Bro same! I was the second in command admin at one point of a Warriors rp forum and I felt (I still do, actually) so proud of myself lmao. I needed to leave the house more...
At least I am completely immune to violence in books now! What's worse, what Darkstalker did to arctic in wof or what scourge did to tigerstar. Same concept, different extra pizzazzy buts
The best thing that came out of being a Warrior Cats fan growing up is being able to tell people who have no knowledge of this series beyond "YA cat books for kids" the death of Tigerstar
When people tell me it's a book series for kids, I love to say "oh yeah, I loved this one scene where a cat named Scourge kills another cat named Tigerstar by using dog-teeth/bone laced claws and ripping him open, and I quote 'from throat to tail'. And the wildest part about it was Tigerstar had multiple lives, and usually when a leader sustains a deadly injury, they die for a moment and come back. But he was so messed up that he could only lay there and gargle on his own blood, dying and waking back up until he lost them all. It was wild" No response.
My favorite thing about the Warriors fandom is everyone's innate need to spoil the books for people who show interest in starting them. Not one comment section on anything relating to introducing the series to new people can be spoiler free. It's pathetic.
I literally just used this to explain how it is believable that there are just some wounds that can't be healed, not even by magic. It was in reference to FXIV where we can rez, but never seem to rez our friends when they die in the story. This attack by Scourge to Tigerstar shaped the way I think about magic trying to heal wounds.
@@exitsexaminedthat and the amount of visceral descriptions during birth giving and death scenes feel very... game of thrones-y. They've kiddie-fied it later on, but, shit, dude. That was disgusting
@@echidna7970 lmao as someone who absolutely lovessss Warrior Cats and a fan who’s keeping up with the most recent episodes of House Of The Dragon ( finished GOT ) I can safely say that these 2 series ARE indeed QUITE alike. They both have SOOOOOO MANY characters, to the point where you often forget names, some characters having little backstory on parents ( which forces you to go onto the wiki for explanation ) but in the end being very entertaining with the insane battles and political intrigue. Firestar and Jon Snow are great protags that audiences can easily side with due to their uniqueness ( one being a kittypet, the other being a bastard ) and having a good set of morals that makes them immediately likable. Along with a child seeing something they were NOT suppose to see ( Ravenpaw seeing redtail getting murdered, Bran seeing… well THAT ) etcetcetc it’s extremely fun seeing how alike the series REALLY are haha.
The Nine Deaths of Tigerstar is still one of the most brutal deaths I've ever read or seen on fiction. Not only was it perfectly placed within the story to be shocking, but also showed how serious and scary things had become with Scourge. Also, the 9 deaths couldn't have happened to a worse cat, so it was a little bit cathartic, even if still horrifying.
Unless you lived in Germany at that time, the german books always had giant cat faces on the covers! So at least he described my experience discovering the books pretty accurately 😂
I read all the way up till Firestar left us. And I f*cking cried and put the books down and said I was done. There's not been a better Warriors protagonist since his series, and I just couldn't keep going knowing he was gone.
I actually had the exact same reaction, even went as far as to scramble on a bit of paper how in the next arc he was going to be revived because StarClan would have realised they'd messed up. Then I learned the next arc was the prequels and I wouldn't get to read about Firestar, I just stopped the series. And then 3 years later I read the whole thing again, then caught up with the later arcs and to this day I keep reading (and crying) about these StarClan-damned cats
@@fabiopauli420 Oooh Whitestorm was a great character too. I actually don't remember how I felt when he died cause it was so long ago, but it must have affected me quite a bit as well, since Whitestorm is still among my favourite characters of the series
Just a little FYI, "Queen" is actually the technical term for a female cat -- whether or not she's expecting kittens -- as used by people involved in cat husbandry, veterinary science, etc. Females are queens, and males are toms. I'm assuming this is where the Erins got the term.
I will never escape the fact that I got into tabletop roleplaying games because I was obsessed with the now-defunct WarriorCatsRPG forum. My favorite hobby as an adult got latched into my brain because I used to roleplay a cat on a forum.
Whoa, what is the WarriorCatsRPG forum? Is that different from the tabletop RPG? If this is another thing I'll have to add a correction to the description!
