#the bluestar propaganda was how I found out about the character limit btw :)

[misrepresentedmorallygrey]

And Now, the Long Awaited; Cataganda!

“Ferncloud is a cat who decided early on in her adulthood that she wants to stay in the nursery den taking care of children, and also having a number of children herself - making her akin to a kindergarden teacher and kind of a stay at home mom at the same time The fandom opinion of her is a lot better than it used to be, but back then people viewed her and characters like her who chose this instead of the regular work as lazy, selfish, good for nothing because they werent participating much in hunting, gathering or fighting (+the occasional mysogyny), the fandom viewed them as taking from the capable and stuff. For Ferncloud this got even worse due to the fact that she had multiple litters of children herself, which resulted in people calling her a 'the baby making machine' and viewed her as such instead of as a character. This got so bad it convinced one of the writters to straight up kill her off, saying ''she has had it too good''. Suprisingly, when a male character (Fernsong) decided that he wanted to take the role of a den dad, noone thought of him as lazy or anything afaik, but that is a more recent matter"

“Oh god where do you even START with leafpool? Ill try to make this as brief as possible but essentially, Leafpool is a medicine cat (a doctor and a religious figure at the same time, able to talk to cat heaven). One of the rules of medicine cats is that they are not allowed to have children, but because the authors wanted to sprinkle in some drama and hetero romance, she had a brief thing with a guy from another clan (which the cat heaven encouraged her to do and was ok with at the time), which resulted in her getting pregnant. This resulted in her having to give her children up to her sister (which was also encouraged by the cat heaven) and having to watch them grow without her. Eventually it gets found out, and she is punished for this by having her rank be stripped away from her and being publicaly humiliated (and almost being poisoned by her daughter), though the guy she had the fling with basically gets a slap on the wrist and then gets a promotion and gets to stay with his new wife without any humiliation or anything. Leafpool eventually manages to get her rank back though. Later on after some stuff happens she dies in a fight alongside her sister, and the cat heaven is suddenly pissed at her for breaking their dumb as shit rule to the point that they declare a trial for her to see if she is worthy of cat heaven or cat hell. She manages to get into heaven but notbefore getting more humiliated. A trial like this barely ever happens and characters who have done much MUCH worse things then her never went through it and got into heaven without any problem (for example Ashfur who litterally attempted to kill 3 children in a fire because their mother didn't want to be with him yet gor into kitty heaven no problemo bc apparently he just 'loved too much') And there's more to be said but thats mostly of the specific parts i havent read so Anyway i think that Leafpool should be allowed to be pissed off and fight cat heaven and god for what it did to her”

“Basically she (Squirrelflight) is a character that some parts of the fandom love to be misogynistic towards because. Uh. She thinks that sometimes doing the good thing even if it means breaking the rules is a good and necesary thing (the same thing that her dad was very very much known for and done multiple times earlier in the series yet noone complained about it)? Which she gets redicilously punished for by her shitty husband who is also her boss? To the point she is treated as a uncapable child and demeaned constantly by him? And then she gets viewed as abusive as him because she sometimes can try to stand her ground against him and isnt a completely helpless victim 24/7? Oooo what an evil woman”

“In her book she had an illegal crossclan relationship and got pregnant with illegal halfclan kits. Now the big issue with that was that their current deputy (second in command/next in line to rule) was going to retire soon, and she was one of the candidates. The other was Thistleclaw, her brother in law. She did not like him, thought he was violent (he was), and did not want him to be next to rule the clan. In fact he encouraged his apprentice/student to beat up a kitten who was on the border.

"The kit squealed in agony. "Show it your teeth Tigerpaw," Thistleclaw goaded. Tigerpaw sunk his teeth into the kit's shoulder..." He literally once said "It's too easy to invade. Too many invaders. Only fear will keep them out. We must mark our borders with the blood of our enemies."

Her kits being halfclan wasn't known, so that wasn't a problem. What was was that she had young kits. At one point she is allowed by her leader Sunstar to go to the gathering despite her nursing kits. If he doesn't usually let nursing cats go to the gathering, he's definitely not going to make one deputy. When he found out she's pregnant he said "I had hoped that one day you'd follow in my paw steps, but StarClan seems to have a different path for you." He made it clear that he would now choose Thistleclaw.

Their religious healer Goosefeather insists that she needs to be deputy instead of Thistleclaw. He said "If Thistleclaw becomes deputy, it will be the end of ThunderClan." And "But these kits will drown in blood like the rest of their clanmates unless you act." As medicine cat, he's able to speak with StarClan (their ancestors) and recieve prophecies from them. So what he says isn't just intuition, it's also backed up by visions of the future (he's also uniquely able to see the future).

Speaking of visions, she has one about Thistleclaw: "Something dark and sticky was flowing down his pelt. Blood! Thistleclaw was drenched in blood. It oozed from his fur and dripped from his whiskers, staining the snow around him scarlet. ... She caught Goosefeather's eye, and he nodded. He'd seen it too. A vision of ThunderClan's path if Thistleclaw was to lead them."

Because of all of this, she decides to give her kits up and bring them to their father to raise. It's a tough decision, but the future of her clan is at sake. It's also winter, which means that when she makes the journey one of her kits freezes to death. She feels terrible about it (and about lying that a fox took them), but Goosefeather insists that it was the correct code, and she gets the deputyship. When she gets it, her leader says that he chose her over Thistleclaw because "...I don't want my clan to be led into endless fighting. Our borders are strong enough without being marked over and over again in blood." He was also worried about Thistleclaw's violence, but still would have chosen him if she was still nursing.

