up forming his own little army and rebels against the new leader of the Clan, Onestar-- only to fail and then get killed in the process. tho Onestar did not personally have Mudclaw executed. if i'm remembering correctly, a bolt of lightning hit a tree and fell on Mudclaw, which everyone interpreted as Onestar having the approval of StarClan (the kitty deities) to rule. essentially, divine right!

-now we veer off here to speak about some earlier plots... personally I think Brokenstar's, and then Tigerstar's, quests to rule the whole forest are kind of Louis coded

-even the personal feud between Tigerstar and Firestar, the main character who is an ORANGE CAT, kind of feels like the whole 'mortal enemies' thing with Louis and William respectively.

-however! Tigerstar himself has a few James II moments/arcs. I think the most notable one is when he is exiled from his birth Clan by being defeated by Fireheart, said orange cat (a warrior at the time), and is forced to join a Clan across the Thunderpath (a road). from there he works to get revenge on Firestar and waging war using his new Clan. obviously this feels a lot like the Glorious Revolution, where James is exiled and flees across the water to France, where he consistently tries and fails to get his throne back. the only difference is Tigerstar became leader of his new Clan.

-Tigerstar actually had an alliance with the old leader of his new Clan, Brokenstar, to get back at the Clan that exiled him, which reminds me of the James-Louis alliance. things do obviously work out a little different here... which is good, bc i do not want to think about Louis being blinded and murdered and James taking over France, as metal as that is.

-Tigerstar's arc in the afterlife in which he tries to influence his children in his birth Clan by walking in their dreams reads a bit like James' relationship with his daughters, particularly Mary.

-now... I hesitate to compare Mary to Brambleclaw, the son that Tigerstar manipulated, bc I FUCKEN HATE THAT GUY, but they check off everything! Brambleclaw struggles with his admiration for Firestar while also wanting to learn from his father. this is all while Firestar doesn't know if he can trust Brambleclaw bc he is his enemy's son. their relationship is more like father-son here, but it does feel a bit like William and Mary. Mary does genuinely fall in love with William, but she still feels guilty after driving off her father... and ofc we can't forget that at first, William was more distant towards her (understatement of the century but the point still stands). eventually Brambleclaw decides to turn away from the influence of his father and remains loyal to Firestar and his Clan, much like how Mary loved William enough to feel like she could ultimately handle anything with him at her side.

-so Tigerstar actually had two mates... much like James had two wives. with his first mate, Goldenflower, he had Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt, like James had his first two daughters with Anne Hyde. with his second mate, Sasha (a former kittypet), Tigerstar had two more kids! well actually he had three but one died in a flood. the two kids that survived are Hawkfrost and Mothwing. a bit like how James had James Francis Edward Stuart and Louisa Maria with Mary of Modena! a key difference here is that Goldenflower did not die, she was alive and well, raising her children when Tigerstar (then Tigerclaw) was exiled. he literally just left her! and then he was rather abusive towards Sasha... who was rlly unhappy to find out about all the atrocities her mate has been committing. quite unlike Maria, who stuck around anyway (tho it wasn't like she would have had a choice).

-Hawkfrost himself, Tigerstar's son with his second mate, doesn't actually feel so much like our alleged warming pan baby. like yes, his character follows the path of someone trying to reclaim the lost glory of his father, and rule the forest simply because he believes he has a right to after all the ways Tigerstar was wronged... but also, goddamn he's just too cartoonishly evil!! and he dies in a horrible way, killed by our Mary-equivalent Brambleclaw, which actually would have been kind of metal historically, two half-siblings duking it out.... ANYWAY. surface level, at least, it is very similar. that is, if BOTH William and Mary had lived to see James II die and then to fight his son off.

-i will say this about Firestar, our supposed William parallel: Firestar is IMPOSSIBLY kind and everyone likes him, also he's allegedly very handsome. he may be an orange foreigner who follows a closely similar arc but oh god he acts NOTHING like William. to find someone like William i say we look at someone else in a completely different Clan, going through his own completely separate troubles, away from the main story-- that would be Crookedstar. his whole arc is quite different from William's real story, but i think the basic pieces are there: disabled, generally unlikable cat grows up believing it's his destiny to rule his Clan, and, as a result of that destiny, he ends up losing everything he ever loved. they both still manage to find a few joys in between all of the despair, but their whole life is kind of tragic tho at times you kind of want to throw them in a river (Crookedstar at least would be able to swim out, as the leader of RiverClan, not so sure about William).

that's all i can think of rn, if you read wc and also like the stuarts and find something i didn't catch, lemme know i wanna hear!!

[the-determined-sparks-au]

Take this as an opportunity to rant and rave about any blorbo of your choosing

AHHHHHH I LOVE YOU ANONS THANK YOU FOR KEEP SENDING ME ASKS

my blorbo of course is my girl Blaze! She is my female Firestar, who i have been trying to create since my middle school days after I learn that the Hunters at first wrote fireheart as a girl but I felt most, how to say...dissapointed that they would have her with graystripe...GRAYSTRIPE? Like don't get me wrong my grayfire fellows, I do think the ship is cute...if it wasn't canon graystripe...because canon graystripe is a...well you know, not really a good friend, not a good deputy and well...yeah I mean don't get me wrong...but I like him and fire just as friends, though Ankh makes a good grayfire that is for sure (listen Flippy never forgave him for attacking Fire when Fire was trying to help and I still hold a grudge)

So, that's where Blaze came from, or her full name Blazelight. Over the last few years she became more from a copy of fireheart that's a girl to her own person. She still has fire's mischief into sticking her nose into things that people really don't want her too, and standing for what right even if it goes against the code but unlike fire she will fight. She won't have the other clans, or kingdoms say shit about who she lets in, and she won't just try to talk it out because she does like fighting, it's part of Thundergrowth's culture, they love a good fight. She and Tigerclaw are like the power couple of Thundergrowth, Blaze softens him up a bit, while Tiger...well is one of the reason why Blaze is a bit claw first ask questions later.

Honestly the most excited thing I can't wait to write about (If I ever get to it) is Blaze's relationships, with Blizzard, Tigerclaw, Flickertail and the other prophecy cats, her brother Soot, along with Smoke and Scorch (Sasha)

[bonefall]

could frostfur mentor ashpaw maybe, if you are wanting to keep the brindleface kits adhering to the code ammendment? she wouldn't have kits in the nursery anymore, and ashpaw isn't her kit, and it would keep the reasoning of fireheart not wanting runningwind to mentor a kit while still choosing a warrior of 2+ years

That would work very well-- plus, I can even make Fireheart's reasoning like,

"Darkstripe, Longtail, and Dustpelt need to be rewarded for their loyalty. Dustpelt will want an apprentice... but he's so young," Fireheart remembered when he and Graystripe were given Frostfur's oldest kits to train, as rewards for driving out Brokenstar and retrieving WindClan. There was no doubt Dustpelt would be jealous of his early achievements, but Fireheart wouldn't soon forget how unprepared they both were to guide apprentices into warriorships when they'd barely been adults themselves.

No. Dustpelt would need to be rewarded in a different way. It wouldn't be fair to Ashpaw, or the well-being of the Clan, for Fireheart to use him like a bargaining chip.

"Frostfur is hardworking and experienced," He concluded, "She will mentor Ashpaw." She would appreciate the incentive to return to warrior duties, now that Thornpaw and Brightpaw have joined their siblings. Besides, he thought grimly, ThunderClan would need all paws on patrols now that they had a powerful enemy lurking in the forest.

(side-note; one of my favorite things is warriors-ifying idioms lmao if you put that in your fanfictions, know I'm giddy with glee)

I need to work out a sort of... secondary-apprentice system that still looks canon-compliant, btw. I want Dustpelt to be rewarded by actually learning how to do construction from the previous generation's building expert, using such a system.

Longtail meanwhile, his reward is that Fireheart starts putting him on important patrols and investing real trust in him. They also start becoming 'friends' at this point; I plan to start showing that he is a reliable cat capable of leadership, since he becomes deputy post-BloodClan battle.

[cat-alyzing]

I need my man fire… please give me the boy fire

Pants Firepaw/heart is my favorite. I almost made him a tabby but scrapped it so he has pants. As he gets older I’ll give him a pouch but as a younger cat he’s smaller.

(ID- Firepaw is standing to the left, his head slightly to the camera and right eye looking off to the top right. He is winking with a big smile and his tail goes up, curling slightly with his old green collar wrapped around his tail. He is orange with ginger pants, front paws, ears, stripes to his eyes, on his chest in a heart, and eyebrows. White is on his mane, belly, front toes, under his eyes, inside of his tail, muzzle, inner ear tufts, and ear tips. He has emerald green eyes and is sleek with tufts on his mane, belly, and cheeks. End ID)

Fireheart is trans he/him, bisexual and poly. I’m scrapping his half brother being Scourge bc it did nothing to the story but he is still Jake’s kin through a sire situation as his mom just wanted kits. Best friends with Graypaw and Ravenpaw with a guardian relationship with Icestar and Brindleface. Personality wise he is caring, incredibly compassionate and quick to help those he cares for. Even cats who aren’t really nice to him he can still help. With a very very loyal attitude. While he’s still rather naive as he grows he learns what rules he can bend and should and what one’s matter the most, and to trust those older and wiser then him to help. While he does see the reason for the rules he can see their flaws as a outsider brought in and he’s working to slowly change them to a better code that does what its intended to do and not create more cats like Tigerclaw. His main flaws is how loyal he is, occasionally lacking attention when it comes to his environment, and a pretty bad grasp at how to keep track of time relying a lot on his healers and elders to tell him when the next gathering is coming around.

Also here’s the alt tabby version:

(ID- Fireheart is a rusty orange color with darker tabby stripes across his pelt, a heart on his front paws, banded tail, and stripe around his neck. White is on his mane, belly, paws, ear tips, inner ear tufts, and on the left of his muzzle in a semi fire like shape. He has the same pose, green eyes, and dark green collar the other design. End ID)

[dreamingblacktabby]

Thistlestar's Reign (Part 1)

AU starts with Thistleclaw finding out the father of Bluefur's kits is Oakheart and announcing it to the whole clan

Bluefur loses respect from the clan(except Thrushpelt and Rosetail) and ends up not being made deputy

Thistleclaw is rejected as deputy at first, the position being given to Adderfang

RiverClan finds out about Bluefur's kits and want them so Bluefur ends up giving up her kits to prevent a war and also for Crookedstar to relinquish the rights to Sunning rocks

One day Adderfang winds up being found dead along ShadowClan territory and Thistleclaw is made deputy

Sunstar dies pretty soon afterwards and Thistlestar becomes the new leader of ThunderClan

Thistlestar launches a war against ShadowClan for the death of Adderfang, the war resulting with casualties on both sides

I haven't decided who Thistlestar's first deputy is but whoever it is dies and Tigerclaw is made the new deputy

One day Thistlestar finds a queen wandering on ThunderClan territory and ends up killing her despite her promising to leave

Featherwhisker and Spottedleaf find the queen's kits and tell Thistlestar ThunderClan needs to take them in which he denies until Featherwhisker points out its against the warrior code to leave kits to suffer, regardless of their origin

Thistlestar relents and allows the kits to be brought to ThunderClan where they are given to Willowpelt to raise alongside her own kit

He names the two kits Lostkit(Firestar) and Softkit(Princess)

Lostkit and Softkit grow up close with the other kits in the nursery and don't understand why some of the older cats hate them so much

When the kits all become apprentices, Dustpaw is apprentices to Tigerclaw, Sandpaw to Whitestorm, Ravenpaw to Darkstripe, Graystripe to Lionheart, Lostpaw to Bluefur, and Softpaw is given to Redtail

Lostpaw has a vision of the forest rotting away from the war between ThunderClan and ShadowClan and tells Spottedleaf about it

One day Lostpaw discovered Yellowfang on ThunderClan territory and tries to get her to leave because he knows she'll be killed if she stays but she doesn't seem to care

A patrol finds the pair and bring them back to camp where Thistlestar decides to keep Yellowfang as a prisoner and question her for information about ShadowClan

He puts Lostpaw in charge of her for being soft on her and then privately pulls Lostpaw aside to tell him to gain Yellowfang's trust so he could gather information from her

Lostpaw does as he's told and tries to learn things from her but she catches on pretty quickly and tries to be cold towards him, finding it hard to do so since Lostpaw is genuinely nice to her

WindClan is still chased out but Thistlestar takes this as a big threat and tells Brokenstar that if even a hair crosses the border between ThunderClan and ShadowClan it will be a fight

Brokenstar accepts the challenge and tells Thistlestar to meet him at the border in a couple days

Thistlestar prepares the clan for the battle, sending Ravenpaw across the border as a spy after he proves himself to be good at sneaking

Lostpaw tells Spottedleaf about his worries and Spottedleaf tells him she had a vision that he was destined to save the clans

Softpaw finds herself craving safety from the coming war and ends up running away to RiverClan

Ravenpaw also doesn't feel safe because of Thistlestar so ends up going off to find WindClan(Thistlestar and the rest of the clan think he was killed while spying)

During the battle between ThunderClan and ShadowClan, Lostpaw manages to take one of Brokenstar's lives by accident when Brokenstar chases him onto the Thunderpath in front of a truck

Thistlestar decides Lostpaw has earned his place in the clan and makes him a warrior alongside Sandstorm and Dustpelt

Lostpaw is renamed Fireheart because he's got a fire in his heart and is no longer lost

During their silent vigil as new warriors, Clawface and Deerfoot sneak into camp to try and steal kits but they get spotted and Thistlestar executes them both

Fireheart realizes the war is far from over and can see the decay of the clans is well on its way

-To Be Continued-

[thunders-warcats-stuff]

Thunder's Warrior Cats AUs

Prophecies Begin AUs

Apprentice to Leader - SkyClan happens right after Into the Wild. Firepaw gets strange dreams after the battle for ShadowClan and goes on an adventure. Things unravel back home

Fireheart’s Exile - One-shot, Fireheart gets exiled after he prevents in battle with WindClan and has to deal with the dogs himself

Firefang’s Rise - Female Rusty AU where Tigerclaw is mentored Firepaw but is still a traitor

Fireheart’s Sacrifice - One-shot, Fireheart gets hit by the car instead of Cinderpaw

Finding Jake (Jake Gets Involved) - Rusty’s looking for WindClan but finds ThunderClan instead

Growing Up Wild (Jake Gets Involved) - Jake takes Rusty, Princess, and Blackie (scourge) to live with WindClan but ends up in ThunderClan

Just a Dream - Firestar wakes up as a housecat after defeating Tigerclaw. Naturally, he tries to fix everything. Up to A Dangerous Path

Louder Than Words- Instead of going to StarClan, cats roam the forests as ghosts. No one knows why. Enter Rusty, a ghost seer who goes where cats ask him to. After things go terribly wrong, he’ll have more than just the new surroundings to adjust to.

