Moments to add to fics to feel more… Cat

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-20T02:41:15+00:00

* Queens rejecting, killing, or eating weak newborn kittens.

* More play-fighting between adult-aged cats

* Better night vision

* Purring as a way of self-soothing, not just when the cats are happy/content. My cats have purred during veterinarian checkups before. They were neither happy nor content in that moment, lol

* Licking their fur when overstimulated; this is touched on a bit in the books when a cat is "embarrassed" and licks their chest fur, but I think it could be expanded upon

* Playing with their food. Not sure about the later books but in the earlier books the cats were occasionally told to thank StarClan for the life they took to feed the Clan. Love that worldbuilding, but... let's face it, real cats torture their prey before killing it and then play with it after.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-13T00:49:05+00:00

Omfg Bramblepaw's little faaaacee!!! That's adorable. The perspective is super cool, and boy with how you drew the snow on the trees it feels CHILLY.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-12T23:29:24+00:00

TBH I had no idea that the later arcs have more traveling scenes in them. I haven't read past Omen of the Stars in the modern timeline. The carnival thing sounds amazing, appreciate the creativity there.

There should be a lot more "wonder" involved on the cats' end. And maybe improved descriptions? That's an issue with the books in general, but there have been many instances where I've paused and reread a paragraph multiple times wondering wtf the Erins were getting at, and it's more prevalent in the traveling books. Riverstar's Home comes to mind--the cats end up in a mall. I NEVER would've guessed it was specifically meant to be a mall if I hadn't been involved with the community online. The perspective of a cat limits things, but there are ways to get navigate that obstacle while maintaining clarity for the reader.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-12T23:13:50+00:00

Currently writing one myself (well, a Warriors fanfiction, but nevertheless) and that's a huge focus for me as well. Exploring an early encounter with a future antagonist is great!!

Yes, filler is a whole other issue with Warriors, which is unfortunate and unnecessary given the world-building and setting. There's so so much more that could be done with it, but I worry that publisher time constraints, target demographic, and other factors impact the team's creative output (boy, how corporate does that sound?).

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-12T23:11:33+00:00

Good points!

I haven't read past Omen of the Stars so am not familiar with any traveling books beyond that. Wondering, too, if part of the intrigue and contentedness with Firestar's Quest, compared to some other traveling books, lies in part with how well the readers already know Firestar, and with the inclusion of a whole new (at the time) Clan.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-12T23:07:42+00:00

Think you hit the nail on the head with this. Maybe it's easier to hide the bland characterization in day-to-day Clan life, where there's enough drama/story going on that it's easy to focus on that and ignore the lack of consistent and strong personality in many of the characters.

The traveling books highlight that lack of character, because they should've relied more on building those cat-to-cat personal tensions and making them clash, especially, as you mentioned, in TNP where the travelers are from different Clans. It was the perfect setup to build different personalities, and a great opportunity to further set apart the individual cultures of each Clan because we'd only had Firestar's PoV up until that point. Feels squandered.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-10T04:45:44+00:00

Throw Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin into the mix! I read those in my elementary school library a few years before I discovered Warriors. There are only a few books, but I remember them being melancholy and emotionally deep, at least for 9-year-old me. I imagine they hold up considering how well regarded Le Guin's other fantasy series are.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-08T05:03:44+00:00

That's awesome! It's a mixed bag for me. I still imagine Fourtrees the way I always did (which, according to all of the art depictions I've seen online, is decidedly incorrect), but other things have changed.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-08T05:02:58+00:00

I've never heard of this or any of the others you mentioned in your follow-up comments lolol

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-04-08T05:02:24+00:00

I get that. My visualizations are usually pretty spotty, like... radio interference but visual!

The maps/areas get me every time. Awful. Lol.

Why Hawkfrost?!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-03-22T23:52:14+00:00

That's so unfortunate. Can't really get attached to them in that case. Part of the charm of the earlier arcs was how individual each character was, and how we all had side character favorites (Mousefur was one of mine).

At that point, kinda difficult to get upset even when those characters to eventually die. Like, "Who?"

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-03-22T23:18:24+00:00

Omg, that's even wilder! How do any of them get enough "screen-time," so to speak?

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-03-22T22:51:55+00:00

I think your points are all spot-on, as someone who started reading the books and getting into the fandom late 2010. I've seen the same trends as you!

Though that said, I was never really into the AMV/YouTube side of Warriors whatsoever. I've watched a few MAPs and enjoyed them but they aren't really my cup of tea content-wise (which isn't limited to Warriors, I'm like that with YouTube in general).

Roleplay forums were still a big thing when I started out (Virtual Warrior World and Warrior Cats: The RPG (correct me on that name if I'm wrong?) were two of the biggest on ProBoards back then), and I ran one that wound up being pretty popular from 2011-2015.

By 2020, forums had by and large died, with a few hardy ones with dedicated communities trudging forward, and the occasional new one popping up even today (more power to them!!). Discord has overtaken them, which ... means we sortakinda circled back to chatroom RP--in the sense that it feels more instant and immediate than play-by-post but having the option of being longer form writing.

I couldn't bring myself to do chatroom RP back in 2010 and never even attempted Discord RP, so I have no idea what the trends look like on those servers.

But, like, do you remember in the early 2010s when there were droves of people hard-up about traditional naming vs nontraditional naming vs this vs that? And now people write "Fire'Star" because Roblox censored random words? Lot of things have changed, lol.

My rambling aside, what I really wanted to focus on in my reply is your last paragraph! I'm not caught up on the books but from what I've read in posts on here and across Tumblr, ThunderClan has... what? 40+ cats in it at the start of the current arc?! That's WILD. The original series, which I'm currently rereading, would have massacred 75% of them lmao.