When she gets the nine lives of a leader from StarClan, her sister (speaking for StarClan and with their knowledge) says "...our clan walks a safer path now." And "You were chosen long ago, and StarClan has never regretted its choice."

All of this goes to say that she made the right choice. Even their ancestors (who can see into the future) agree with her choices, and that she is the right leader. However, a lot of the fandom does not agree. I've been into these books since 2008, and been in the fandom on many sites. Bluestar is a controversial character, and two of those reasons are for giving up her kits, and distrusting Thistleclaw. In text it is explicitly said and shown multiple times that she made the right choices, and that Thistleclaw would have been a violent leader, and yet people don't agree.

People will say that Sunstar totally would have made her deputy even when she was nursing kits (despite that being false in the books) and therefore her giving up her kits was pointless. They'll say that she should have gotten her kits to their father without riding their lives. Anyone she told may have reported her, and she definitely would never have been deputy then. And she told their feather that she'd meet him that night. If she waited for a night with better weather, he probably wouldn't meet her, which would be worse for the kits.

Then a lot of people defend Thistleclaw, saying that we don't actually have proof that he was violent/would be a bad leader, and that Bluestar just didn't like her sister's mate. He encouraged Tigerpaw to attack a small kit, and it probably would have led to the kit dying if she hadn't stepped in. He attacked a cat who was on their side of the border, but was alone and had an excuse, and may have killed him if she hadn't stepped in. Goosefeather - who had visions of the future - repeatedly insisted that Thistleclaw was dangerous, and that the prophecy he'd had about her meant that it was her job to stop him. Yes he has been wrong before, but that was interpreting one omen, and that wasn't a drawn out thing. Finally, their ancestors agreed that she'd done the right thing! In later books they do absolutely have flaws and are often wrong, but that's later! There's nothing to say that they were wrong this time. And yet I've seen a lot of Thistleclaw apologism and people hating and blaming Bluestar. It's been over a decade of me seeing people say these same things.”

“Mapleshade is one of the extremely few female villains in warriors and is arguably the first one, but her actions that people debate more about are more morally messy in what got her sent to cat hell (since all the characters here are cats) as she was avenging her dead children by killing those she believes were responsible for their drowning after she tried to cross a flooded river after being chased from home. Despite the mixed mortality of her story she's been extremely vilified, especially in comparison to other characters in her story, or seen as a completely justified. There's a lot of divide over her, especially in older days of the fandom where most either loved or despised her. Some of the fandom that loves her sees her as a innocent kitty who was never wrong for seeking revenge and deserves to kill everyone else involved which screws her character over in the other direction. I've seen multiple times her being called many derogatory comments and swears with people misinterpreting her story to surprising degrees. For example, at the beginning of her book, we learn quickly that Mapleshade pregnant with the children of anothet cat she is in a secret relationship with a cat who lives in a different colony and is very enamoured by him and slightly possessive. I've seen people state that she baby-trapped her partner in this instance. They are both completely normal cats living in the forests in a rather normal relationship. I've also seen other people directly state that she was completely justified in all her murderers, and believe she should have murdered the innocent pregnant women she wanted to kill. Her character has been so heavily misinterpreted by both making her a completely evil killer and a justified avenger who did nothing wrong.”

“Squirrelflight can’t do so much as breathe the wrong way both in-universe and within fan perception of her/the series. Her mate, Bramblestar, is manipulative and even abusive in canon (mind you, none of this is treated as bad in canon and Bramble is portrayed as a good guy except when the ghost of Squilf’s evil ex takes over his body for a while but that’s a whole other thing). Bramble fans will tell you she deserves it for being “just as bad.” Which… no. Someone going behind their abuser’s back on occasion or arguing with them a few times isn’t equivalent to that person constantly berating them and manipulating situations just to argue with them. Oh yeah so real quick about the shitty ghost ex thing. Ashfur is a cat incel basically and while this part of the fandom has died down over the years there were definitely people back in the day who thought they should be together even though when he was alive he threatened to kill her and her adopted children all bc she wouldn’t date him and he wouldn’t get over it, just because “waaah his manpain and angst.”’

“Ferncloud was not vilified as much as the fandom wanted her dead in the past. For having children. Warriors cats is very msogynistic series despite the writing team being all women as far as I know. Female characters rarely get nuance and they either die young or eventually become a mother for seemingly no reason. Ferncloud was notable in that she became a mother very young and had her first litter of kittens shortly after becoming a warrior which is the equivalent of high-school graduation in warrior cats with her mate, who has been an adult for 90% of her life. Throughout Ferncloud's life she had three litters of kittens, with 4/7 surviving to adulthood. This is not an unusual number of total kittens for real cats and most couples in warriors have 2-5 children. Ferncloud herself was born into a litter of 4 kittens and her granFernclouddmother had 5 kittens across 3 litters depending on if you believe the retcons. Despite the normalcy of this in the series itself Ferncloud has been heavily referred to as a baby factory, both jokingly and derogatorily and many people calling her lazy and unskilled as well since she chosen to be a permeant resident of the nursery and help bring up other cats kittens after having her first litter. The complaints eventually lead to a lot of people saying she should die and stop having children. Later the authors commented the reason she was killed off was because of all the dislike towards her from fans. Her treatment from the fandom literally got her killed off.“

#warrior cats propaganda #warrior cats #the bluestar propaganda was how I found out about the character limit btw :)