Ravenpaw’s Stand - Redtail survives because Ravenpaw lunges for his mentor and distracts him long enough for both cats to run for the river

Reflection (one-shots)

Regrets of a Would-Be StarClan Cat =Swiftpaw lives. Here’s what happens next

RiverClan Chronicles (one-shots)

Rusty’s Family - AU where a stricter warrior code and tighter familial bonds make for a different story

ShadowClan Chronicles (one-shots)

Tigerclaw AUs (one-shots)

New Prophecy

Brambleclaw’s Ascendancy (one-shots) - Some one-shots about Brambleclaw set to Hamilton because why not?

Brambleclaw’s Worst Fear (one-shot) - Brambleclaw knows that the Dark Forest is more than just a dream, but just this once, he hopes he can wake up from this.

Journey (Blackstar AU) - Blackstar was a rogue before he joined ShadowClan. Now, as the cats leave for the Great Journey, some cats from his past make a reappearance

Next In Line - New Prophecy but everyone's all up in each other's business

Rescue Mission Gone Wrong - new prophecy's missing cats get tnr'd and that derails the plot

Secret Hopes - trans squilf and bramble acknowledges he has issues

The Other Side of Paradise - leaf and crow stay gone, Holly, Jay, and Lion grow up very different, and that just might save the clans

Power of Three/Omen of the Stars

Any Other Way - Warrior Jaypaw

As Long as I’m Here - Brambleclaw keeps an eye on the DF trainees

Denounced - Squilf and Bramble react differently to The Gathering ™

Fortune- ThunderClan's acceptance of a kitten with a dark past rocks the whole lakeside

Hidden - When Breezekit discovers a Clanmate's dangerous secret, Nightcloud gets help from another Clan and Crowfeather must choose to put his past to rest once and for all

Hurt Lionblaze- Lionblaze can't get hurt... unless there are strong feelings behind the attack. Ashfur's betrayal, for example, left more than a few scars to remember his mentor by.

Keeping the Secret- semi-genetics

Lessons Learned Psychiatrist Jaypaw learns from Half Moon

Long Shadows Fire Remix (Squilf goes off)

The Moons Without Stars (Moonpool found after Last Hope)

Runaways (Bramble Knows, calmer-ish reactions)

Secret Life of a ThunderClan Medic (Cinderpelt romance leads to Cinderpaw's strange life)

Shadows of StarClan (Founders reincarnated to fight DF)

The Outca(s)ts (Ashfur and the Dark Forest mystery)

A Vision of Shadows/The Broken Code/Starless Clan

Adoption- Alderpaw protests Twig + Violet being separated

Starting Again The warrior code and life as everyone knows it is uprooted after OotS

Outside Series Canon 

A Twist in Our Story- two best friends go through life together and figure out their love lives eventually

Afterlife- Bluestar is greeted in StarClan and explores 

Back to the Future - My favorite characters end up way in the future

Devastated- A healer is thought to have a forbidden relationship but is actually searching for a cure for a disease that affects their family

Futility, Valued- A Clan full of misfits struggles through the day. One, in particular, wants to be more than she is

How to Save A Life (edgy, tw for rape and suicide)- A bullied apprentice with one friend goes looking for StarClan and finds it. Meanwhile, everyone else has to deal with their part in his death

History Lessons- Cats read their series’

Human Neko Warriors- The Clans gain the ability to turn into humans as the forest is devastated. They remake their homes and traditions

Legacy - A shy cat makes friends with the leader and they get philosophical

Rants - mostly on framing vs context w/ certain characters

Reject the Deputy- Fireheart didn’t want to be deputy and is feeling the strain. He snaps at the Clan and runs off for a break. Some bits of his past resurface

Warriors In All But Name- Fireheart begs for Seiftpaw and the rest to become warriors. Bluestar refuses. A nasty argument ensues.

Shattering of Darkness - drugs in warcats makes everything worse

Strange Choices - a new leader’s unpopular choice for deputy is more than he seems

Sweetfur’s Legacy - edgy story undergoing a rewrite, tw for rape, One cat’s greed comes back to haunt him

To Love Without Acknowledgement - A romance between a clumsy warrior and his clan’s healer goes unremarked

[twilights-800-cats]

@lurking-in-windclan-camp​ To put it simply, the warriors are knights! There are different tiers of knight, divided by their seniority, with an elite Royal Guard (senior warriors) all led by the Kingdom’s Successor (deputy).

It’s admittedly fairly basic and really could just be it’s own thing at this point, divorced from Warriors. As far as human AUs go, it’s fairly basic as well lol. But here’s a rough infodump on the Kingdom hierarchies!!

It goes basically Child (kit) > Squire (apprentice) > Knight (warrior) > Royal Guard (senior warrior) > Successor (deputy) > King/Queen (leader), with Healer (medicine cat), Courtiers (queens), and Elders (retired) as fringe outliers.

Children chosen for court from the surrounding country villages (the territory, basically) are raised by Courtiers, then Squired to a Knight until they are anointed with their own titles. Children are usually chosen at around five or six years, taught and educated by Courtiers, then Squired at around 14. Knighthood typically comes anywhere from 18-22, depending on the Squire’s accomplishments.

Outsiders (those born outside of the Kingdoms) are generally avoided, but there are fringe cases where it has happened (eg. a certain redhead from outside the Kingdoms catching the eye of the venerated Bluestar).

Squires are meant to learn from their Knights all the ways to defend their Kingdom, and the Knight’s Code (the warrior code). Every Knight is different in how they’ll go about this. Squires are given a partial title (eg. Fire, Gray, Raven) that will be what they are referred to as from now on.  A King/Queen’s Squire, if there is one, is often presumed to be a future Successor, and depending on who currently holds that position, that can be very precarious.

Knights are the Kingdom’s general defenders! They receive their full title (eg. Fireheart, Graystripe, Sandstorm) and are tasked with the protection of their respective Kingdom. These titles generally take the place of their names, unless between close friends and family. The children of Knights are raised in court from birth and are firstly chosen for Squire positions.

Knights usually serve until death or about 60-65.

Royal Guards are Knights that have earned the prestige, through either seniority or deed, to act as the personal guard for their King or Queen. These are usually the ones most likely to be chosen for Succession.

Successors are the King/Queen’s second in command, next in line for the throne, and functionally treated as if they are the Royal’s kin. They are generally being trained to take full command of the Kingdom and are often seen handling Royal matters in the place of the King/Queen.

The King/Queen are the rulers of their respective Kingdoms. Each one is different in how they rule and how active or aggressive they are. Every leader is blessed by their Healer at a holy site and given the title of “star” to show their divine right to rule. They may also be given powers? Who knows!

Healers definitely have some magical powers! They take these from the Divines, and use them (along with a prodigious medical knowledge) to heal and guide their Kingdoms.

Courtiers are parents (some of whom are Knights) who take care of and educate children together. This role is very important, and they work with Elders to ensure the histories of their Kingdom aren’t lost. A Courtier is free to return to Knighthood after her children are Squired.

Elders are also extremely important, as the records of the Kingdom’s history lie with them. They hold tradition and stories close to their hearts, and often take the lead in the civilian territories.

[telepathicsnail]

For the dashboard osmosis game!! :DD

RWBY or Warrior cats? (Ye can chose either one!!)

Ok, here we go!

RWBY

Created by a company called roosterteeth. Why the rooster has teeth is unknown to me, but the concept is horrifying.

There are four girls. They are color coded: Red, White, Black, and Yellow.

The red one is named Ruby. I'm pretty sure she has this wild giant scythe looking thing that transforms. (This might be from another show; I don't know.)

The white one is named Weiss, I think. She has wings, possibly.

The black one is named Blake, maybe. She has cat ears. I do not know if they have a functional purpose.

I do not know the yellow one's name. She has purple eyes and lost an arm. I thought she had a very cool large fur-lined brown leather jacket but she does not. My brain made it up based on distorted memories of what her outfit actually looks like.

There is also a robot girl with ginger hair. She may be dead.

There are these very large doglike things. They are maybe called the grim or something. I think they are fighting them.

Characters keep dying. All of the time.

Warrior Cats

I read many of the original warrior cats books many years ago. I think I only got through the first three arcs. They were quite beloved. I remember the first arc the most, and my memory decreases as the arcs go on.

Rusty/Firepaw/Fireheart/Firestar is the protagonist of the first arc. He was a pet that travelled into the wild where there are four clans of feral cats. He joined Thunderclan. There was also Shadowclan, Riverclan, and Windclan. All the dead cats are in Starclan.

Firestar's best friend is Greystripe.

The leader of Thunderclan during Fireheart's time and his predecessor is a cat named Bluestar.

Fireheart's enemy is Tigerclaw/Tigerstar.

A wildly edgy cat named Scourge led a more urban ban of feral cats. He somehow attached dog claws to his own.

Scourge killed Tigerstar by taking all of his nine lives at once by disemboweling him. Even though most of the books are shockingly brutal for a series about cats approved for children, I remember this sequence being particular notable, with Tigerstar coming back to life every time only to bleed out again.

There are meetings of all the clans at full moons at somewhere to do with a tree.

There is a prey pile in the center of each camp - one time the one in Thunderclan was rotting and this was a very bad omen.

Medicine cats were consistently some of my favorite characters.

Near the end of my memories the cats travel to the mountains for reasons I can't remember. There was another group of cats living there. They told the forest cats to groom their kits in the wrong direction to warm them up when they were dying of the cold. There were some weird ancestral visons going on there with a pool of water.

Some of my favorite cats were: Firestar, Greystripe, Yellowfang, Leafpool, and Brightheart.

Now what I have learned through tumblr:

There is a cat named Jayfeather. He is blind and has visions. He has two siblings. They are the subject of a prophecy. They have powers. One of them drowned or died in a different way and they just kind of ... replaced him with another kit?

There are two cats I have completed the pickling of, and I read their wiki articles for research. One is Needletail. She got sentenced to death for rebellion, I think. This concept of cat executions inspires deep dread in me. The other is Flametail. He drowned. I think he is the drowned one mentioned in the previous bulletpoint.

This was quite fun, thank you! :D

[shummthechumm]

since seeing a few posts about TPB and how it treats firestar’s kittypet origins as a flaw he needs to overcome, wouldnt it be amazing if the “fire alone” prophecy was failed in some way? yes, short term, he DID save the clan, but in all the arcs following this? 

(looong post under cut)

yeah he’s a decent guy, but his clan immediately turns back to the status quo. sure, lionclan united to defeat tigerclan, but the relationship between wind and thunder deteriorates as soon as windclan rebellion starts. cats within his own clan, who witnessed the impact his very not-in-accordance-to-the-code actions had on defeating tigerstar. aka ONE OF THE BIGGEST TYRANTS IN RECENT CLAN MEMORY. but oh actually everyone dislikes kittypets still in tnp. dustpelt/mousefur especially love to bring up their distaste with the state of thunderclan (”too mixed”). even brambleclaw, his own apprentice, judges cats like daisy based on the fact that she isnt clanborn. it reads as thunderclan respecting firestar in spite of where he came from, instead of them appreciating a major part of his identity that they wouldnt let him forget just a few books ago? you know? getting over their biases and learning to respect others outside the clan? 

were these xenophobic ideas not utilized by tigerstar to climb maim and torture not just cats outside the code, but those who dedicated their lives to it? is that...not a sign for introspection?? 

and on a similar note: the books really want us to know that the only reason scourge was defeated was because he didnt believe in god, which is a really weird conclusion to end this arc on. we see fireheart constantly questioning the code and using his better judgement (most of the time anyway) to do what is the morally righteous thing to do. his unique outlook on clan culture saved a lot of lives. he wanted desperately to find belonging in thunderclan, but often sacrified his safety + position to save lives. but no actually the moral we’re supposed to take is “firestar became leader and proved that his soft kittypet roots couldn’t hold him down!!!” i dont know if him being born in thunderclan wouldve changed his very justice-driven personality, but maybe not being brainwashed from infancy played a factor in many of his choices in TPB.

so with these moments where firestar starts to show some of his conditioning crack through (ex: feeling horrified at the idea of cloudpaw not believing in starclan--and wanting to SHOCK him into being a believer; etc etc), is genuinely an engaging character flaw...that should be treated as a flaw. all of these standards of what a “true warrior” should be--constantly being crammed into his head from a pretty young age; against his own sense of personal identity and moral compass. does he WANT to be seen as a true warrior? does he want away with all of these redundant rules? does he want to redefine what that even means?

even in FQ he is pretty pissed to hear bluestar trying to justify an ENTIRE BRANCH OF THEIR CULTURE being axed off because no one was willing to spare territory. while that book has other issues, its still nice to see glimpses of that characterization i like slipping through. if it was an intentional internal conflict, you can take it even further. 

this is why i like to imagine that firestar’s prophecy came from whatever ancient beings sent down the po3 prophecy (i believe in oots they downright confirmed that the ancients likely sent starclan/the tribe of endless hunting the po3 prophecy decades before even mapleshade’s time). firestar may have served as the short term solution, maybe as a way to get set up the three in thunderclan. im 90% their prophecy outdates his, anyway. what was the intent of this prophecy, truly? 

was he meant to save the clan(s) from a few one and done baddies, or was something more long-term intended. if so...did he fail???

how does firestar cope with this? does he reflect? he knows about the po3 prophecy--what if he were to learn of the manipulation his kids went through by the forces he was taught to worship? ik canon firestar doesnt rlly react to the secret reveal post po3, but...in a better series...would he stand for it? how could he react, knowing that starclan targeted his very bloodline for a prophecy far older than the clans themselves? 

in a different world, would bluestar had even accepted him had it not been for the prophecy?? where would he be then? how would he fare with the knowledge that many cats he idolized when he was younger--cats he grieved for, were roped into perpetuating the unhealthy cycle of reliance both starclan and the living clans have for each other?