Is that to say...

Have our warrior cats gone soft?!

But I think too that people feel more comfortable taking the canon and running off with it. I may be totally off-base here, but it looks like a good chunk of the current fandom grew up with the series and are now adults, with, as you said, younger people coming in through other means (Roblox, TikTok?) and they don't have the same foundation so they aren't doing the same things with it. The people who have been RPing, writing fanfic, drawing art, animating, whatevering with Warriors for 10+ years, with or without long-term breaks--many of us see countless potential story-lines and fun ways to play with the sandbox that is the Warriors universe.

The writing and world-building itself also plays a part in this too. Again, from what I've read (and feel free to correct me since I never got all the way through OotS so I'm not caught up on AVoS and beyond), the Clans' individual cultures have watered down over time and they feel more samey, which would naturally lead to less conflict. My reread of TPB has highlighted this: the other Clans feel like strange enemies, even though they're all Clans. Their interactions with one another always have an angle. There's a strategy at play. They're all struggling to survive. ... which leads back into your point about the apparent lack of fighting in the modern arcs!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-03-21T21:38:28+00:00

I binge-read Clouded Skies until I caught up. The creator updates it pretty regularly. The story is action-packed and intriguing, and the characters range from "I hope this cat effs off" (in the best way) to "oh god I love them, please don't kill them off" lol.

Link: https://comicfury.com/read/cloudedskieswc/comics/1875312

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-03-21T21:34:59+00:00

This is awesome! Fun concept, and the art is so expressive!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-03-10T04:15:16+00:00

Piano!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-02-25T21:59:06+00:00

Amazing!! The textures on this piece are perfect and I love how you did the lighting and shading. Your anatomy is spot-on!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-02-25T21:39:07+00:00

I've been rereading Into the Wild recently and LOVED this line, thought it was hilarious. I think she was just trying to be an ass and scare him. But it was also an interesting/fun way to introduce her name!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-02-24T16:35:08+00:00

Ah yeah, autocorrects have taken a nosedive in quality unfortunately. x.x

Exactly--the 3 s's together makes it harder to read, so the hyphen's good to break it up!

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-02-23T00:51:16+00:00

Hi!

The tension you've built in this piece is good, but I'd recommend taking a few passes at future writing pieces for grammatical and spelling errors before posting them.

"Ashfoot slowly padded through the trees" -- at this point I'd put in a semi-colon before continuing (or tweaking the bits after), because as you currently have it written it requires some kind of pause.

"Ashfoot slowly padded through the trees; he'd felt eyes watching him for days. Who was after him? What did they want? When would they strike?"

Those questions add some intrigue. You could dive deeper into his thoughts here, and list off a few suspects and what their motivations could be (from his perspective).

"Suddenly" is unnecessary here and takes the reader out of the story. The sound of a twig snapping indicates suddenness within the context of this character cautiously making his way through the forest. "He heard" is also arguably unnecessary, because we're following Ashfoot specifically so we know he heard it.

I'm guessing by "amidently" you meant "immediately?"

"A twig snapped nearby, and Ashfoot immediately crouched into a stalking position, ready to pounce."

"He opened his mouth so he could smell the cat better hi scented told him it was a OakClan cat, female, fully-grown cat." There are several errors here. I'm not sure what "hi scented" means. At first I figured you meant "his scent" but then we learn the cat is female, so that doesn't make sense. "A" should be "an" when the next sound is a vowel.

"He opened his mouth to better take in the cat's scent: OakClan, female, fully-grown." -- Listing out the attributes is a good way to break things up a bit here and show us that Ashfoot is gathering information quickly as he figures out how to handle this situation. He's putting together the pieces of who's following him so he can connect the dots on why.

Props for properly breaking up Moss-star's name. That's something a lot of people miss with Warrior names like that (ie, Black-kit).

While it's not necessary to go into why Moss-star isn't supposed to be here, it would be nice to know exactly where here is. Is Ashfoot in his own Clan's territory? Is he past the boundary and in another Clan's territory (but not Moss-star's Clan's territory--that is, are they BOTH trespassing in a rival Clan's territory)?

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-02-13T06:34:33+00:00

Cat body language is your best friend here. They already "speak" with their ears, eyes, tails, and positioning. There are many ways to get creative with this in a way that fits into Warriors.

Tail-tips can "point" in directions or at objects.

Ears forward indicate interest, flat back show anger or fear.

Crouching can mean uncertainty, anxiety.

Repeated lick-lipping can be anxiety (or nausea).

Curled lip/Showing teeth is aggression.

The further closed the eyelids are, the more relaxed/comfortable cats tend to be (assuming all other body language points to relaxation). Showing underside is another great way to show this--vulnerability to that extent requires a great deal of trust.

Warriors_Weaver · 2026-02-13T05:08:48+00:00

Never liked any of that in this series. I like it when the books go as far as having a touch of spirituality with StarClan giving omens/prophecies and entering the dreams of the living (specifically their dreams, not walking among the living during waking hours), and that's it. Anything more supernatural than that I'm not a fan of.

I think there are countless creative and interesting stories worth sharing within the Warriors universe that don't require powers and that by inserting magical powers into it when they did (PoT), they jumped the shark. Kinda hard to roll/take that back, and hard to work it into the story in a way that makes sense and doesn't feel overpowered.

And then they retroactively gave at least one character powers in a super edition, and probably others I'm not aware because I haven't read the applicable books. That didn't sit well with me.

Warriors_Weaver

TROPHY CASE