I mispronounced that) who pointed out that A  Vision of Shadows is an arc I really haven't  

covered much on the channel…which is true,  but uhhh maybe this video will explain why.

A Vision of Shadows is not my favorite  arc…on some days it is my least favorite arc,  

tossing that position back and forth with The New  Prophecy, and while I have several qualms with it,  

the primary thing that prevents A Vision of  Shadows from being in any way appealing to  

me is the characters. I have my gripes with  how the main characters were constructed,  

some of which I've talked about before, and  also how the support characters like Needletail,  

Finleap, or Jayfeather are handled in this arc but  the biggest problems come in the background cast  

where they simply cease to exist at all. With all  of the newest arcs, there has been a trend of more  

background characters being pulled up for a single  line, a short scene, or maybe even a part of a  

book when a character is needed but then thrown  back out immediately after their utility is gone,  

creating very disjointed clans full of nobodies  who mainly just fulfill the purposes of being  

mean to or oppositions for our point of view  characters. This is especially true with any  

characters who were specifically born at the end  of or after Omen of the Stars, but even some of  

the older characters who were less prominent  are shoved into obscurity of different levels  

and often stripped of any notable personality or  relationships they had before. I really hate this,  

on a personal level. I am someone who mainly  goes into fiction looking for characters I  

can understand and see grow and relationships  between those characters that I can feel happy  

to see flourish. Refusing to flesh out characters  to any extent and instead slotting their names  

into lines you need at random prevents any of that  from occurring, and it is made even worse when,  

to fuel the plots, most of the lines  you slot them into are derisive, cruel,  

and / or illogical. It ends up feeling like the  clans are filled to the brim with mouse-brained  

jerks who serve no purpose other than to make us  pity the protagonist for having to deal with them.

Here I am showing lists of every Thunderclan,  Shadowclan, and Skyclan cat born or introduced  

at the very end of Omen of the Stars or during the  A Vision of Shadows period. I'm focusing on these  

to give a fair shot in just showing clans we have  points of views in at some point. Immediately you  

can see the first problem: too many stinkin'  cats. There was already a big kit boom at the  

end of Omen of the Stars and in between that arc  and A Vision of Shadows, but this arc also opens  

us up to points of view in three clans instead  of one. Inevitably only some of the cats are  

going to be able to get much focus. And just as a  fun piece of evidence, here they are in order of  

how many lines they have. Of course we have the  protagonists and the closest support characters  

who get higher counts, but after three or four top  characters, no one manages to get even 50 lines  

across all six books in the arc, and before long  every clan gets into the single-digits, a problem  

especially prevalent in Thunderclan where tons of  new characters were born or carried over from the  

end of the last arc without being given any time  or focus in this new story. Even many of those who  

*are* prominent in this arc will practically  disappear in next arcs while only a few of  

the currently-obscure cats will ever be given  prominence in the future, let alone consistent  

prominence. Now, if any of the lines these  background characters get are intentional or added  

to an overall picture the authors themselves note  down about who these cats are, then no matter how  

long it takes, characters will eventually form.  However, Warriors is and always has been a series  

written by the seat of the Erins' pants, and their  deadlines and lack of a series bible force them to  

instead assign random lines or roles to whatever  character wins the lottery in one chapter and let  

them go in the next. That makes it very hard  to do a deep dive of, say Dewnose in the way I  

would for Hazeltail or Thornclaw, but it is what  I have promised so let's at least give a couple  

of these cats a try. I'm going to randomize which  cats I actually cover for each clan, discounting  

everyone with more than a hundred or less than  five lines just to give these guys a chance.

So first up…looks like Grassheart! She was  Tawnypelt's apprentice during Bramblestar's  

Storm but is introduced as a queen in the second  book of this arc. Several characters mention  

her and her kits without her being on screen.  However, she gets two full lines in this book:  

one asking who Alderpaw is and one telling  Violetkit that she has never seen her kit,  

Snakekit, so ill. Her kits become apprentices,  also with no word from her, and she returns to  

warrior duties in time for the Shattered Sky…where  she is mentioned exactly once by Darktail when  

he asks Rain for an assessment of her talent,  which was that she wasn't the greatest fighter  

but not likely to be a traitor to the Kin. Onto  Darkest Night! Here she uh…watches a speech from  

