Since they’re feral cats, they should be dying more than they do. So, what percentage (or any form of ratio) of kits do you think should actually make it to adulthood? And how many would die as kits vs dying as apprentices?
fsdjkl let's fucking go.
(i'm going to talk about this in more detail in this answer, but i have talked about this before in the inaugural post for wbcd)
warriors but cats die
this whole thing is going to be long so...cut.
so before i get too far into this, i should say, i don't have any kind of data to back up my decisions. i based this off my memory of the first arc and bluestar's prophecy, and i have spreadsheets that walked through it. i'm not sure if i'm going to share any of those, i just want to say that i've walked through this and i know it checks out.
anyway, we're focusing on kits and apprentices here, odds that were significantly less impacted by narrative strength. (e.g., deputies get age immunity, because they're supposed to die at around 3/series, which means that how old they are and how many warriors need to die doesn't really apply to them.)
so! one thing to keep in mind is...okay, how do i put this.
in tpb, a lot of kits were born. like, a lot. there's frostfur's litter, goldenflower's two litters, speckletail's litter, brindleface's litter, ferncloud's litter, and honestly probably more?
like, basically, the nursery is, "oh hey we need to give some apprentices for plot purposes" and fireheart sticks his head in for the first time in 3 months and finds out that there are like twelve new kits yeah.
anyway, there are basically 0 kits in tnp, which makes sense, and then a metric fuckton of kits in po3, which also makes sense. seriously, i believe we have berrypaw, hazelpaw, mousepaw, cinderpaw, molepaw, poppypaw, honeypaw, lionpaw, hollypaw, and jaypaw, with foxkit and icekit being apprenticed not long after bhm's warrior ceremonies, and possibly before.
that's 12 kits within like. nine months? it's so many kits.
anyway, oots doesn't count because the allegiances are copy-pasted and poppyfrost spends like two years in the nursery or something, i don't remember anything in avos except violetshine, and tbc is. weird.
but! you can directly blame thunderclan's overpopulation on po3. because basically all of those cats live to have kits. no, seriously. poppyfrost, cinderheart, and icecloud all have litters. that's three, i know, but it's, like, a lot? when you consider that ivy and blossom also have litters later, and older cats have litters (brightheart go retire already, but i do adore ambermoon's name), and then you get grandkits (ivypool's litter, sparkpelt's kits), you get the idea.
basically, we needed to kill of a bunch of the cats in po3 and we wouldn't have so many cats now.
but back on topic, what's my point? well, in order to keep high ratios of child death, we need high number of births. trust me, the numbers i'm going to lay out stabilize around about 20 warriors, which is appropriate, i feel, for warriors. that's enough to have a good number die in a battle dramatically, but not so many you don't know who they are. and you can tweak this as you desire.
so.
we look to average four kits per season. two of those kits will become apprentices, and 1.5 of those apprentices become warriors.
or, annually, 16 kits are born, 8 are apprenticed, and 6 become warriors. i worked in numbers, not ratios, because i knew how many new cats i needed.
i knew i wanted 2 of the leaf-fall/leaf-bare kits to become warriors, and 4 of the new-leaf/green-leaf kits to become warriors, and i wanted an average of one new litter per season.
working backwards, well, you see what i have.
(as a note, that means you see 2 new warriors per season in the colder months, and 1 new warrior in the warmer months.)
anyway.
these are still just averages.
for example, lion, jay, holly, fox, and ice make up a crop of leaf-fall/leaf-bare kits. that means only two of them should become warriors.
and let's be honest, you can kill foxleap and icecloud without changing anything. they're fine. it's fine.
isn't that so much better than having them just hang around to have more kids and perpetuate the problem?
so the kits → warriors numbers are definitely from that perspective.
the kits -> apprentices and apprentices -> warriors numbers become a narrative thing.
i know i want the lf/lb litters to have less survival rates, but i've given everyone equal kithood survival chances. yes, i could tweak it, but i don't want to redo the math. i'm bad at numbers.
also! apprentice deaths have way more weight. so even though it doesn't really make sense, there you have it: more apprentices die during new-leaf/green-leaf.
but! this is a narrative tool, so you can shove the deaths in wherever works.
so yeah, those are my numbers.
like i said, i've actually like, done a bunch of calculations and stuff to make sure this works out. i think i'm going to be redoing my "who lives who dies" stuff soon, because i'm not happy with how it went the first time, so if that's something people would be interested in seeing, let me know? and i'll share it.
<3
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