📚✏🐅 for the ask meme

sparrowminder:

📚- Favorite book or series?

I’ll admit it, I loved Firestar’s Quest, despite all its flaws. I’m just a sucker for clan-building stories. My favorite Warriors fanfic is Snatched, which is also a clan-building story. I love reading about accumulating cats one by one, getting to know each of them and giving them ranks and names…If I were to ever actually write a full Warriors fanfic, it would definitely be a clan-building fic.

🐅- Favorite cat?

Well, when I first read the books, Bluestar was one of my favorites, but since reading and discussing Bluestar’s Prophecy, I’ve become a little disillusioned with her. Cinderfur and Brightheart, on the other hand, are excellent through and through and I love them both very much.

✏ – If you rewrote Warriors, what would you change?

Ok, I purposely saved this one for last.

Starting from the first arc. There are some things that I’d change for sure (like kicking those misogynist and ableist tropes right outta there), but ultimately I’d be aiming to maintain the same magic that Into the Wild held for me. That means the focus of the first arc would be drawing the reader deeper and deeper into this world. Weave in more myths and stories, flesh out side characters more, etc.

Part of that would be giving Firestar a little more of an actual character arc I guess? I remember him getting more mature, but I genuinely can’t remember if he had a real character arc at all or if it was just him moving from apprentice to warrior to leader that gave a sense of progression. I feel like this could go two ways – either he learns to embody the virtues of the clan as their leader, or he aims to change the clan for the better. I’d probably go for the latter, just cause, y’know, he’s Firestar, and also that would really set the stage for a full rewrite.

I think the first arc would mostly keep the same story beats, though. I really liked Scourge, but thematically a lot more could be done with him…I’ll be honest, I don’t know what exactly, since I have no intention of actually doing a rewrite, but something for sure.

Past that I have to speak in broader terms. I like the idea of the journey for sure, but it kind of disappoints me that they built up this cool setting and immediately left it behind? So instead the cool roadtrip buddies would have to do something together at home. They would be together though, because otherwise we’re getting so wildly off course it’s kind of a pointless exercise. Maybe a prophecy that seems pretty clearly about one cat, but that’s interpreted differently by every clan, so they all show up ready for their special adventure and instead it’s party time for everyone? That could be fun to play with.

Anyway, then there’s Power of Three stuff. There are so many very cool ideas about alternate cats the Three could be…I think I would keep Jay, Holly, and Lion (and maybe even Dove but have her be actually a fourth instead of shunting Holly out), but split them up somehow. Someone in one of the Discord servers was talking about them being kin of cats Firestar considers his family but aren’t necessarily blood related, which is fun, but there’s a lot of other routes to go too. The one thing I can tell you is Hollyleaf gets a power of some sort. Even if I cut the whole magical powers thing you better believe Hollyleaf has some cool unique ability because she absolutely deserves it.

And….I’m literally clueless about what’s been happening after that, so we’ll stop there! But there’s my very loose ideas on things I would change about the Warriors canon.