Rowanstar, suggests that they send out a search  party to look for the six-toed cat, exchanges  

glances with Stonewing in a sign of distrusting  Rowanstar, suggests the exact same search party  

again, blames Scorchfur for driving Rowanstar  away, presses around her kits with Stonewing  

who is now confirmed to be her mate for the first  time ever, suggests Shadowclan get supplies from  

their old camp before moving to Skyclan, cheers  Violetshine's warrior name along with the clan,  

and finally questions why Berryheart and  Yarrowleaf haven't returned to the clan. Already  

we're seeing the results of haphazardly assigning  lines to cats, as this book's meager pickings for  

her have had her be both for and against Rowanstar  as a leader. Even in this *very* small number  

of lines, she already has inconsistency, and  certainly no depth. This continues in River of  

Fire where she starts by demanding an answer as  to what Twigpaw is doing there, though she does  

accept Violetshine. Later she and Strikestone run  into Thunderclan and ask for Hawkwing because the  

missing Shadowclan cats have returned and  even later she gets her fourth and final  

line explaining that they're going to the Moonpool  where Tigerheart was taken. Finally, in The Raging  

Storm, she and Strikestone watch the Gathering  with neutral expressions, she goes on a patrol,  

and Violetshine thinks about her being caring if  not motherly when she was a kit. Grassheart gets  

attacked twice by Leafstar before and after she  calls to retreat and runs away. Medicine cats are  

mentioned to be treating her wounds a few times  and she says it hurts. Much later, she says that  

a Shadowclan warrior would never poison someone  because they settle arguments with claws like  

warriors. She also defends Tigerstar for wanting  to keep their land to protect Shadowclan. She and  

Snaketooth escort Alderheart to the border when  her wound heals and she notices that Tigerstar  

looked angry with Alderheart and checks in on  him…and that's everything she does in the arc. Her  

main role is as a mother, a sub-par warrior, and  a patient so there's not a lot to go on beyond the  

stock Warriors she-cat characterization. She also  never interacts with her former mentor Tawnypelt,  

here or in Bramblestar's Storm, so it's impossible  to say what that relationship was like. It is  

probably true that she likes her mate and kits  and she appears to be at least friendly with  

Strikestone as well, in a single book. Her values,  though, are very difficult to pin down thanks to  

the contradictions and the best I can say is that  she probably believes in fights solving problems  

to some degree. She at least has an implied  relationship with Alderheart after he treated her  

for so long but how that changes her perceptions  of other clans or what either of them honestly  

feel about each other beyond generic thanks is  completely unknown. Mostly, she's just she-cat:  

there to provide kits, fill in background space,  and expound on the current plot details we need to  

notice when her name is selected from a hat. Keep  in mind, she's also one of the more prominent cats  

on this list, about average. This is just what A  Vision of Shadows tends to give its characters.

As Skyclan's representative, the randomizer has  given me Nectarpaw: a kit born in Hawkwing's  

Journey who is an apprentice when she's introduced  in Darkest Night. Her first appearance is,  

in fact, being introduced by Nettlesplash,  her father. Later she and a bunch of other  

apprentices go on a patrol to the twolegplace and  she gets her first two lines encouraging Violetpaw  

to climb a tree while the other apprentices stay  down and telling her not to listen to Gravelpaw,  

who already thinks he's a warrior. Later it is  noted that both Nectarpaw and Fringepaw have  

“lost their shyness” and become more friendly with  their new denmate: Violetpaw, though I can't help  

wishing we ever saw any evidence of this. We also  learn in passing that Nectarpaw had, at one point,  

wandered too close to a twoleg patrol and been  saved by Molewhisker. She gets excited when they  

approach the lake, though that quickly drained  into hunger, that they relieved by going hunting  

with Gravelpaw and Nettlesplash, and that's  the last thing she does in the book. In River  

of Fire, she unfortunately only appears in the  allegiances, but in The Raging Storm, she is seen  

practicing battle moves with Pigeonpaw, defends  Shadowclan by saying they didn't invade Skyclan,  

collects and weaves tendrils into a  den with Sunnypaw and Nettlesplash,  

gets excited about an announcement from Leafstar  about whether or not they'll leave the lake with  

some other apprentices, asks Harrybrook how far  the journey to the gorge will be, gets worried for  