@exitsexamined in my experience it is different cuz it's text based so your characters can get into way more long discussions and politics and religion stuff than in a dnd game which is more "Do x y z to kill the creature". Ik dnd can have long discussions too but you're not literally writing an essay from the point of your character
@@exitsexamined Forum boards roleplay has been around for a while, i can't speak to the warrior cats board but i did see it around. i used to roleplay wolves in this fashion. Forum RP is different from tabletop RP in that there can be more time between responses, responses can be multiple paragraphs, there are no "skill checks" or can you do this or that? as long as you can create a plausible way for your four legged animal to do something, they can do it. my old board had a system for fighting but that was only because fights involving two characters played by two people needed a form of mediation to prevent "my character wins because they're simply better" things like "god modding" or making another characters choices for them were very frowned upon. but yeah, it's very likely that the warrior cats forum board developed their own lore in regards to families and dynamics and what form of drama was happening. i find forum RPers also focus far more on character dynamics, drama and building relationships than table top players. table top players tend to focus on action and fighting and taking their party on a journey instead of chatting up bill over there just because you happen to be at the same river bank and then accomplishing nothing meaningful because of it.
There was a flood and food and territories have become rare. They think their prophet will help them but it turns out he is a false prophet. Meanwhile there is a prophecy that 3 pandas would become the new prophets or something but the current one doesn't want to become outed as a liar and fake prophet so he spends the series trying to kill the 3 main pandas or make them joining him by manipulating them and also kills other pandas who find out his secret
I still think it would be super sick if the Warriors team collaborated with Rockstar Games on an open world video game with its own, unique storyline where you had free reign to do whatever you wanted as a cat, but you still had underlying obligations to serve your Clan/obey the Warrior Code etc.
@Endaretainer I'd say up until 5th arc is worth reading, although you do notice the decline by then. I enjoy seeing what the fandom is cooking up animation wise but I grew out of the books.
nearly 20 years old and it’s like i have a soul tie to this series 😭 i wont be able to escape until the series ends and even then i’ll never be able to deny how much these books have impacted me
I'm about to turn 20 lol. The thing that got me into the series as a kid were all the animatiom projects here on youtube. They are all so good it's insane. I loved this series so much. Even my first manga was a warrior cats book named 'the rise of scourge' lol.
When I was a kid, I read every book in the series at the time like 3x's over each. I learned to draw specifically for Warriors. I participated in RP forums and did the quizzes that gave you your warriors name and clan. When I was in elementary school, the principle banned "playing warrior cats" on the playground because kids were actually scratching and biting each other. SpottedLeaf was my favorite character and I'm still upset.
I'm a veteran rper of Kugyay. Started in 2006 (when I joined) and still exist. Kugyay is a warrior cats rp forum. I was a freshman in high school when I got into the series. I still rp and read the series. I'm now 32. 😂❤ warrior cats forever.
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but Survivors, Seekers, Bravelands, Bamboo Kingdom, and Wings of Fire aren't spin-offs, they exist in their own universe with its own worldbuilding that isn't the same as the Warriors books. I'm a big fan of Wings of Fire and I feel that it often subverts tropes found in Warriors, and has much better characters with much more nuanced explorations of how things that happen in the book affects them.
Yeah 😭 Warrior cats does not have a monopoly on animals as humans that’s not a warrior cat exclusive thing. I bet some pre date WC Yep. Seekers predates warrior cats. Didn’t check others And Tui is WAY MORE than an Erin…
survivors, seekers and bravelands i can understand the confusion because they're all made by erin hunter. the other two though, yeah they're very unrelated.
Another fun Warriors game is called ClanGen. It's a clicker story generating game where you generate a clan name, pick out what you want your starting cats to be, assign leader, deputy, and medicine cat, and then send your cats on patrols and make decisions to do or not do something, and there's a whole risk/reward thing where if you do something you'll either gain like prey or herbs or more cats for the clan, or your cats on the patrol will die or get hurt, or nothing will happen. And to proceed you "skip a moon", which gives you a run down of what's happened in the past moon like deaths, illness, injury, relationship statuses, stolen prey/herbs, wars starting or ending with other clans, pregnancy/outsider kits brought in, and even murders (where you may or may not be told who the killer is in the clan).
The atheism thing actually makes sense to me, especially with Mothwing. She was so excited to be a medicine cat, and so nervous to meet StarClan. They didn't come to her. She found out her own brother faked the sign that made the clan believe she was destined to be a medicine cat. How could StarClan let that happen, if they were really there? Wouldn't they stop the evil and lying, or at the very least, tell Mothwing or their leader that she shouldn't be the medicine cat? I don't blame her for rejecting StarClan when they finally appear to her.
One of my least favourite thing about Warriors is how StarClan are all idiots, and it's never really acknowledged in the series. I like Mothwing's story because that's the only time it was.