......is starclan even the source of the fire alone prophecy??? if not them, then who was??>?? how far did this go?? how far is starclan willing to go to get their desired outcome?

 give me existential  firestar, PLEASE 

[warriors-rewritten-chaos]

Detailed Rewrite Plot Summary: The Darkest Hour

We’ve made it to the first arc’s grand finale! 

Fireheart, now Firestar, becomes ThunderClan’s new Leader and journeys to the Moonstone to receive his nine lives from StarClan. The lives he receives are: Courage (Lionheart), Justice (Redtail), Loyalty (Silverstream), Protection (Brindleface), Love (Spottedleaf), Joy (Rosetail), Selflessness (Swiftpaw), Compassion (Volewhisper), and Faith (Bluestar). However, his ceremony is interrupted at the end by a colossal hill of blood-soaked cat bones erupting from the earth around him. Bluestar gives him a foreboding prophecy: “Four will become two. Lion and Tiger will meet in battle, and Blood will rule the forest”. Firestar returns to ThunderClan, stomach churning with anxiety and dread.

Once he returns, he names Whitestorm as his Deputy, performs a renaming ceremony for the cats Bluestar cruelly named, and names Willowmoon’s kits apprentices at long last. Brightheart, Snowpaw, and Cinderspark’s names are cheered by the entire Clan. So are Sorrelpaw, Sootpaw, and Rainpaw, who are given Cloudtail, Cinderspark, and Brightheart as their mentors. Firestar also names Bramblepaw and Tawnypaw apprentices, but the Clan is much less enthusiastic and happy about the two of them. The two of them are disliked and distrusted for being Tigerstar’s kits and having a strong resemblance to their biological father. Firestar declares that he will mentor Bramblepaw personally, while he chooses the unenthusiastic Willowmoon to mentor Tawnypaw. Before the ceremony ends, Lynxtuft and Ashfur approach and ask for their names to be changed to Lynxswift and Ashface in honor of their recently deceased loved ones. Firestar happily does so.

Also around this time, Firestar confesses his love to Sandstorm. She admits that she feels the same, but she cannot become his mate. She tells him that it’s obvious Firestar still harbors romantic feelings for Graystripe. It isn't that she has an issue with polyamory (such relationships, while rare, are considered perfectly normal in the Clans) but she does have an issue with the fact that Graystripe is now a RiverClan cat and their relationship would thus break the Warrior Code and get the three of them into major trouble. She tells him to figure himself out first.

At the next Gathering, Tigerstar and Leopardstar ask that WindClan and ThunderClan join their new combined version of ShadowClan and RiverClan, dubbed TigerClan. Naturally, the other two Clans refuse and a fight ensues that nearly escalates into a full-on battle before a storm comes rolling in and blots out the moon, ending the Gathering early again.

To try to clear his mind, Firestar goes for a walk by his old kittypet home. What he discovers are terrified kittypets refusing to leave their homes due to the threat of a violent group that now fully controls Twolegplace- The Coven of Blood, and stray cats fleeing the city en-masse. Firestar checks on Smudge, Hattie, and Princess to make sure they’re safe before he heads to Pinecone, Ferris, Pollyanna, and Xena’s home. The first thing he notices once he gets there is that the two sisters are heavily bandaged and smell like Twoleg medicine and that their parents are nowhere to be seen. They begin sobbing when he asks them what happened and where Ferris and Pinecone are but he learns the horrifying story through their tears.

Around a week ago, the family had gone out by the forest for their morning walk and had been accosted by a strange tom who smelled like the forest. None of them knew who the tom was themselves, but he seemed to have recognized them. He was hostile from the get-go but became enraged when they told him they had no idea who he was when he asked them. He tore up Xena and Pollyanna, but didn't kill them. Instead, he told them to leave, never approach the forest again, and that “this is what the Clans do to traitors”. The sisters had been forced to leave their fathers behind to flee for their own lives as they were viciously torn apart. When Firestar asks what the cat looked like, the description they give is of Tigerstar in everything but name. Firestar then returns to camp more concerned and troubled than before.

Also around this point is when Tawnypaw vanishes and reappears in ShadowClan, having chosen to try to find acceptance through joining a Clan that reveres her father after reaching her breaking point in ThunderClan. Firestar and Goldenflower comfort the devastated Bramblepaw.

Soon after, Ravenpaw comes hurrying into the ThunderClan camp asking to see Firestar. Apparently, they had gone to RiverClan to see Graystripe and his now apprenticed kits after paying respects to Bluestar but instead stumbled upon a terrifying sight: Stonefur, Mistyfoot, Graystripe, Featherpaw, and Willowpaw are being held prisoner in the RiverClan camp. The group managed to sneak a message for help out via Ravenpaw, which is what he’s delivering to Firestar. Firestar mounts a rescue mission and when the group arrives things are just starting to go sideways.

Tigerstar and Leopardstar are putting the five prisoners on trial, denouncing them as half-clan cats (non-RiverClan in Graystripe’s case) and therefore Codebreakers and traitors who must be harshly punished. Stonefur and Mistyfoot are ordered to execute Graystripe, Willowpaw, and Featherpaw to put themselves back in TigerClan’s good graces, but they refuse to do so. Tigerstar then orders Darkstripe to kill them, but Darkstripe is a wimp and Stonefur and Mistyfoot are still formidable opponents despite their weakened state and together they fight him off. Tigerstar then calls in Blackfoot to finish the job. While this is happening, Firestar’s patrol consisting of himself, Ravenpaw, Sandstorm, Cloudtail, Thornclaw, and Dustpelt creates a diversion and manages to successfully rescue Mistyfoot, Graystripe, Willowpaw, and Featherpaw. Stonefur chooses to remain behind to buy them enough time to flee and is slaughtered by Blackfoot as the others make their escape.

While the four refugees are recovering in ThunderClan and mourning the death of Stonefur, Firestar gets another urgent message, this time from the WindClan Warrior Runningbrook who was sent as a messenger. WindClan is under attack by TigerClan, who have mobilized and are attempting to force them to join under threat of destruction. While Firestar gathers another patrol and rushes to their aid, by the time he gets there TigerClan has gone. While WindClan had managed to fight them off somehow, Tigerstar had publicly killed Gorsepaw, who Firestar had an attachment to, as a warning of what was to come if they didn't join TigerClan peacefully. Grief-stricken Onewhisker snarls at his former friend, telling Firestar that his apprentice would still be alive if Firestar hadn’t gotten unnecessarily involved with WindClan and says he’ll kill him if he ever sees him on WindClan territory again. 

TigerClan sends messengers informing ThunderClan and WindClan that they have just three days left to join TigerClan and avoid a deadly battle.

Tallstar, Nightoak, Whitestorm, and Firestar meet and discuss what they’re going to do. Neither WindClan or ThunderClan has any intention of joining TigerClan, but all agree that if they fight alone they will be overwhelmed and destroyed. They make the decision to temporarily combine their fighting forces into one that they name LionClan. On the dawn of the third day, Firestar and Tallstar mobilize their Warriors to meet TigerClan head-on.

Upon reaching the battlefield, they find a third group has joined forces with TigerClan- The Coven of Blood, the bloodthirsty group that has taken control of Twolegplace. Their Leader is a cat by the name of Scourge who explains that his group is assisting TigerClan as mercenaries on the condition that they are given territory and resources. The battle is set to begin, but the Coven cat’s don’t move when Tigerstar calls his cats to fight. The battle abruptly stops as Tigerstar rounds on Scourge to demand he mobilize his cats to fight. Scourge’s only response is to laugh and say that he's waited for this moment for a long time. Before any cat knows what’s happening, Scourge lunges at Tigerstar and uses his dog tooth and glass-tipped claws to tear him open from chest to tail.

TigerClan and LionClan look on in horror as the wound is so severe it is unable to close even with the regenerative power of a Leader and Tigerstar loses all nine lives all at once. As his convulsing body goes limp for the final time, Leopardstar and many of the Clanborn TigerClan members. He then tells the Clans that he and his fighters will kill all of the Clans and take the forest themselves. With that, The Coven attacks.

At first, the remaining Clan cats (LionClan and the remaining TigerClan cats that have joined them now that Tigerstar is dead) think this will be an easy fight since The Coven no longer has the support of ShadowClan and RiverClan and thus has lost the advantage of greater numbers. This is before an avalanche of hundreds of Coven cats pour from the shadows into the battlefield, having been hidden until Scourge gave a signal. The battle begins.

Predictably, it is an absolute bloodbath. Cats are dying left and right. Firestar, Sandstorm, and Graystripe team up to take on a massive group of cats and do well before they’re separated. Firestar watches in horror as Nightoak is basically decapitated in front of Ashfoot and their children. Whitestorm, who had joined up with Firestar after he’d been separated from his partners, is attacked and killed by the Coven cat Bone. Before Firestar can avenge him himself, apprentices and young Warriors of all four Clans mob Bone en-masse. The last Firestar sees of Bone, he is being torn and crushed by the mob.

Firestar finds Scourge standing over Tallstar with his claws near the old tom’s neck. Firestar flings the smaller tom off and the two begin to fight to the death. Firestar gets the upper paw, believes that he will be the victor... but Scourge tears his throat out and he crashes to the ground. He dies and awakens in a place that isn't StarClan. It is a a void of pure darkness, with no light but he can feel jagged stones pressing into his back. A cave, then. A translucent being that resembles a cat but not quite is crouching in front of him. It has no eyes and is devoid of fur, and just looking at it makes Firestar’s vision swim and his head ache.

The thing reaches out its paw to Firestar’s still-bleeding throat and as it touches him, he sees everything. Every moment of his life up to this point, and things that have never happened but are meant to, he can feel it. He sees it all and forgets just as quickly as battle-sound feels his ears once more and the pitch-dark cavern fades away. The last thing he hears is words spoken by many calling voices that he’s never heard but knows all the same in his ear telling him one simple thing.

“Not   yet.......”

And then, he is back in his body with his throat healed and Scourge walking away from him. He jumps to his feet and catches the tom off guard. Scourge barely gets out a “how?!” before Firestar crushes his small throat in his teeth.

With their Leader now dead, the Coven flees. Groups of Warriors pursue the stragglers as the surviving Clan cats return to their homes to rest and bury their dead. Firestar bows his head to the other Clans as he and his clanmates return to ThunderClan, with both Graystripe and Sandstorm pressed tightly against him, tails entwined, and followed by Bramblepaw who keeps stopping to look at his sister headed towards ShadowClan.

[talonslockau]

Fire and Ice - Chapter 46

Chapter 45 || Index || Chapter 47

A night of listening. That was how Bluestar had described it, just before leaving them to their duty. Fireheart didn't know what he was supposed to listen for, exactly. Was Starclan themselves going to descend from the Startrail and whisper to them?

The sun had long since set, casting the camp into darkness. He fluffed his now dry fur up as much as he could as the chill of night crept over them. In the distance, he could hear an owl call, but it was far away and not likely to bother them on the other side of the forest. Aside from the whispers of mourners sharing tongues with the dead one last time, the camp was quiet. Even the kits in the nursery were now asleep, resting safely with the queens.

He had all night to think, sitting alone under the stars. Perhaps this was intended to be a night to think over the warrior code and understand what he had pledged himself to. Or maybe it was a night of reflection, remembering their apprentice days and what they had learned in order to become warriors? He wasn't sure.

Still, he didn't mind the chance to process everything that had happened in the past two days. He had visited the Moonstone and talked with a Starclanner, though he felt that was less impressive than it should be with how often Redtail was showing up lately. The camp had been attacked, and Spottedleaf killed. Their kits were stolen. Ravenspirit had fled for safety. And then Yellowfang and the Shadowclan elders had teamed up with a Thunderclan battle patrol to drive out their power-mad leader and his strongest warriors. And that still didn't mention how he had deceived the Clan and gotten his warrior name. How could so many things happen so fast?

He gazed up at the sky. Between the attack on their camp and the fury of the storm, there were several holes in the leafy cover that normally hid Thunderclan from any onlookers above. Someone would have to fix them tomorrow. In the meantime, he appreciated the view of the Startrail that they gave him, twinkling brightly above him.

Spottedleaf would be joining them tonight. He glanced briefly at her body, laying still in the center of camp. Dappleshine and Bluestar were murmuring softly to her, sharing tongues with her for one last time, while Dewpaw was curled up in the white fur of her belly. His heart ached as he watched her flank gently rise and fall. She had taken the healer's death hard, blaming herself for the tragedy. Even though she had hardened for Goldenflower's sake, he knew the grief was eating away at her the whole time. He hoped that despite her gruffness, Yellowfang would be able to help her mourn the calico properly. Death, he figured, was a wound only time could heal.

His gaze moved to Speckleflight, Sandstorm and Dustleap beside her as they stared up at the sky. Their mouths weren't moving, but he knew they were all speaking with Ravenspirit in their own way. It was surprising to see Dustleap join in mourning his half-brother, but he could see tears in the tabby tom's eyes that felt genuine. It was partially because of the young warrior that Ravenspirit had feared for his life. Had he truly believed Tigerclaw's words that the apprentice was guilty? Was he now mourning the loss of what could have been, now that his half-brother had 'redeemed' himself? Fireheart wasn't sure he cared to ask. Even if he did, he doubted the temperamental young warrior would answer him honestly.

How would they react if they knew the truth? If he revealed that Ravenspirit was alive, but that he had fled because his own father wanted him dead so he wouldn't reveal the secret of Redtail's death? He could only imagine the shock the Clan would feel, and likely a fair bit of betrayal. No, as much as he desired to be honest, he knew that for the moment it was better this way.

