"The plots are bad" is debatable.

It's probably true for at least the second and fourth series,

both of which seem written as they went along, but they're always at least passable,

even the worst situations are passable.

Reading the books for the first time, the plots are never so bad that they're disruptive, only disappointing.

"The cats have dumb names" is a petty, barely applicable problem to have, especially with it being

incredibly subjective in the first place, but it's always the first thing I hear

when you ask somebody what's bad about Warrior Cats.

Sorry, buddy, the names have been quote-unquote "bad" since the first book.

I think you're in too deep now.

"There's too many forbidden relationships" is another tiny, annoying thing people always say.

The series was built on forbidden relationships.

If you've got a problem with it, ya shouldn't be reading Warrior Cats.

There's more forbidden relationships condensed in the first series than there are in any other set,

and by the standards it's set, it's really a shame in my opinion that this issue

has never been seriously tackled or questioned by the cats as a whole.

But my biggest issue with Warriors isn't the world they're in, the way the cats

don't follow realistic behaviors or genetics, or any sort of issue with the plot or storyline.

And people believe that I don't like Warrior Cats, but I promise you that if I didn't like it,

I wouldn't be here making two videos a week about how good Spottedleaf smells.

If my single, sort of complicated issue was solved, I would be able to overlook every other issue.

The other problem here is that I'm not sure what to call it,

but I'll give an attempt with "lack of realistic community."

I've talked about this briefly in other videos and in streams

(actually I think extensively in streams),

but I figured I'd give it a little bit more attention.

Within Warrior Cats, there's a very specific lacking character element.

We have huge clans, some with forty to sixty cats, where there's nearly no gossip.

No rivalries, no cliques, and romance that needs to be read between the lines to even register as a romance.

While the first series is passable in this element,

(if not, just for how Tigerstar divides ThunderClan),

starting with the second series, there's less and less of it.

Cats barely have friends, there's very little note made about who's friends with who or who doesn't get along,

in fact, beyond the plot relevant resentment carried by Ashfur during the second series

(well, third series as well),

there's barely any animosity between ThunderClan cats at all.

Rivalries between cats like Berrynose and Lionpaw are so loosely covered that they're hard to even remember.

There's usually no climax, with these situations ending in barely tied strings

or passing comments at the end of any given series.

As soon as an element of clan life is covered, it's out of sight, out of mind.

Things are introduced to distract or derail our main characters,

and then forgotten about as quickly as they came.

For example, Twigbranch spends most of the first half of The Raging Storm

extremely frustrated with training her apprentice.

You would expect that an element of this book would be her learning how to treat her,

learning how to properly understand her apprentice, learning to be a better mentor.

Maybe actually interacting with or having a heart-to-heart with the cat she's teaching.

But instead this is forgotten about and covered in past tense every time it's brought up.

"She'd learned that her apprentice worked better when they were in an unusual part of the forest.

Fresh stimulation seemed to keep her focused, and so, whenever she could,

Twigbranch challenged Flypaw with tricky battle moves or prey that was hard to catch."

"Flypaw was taking her time, but Twigbranch resisted the urge to hurry her on.

She knew that the young she-cat did her best when she was allowed to go at her own speed."

Okay Twig, but how did you learn that? When? It's boring to have these things told and not shown,

especially when it's time that you could have spent on Flypaw's personality,

on developing her as a character, on... you know, just giving this world a little bit more... of a realistic feel,

and I don't mean realistic in a sense of cats that look like cats or cats that act like cats,

I mean realistic as in realistic for a society of sentient beings with health care

and friends and enemies and relationships.

We're left with clans full of cats that are just placidly coexisting.

There's nothing going on when the cats aren't having a fight.

The cats never have personal problems smaller than knowing when somebody's plotting a murder.

Okay, not never.

In The Raging Storm, the same book that forgets about Twig's apprentice issues halfway through,

Twigbranch had a little bit of a rocky relationship with her mate Finleap.

A little bit more than rocky.

The resolution of which was that Finleap and Twigbranch should be talking to each other

instead of just assuming how the other feels and should act.

Not having conversations is plot relevant here,

but it's also something that applies to the whole of Warrior Cats.

I can't remember the last time there was a minor character about,

and the character we're following so much as said hello.

Hollytuft has been there your entire life Alderheart, the least you could do is introduce yourself.

When cats do have personal problems, they're usually ignored.

Nothing eats away at these cats enough for them to actually confront others.

And when they do want to talk to another cat about their problem, they're always conveniently stopped.

"Oh, you can't tell Cinderpaw she's Cinderpelt!

She needs to live a life as a warrior.

You know, even though that would make Cinderpaw a more interesting and relevant character.

Even though it would only take a minor excuse or a minute of explanation

to prevent her from going back to the life of a medicine cat.

Even though we never do anything, anything at all with the plot point

that Cinderpelt's ghost is possessing Cinderpaw's body."

A lot of the conflict in Warrior Cats is unnecessarily dragged out just by the fact that

everyone is too secretive to tell anyone else anything.

Although, recently, this secretiveness has been replaced by the leader and medicine cat

won't believe me-ness, which is just as annoying.