I could be remembering it wrong, but didn't she kinda confirm at one point that she DID see them? And thought that they were just a weird dream or something?
@@purplepartytigerd1598I think she finally sees them *officially* at the end of Omen Of The Stars, but she shifts her stance from "I don't believe in Starclan" to "I acknowledge Starclan's existence, but don't think they have as much sway as everyone says they do." Which... She gets proven pretty damn right (and screwed over relentlessly) in the arcs after that one.
I stopped at the place of no stars, I got married and had kids and life just hit me, up until then I read every single book, re-reading whenever I was waiting for a new release. I still have the place of no stars sitting on my nightstand to this day ready for me to pick it up again but I just haven’t had the wherewithal to begin reading again. I think I might have to now that UA-cam’s beautiful algorithm he fed me this gem of a video. It’s been 3 years and I’m 21 years old now.
It’s always fascinating to see what Warriors looks like to an outside viewer who isn’t acquainted with the books or the fandom. I’ve been in cat purgatory for years.
@@exitsexamined The cat purgatory I’ve been in hasn’t been so bad, so you’re not wrong. Speaking of purgatory, you didn’t even mention there’s a cat hell in Warriors to go along with StarClan, cat heaven.
I have someone in a animation community that loves cat warriors and I wanted to approach/understand their obsession with cats lol they gave me a quick summary and hoooo boy u can really make ur own cat fantasy ahahaha
I work with kids, and whenever they see me reading a warriors book, they'll go, "hey!! I love those books!!" The fact that even now in 2024 kids are still walking around with these books under their arms makes me so, so happy.
The best thing about the Warrior Cats was on the old website, there was Warrior Cats forums where you could roleplay, draw art, chat, and so much more! I spent years on the Warriors Forums and it’s actually where I got my username from and have used for over 10 years now. Skyfawn was my Warrior Cat name and it’s been a part of my identity for so long I can’t see myself as not being Skye Fawn online. I met some amazing people on there and to this day I actually still text and keep up to date with one of them on how our lives are going. It was always a warm and fun community to interact with and I have so many memories from the forums. Getting the email it was being shut down was heartbreaking, but I’ll never forget my time there!
A great breakdown of the series and fandom, i believe the reason for a specific app, is for the kids whose parents who don’t want their kids on a browser for safety reasons (aka the non ipad kids with parents who are actually cautious)
Hey thanks so much, glad to hear you thought it was OK! It was a beast of a series to go through haha. That makes a good amount of sense actually now that you mention it!
The books didn’t have those “weird close up pictures of cats” until recently Wayne Mcloughlin’s covers featured full-body dynamically posed cats and a character portrait in the center
Way nicer imo, but it could be I just love those covers cuz they were the dominant ones around when I had my warrior-cat-crazy phase XD I use them as my background on my Mac
I think it depends on the language, the German editions in my childhood (maby 15 years ago) had a single big picture of a cats face on it. Maby not as close up as the new covers, but very similar.
Just wanna point out that those are NOT the original book covers; the original book covers were gorgeous and iconic, and the fandom mourns both then and their artist every day.
The warriors fandom is so silly and crazy. But the passion and imagination is astounding. I still love it all these years later. I still love to poke my head in and see what's going on. I'm happy to have stumbled on the books as a kid and to have been there for the RPs on forums. To see it all transform and have new generations go through it all. Thank you for making a video on it!
@@exitsexaminedwell, from reading the recent series (A Starless Clan, A Vision Of Shadows), I can say that the authors are repeating the ‘Trauma Medicine Cat Apprentice’ POVs, with ones like Alderheart, Frostpaw(that one might have a name change since I haven’t read the end of that part cuz I can’t find the book), Shadowsight, and a new one called Moonpaw(probably the same). One tiny good thing is that they left a the ‘Apprentice POV’ for a full Warrior/med cat like Sunbeam, but only Sunbeam. This is my own opinion btw
When I was a kid, I was OBSESSED with these books, but unfortunately only 3 of them were translated to my language and I didn't know English back then. I hugely blame the series for my fondness of forests and medicinal herbs, I just enjoyed it sooo much. I think this is a sign for me to finally dig deeper
Thanks for the video!!! I read the first Arc when I was like 12. They were my moms attempt to get me to read more and she read the alongside me so we could chat about them. I stopped after the second Arc I think. Most of the caracters I grew up with were dead and I just kinda lost touch with the series, but it always keept a special place in my memory as the books that got me back into reading and the first book to make me cry. A few years later when I was deep in the anime hole I stumbbled over a bunch of Warrior cats fanart. I tried googling around to find out what had happend to the series but quickly gave up as it was quite ... convoluted. This video is EXACTLY what I was looking for back then. So thanks for explaining and the trip down memory lane!