He wondered if Ravenspirit had safely gotten to Barley's barn. Part of him wished he could leave now and check, but he knew someone would notice his absence, and that would only bring him trouble. Besides, Ravenspirit was a capable cat; he had caught two adders that had been trying to catch him, once! If it weren't for Tigerclaw, his friend would have been a great warrior, just like his mother had been.

Was Nightwish watching both of them now? Was she pleased with what he had done to protect her son? He looked back up at the Startrail shimmering merrily above him. The stars seemed to dance before his eyes, swirling around each other like leaves in the wind. It looked as though many spirits were traveling the Startrail tonight. Perhaps the ghostly queen was one of them, watching over her son and the two new warriors that had saved his life.

As he looked over the Startrail, his eyes caught the red star he had seen on his first night in camp, the night of Redtail's death. His neck bristled at the thought of the cryptic deputy, the main source of frustration in his life now. Maybe now that his sister was up in Starclan with him, she could knock some sense into him and get him to be a little more helpful. He somehow doubted it, though; even in life, she had been just as difficult as her brother in the best of times.

Something rustled nearby. He perked his ears and looked around, suddenly alert. Had Brokentail's rogues come back? He straightened up, spine bristling as a brown tabby slid out of the elders' den. "Oh, keep your fur on, young Fireheart." He relaxed as he heard Halftail's familiar grumble. "Just an old tom taking a little nighttime walk. Don't mind me."

He watched the elder stumble stiffly past him, opening his mouth to mumble an apology before remembering the rules of his vigil. With a quick nod, he sat back down, watching as the tabby vanished into the shadows of the entrance. He gave his chest fur a quick lick, feeling a bit embarrassed. It wasn't like they could blame him for being on edge. It was only that morning that Brokentail had been defeated, and he was sitting on very important guard duty. 

He had to wonder if Brokentail would return from wherever he had run off to. His rogues had been badly injured in both battles, and now that they didn't have a healer to care for them it would be a while before they were ready to fight again, if they survived their wounds. Still, the tyrant's last words echoed in his mind; "This isn't over." If Brokentail survived, the cats that toppled him would be at the top of his list for revenge.

He shook himself out, trying to release the tension in his muscles. He was freaking himself out. Now was a time for pride and celebration. He had earned his warrior name, something he'd been hoping for since he first set foot in the forest. He couldn't wait to tell Princess, especially now that he was free to go where he pleased as a warrior. Would she be proud of him? He imagined her green eyes glowing with happiness for him as he told her of his accomplishment.

As he looked out proudly around his camp, he froze when he saw a pair of eyes staring at him from the darkness. It wasn't Graystripe or Halftail’s familiar yellow eyes, but a sinister amber glare that could only belong to one warrior. Tigerclaw was watching him, his gaze unblinking.

It wasn't hard to guess at why. The dark tabby must have realized that Fireheart was trying to get him to make his accusations against his son in front of the whole Clan, to discredit him in Bluestar's eyes. It hadn't worked, of course, but the giant warrior was smart enough to notice such a trap easily. No doubt he was suspicious of the ginger tom now, and he likely realized that Fireheart was onto him. It was even possible that Fireheart was a target now.

That was fine with him. He would not underestimate Tigerclaw's sinister intentions like Redtail had. If the broad-shouldered tabby wanted to try something, the new warrior would be ready to stand tall against him.

He flicked one ruddy ear as he heard rustling from the entrance that signified Halftail's return. The amber eyes watching him slipped back into the thorn thicket of the warriors' den once more, evidently not caring to be spotted. The tabby elder passed in front of him before stopping and turning to sniff at him. "You sure you don't want to cry fox over an elder making a trip to the dirtplace?" He mewed, sticking his rather stinky muzzle in Fireheart's face. "I'm sure Bluestar will appreciate having such an attentive warrior on vigil."

The ginger tom glared back at him, unable to speak and defend himself. After a few heartbeats of staring at each other, nose to nose, Halftail chuckled and stepped away. "Ah, well. Can't blame an old tom for trying." He grumbled, as Bluestar twitched an ear towards them from where she was mourning. 

Fireheart stiffened and flicked his tail for Halftail to get moving. Surely he couldn't get in trouble for someone else talking to him during his vigil, right? "Alright, alright. Just don't panic when the other elders wake up to perform the burial rites, okay? That would be rather embarrassing for you." With that, the tabby toddled back to bed, leaving him alone.

Sighing heavily, he adjusted his position and looked back up to the Startrail. It would be a long night, but he had gone through worse as an apprentice. Now that he had received his warrior name, he felt as though he could do anything. He had proven he was capable, not just to Bluestar and the Clan but to himself. A new dawn was coming, and he could not wait for it.

[staircasttext]

Ep 10 Transcript: Fireheart Learns to Code

Episode 10

[intro music]

PAZ: Hi, everybody. Welcome back again to Stairway to StarClan, a Warriors Cat reread pawdcast. I'm Paz.

JULIAN: I'm Julian.

LIZ: And I'm Liz.

PAZ: And we're back again this week reading Fire and Ice, chapter eight through 10, if I am remembering correctly.

JULIAN: Yep.

PAZ: But before we get into the chapters, we have some updates on the Barnes and Noble saga that I want to share, because they're all incredible. So a lot of these are just like additional comments to the Tumblr post that we read last week. I guess we can just go in the order through like how you sent them, Julian, because that's how I pulled them up.

JULIAN: Sure. I can read the first one.

PAZ: Sure, go ahead.

JULIAN: All right. Tumblr user melthedestroyer says, "I used to work at Barnes and Noble. And I need you all to know, when you pulled up a book in the internal system, it gives you a couple of top reviews from bn.com on the page. Imagine now my coworker Sal, a 60 year old Italian man with a flip phone, pulling up one of these one day. It was an interesting shift for Sal and I." Imagine having to introduce your coworker to the concept of roleplay, Warrior Cats roleplay.

PAZ: Yeah, not any roleplay. I love that.

JULIAN: I mean, I'm sure if he worked at Barnes and Noble he was familiar with the Warrior Cats phenomenon.

PAZ: Yeah, better be. Yeah, I'll read the next one. This is by Tumblr user diatribe. "I was part of a different circle of this for three-ish years in the early 2010s. Most of us had super controlling parents and weren't allowed internet access. The BN book reviews were broken af, completely unmoderated. Multiple books often shared the same reviews. And you didn't even have to own the book to write a review."

LIZ: Lawless.

PAZ: "It started with people just shouting out in these popular books, wondering if anyone else could see them. And then when people could reply, it spiraled. Also, we used BN's e-reader, so it just looked like we were reading." So Julian, you were like 100% correct.

LIZ: That's amazing.

JULIAN: Yeah, I was talking about this with Han after the podcast. And they also mentioned that Barnes and Noble's website probably also wouldn't be blocked on a school computer. So people might have been doing it from school computer labs. But a lot of the comments mentioned like doing it specifically on the Nook. So it looked like you were reading which is, oh, I'm really glad that these kids had somewhere to roleplay Warrior Cats that their parents could not control.

PAZ: Right? And just like, instant message, because we saw some of those as well. The creativity of children when they want to RP cats with their friends is endless. And I have nothing but respect.

JULIAN: Yeah, another update was someone saying that there was also a big Warrior Cats roleplay community on Khan Academy, which again, tracks.

LIZ: That is just incredible to me. That's like saying yeah, I used to RP on like Wolfram Alpha, or whatever that math site is.

JULIAN: Does Wolfram Alpha have a comment section because if so there might be Warrior Cats RP there.

LIZ: Wolfram Alpha forums. Let me check. Yes.

PAZ: Oh my gosh.

JULIAN: Oh yes.

PAZ: Search Warriors.

JULIAN: Community.wolfram.com/groups.

LIZ: Wait, search Warriors, please.

JULIAN: Oh, I'm doing it. I'm doing it.

LIZ: Cats, anything.

JULIAN: Oh, no, I'm not seeing anything, unfortunately.

PAZ: Oh no. Maybe it's too moderated.

JULIAN: It might be too moderated. It seems like it's pretty moderated.

PAZ: Tragic.

JULIAN: It's also like a whole company.

LIZ: Well, the framework is there. You could get past that. Listen, we saw some territorial disputes in the Barnes and Noble comments section.

JULIAN: We really did.

LIZ: So if anyone needs to branch out, I bet-- you know, there has to be someone who can hack a little bit.

PAZ: Yeah, Wolfram Alpha? Yeah.

LIZ: To get around this.

PAZ: Who wants to read the other final update that kind of dove into the questions we had about like, moderation and stuff?

LIZ: Is this the very long one that's like a screenshot?

JULIAN: Yeah, it's the one I had to screenshot because it was a reply, so I couldn't link to it.

LIZ: Okay, I can do the first one because it is pretty long. Okay, "here's a breakdown for you guys. You'll find people RPing in classic books because they're multi rez, which means multiple books link to the same review section. You can only post one review per book and posting in it erases your original review. So multi rez books are obvs desirable if you wanted to RP more than one character. Or if you wanted to leave a post up for someone who wasn't online at the moment."

JULIAN: "If you posted a bad word, you'd get locked out and wouldn't be able to post in that particular book anymore, which also made multi rez books desirable. You can get around this by putting open angle bracket underscore close angle bracket after the first two letters of a swear word, and then posting it would make it look like you hadn't censored it at all. Warrior Cats books were the most popular, but I remember Percy Jackson RPers hung around in like the Athenian constitution books."

PAZ: Yeah, so I remember we'd noted that like you could see the review counts of people and it would just say like one. And I think the explanation for that phenomena is here.

LIZ: Incredible.

PAZ: Because apparently it'd just delete if you reviewed more than once.

JULIAN: Yeah, so that makes sense, though, because it's like, if people are basically waiting for someone else to be online and then kind of RPing back and forth, but each of their new posts erases the old post, we only see the last one.

PAZ: Yeah, it's really tragic that there's no archive, though, because of that.

JULIAN: It's all gone. And the odds of it being on like Wayback Machine are very low if it replaced that quickly, unfortunately.

PAZ: It's truly the epitome of like, touches ground, something happened here.

LIZ: God, I hope someone has at least like saved or archived or screenshotted somewhere like just a moment of this. Like a slice in time to put in a museum in 3021.

PAZ: Yeah, I hope somebody was like copy-pasting into a Word doc somewhere.

JULIAN: Right? Ugh.

LIZ: I mean, how else are you gonna remember what's happening if you're RPing?

PAZ: Right?

JULIAN: I mean, you depend on the encyclopedic memory of an eight year old for like trivia.

LIZ: That's true.

JULIAN: They don't have to remember how taxes work so they can remember every detail of what Umbrellastar from BloodClan told them.

PAZ: I wish that was me.

LIZ: God, if only.

JULIAN: Same.

PAZ: But yeah, I guess that's the updates we found. The fact that it was somewhat moderated is extremely funny, but like not moderated enough that they're like we're gonna not allow this RP to happen.

LIZ: You just can't say fuck.

JULIAN: Like we can't stop you from RPing on this forum but you can't get horny about it.

LIZ: For some reason, we can't stop you.

PAZ: I so badly want to find someone to talk to who was in charge of the Barnes and Nobles website in some capacity and be like, what happened here?

JULIAN: I want the email chain where someone was like, Hey, my boss. You got to know about this. What do we do about this?

LIZ: CEO voice, you know, it's interaction. It's engagement.

PAZ: Yeah. They're probably like--

LIZ: We need to get those Hamlet numbers up. The kids do not care about Hamlet. This is as close as we're gonna get. If Shadowfur wants to RP with an assassin cat or get into a territorial dispute with the Percy Jackson RPers, we let them.

PAZ: Yeah, we need those clicks. That's all that matters.

JULIAN: Honestly, I wonder if they were so laissez faire about it because Barnes and Noble really, really wanted people to like use their Nooks. There was like a big push for them to like-- they were pushing Nooks versus Amazon's Kindle really hard. And so if they were like, well, at least people are using the review section with their Nook devices.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're a kid who wanted really badly to RP with their friends and you could convince your very strict parents to buy you a Nook, it works out in Barnes and Noble's favor, so.

JULIAN: I mean, honestly, I wonder if it was just like, you know, I borrowed my mom's Nook because she never used it. And I didn't know about-- I was also too old for RP at that point and was just bulk downloading fanfiction to the Nook. But like if I had been slightly more sheltered and a little bit younger at the time, I definitely would have been-- I would have done this.

PAZ: Did you guys do that thing where you would print out fanfic?

LIZ: Yes. Mm-hmm.

PAZ: And then either read it in bed or take it to school?

LIZ: Yes.

JULIAN: I did not print out fanfic because I was mortified that my family would find out about it. So instead, I copied and pasted it from a particular Doctor Who fanfic archive into Word documents. I had like one Word document that was like one genre and then another Word document that was like a different ship, and they all had like little secretive acronyms so that...

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: This is so intricate.

PAZ: Wow.

JULIAN: It was so much. Because this is before Ao3.

PAZ: I don't think I was smart enough as a child to do that. I would just like to try and throw out all the fanfic I'd printed out before people saw it. Because I would read it in bed because I didn't have a phone I could read it on.

JULIAN: Oh yeah.

PAZ: If I wanted to get cozy in bed and read my, I don't know, Kingdom Hearts fanfic, I had to print it out.

JULIAN: When I finally did get a phone my senior year of high school, I spent pretty much that entire summer reading fic. And so my mom was like, oh, what are you doing? And I was like, Oh, I'm-- someone had posted about this on Tumblr and I stole it. I was like, Oh, I'm reading unpublished stories by authors online.

PAZ: God.

LIZ: Not untrue. You're just supporting new writers.

JULIAN: It's accurate.

PAZ: It's what people on Twitter want to think, so.

JULIAN: It's literature. It's literature, Mom.

LIZ: God.

PAZ: Yep, classic. You know, getting fan content, it was bad. It was hard back in the day.

LIZ: It was hard.

JULIAN: We didn't have tags. You had to just pick a pairing and hope that the fic was good.

PAZ: Right? Oh my god. Yeah, it was all summary based, like good fucking luck.