There's one example of interesting personal drama in all of Warrior Cats in my opinion,

and it's about a character named Ashfur.

You know Ashfur, everyone knows Ashfur.

And I'm not saying it's great, it's filled with the same issues that the rest of Warrior Cats has.

Sudden undeveloped relationships, ignored conflict, the works.

But unlike other Warrior Cats personal drama it was interesting.

I'll run through this quickly just in case you haven't read the books.

It goes like this...

Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw quickly and briefly become a couple late in Dawn, and they fight like so.

Squirrelflight says, "Brambleclaw, your brother is evil and manipulating you."

Brambleclaw says, "Squirrelflight, you are an unreasonable and hysterical woman."

Squirrelflight is upset by this, so she goes and hangs out with Ashfur

and also, seemingly in one of the few post first-series examples of a friend group, Thornclaw and Spiderleg.

This makes Brambleclaw very, very angry.

"Why is the women that I've spent 4 books being a jerk to hanging around with another boy? How dare she!"

Squirrelflight likes Ashfur when it seemed like Squirrelflight liked Brambleclaw.

This, for some reason, is taken as extremely inappropriate behavior on Squirrelflight's part.

She is scolded for not making up her mind by her mother, and the book expects

its teenage girl audience to be bored and angry with a love triangle.

And don't get me wrong, some of them were, but certainly not me in 2008.

Without much of any resolution to the Hawkfrost problem,

Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight quickly get together again.

This visibly upsets Ashfur and then, for some wonderful reason, the authors decided that Ashfur didn't let this go,

that he stirred on his anger and he allowed it to manifest.

It builds up, Ashfur is visibly off throughout the rest of the books, leading up to a huge confrontation,

which not only allows him to scream his feelings, but also gives a good point for a dramatic reveal.

Victoria Holmes admits that she built the entire third series around freighting what we call, "the fire scene",

which is very obvious and almost absolutely the most memorable part of Warriors post first-series.

I want more of this.

Not this specific situation, I just want more emotional resolution.

I want more of characters remembering how they feel

and more background characters just being actual characters.

What makes the situation interesting is that there's something off about Ashfur.

And not only is there something strange about him, you can guess it before it happens

and many people did, right as the books were comming out.

This story arc carries an actual consistency and it has foreshadowing

and things that just don't happen in other Warrior Cats books.

And don't you dare try to hit me with that,

"Ashfur was a good boy before they just decided to make him evil!" nonsense.

He was a nothing before they decided to make him evil.

He didn't have any personality whatsoever before he started brooding.

So... like-he, he was a background character, he was Brackenfur, he was Thornclaw.

If you liked Ashfur before he was bad, you should like, you know, Brackenfur, Thornclaw, Rainwhisker,

just any one of these background characters that don't have any personality or motivation whatsoever.

I don't want elements of cats' friendships and rivalries to be mentioned and then forgotten about.

I want cats to have developments and conclusions to their social problems.

Here's another example of this being annoying.

Leafpool is upset that Sorreltail has stopped being her friend in favor of Brackenfur and being a mother.

It's used to get Sorreltail out of the way, to get Leafpool to rely on someone else.

But this situation was placed in my brain. It was established.

Leafpool misses Sorreltail.

But does she talk about it? No, never.

She laments once that she can't be close to her friend.

It's mentioned, and then suddenly all elements of

Sorreltail and Leafpool's once close friendship are evaporated.

If they were just a little bit more developed, if their friendships and relationships

were a little bit more complicated, I feel like even the filler plots could be carried with a lot more interest.

Because this works hand in hand with books where not much of anything happens.

Slow books that come after an end of an important plot, that won't affect much of the world around them.

And if there was a little bit more character development, maybe these books

would feel like they had a little bit more impact.

There will be little, filler elements, maybe in one book there's a fox problem, maybe in another book

the main characters are busy training apprentices,

but these issues are usually putting on hold the developments of personal relationships

instead of fueling them.

An exception to this is super editions where, probably due to the nature of it being a single book

(usually, and with a HARD usually here),

the characters actually have some level of character development and personal relationships.

Hawkwing's journey was full of characters with all sorts of dynamics, and they all died,

but at least we had some level of consistency in emotional resolution.

My hope for the new arc, and Warrior Cats going forward, is that they do more

to develop the clans and the people in them.

I want them to treat cats more as individuals and less as a collective,

and also do less to bother preserving the perfection of characters and older generations.

Bramblestar can make mistakes, older cats don't need to live on forever.

Maybe Hollytuft is a real jerk. We don't know because Hollytuft is a blank slate.

Actually, here's a list of characters who are complete blank slates

that the authors could do literally anything with if they just remembered they were there.

Please give us some clicks Erin Hunter, you have the power.

Give us some relationship drama at least, and I'm not talking relationship drama between two people,

I'm talking relationship drama between several people, like Poppyfrost in The Fourth Apprentice,

but it actually has some weight to it instead of just being an excuse for

Breezepelt to kick Jayfeather's *censored* and quickly resolved by a ghost.

I mean relationship drama that is actually causing several people stress,

like in real life, every single time it happens.

And thus ends another "Moonkitti gets angry about cat books" video.

Thank you for attending!