Hey honestly really appreciate you saying that! It was an intimidating series to speak on because there are so many nooks and crannies but glad you thought I gave it justice. Your gold star will arrive in the mail shortly
Cat atheism is basically “believing Starclan can always be trusted.” Rather then “believing Starclan is real.” At least that’s what Mothwing seems to believe in newer books. It’s not atheism as we think of it in the real world. But it’s the closest thing you can get in a world where magic is real and cats have 9 lives. Without the character being just dumb, of course.
They had a few books where it was stated that she believed that the DF attack was rogues who attacked the Clans I think they changed it because of how actually insane that made her sound
well cloudtail was full on "they're just fairy tails". even when he was fighting darkstripe in the great battle and gets taunted for that he responds " I might not believe starclan is real, but I know evil is" and keeps fighting
To be fair, I would put it closer to agnostic people than atheists people. Knowing there is a god (or here Starclan) but refusing to believe in them, pray for them and/or live your life "for" them.
haha is that really most of the channels?? Most of the reference videos I was watching were about the series itself so I didn't go too off the rails into the characters themselves but I can imagine there probably are entire series dedicated to it
This is the Gospel: Jesus loves you so much that He gave His life for you as a willing sacrifice to reconcile you to the Father and give you eternal happiness and peace. Romans 10:9-10 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.
@@exitsexamined If I read this correctly and understand correctly- there ARE some Warriors UA-camrs who have series dedictaed to talking about characters themselves. The one I actually know, is Moonkitti, were she goes into the stories of some suggested characters. Sometimes only a little bit. (Her Talking/Mini Talking series)
Your channel is such an underrated hidden gem. It's really good to see someone covering & explaining all these book series i would see on shelves but never got around to actually reading.
My daughter was very into this series. She named our cat "Raven claw"and we have a family tradition where our pets are given titles and that gives us Countess Raven Claw. She goes by Miss Kitty to us commoners. I read 40k, Horus Heresy, and many, many, many other book series are up in my head. Robotech, Battletech, Forgotten Realms, Varayan Memoires, etc. So I never saw anything wrong with her loving a series.
💖 I named one of my cats Greykit after Warrior Cats names. I had a whole Logclan, the Kittypet clan lore for my cats a few years ago but I'm not sure where I wrote it all down
i’m 20 and i’m still in LOVE with these books, i still keep up to date with the newest releases although i prefer the writing style of the original couple arcs
I'm 35 and I still tell my fellow adults all about the silly cat books I love so much. The looks on people's faces sometimes when I tell them battle cats is my favourite series is hilarious, I'm sure they expected something else.
The first arcs are good after that tough.... It becomes realy repatative and boring and to be fair I personally don't like the first books as much as when I was a child lol. Those are children book after all.
Those books started my english journey...back in 9th grade i sucked at english...stumbled upon those books in German. I thought - okay those are books for kids - I will start reading them in English to improve! So the fandom, the books and the world will always have a sweet spot for me!
Warrior cats has been such a insane inspiration for me, it inspired me as a young elementary schooler to start drawing, i’ve created an entire universes with more than 100 different characters, but all somehow important to this story i’ve made, all in my head. It’s such a hyper fixation that not even a day goes by that I do not think of this series, or my characters. It’s so very dear to my heart. I miss roleplaying, so much but unfortunately most of my friends have drifted away.
i had such a fondness for this series i was dyslexic and never really read much but LOVED cats - i found these books and read the first 18 in like three months which was the most i had ever read in my life. we used to have yearly tests to find our reading age and i had been stuck at six my entire school career, read these then shot up to a reading age of fifteen. (i was like 9/10 at the time) i’m still a reader now as an adult and honestly think it’s because of these books! i’d completely forgotten about them, tysm for reminding me!
Warrior Cats is one of the franchises that I'd rather appreciate from afar [and avoid the dark side of the fandom as well], and I especially dislike how Squirrelflight was treated in the books. On a different note, I'd love to see you talk about Cosgrove Hall's rise and fall, they were so iconic in the UK and I feel like they could've even rivaled Disney and Hanna Barbera had ITV just gave them an actual chance. Will Vinton Studios also has a really bittersweet story, and Will himself deserved so much better. The documentary Claydream goes into details of his life, how he founded his studio, and how he lost everything no thanks to Phill and Travis Knight. Will Vinton Studios was turned into Laika, and Laika has had many controversies [OSHA violations as an example], that I don't think would've happened under Will's watch.