LIZ: It did have genres. Like fanfiction.net did have genres. It was like romance.

PAZ: I vaguely remember that.

LIZ: Comedy, poetry, suspense.

PAZ: God. What was the fanfic that I would... what was the fandoms that I was in reading fanfic on fanfic.net? I know it was Kingdom Hearts. I think Ranma 1/2, probably Naruto fanfiction.

JULIAN: Yeah, it was just Sherlock and Doctor Who. I'm so sorry to tell y'all this.

PAZ: That seems kind of... Sherlock seems kind of late for fanfic.net though. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

JULIAN: It was... I like started out fanfic.net. It was like right when Ao3 was becoming a thing. But the wait for Ao3 was like six months at that point.

PAZ: Oh right.

LIZ: I used to read Sherlock fic on Livejournal.

PAZ: Also definitely read Invader Zim fic on fanfic.net.

JULIAN: My Invader Zim phase was before I realized that like fanfic was a thing that existed outside of me writing fanfic in my journal. So unfortunately, I did not stumble across that.

PAZ: Maybe, maybe, fortunately.

JULIAN: Maybe good. I also probably would have been reading a lot of iCarly fanfic.

PAZ: It wasn't like ship fic though. I don't think I understood the concept of that at the time. It was just like-- I read a lot of like OC self insert fic when I was much younger. I don't know.

LIZ: You just loved the character building.

PAZ: I did, I loved the worlds.

LIZ: Yeah, well, what an intricate like beautiful universe you've created.

PAZ: I think I remember a fic like that was like a crossover with Alien.

JULIAN: Oh my god.

LIZ: Like Alien-alien?

PAZ: Yeah, the movie Alien with like the xenomorph.

JULIAN: I love that. That's wonderful.

PAZ: It was powerful.

JULIAN: Oh all right, sorry, Chickpea is screaming. Let me see if I can feed her and then she'll stop.

PAZ: Okay.

LIZ: I'm just thinking about that fucking like Sherlock Livejournal community that we looked at with the graveyard with all the broken Photobucket links.

PAZ: I'm kind of... I don't know why I never got into Sherlock fandom like seriously, but I'm happy I didn't.

LIZ: Bullet dodged. It was something. We should look for Warriors Livejournal stuff. I bet there's some good graphics if...

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: If it ever made it there.

PAZ: No, I'm sure there were Warriors Livejournals. But Livejournal was after my Warriors period so I wouldn't know from personal experience. Definitely read a lot of Doctor Who fanfic on Livejournal though.

LIZ: I actually didn't. I was big into it.

JULIAN: Alright, hello.

LIZ: I just stuck around for icons and stuff. Hi.

PAZ: Hi, welcome back. We were saying there's probably like Warriors communities on Livejournal, like old ones somewhere.

JULIAN: Oh my god, I bet there are.

PAZ: Yeah, we should look into that in the future.

JULIAN: Yeah, we should do a hunt there.

PAZ: There's so much content out there. Even on Barnes and Nobles.com.

LIZ: I don't think people are RPing in like Goodreads reviews for Warrior books. But wouldn't that be something? You can reply on those things.

PAZ: Are you sure people aren't doing that?

LIZ: I don't know. Maybe.

PAZ: Now that you've said that, that seems like an obvious situation to do it.

LIZ: Put it on the docket. We've got so much research. God.

PAZ: We're going to become scholars of Warrior Cats RP communities.

JULIAN: Great news. Uh.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Yeah?

JULIAN: There are... Goodreads: Group. Show Tag RP.

LIZ: [gasp]

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: Fuck yeah.

JULIAN: We have 1825 roleplay groups on Goodreads.

LIZ: What?

PAZ: Oh my god. Is this just Warriors, or like everything?

JULIAN: Oh, this is everything.

LIZ: Oh, okay. I was like damn, Warriors. Can you give us a little tasting board of this?

JULIAN: No, don't make me login. So let's see. Just a little something. We have Percy Jackson and HOO– I guess that's something about Olympians– roleplay group. Have you waited for your satyr all your life but it never came? Well, welcome to CHP, where all demigods are accepted. You can create your own character and talk to other half bloods. We are here to have fun, sing songs on the fireplace, play Capture the Flag, volleyball, and of course go on lots of quests.

LIZ: This sounds fun.

JULIAN: Yeah. I haven't seen any-- oh, here we go. Warrior Cats: A New Fall. Yep, we've got three separate Warrior Cats RPs on the first. So we'll have to dig into this a little bit.

LIZ: Thank god.

PAZ: This is so exciting.

JULIAN: A lot of this is like... a lot of boarding school RP. Like people have made up-- this roleplay is tagged as semi-advanced. What does that mean?

PAZ: I guess your reading level has to be... I don't know.

LIZ: Middle school and above.

PAZ: Eight plus.

JULIAN: Oh, I'm so glad people are just out here on the Goodreads forums RPing.

LIZ: Good. Fuck it up.

PAZ: This is a better use of Goodreads.

JULIAN: Yeah, it is. I hope Amazon has to read all of these.

LIZ: Yeah, get wreckt.

JULIAN: It'd be good for them.

LIZ: Humble them a little. We should look into those. I bet there's some new innovations going on if it's still active.

JULIAN: Oh yeah, no, these are sorted by the latest activity. So the three ones I found, last activity six hours 25 minutes ago.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Yeah, so we can really dig in here.

LIZ: We need to check out that semi advanced style. I wanna know what that means.

JULIAN: I can't tell, but they have their own gifs. Like there's some really nice graphics.

PAZ: Wow, you can post gifs on Goodreads?

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Wow.

JULIAN: It's like a fully fledged forum here.

PAZ: Wow.

LIZ: Yeah I think you can post like reviews and then that you have like, here's my Marvel GIF about reacting to... I don't know. Twitches.

JULIAN: I think there's like... because there's like a Groups function.

PAZ: Oh my gosh. Yeah, this is just a forum.

JULIAN: That I think is intended to be like for book clubs. But is, in this case for--

PAZ: This is a book club. What are you talking about?

LIZ: Oh, yeah, these things. I joined one for exactly one reason. It was to ask what book this was because I didn't remember the name, title, or character, or author, or anything. And they were mean about it.

JULIAN: Aw.

LIZ: They were like, everyone has asked what this book is. Did you not read the FAQ?

PAZ: Oh, no.

LIZ: And I did. So anyway, Goodreads is bad, but I'm glad people are using it to RP.

PAZ: Good on this random boarding school roleplay for saying no racist, homophobic, discriminatory, etc. comments.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: The Warrior Cats: A New Fall RP's number one rule is "no bullying. We make exceptions for in the roleplay."

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: Gosh, perfect. Well, this is an exciting possibility world before us that we will have to revisit in the future. But I guess now that we're done with that update, we should go into our chapters.

LIZ: Beautiful.

PAZ: So this week, we read three chapters, chapters eight through 10. And I'll just dive right into the summaries. So chapter eight continues from the scene of the RiverClan warrior Whiteclaw's death. Leopardfur, the RiverClan deputy, warns ThunderClan that this has now gone beyond a border dispute and leaves. The WindClan cats leave as well, thanking ThunderClan again. And Sandpaw is freaked out from her near death, and Graystripe is shaken and disturbed from accidentally causing another cat's death.

Once they are back at camp, an angry Tigerclaw takes Fireheart and Graystripe back to Bluestar and informs them both of WindClan's rescue and the RiverClan death Tigerclaw believes seeing ThunderClan with WindClan cats will push RiverClan and ShadowClan together. Bluestar, while disappointed, is not as angry. She decides Graystripe and Fireheart should take apprentices to train to prepare for future hostilities.

Later that night there is a naming ceremony for the apprentices. Fireheart takes Cinderpaw, an energetic cat, as his apprentice, and Graystripe takes Brackenpaw, who is more serious, as his apprentice. The chapter ends with Fireheart thinking about how he wants to be a good warrior and mentor and that it feels like Tigerclaw is waiting for him to fail.

In chapter nine, Fireheart takes Cinderpaw out into the forest for her first day as an apprentice. Graystripe declines to join them and is still depressed. Fireheart and Cinderpaw travel various places, with Cinderpaw bounding ahead and not listening to Fireheart closely. Fireheart teaches her some things about scents, hunting, and owls. Cinderpaw then runs ahead towards Snakerocks before Fireheart can warn her, but comes back once he makes the danger clear. They then visit the Thunderpath and eventually go near the Twolegplace, where they spot a pregnant kittypet. Fireheart gets an inexplicable feeling that this cat isn't a threat and gives away their position so she runs away. Back at camp, he dreams about when he was a kitten and realizes the kittypet he saw was his sister.

In chapter 10, Firepaw gets an intense longing to see his sister after seeing the familial familiarity amongst the clan cats. He asks Graystripe to take Cinderpaw for the day and heads back to the Twolegplace. He waits until the sister comes into the garden to reveal himself. She is frightened at first, but once he remembers her name, which is Princess, and remembers who he is, she calms down. When she asks why he came to see her, Fireheart simply says, because you are my sister. He asks about their other family, who all still live in the neighborhood. They talk for a while and Fireheart tells her about the clans. Princess eventually has to go inside and Fireheart returns to the ThunderClan camp after hunting.

Back at camp, Tigerclaw confronts him about leaving Cinderpaw with Graystripe. Fireheart apologizes and says he will focus on her training. Graystripe still seems disturbed about the RiverClan encounter. The chapter ends with Fireheart watching Cinderpaw and her brother, and thinking about how he has felt lonely within the clan, as none of his family is there. And that's the end of our reading this week.

JULIAN: My first note for chapter eight is Graystripe killed a man.

PAZ: Yeah. RIP Whiteclaw, our beloved friend. Yeah, Graystripe, you did kind of kill a guy. This was like, the first time I'm like, damn, I just agree with Tigerclaw because it really is like Fireheart's fault completely. There was no reason to go into RiverClan territory. And he is also partly responsible for a death.

JULIAN: Also Fireheart being like, Oh, it was a special mission, just like Highstones. So it's okay for us to-- like, no, it's not. You knew it wasn't.

PAZ: Yeah, you had to convince everyone to do it. Because everyone was like, I don't think that's a great idea. I feel bad for those poor WindClan cats who just... they just had a horrible two months, and now this bullshit.

JULIAN: Well, and like Tigerclaw is, for once, worst person you know just made a great point.

PAZ: Exactly.

JULIAN: He's like, yeah, this is gonna solidify RiverClan and ShadowClan's alliance. And he's right, it will.

PAZ: Yeah. This is the worst thing that has come out of Fireheart's lack of brains by far. And he seems like he doesn't have any lingering guilt about it.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: Yeah, Graystripe is like, tore up about this. And Fireheart is just like, Why doesn't he want to eat with me?

LIZ: Isn't there that part in like, that part where he's like, aw Graystripe doesn't want to hang out. Oh, well.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, I think I think Graystripe's having the appropriate emotional reaction. But I don't know why he's the only one having that reaction.

JULIAN: Yeah, I am still unclear on like, when it's okay to kill another cat. Um.

PAZ: Yeah, it's very, extremely unclear. Because I really feel like people die all the time. But then it's like, we're sad when people die. Also, sometimes maybe it's dishonorable? Question mark?

LIZ: They say like that it's just a border dispute, which is why like, the murder was, I guess, like, too much, but it seems like all of their disputes are border disputes.

JULIAN: Like what else do they dispute about?

LIZ: Yeah, what?

PAZ: I don't know. Maybe there are periods of active warfare. I don't know.

JULIAN: Yeah, like maybe it's okay to kill another cat like, if they're in your camp or something.

PAZ: Yeah. Or like they stole your children.

JULIAN: Yeah, I remember-- in Warrior Cats roleplay, we would like schedule battles. And I'm trying to remember whether that is based on the books or just useful for RP scheduling purposes.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't really remember from later books. So I can't really say. But I do like how this whole situation sets up like Sandpaw's changing thoughts on Fireheart. Like, her appearances in the rest of these chapters is her being like, very, like, shaken that she almost died and also like, seeming to be thinking thoughts about Fireheart, so.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's very like... you can tell that she's sort of thinking about like, Oh, you know, damn, kittypet did save me.

PAZ: Have I been wrong? Who knows. I do still feel-- damn. Dustpaw and Sandpaw have it bad, though. They're still apprentices and fucking Fireheart and Graystripe are getting their apprentices. Can you imagine sharing the apprentice den with these little tiny babies?

JULIAN: With these babies that are like, technically still too young.

PAZ: I hope they become warriors soon. They don't deserve this.

LIZ: I don't know. You'd think that since Fireheart and Dust-- nope, Graystripe are getting apprentices so early, that Bluestar would also make the other apprentices warriors by now too, just like, gotta keep moving.

PAZ: Right? She's like, we need more warriors. I'm just gonna make these babies apprentices and not promote these older cats for some reason.

LIZ: Who have seen battle.

JULIAN: Right? They're also like, at this point, they're like super seniors.

PAZ: Yeah, I assume they're at least a couple months older than like, Graystripe and Fireheart.

JULIAN: Just like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna keep taking classes.

PAZ: This is so sad.

JULIAN: I was really happy to see that there was some sort of like criteria to become a mentor, because Bluestar says that Runningwind would make a bad one. So at least they are thinking about it a little bit.

PAZ: I think her judgment is off because she decided Tigerclaw would make a good mentor, but I guess, at least there are considerations. Yeah, the other thing from the beginning of this chapter is I know we said we'd keep a Fireheart/Onewhisker alert out. Yes, here it is. "Fireheart meowed a quiet farewell to Onewhisker as he passed. Onewhisker glanced briefly at him and walked on."

JULIAN: Damn.

PAZ: It's there. It's real.

JULIAN: Oh my god.

LIZ: This is all those posts about tender yearning, you know.

PAZ: Exactly.

LIZ: It's about glances... and they don't have hands, so paws.

PAZ: The nose touches. The tail touches at their annual ball dance.

JULIAN: The jellicle ball.

PAZ: But yes.