Sunnypaw when she gets stuck in some mud and  quickly finds a stick to help in the rescue,  

and soon she and all the apprentices decide  that they only want to live at the lake where  

they were born. In two more instances, she  helps out with creating and reinforcing nests  

and her last action is being injured, getting a  twisted paw that causes a brief limp. Nectarpaw,  

in the three books of this arc she appears in,  is exactly what I would prefer from a background  

character. I would *like* it if her friendship  with different cats had more confirmation but  

she clearly cares a lot for and spends time with  Sunnypaw and Gravelpaw as well as being friendly  

with every apprentice, can be pretty excitable  but also tires and gets frustrated easily like  

you'd expect of a young kid, and seems to  be taking on a secondary hobby of seeking  

out information on and taking part in the building  aspect of dens and nests. I couldn't tell you any  

of this was intentional, but it was consistent  and these are elements that could be taken and  

expanded on if a story focused on her more  closely. Of course, being in Skyclan where  

none of the protagonists had to be bullied  by them might have helped in that. Anyway,  

having said that, let's move onto our third  kitty cat, the Thunderclan representative.

For this one, the randomizer has selected…oh  no. Uh, Stormcloud. Okay so if Grassheart  

showed how most fully-background  cats are handled, thoughtlessly,  

and Nectarpaw showed what can happen when  a background character is given more than  

the average, Stormcloud is what happens  when a cat who already had interesting  

characterization is actively shoved into the  background. Stormcloud, if you aren't familiar,  

was once a kittypet named Frankie who came with  Minty and Jessy to Thunderclan during the flood  

in Bramblestar's Storm. They were all kittypets  who had lost their homes and, in Frankie's case,  

he lost his brother Benny as well. By the end of  the story, Minty wanted to get back to her plush  

kittypet home and Jessy didn't find anything  in clan life she couldn't already get elsewhere  

but Frankie decided to stay in Thunderclan and  became Stormpaw, then Stormcloud, apprenticed to  

Squirrelflight until he took up the duties of a  full Thunderclan warrior. That is an incredibly  

unique and interesting backstory. So what does he  do here, in his first main series arc? Well in the  

first book, he only appears in the allegiances. In  the second, he goes on a patrol and helps to track  

down the rogues in Shadowclan. In the third book,  he visits the medicine den, guiltily because of  

how many cats are injured, with some insomnia and  breathing problems, and says he misses Purdy. He  

mentions he never had to put up with any of this  when he was a kittypet, but though he believes in  

what Thunderclan stands for, he's worried there  won't be any clans at all soon. He exists for  

this one scene in this one chapter and not ever  in the rest of the book. So in the fourth book,  

he's one of three cats to run past Brackenfur when  some rock falls into camp. In the fifth book, he  

and Leafshade check on a fire near Skyclan and he  mentions this is just like old times, referring to  

the flood in Bramblestar's Storm. He later spends  one line imploring Bramblestar to take in Velvet  

and Fuzzball since taking in him didn't go badly.  And finally, in his last chance, the sixth book…he  

only appears in the allegiances again. A total  of one scene and two one offhand comments across  

this arc bring up Stormcloud's past to involve him  at all and he never grows beyond being the cat he  

was in Bramblestar's Storm. How is he adjusting to  Thunderclan? Who knows! Does he have any friends?  

Who knows! Does he have any hobbies or thoughts  about his past life? Who knows! This is the case  

that actually gets me the most annoyed since they  didn't have to come up with anything. Stormcloud,  

a brand new character with tons of unique  qualities, was right there for you. You just  

had to use him and you didn't. You didn't use  *most* of the resources you had for characters.

Whether because of the larger cast, the new team,  lack of time, an adherence to the plot, a need to  

give the protagonists enough detractors, or some  combination, background characters in this arc  

were given little to no interest, and sometimes  actively kept away from the interest they had  

before…which might explain why I haven't done many  videos on them. It's entirely possible that I'll  

try to do a more thorough dive of a support  character in A Vision of Shadows one day,  

one that the narrative cared about for at least  some amount of time, and at some point I might  

try to write a more holistic story for one of  these cats using every piece of their life,  

not just the scraps A Vision of Shadows gives  them, but I don't want to confine myself to this  

period for much longer. It's a dark place to live,  where no one cares about developing relationships  

and the community that had begun to peek through  in the past three arcs is shredded into dust for