JULIAN: God-- oh sorry. One more Bluestar thing. Um, she does tell Fireheart to pass on everything that she taught him. And I just have a note that's like, you didn't teach him shit.

PAZ: Right? There was something-- like there was like a part in like, a later scene with Fireheart and Cinderpaw that implied she did more than one thing with him. Because it said something about like, Bluestar teaching him about owls. But I'm like, when in the world did this happen? This did not happen. They had one fight.

LIZ: Is it just like... is it like a retcon to imply that like more time passed than we saw?

PAZ: Yeah, maybe?

LIZ: Or I guess so. It just would have been nice to see like, if not just one, maybe two or three, and then you can just say it kept happening. I don't know.

PAZ: Right?

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: It really felt like it was only one. But yeah, but speaking of time passing and timelines, I was trying to figure out the timeline for like, how long they were actually warriors before getting apprentices. I think it was like three days, because--

LIZ: Oh my God.

PAZ: Because, right? So they became like, apprentices after-- they became warriors after their vigil. And I think it was the day after that that Bluestar's like okay, you gotta go find-- I don't know. When was the Gathering?

JULIAN: Let's see. Pull up my ebook.

PAZ: I forgot there was a Gathering in between. Maybe it's like five days.

LIZ: Well, how long did the WindClan retrieval take?

JULIAN: I feel like three days, I think?

PAZ: That was like two days.

JULIAN: Two or three?

PAZ: They slept two nights. They slept a night before finding WindClan and then they slept a night on the way back with WindClan. So yeah, I guess it was like three days.

JULIAN: Yeah, they sleep a night on the way back, and then they come back, go through RiverClan, go back to ThunderClan. And then that night they get apprentices. I think the Erins are really relying on the fact that children have no idea what timelines are.

PAZ: Okay, so, checking back to the beginning, it appears there was the day after they became warriors. And then the following day was the Gathering. So that's like two days. And I think it was the day after the Gathering that Bluestar is like, Okay, you got to go on this journey. So that's like another day. And then there's the day of the journey. They sleep. Day of finding WindClan, coming back. They sleep. Then they're back. So that's six days, I think.

JULIAN: What are we at? A week?

PAZ: I totally was not counting. Yeah, like a week, about.

JULIAN: Oh, you know.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: They are cats. A week is a long time if you're a cat and have no real sense of short term memory.

PAZ: I guess.

LIZ: What's a week for a cat?

PAZ: But I mean, cats don't live like-- cats can live until they're like, 20. They don't... I mean, not outdoor cats, I guess. But it's not like they only live to be like five years old. I feel like it should be at least a month.

LIZ: What's a week to a cat? Like, a month?

PAZ: I don't know.

LIZ: Two weeks? Three weeks.

JULIAN: I'm googling cat sense of time. But I don't know. That might be a rabbit hole we can't fall down.

PAZ: I feel like cats don't... Cats wouldn't have a concept of days, though. Because they just sleep whenever.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: I mean, not these cats.

JULIAN: I mean, pet cats have a really good sense of time because like, they do get onto a...

PAZ: Yeah, they know when they get food.

JULIAN: Right. They get on to a rhythm. And if their rhythm gets disrupted, they get very upset.

LIZ: Yeah, they have to have their breakfast at 5am.

PAZ: And they have to run around the house at 3am. Very strict schedule. Well, anyway, yeah. Timeline is weird, but they get their apprentices. I couldn't remember any cat named Bracken-something. I feel like maybe there was like a Brackentail. But I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if this guy's gonna make it.

LIZ: Maybe he's destined to just be like--

PAZ: Pouring one out.

LIZ: -- inoffensive side character.

PAZ: Yeah, that might be the case.

LIZ: That's the life you want. You don't want to be like a fucking Firepaw. Look at that shit he's going through.

PAZ: I didn't look it up because I'm like, I'll just see.

JULIAN: I did look it up and spoiled myself, but I will not spoil y'all.

PAZ: I know what happens to the other two apprentices so far in this book, which is why I'm like who the fuck are you, Brackenpaw? I don't know him.

JULIAN: I mean, in his defense. Well, not in his defense. He hasn't really established much of a personality yet.

PAZ: I know.

JULIAN: You know, sometimes you're the quiet sibling, and your sister is real boisterous.

PAZ: Yeah, is their other sibling Swiftpaw? Or like, am I getting confused?

JULIAN: I thought it was just Brackenpaw and Cinderpaw. I didn't think there were...

PAZ: Was Swiftpaw a different litter? Maybe. Because that was the one who got promoted to apprentice at the beginning of this book.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Or wait, at the end of last book? I don't know. Recently.

JULIAN: Um, yeah, no, Swiftpaw is a different...

PAZ: Okay. That makes sense. Cause he's older.

JULIAN: Yeah. Different litter. The stuff with Cinderpaw is very cute.

PAZ: It's so cute.

LIZ: It is.

PAZ: But I'm also like, Oh, God, don't go to Snake Hell please. Listen to the adult.

LIZ: She got so close to Snake Hell like immediately.

PAZ: Cinderpaw needs to be on like a child leash.

LIZ: Uh-huh.

JULIAN: I am a little bit like, watching Fireheart mentor her is very much like when you have a teen babysitter take like a bunch of children to a pool. Or like to the zoo. It was just like, Oh, this was a mistake. You all need an adult.

LIZ: Bluestar, why did you do this?

PAZ: Right? Once again, worst person you know makes a good point. I think Tigerclaw was right when he was like, they're too young to have apprentices.

JULIAN: Fireheart like fully does not know what he's doing. He's just like, uh, I'm gonna take you around. We're gonna go to the Thunderpath. That sounds like fun.

PAZ: Yeah, no one gave him the like, teacher's manual.

LIZ: No, he's not certified. He's a teen boy.

JULIAN: Fireheart, your union contract.

PAZ: This is really just like in high school when you have a, like, junior college student come in and be like the assistant teacher for their like college credit courses. And it's, like, so obvious to you as a senior. It's like, Oh, wait, we're actually pretty close in age. What are you doing here?

LIZ: Don't worry. Cinderpaw [inaudible]

JULIAN: I fully respect Graystripe wanting to be alone and not be near Fireheart right now because Fireheart does not seem to understand that he did anything wrong. I also think that he should have stuck with Fireheart because two adults and two children is much more manageable than one adult and one child. Especially when one of the children is like... like if you have a rambunctious child and like a very calm child, that's much better than one rambunctious child.

LIZ: Graystripe even says so, right?

PAZ: Mm-hmm. But Graystripe is having a crisis so I'll excuse him.

JULIAN: God. And then Fireheart is like, well, I'm just gonna ditch my apprentice with you for a day. Is that chill?

LIZ: Yeah, like the second day.

PAZ: Ah, God. I gotta say though, all the internal thoughts about family Fireheart has in these set of chapters is very good.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: There's just so much more internal life than in the first book. It's like, it's very noticeable.

LIZ: Yeah. He's really going through like-- he has not become dad, but he thinks he is. Like, he's looking at Cinderpaw like, Oh, God. Oh, God, what do I do? Oh, god, no, no, she's going to Snake Hell. Wait, come back. Oh, my God, children. So he's also like, just a young guy. But it's very funny.

PAZ: Yeah. And his like, anger and worry about being a former kittypet continues to be like, a thread running through this. Which is... I don't know, it's just good to see that they're keeping that like personality trait consistent in this book.

JULIAN: Yeah. And like the tension between like, found family versus birth family is like, nice to see explored here.

PAZ: Yeah. And like how he feels like he's-- even though he really likes his found family, how he still feels alienated because, I mean, like, they still see him differently.

JULIAN: Yeah. And like, even through that, you know, there's a bit where he's like, yeah, you know, I do wonder if I would have closeness with my birth family. But also I know that like, you know, the closeness that Princess has with her siblings who she sees occasionally is not the same as like, the closeness that the cats in the clan have.

PAZ: Yeah, he like, thinks some thoughts about like, you know, would my life have been different? Like, what am I missing?

LIZ: And he still does feel like, like that level of remove, and he's like, lonely. Like, damn, I wish I had someone who knew exactly like where I was coming from and had the same experiences.

JULIAN: Yeah, that moment where they both-- like he and Princess talk about like, the bedding that their mom had when they were kits is really sweet and like, poignant.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Because he doesn't have anyone in the clan who remembers how he grew up.

PAZ: And like, what they think of his childhood is just like, really mean to kittpets because they're all xenophobic. So he can't even really talk about it I think is one of the points. Like he can't tell anyone like he saw his sister or anything. And it stresses him out and it's just, yeah.

JULIAN: Also the bit where he doesn't remember her name is awful.

LIZ: Oh, yeah, that was bad.

PAZ: Aw, I know.

JULIAN: Like, initially, he can't remember it and he's like, Oh, I'm Rusty. And then like, finally does remember it but like, it takes him a bit and that's just like, ah. Aw, buddy.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: I hope he finds, you know, something where he feels like he can be his whole self. I also got to say, Rusty, do you think your balls really would have been stolen? Because apparently nobody spays or neuters their cats here. Because your sister's just pregnant. She obviously didn't go get the-- what the fuck.

JULIAN: The snip?

PAZ: The cut. Think he might have had balls still.

JULIAN: Like she's pregnant, which clearly means that like A, she didn't get neutered and also, like, whatever cat is the father didn't get neutered either.

PAZ: What is up with this neighborhood?

LIZ: Did you catch the part where-- I mean, like, she says that all the siblings are still kind of nearby too. So do like-- I just want to know if a cat gets pregnant in this neighborhood, do they just distribute the kittens to neighbors, or do they just keep all of them? Cause I know that happens but that can't be regular.

PAZ: When our cat Maria kept having kittens before we could get her to the vet, we would just post free kittens sign. People would come and check out the kittens. I don't know. But it wasn't just like our immediate neighbors.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: No, not at all.

JULIAN: The HOA where it's like, to live in this neighborhood, you must accept every fucking six months or whatever.

PAZ: Oh god. Yeah okay, so let's go through our list of kittypets so far. Princess, wasn't fixed. Their mom, Nutmeg, obviously wasn't fixed. Jake, still had his balls because he fathered children at some point. I guess Henry is the only one we got confirmed to...

JULIAN: Smudge. Smudge got neutered.

PAZ: Oh, yes. Smudge got neutered. Okay. I don't know.

LIZ: So two out of like, what? Six, seven? Probably more.

PAZ: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what's going on here.

LIZ: They're really just lax about it over in England, huh.

JULIAN: I mean, is it England or is it just this book?

LIZ: Is it just this one neighborhood in England? Like oh yeah, that's cat city.

JULIAN: That's cat hell.

PAZ: Maybe it's some sort of weird hippie community.

JULIAN: You know what, maybe that's why all the Twolegs they run into are so awful to the cats because it's like you know...

PAZ: Oh, it's just overrun.

JULIAN: The neighbors are really nice, but like anyone who comes and visits this park is like, oh fuck. It's the fucking cats again. It's all the horrible cats.

LIZ: It's like that one island they always talk about on clickbait articles that's like, oh yeah, this is the city of cats. And they're just everywhere.

PAZ: Oh, the one in Japan? Or near Japan.

LIZ: God, yeah.

JULIAN: I want to read a Warriors book set with the feral cat colonies that live in the Colosseum. That's all I want.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Oh fuck yeah. They'd all be Italian. Cat mafia.

LIZ: The Meowdessy.

JULIAN: You already have a clan structure.

LIZ: The Kittyad.

PAZ: On the day of my daughter's naming ceremony. But to go back to that point about Fireheart's character exploration in this segment, like the second to last sentence in these sort of chapters was just really nice. It was just a good sentence. It was, "He had found the closeness he had missed, but it had given shape to a sense of loneliness that until now had lain vague and nameless in his heart."

JULIAN: Aw buddy.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: That was a good little sentence and evocative of a feeling. And just wanna give him a little hug.

LIZ: He's just a little guy.

JULIAN: He's just a little guy.

PAZ: He's a little guy, but also now a responsible teacher.

JULIAN: He's a little guy and he's also a father.

PAZ: And an accessory to murder.

JULIAN: I mean, manslaughter. Graystripe didn't mean to kill him. It wasn't premeditated.

PAZ: Yeah, sorry, Graystripe.

LIZ: Has Firepaw killed anyone yet? Fireheart, sorry.

PAZ: No.

LIZ: I don't think so.

PAZ: He wanted to kill that one ShadowClan cat but then I think Whitestorm was like, no, we do not kill, apparently.

LIZ: The emphasis on it, and I mean, the emphasis on Whiteclaw dying and like the almost murder from the last ep, I wonder if it's gonna come to a head at like the finale of this book.

PAZ: Yeah, maybe. I just... I know in later books cats die so much, but murder seems to be like... so far the only like onscreen murder slash manslaughter we've seen is Oakheart. Is that the guy? I don't know. That RiverClan cat who got killed by Redtail. And then all of Tigerclaw's murder victims, but that was obviously evil. And then there's accidental death. But I know these cats are killing each other in later books. So I don't know. Maybe it's just like a change that happens.

JULIAN: I feel like there is some-- there is like a shift. But I don't remember when it happens.

PAZ: Yeah, I'll be curious to see if it happens like within the first series, or if that only really starts happening like, second series onwards.

JULIAN: There's definitely murders in the first series.

PAZ: Okay.

JULIAN: Unless I'm misremembering what happens in the first series.

PAZ: No, I mean, there's like murders. I know there's murders of like the other evil group. But I'm talking like interclan murders.

JULIAN: Oh, gotcha.

LIZ: What other evil group? Hold on. Wait.

PAZ: Don't worry about it.

LIZ: Okay, sure.

PAZ: We'll get there.

LIZ: Hmm.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know. We'll see.

JULIAN: Yeah, there have so far been no war crimes, I would say. At least in these chapters. I think this book has also been pretty low war crime.

PAZ: Yeah, I feel like the war crimes might be coming up, though.

JULIAN: Yeah, I probably shouldn't call it. We're only on chapter 10.

PAZ: Yeah, I think we're gearing up for war crimes.

JULIAN: I guess hunting on WindClan's territory after driving them out could probably be construed as a war crime.

PAZ: Yeah. Breaking treaty, breaking word also. So there were war crimes. Couldn't go 10 chapters without some war crimes.

LIZ: Well, it is Warrior Cats. Not like non Warrior Cats. I think I've made this joke but better before. These are some fighting cats.

JULIAN: Cat fight.

PAZ: They sure are. I don't know. I don't have anything else really for these chapters. I don't-- does anyone else?

JULIAN: Yeah, I don't either.

LIZ: As a note, I think it's very funny that in like these chapters Tigerclaw he's being put on like, the sensible side of the argument or whatever. Yeah. It's just like, he's just acting normal guy now, but he's still evil.

PAZ: Yeah. He was so normal guy these chapters, noticeably.

LIZ: It's very funny.

JULIAN: Yeah, I feel like it's like trying to set us up for like, a twist when he goes mask off again. But.

LIZ: But what if he does-- what if he does just become normal? He's like, Oh, yeah, Vice President. This is good enough. I'm retiring my evil ways. I'm still mean, but from now on, I'm just going to be critiquing your teaching style.

JULIAN: Which frankly, needs it.

PAZ: Fireheart, have you considered murdering your apprentice as a motivator?

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: Oh, no? Well, have you considered taking notes?

JULIAN: Fireheart, have you thought about taking some continuing education classes? Some workshops?

LIZ: Night classes.

JULIAN: Personal development? Professional development?

PAZ: Needs to get his education certificate.

JULIAN: Yeah. Fireheart, where's your MA?

LIZ: You know, Fireheart, they have some courses on LinkedIn that you can take. About seven hours each. You get a little certificate at the end. That's how I got mine.

JULIAN: Fireheart learns to code. Fireheart goes to boot camp. Comes out with a Udemy badge.

LIZ: Are we good for these chapters?

PAZ: Yeah, I think we're good.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: It was only three chapters. And it was a lot of like, internal stuff.

JULIAN: Right, they're a lot less eventful than the last ones.

LIZ: Everyone's very sad.

PAZ: Yeah. Yeah.

[meow]

So, in honor of meeting Princess these chapters, I decided maybe we should look at all of the canonical kittypet names and rate them and see what the kittypet names got going on, because I think we were pretty positive on Nutmeg last week.

LIZ: Oh, yeah.

PAZ: So we're gotta see if there's more where that came from. So I'm pulling up the list of canon kittypets on the Warriors wiki. Okay, I'm just gonna go down them and we can give our thoughts. How about that?

JULIAN: Sounds good.

LIZ: All right.

PAZ: So the first that we have is Algernon? Is that how you say that? Al-grr-non?

JULIAN: Al-jer-non, yep.

PAZ: And Bess. How are we feeling about that?

JULIAN: I like them, but only as a duo. Like you got to have Algernon and Bess. They really play off each other.

PAZ: Yeah, I agree.

LIZ: They sound like a separate pirate duo in Black Sails.

PAZ: Yeah, I agree. They have to be a pair. Okay, next we have Hal.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: Pretty boring.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Pixie.

JULIAN: Very good.

PAZ: Eh. Yeah, I think it depends on the cat. I have to visualize this cat.

JULIAN: That's true. This is a fluffy white she cat, which is like a less good-- I hear Pixie and I'm biased by our friend Erin's very good cat who is a little tabby freak.

LIZ: Pixie should be a freak.

JULIAN: And this doesn't... this cat does not sound like a freak.

PAZ: No. Freaks only. Okay, the next cat is Red.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: Uh, it's okay, I guess.

LIZ: We've got a good ginger cat already. And Fireheart really got the protagonist name thing down.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Okay. Next cat is Marmalade.

JULIAN: Excellent.

LIZ: 10 out of 10.

PAZ: This is fantastic. He is described as a large ginger tom.

JULIAN: Yes.

PAZ: I am a huge fan of this name. Then we got Jay.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: It's okay.

LIZ: It's all right.

PAZ: I do like-- a very old black and white she cat. I'm just picturing Chloe.

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Then we have Jake. I feel like we already discussed his name, but I'll just reiterate. I love when a cat is just named a guy.

JULIAN: Just a human man.

PAZ: Then we have Twig.

JULIAN: Very good.

PAZ: That's pretty good. I like the energy that brings. Then we have another duo. It's Cherry and Boris.

LIZ: Very good together.

PAZ: I love Boris so much.

JULIAN: That's another human man name.

PAZ: Right? It just sounds like some Russian, old Russian man. I don't know.

JULIAN: Who is out here naming their cat Boris? I love it.

PAZ: I don't know but they chose right.

LIZ: I mean--

PAZ: Um-- yeah, go ahead.

LIZ: No. Our good friend does have a cat named Putin. Short for, if I'm remembering correctly, Rasputin, so.

JULIAN: Yes.

PAZ: Exactly. Then we have Echo. That's okay, I guess.

LIZ: Nice Friends at the Table reference.

JULIAN: Next cat name is Fourteen Fifteen.

PAZ: No, if only. Hutch. I don't know.

JULIAN: It really depends on the cat.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: I feel like.

PAZ: It's original, I guess.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: I'll give it points for that.

JULIAN: "Hutch is a dark brown tabby tom with amber eyes and hard paw pads." Why do we know that his paw pads are hard?

PAZ: Oh no.

LIZ: You mush them.

PAZ: How am I gonna squeeze his beans?

JULIAN: Give him some coconut oil.

PAZ: Okay, our next cat is Oscar. Once again, love just a normal human man name.

LIZ: I know I shouldn't be looking at the descriptions of these cause they're probably really spoilery.

PAZ: Yeah, don't do that. Stop.

LIZ: But this one's really funny. I won't remember it by then.

PAZ: Okay, you can read it.

LIZ: But if anyone's worried about spoilers, cover your ears. This says, "an unknowing descendent of SkyClan who chooses not to live in SkyClan because he believes clan ideas are stupid."

PAZ: I agree with Oscar.

JULIAN: That's a real Oscar-- Oscar would.

PAZ: Classic Oscar. Okay, the next cat is Bella. It's boring, I guess. I don't know. Another duo, Rose and Lily.

JULIAN: It's fine. It doesn't have the same energy as our previous duos.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: No, I don't... they're not bringing the same heat. I guess at least they have a theme, which is flowers.

LIZ: I want these to be like really out there cats, if it has to work, like real fancy or really evil.

JULIAN: Yeah, I just want like a cat with a flower name that's like really fucking-- like, where's my cat named Hydrangea?

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Fuck yeah. Okay, next cat is Hattie. Feel like that's cute.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Sounds like it should be like a little, little old cat. Next cat is Velvet.

LIZ: Very decadent.

PAZ: Yeah, just makes me think of the Velveteen Rabbit.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: Which I guess is a vibe. I don't know. Okay, then we have Benny.

LIZ: That's cute.

PAZ: It's pretty good. It's not as good as the other man names but it's cute. Then we have Brandy.

JULIAN: Brandy feels like such a 90s name to name your cat.

LIZ: Yeah. Like you're definitely thinking of like Brandi, capital B Brandi, right?

JULIAN: Oh, yes.

LIZ: I guess these did come out around that time.

JULIAN: Like that cat needs to bring that energy.

LIZ: This is a cat with a rhinestone collar.

PAZ: I think the name is better conjunction when you see that his sibling is Minty.

LIZ: Aw.

JULIAN: Oh, that's good.

PAZ: I think that's a good pair of names. So another one where I think a duo really brings out that energy.

JULIAN: The next one is also a duo. Or like, half a duo.

PAZ: Yeah. So it's Frankie. And then Jesse.

LIZ: Very cute.

PAZ: Those are just like, those are solid names. (laughing) The next cat is O'Hara.

JULIAN: Oh boy.

LIZ: Uh.

JULIAN: Bad, but it's not her fault.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: Oh, God. Okay, next name is Parsnip.

JULIAN: Excellent.

PAZ: I love that.

LIZ: 10 out of 10.

PAZ: This is a perfect cat name.

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: I'm gonna keep it in mind for future cats, I think. It's powerful.

LIZ: I think Parsnip should have like a little vegetable clan and it should just be like, here's my deputy Carrots. Here's my other deputy, Rutabaga. And my [laughs] I don't know, my apprentices, like, Cabbage and... I'm running out of vegetables.

JULIAN: Peapod.

LIZ: Potato. Peapod, yeah.

PAZ: Polly. Eh.

JULIAN: I like Polly, but I think I'm mostly biased toward it because it's my grandma's name. So I'm just envisioning like a very like old, cheerful cat.

PAZ: That would be good. Then we have Riga, I guess? It's unique.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: It's probably a person name or something?

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know.

JULIAN: I think it's a person name.

PAZ: Points for not being a common name. Scarlett.

LIZ: No. Hold on a second. Are Scarlett and O'Hara a duo?

PAZ: Oh, no.

JULIAN: Oh, I'm very afraid that they might be.

LIZ: I don't like that. No.

PAZ: They both live in the same place apparently.

JULIAN: Nooo.

LIZ: Bad.

JULIAN: Hate it.

LIZ: Not their fault. But bad.

PAZ: No, but I'm looking at Scarlett's wiki page. It doesn't mention O'Hara anywhere, so. Maybe not.

JULIAN: That might be an Erin Hunter badness.

LIZ: Oh, no. Okay, wait. It says they're hostile. [laughs]

JULIAN: Well, then the name is perfect.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't think they're together. They live in the same neighborhood. I think that's about it. Thank God. Okay, then we have Victor.

JULIAN: Excellent.

PAZ: That's powerful.

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Then we have Webster.

JULIAN: Yes.

PAZ: I like-- I love that.

LIZ: Yes.

PAZ: That's a little, like, nerd cat.

LIZ: With glasses.

PAZ: Exactly. Then we have Ziggy. That's also cute.

JULIAN: I think the four here are just really good kind of in conjunction, where it's like Victor, Webster, and Ziggy.

PAZ: Yeah, that's a great combo. That's a little like, YA friend group.

LIZ: They all sound like, like in that book, they would be the little nerd group that's going to go on like some sort of robotics competition thing. And it's about friendship.

PAZ: Exactly.

LIZ: And accepting who you are.

PAZ: The next name is Betsy.

JULIAN: Cute.

PAZ: It's a good name for an old cat. Gonna skip some of these names. Max. Eh.

LIZ: Can we go back to one? Just one because it's--

PAZ: No, we gotta skip them.

LIZ: Aw, but the one before that is so...

JULIAN: It's really good.

PAZ: Okay, I don't think that counts as a real kittypet name.

JULIAN: This was clearly not chosen by a human but Harveymoon.

LIZ: Can we give it a shout out?

PAZ: Harvest Moon sequel, Harveymoon.

JULIAN: Is that what they're calling it now that they can't use the Harvest Moon trademark anymore?

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Harveymoon, friend of Susanclaw.

JULIAN: Now I'm gonna be imagining them as an elderly couple.

PAZ: That's perfect.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Okay, um, Ajax.

JULIAN: Excellent, real powerful name.

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

PAZ: That just reminds me of dogs because I read a book about a half-dog half-dingo named Ajax, but that's my own bias.

JULIAN: Can I just read his description real quick?

PAZ: Yes.

JULIAN: "Ajax is a kittypet and friend of Rose and Fuzzball."

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: Yeah, I was waiting to get to Fuzzball on this list to rate that, but Fuzzball is a 10 out of 10 also.

LIZ: All three of those together are just... what a wonderful friend group. Powerful.

PAZ: Then we have Pickle.

LIZ: Beautiful.

PAZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: He has a squashed in face.

PAZ: Aw, Pickle. Imagine Pickle and... what was it? I've already forgotten it. Yes, Pickle and Parsnip together. Imagine that.

JULIAN: Oh yes.

LIZ: Oh, yeah.

PAZ: Yeah. Powerful.

LIZ: Wait, wait, wait. Do you think Pickle used to be Cucumber when he was younger and then as he aged he became Pickle?

PAZ: God.

JULIAN: Aw.

PAZ: Then we have Yew.

LIZ: Oh, me?

[laughter]

PAZ: Yep. Then we have Bumble.

LIZ: Beautiful.

JULIAN: That's very good.

PAZ: I like to picture this as the cats, you know, with like the balance like condition.

JULIAN: Oh yeah.

PAZ: Where they wobble.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: Yeah, it'd be a cute name.

JULIAN: I do think it's a cute name. I do think about the dating app unfortunately.

PAZ: Oh no.

JULIAN: But it's fine.

PAZ: I forgot that existed. Um, there is a cat just called Tom.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Good.

PAZ: Here's Tom's description. "He is hostile to every cat he meets and is a mean bully."

JULIAN: Good for him.

LIZ: So this is an old man.

PAZ: Who wrote this? Then we have a cat, Flower. Eh.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: I don't know about--

JULIAN: She is said to be frightened by strange cats.

PAZ: Who isn't?

JULIAN: So I'm picturing a very skittish creature.

PAZ: Yeah. Um, we got our boy Rusty. I think that was a pretty good name, but could be better.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah. Then we have Smudge. I think Smudge is a cute name.

JULIAN: Smudge is very good.

PAZ: We have Princess.

JULIAN: Eh.

LIZ: Classic.

PAZ: That name didn't do much for me.

LIZ: In context, it's very good.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Right, when you know that Princess is the daughter of Jake and Nutmeg.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah. Um, then we have Henry.

LIZ: The best.

PAZ: We love Henry. Henry is 11 out of 10. Fantastic.

LIZ: I'm looking at Henry's page wondering if there have been any hot Henry updates.

PAZ: No, I think we already established this.

LIZ: There's a pretty good image of him. He doesn't look as big as I imagined him, though.

PAZ: Yeah, it's like the stock Warriors wiki for kittypets.

LIZ: Aw.

JULIAN: I want him to be like a real chongus.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Okay, moving on. We got Purdy. I think that's a great name.

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

JULIAN: Mm-hmm.

PAZ: Cody.

LIZ: That's just a boy. That's just a guy. A lad.

JULIAN: Cody feels like a dog name to me.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah, if you told me there was an animal named Cody, I think I would assume a dog. Then we have Sasha.

JULIAN: Cute.

PAZ: It's okay.

LIZ: Also feels like a dog name, but like a sort of big furry one.

PAZ: Yeah, kind of.

JULIAN: Mm, I can see that.

PAZ: Then we have another duo. Jacques and Susan.

JULIAN: Perfect.

LIZ: Yes.

JULIAN: Yes.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Jacques is such a good cat name.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: And with Susan, though, that's like...

JULIAN: Yeah. I'm picturing like, you know how kids cartoons have like, sometimes just a very stereotypical French character.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: I'm picturing like a little cartoon where it's like, I'm Jacques. (high-pitched creaky voice) And I'm Susan.

PAZ: Yeah, Jacques has a little beret on.

JULIAN: Yeah, he's all stripey.

LIZ: I've seen this and it's the cooking show that Jacques Pepin had with Julia Child. This is just what it is.

JULIAN: Perfect.

PAZ: We have, um, Jingo. I have to say, don't name your cat that.

LIZ: Mm-mm.

JULIAN: Yeah, I think the cat right after is also bad.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: It's like Jingo and Huss-er. Or Hussar. I don't actually know how to pronounce that word.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Bad.

PAZ: Yeah, it's like a cavalry person. Really leaning on that theme. Then we have Snowdrop.

JULIAN: Perfect.

LIZ: Cute.

PAZ: I think for a little kitten, that would be a very cute name. We have Jigsaw.

[laughter]

Yeah?

LIZ: I love puzzles. That's the only reason I'm laughing.

JULIAN: I think it's a very good cat name.

PAZ: Yeah. Is Seville how you pronounce this next one?

JULIAN: I think so.

LIZ: Yeah, like with the oranges?

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Seville oranges.

JULIAN: Unless you're being super like, "suh-veal" or "suh-vee" or something. But like I don't think anyone...

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: That's like people who say "cwossan."

LIZ: Oh god, can I get another read on that? That was very good.

JULIAN: You want me to...? "Cwossan."

LIZ: Name a cat that.

JULIAN: But you have to say it exactly like that.

PAZ: Uh-huh. Next up we have Bob.

JULIAN: Good.

PAZ: 10 out of 10. Fantastic. Then we have Zelda.

LIZ: Great cat name.

JULIAN: Can I just read this list of like the next like three or four, kind of all in conjunction?

PAZ: Yeah, go ahead.

JULIAN: So we have Bob, Zelda, Max, and Loki.

PAZ: Wow.

JULIAN: Just a real--

PAZ: One for the Marvel fans there.

JULIAN: That's another YA book friend group.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: You have Zelda, your sort of token girl. And then Loki, who clearly chose their own name.

PAZ: Loki's just LARPing. I think we already rated the next two, which is Velvet and Fuzzball.

JULIAN: Fuzzball is still so good.

PAZ: Fuzzball's still fantastic. Okay, everyone brace yourself for the next two. It's Eggs and Bacon.

LIZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: Yes.

LIZ: Best ones.

PAZ: And Eggs and Bacon are the sons of Pancakes.

LIZ: Oh my god, they're siblings. Of course they are.

PAZ: This is 100% the best names on this list.

LIZ: Pancakes, you've done it.

JULIAN: Pack it up. What else can we do?

LIZ: We can't go on.

PAZ: It's so good.

LIZ: Fuck.

PAZ: Oh my god. Okay, um, we got Millie... eh.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: Also, Liz, don't look at these descriptions. I'm covering your eyes.

LIZ: Okay, can I-- I'm covering the half that has the descriptions and I'm just looking at the names.

PAZ: Uh-huh.

LIZ: These... these mostly look like people names going forward.

PAZ: Yeah, yeah. We got Millie, Duke, Ruby, and Socks. I think Socks is cute.

LIZ: Socks is cute.

PAZ: Socks is a classic.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Quince... Okay.

LIZ: So a fruit?

JULIAN: I think it's a fruit.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: You little fruit.

LIZ: Tigerclaw.

PAZ: We have Shnuky.

JULIAN: Oh, that's good.

PAZ: That's a powerful name.

LIZ: Oh, when did that book come out, with the Shnuky in it?

JULIAN: Shnuky's in the mangas.

PAZ: Yeah. Then we have Patch. That's cute.

JULIAN: Cute.

PAZ: Then we have Harry. Once again, that one's just a guy.

JULIAN: Can I just post real quick an image of Shnuky?

PAZ: Yeah, please.

LIZ: Yes.

JULIAN: From the wiki? That may be from the official art. Um, this is not a cat.

LIZ: Wait. Wait a second.

PAZ: Oh my god. That's definitely from the manga.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: That's a man. Or that's some sort of human.

PAZ: This is a human man who's been cursed to be a hairless cat.

JULIAN: He looks like those paintings.

LIZ: This cat has the eyes of Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid.

JULIAN: The legs are also all wonky. They're like--

PAZ: They look like arms.

JULIAN: I'm like... so I assume this is, because I don't want to make fun of it if this is like a child's fan art.

PAZ: No, I think this is the manga for sure.

JULIAN: Oh god.

LIZ: I think it is. It's got that screen tone.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah, I think oh, it does have screen... Yeah, no, this was drawn by an artist. These are human eyes.

PAZ: Yeah, it's kind of scary.

JULIAN: I hate to look at this.

LIZ: They're human eyes and they're begging you to set him free from this cursed form.

JULIAN: God, and the back legs. One knee bends forward like a human's knee. And then the other knee is bending back.

PAZ: God.

LIZ: This is an animorph mid-transformation.

PAZ: Oh god. Okay, we're almost at the end here. Let's get haulin'. Myler.

JULIAN: I... sure?

PAZ: I don't know. I guess.

JULIAN: I don't know how I feel about that.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: It feels like a... like a Kayleigh. Like a Michaela name.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know. It's a name, I guess. Um, Crystal? She's just like, a blonde.

LIZ: That's the name of my old boss.

PAZ: I don't know.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's like, the problem with Crystal is that it is a human name. But it doesn't have the same kind of human name energy that like... Susan--

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: This is no...

JULIAN: --has because it's also an object.

PAZ: This is no Boris.

JULIAN: Yeah, no, not a Boris at all.

PAZ: We have Violet. It's fine.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Riley. Also fine, I guess.

JULIAN: Yeah, Riley's cute I think.

PAZ: Yeah, depending on the cat, I think. Then we have Lulu.

JULIAN: Lulu's very good.

LIZ: Good.

PAZ: That's what my dad calls my cat Loo, whose full name is Waterloo technically.

JULIAN: Aw.

PAZ: Heck yeah.

JULIAN: I didn't know Loo was short for Waterloo. That's really cute.

PAZ: Then we have Madric. I feel like that's something, but I don't know what that is. Okay, googling it just showed me soccer players so I don't know. I guess it's a--

LIZ: This is a jock.

PAZ: Oh my god, this cat's homophobic.

LIZ: What?

PAZ: "He is an antagonistic kittypet who acts hostile towards Ravenpaw and Barley--"

JULIAN: Fuck off, Madric.

PAZ: "--and accuses them of trespassing."

LIZ: Fuck you. Get out of here.

PAZ: Madric's just some fucking straight boy in those like knee length shorts in winter on the football team.

JULIAN: Ravenpaw and Barley don't respect your land borders.

PAZ: No. And then we have Pasha. I don't know why this is the second cat named after historical military officers, but okay.

JULIAN: Isn't Pasha also like a diminutive for like Sasha?

PAZ: Is it?

JULIAN: I thought it was.

PAZ: I believe that, yeah. It probably is. Oh my god. Okay, I just have to read this description. "A dark tabby. He is one of the kittypets tormenting SkyClan."

LIZ: Oh no.

PAZ: Oh god. Okay, that's all the kittypet names.

JULIAN: We did it.

LIZ: I think there's some more.

PAZ: No, I think that's all of them.

LIZ: No, if you click on the-- did we miss Gremlin?

JULIAN: What?

PAZ: Where is this?

JULIAN: Oh, there's-- if we go into List of kittypets, there are more kittypets.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Liz, I don't want you to-- stop clicking around. Please.

JULIAN: Here, I opened it up. There's no spoilers on this list. And we don't have to read them all because there are--

PAZ: No, Liz, close the list. I'm holding a gun up.

JULIAN: 155.

LIZ: I'm closing it.

JULIAN: Um, but I just want to call out a couple of really good ones.

PAZ: Yeah, please.

JULIAN: Bigteeth. Bugeater. Buster.

LIZ: They're good.

JULIAN: Cheddar.

PAZ: Oh god.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Oh, we do have a good-- Daffodil.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: That's cute. Diesel.

JULIAN: Yeah. Um, Gremlin, as mentioned.

LIZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: We have not only Hal, Harry, Harvey, Hattie, and Henry, all of which are good.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Macgyver. Oh, Miss Mama Cat. Hello?

PAZ: Oh my god. That is incredible.

JULIAN: I must know more. Oh, Miss Mama Cat is a different name for a cat who has a separate name.

PAZ: Oh, yeah. Don't click.

LIZ: Spoilers, huh?

PAZ: Look away from this list.

LIZ: I'm not clicking. I'm not clicking.

PAZ: Holding up the gun.

LIZ: I've exited. Don't worry.

PAZ: Okay.

JULIAN: Um, let's see. Raindrop, very good. Scraps.

PAZ: Aw.

JULIAN: Shanty, Snooky.

PAZ: Tiny.

JULIAN: I can't be fond of Tiny because I know who Tiny is.

PAZ: Oh yeah, fuck, I forgot. Yeah, you're right.

LIZ: Oh, that's very ominous.

PAZ: Yeah. That bitch Tiny.

JULIAN: But apparently there are two Tinys. So maybe I can be fond of one of them.

PAZ: No, it says graphic novel.

JULIAN: Oh, they've listed it twice.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: They just haven't sanitized this list well. Um, but yeah, there's some good ones on here. I think we-- oh, Little Mew. I missed Little Mew.

PAZ: Aw.

LIZ: More cats should have little titles.

PAZ: I agree.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Like imagine if--

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: I don't know, Nutmeg was like Miss Nutmeg.

PAZ: Aw, that's very good.

JULIAN: Little Mew is the kit of Husker and Moss and kin to Splash. Their siblings are Pad, Raindrop, and Birdy. And they all live in a barn besides a Twoleg nest.

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: Aw, that's so cute.

LIZ: They're in their own book. This is some like Beatrix Potter shit.

JULIAN: Oh my god, Little Mew has anime bangs.

PAZ: Oh my god, please. Please please please. Oh my. They're horrible.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Little Mew has 90s boy like middle part anime bangs.

LIZ: Little Mew looks exactly like a little boy in Pathologic Classic.

JULIAN: Here's the screentone version of Little Mew so you can see the bangs better.

PAZ: The bangs are colored differently.

LIZ: Little Mew's frosted tips.

JULIAN: Little Mew's center part.

PAZ: Oh God.

JULIAN: Little Mew's Edward Elric haircut.

LIZ: No!

PAZ: It also kinda looks like Yugioh hair.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: I love the Warriors manga. I love that it exists and that it gave all the cats anime bangs.

LIZ: But not the ones we wanted.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Okay, well, that's all the kittypet names. I think there's some pretty good ones here.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: So good job, Erins.

LIZ: 98% good job.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Can I share one more art from the manga?

LIZ: Yes.

PAZ: Oh yeah, please.

JULIAN: This is Birdy.

LIZ: Holy shit. What the fuck.

PAZ: Does she have eyeshadow on?

LIZ: What the... who...

JULIAN: I just, I love that for the manga they appear not to have gotten like furry artists or people who were particularly good at drawing cats.

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: They got some like regular manga artists and were like, hey, you're good at shoujo manga, right? Um, can you draw cats? Don't worry. It's just like people.

LIZ: This cat looks like one of those old cats in the Cats musical.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: This is Grizabella the glamour cat. But this is before she really went downhill. You know? She's got her eyeshadow. She's looking fierce.

PAZ: Uh-huh.

LIZ: This is her in her prime.

PAZ: Yeah. Got her side face fluff styled to perfection.

LIZ: I don't like this expression that the artist has drawn.

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: She looks really vacuous. It's kind of scary.

LIZ: Don't look at me with those big old eyes.

PAZ: Oh gosh. Okay, well, I think that might do it for us. It's been a while. It's been a journey.

LIZ: I think we can agree that there are three really good categories of kittypet names. So there's one, just stuff in the kitchen. Two, just human names. And three, which is just kind of like a cutesy descriptor.

PAZ: Yeah. I agree.

LIZ: Fuzzball, you know, can't top that.

JULIAN: Socks.

LIZ: I think for the new generation of Warrior Cats as a series, if they have more kittypets, there should be cats named Toaster and Tax Return. That seems to be what millennials are doing now, right?

PAZ: No, it's for the children. It has to be like TikTok and, um...

LIZ: This is my cat Fortnite.

PAZ: My cat Fortnite. Exactly.

JULIAN: Name your cat after memes that are like three years old. This is my cat Doge.

PAZ: Oh god.

LIZ: Name your cat Bean Dad now to be already out of date.

PAZ: My cat Milkshake Duck.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: This is my cat Warrior Cat. I'm sure somewhere there is a cat rescue that is naming their cats after memes.

PAZ: Oh, absolutely.

JULIAN: Ensuring that everyone who adopts the cats will immediately rename them.

PAZ: Mind games. Okay, I'm gonna call it here. Great list, some great names. But we'll be back next week reading chapters 11 through 14. And as always, you can follow the show on Twitter @staircast and send in any questions or anecdotes to stairwaytostarclan@gmail.com. I can't remember if there's anything else to plug. Oh, I don't know if I ever mentioned it on the podcast but the episode summaries like written out, I'm linking them in the episode description. If anyone wants to look at that, they're there. Other than that, I think that's it. So until next time, may StarClan light your path. Bye.

JULIAN: Bye.

LIZ: Bye.

[outro music]

Let's podcast. Sorry.

JULIAN: We have to get that MeUndies money.

PAZ: Ugh. MeUndies wishes, but they'll never get us. They won't corner this market.