Honestly, I can understand appreciating this one from afar haha. Cool to know about Cosgrove Hall, not super familiar with it but I put it on my lost! I might reach out to you when I get around to it, always good to talk to someone familiar with the series!
@@exitsexamined Cosgrove Hall made a ton of classic British cartoons, such as Danger Mouse, The Wind In The Willows, Engie Benjy, Little Robots, and Roary The Racing Car [made in collaboration with Chapman Entertainment]. I am so excited it's on your list! Will Vinton Studios would also be a good one, given the bittersweet circumstances behind everything that happened to the studio. I recommend watching the documentary Claydream to get a basic idea of what happened to Will Vinton Studios.
Thank you for this. I never interacted with the fandom myself, but... I did love these books. To know such a big part of my love for reading and writing wasn't some niche topic nobody else knows about is comforting. I didn't really have internet access as a kid and by the time I did, I was a teen obsessed with FNaF. A shame that I missed out on such a dedicated fandom
I’m so glad I was a loner kid. I enjoyed my Cats of Thrones without any extra fanatical input, and managed to get out around the time of the Upside-Down invasion before the rising tide of supplemental material drowned me.
This series was my childhood. I outgrew it now but I still have my books stored away to pass on to my own children. I’m surprised this series is still going. Last one I read was the one where Firestar died. It seemed fitting that Firestar dies when as I become an adult and say goodbye to childhood . RIP flame boy.
I never realized there were multiple authors but that makes ALOT of sense. As a kid i was super confused. Some of those books had VERY contradicting takes on philosophy, religion, tradition, morality, war, killing, and even indevidual characters. Like first series was like "He died honorably in battle and the warrior who killed him is a hero for his clan and will not be resented by the enemy" and the 4th or 5th series was like "wtf wtf why are you trying to kill that guy sure he invaded your home and terrorised your elders and children but wtf r u doing warriors don't kill!"
I think with more fans coming bearing a more leftwing attitude, the authors might have felt that honor, war, blood and soil would leave bad tastes in their mouths. This is why I think the first arch, along with dawn of the clans, bear some of the most "real" ideas of the clans.
Thank you for this trip down memory lane! I "only" read the first four "seasons" of Warrior Cats (and some of the specials) and stopped after those, because I felt the series got to a pretty good conclusion at the end of season four; but still, this series holds a special place within my heart. I always loved how the authors were able to present their characters as belivably cat-like in describing their instincts and how cats would experience the world and simultaneously managed to portray them as "furry humans" to make them relatable. I always felt that Warrior Cats evaded the trap of falling into repeating storylines by taking a focus on its characters, giving each of them very distinct personalities, which is probably a great groundwork of preventing to fall into predictable writing patterns. I believe the best sign of how well the series is written is that I only realized how crazy it actually was, once I summarized season 3 to a friend of mine in the briefest way possible, because season 4 came out at the time and they were contemplating skipping season 3 to be up to date with reading (but still decided to read season 3 after this conversation). It is one of those stories that takes some very simple concepts (religious Clan Cats in a forest fighting for survival) and just brings all the potential hidden in there onto the page for readers to enjoy and to inspire them.
Warriors was my favorite book series growing up, I haven’t touched these books since middle school! I’m amazed there’s a fandom dedicated to this series and it’s ever growing. It’s heartwarming to see that kids today get to enjoy the same books I grew up on.
They’ve really been pumping them out. It’s been what, three, four generations now? Plus the series for dogs, the series for bears, and the series for African wildlife. Take a break Erin Hunter😭
I was in a very specific part of this fandom. There was this host of people on Animal Jam who participated in the AJCW (Animal Jam Clan Wiki). We coded pages for our clans and even some of our characters for the wiki, and we would create clan camps on Animal Jam and roleplay in them. Oh how I miss those days..
i never got to be a part of any AJ warriors roleplay groups, but i always admired them! their coordination/battles kind of reminds me of Club Penguin Armies back in the day. it's always nice to stumble upon cool little internet communities like that!
i loved the series as a kid, remember saving up some pocket money so I could go to the book store and get a brand new book that just came out. it was on the same level to me as Redwall series and other fantasy books with animal characters, these books really sparked the love of reading in me when i was around 7-10 years old. now listening to this video essay I'm also really happy that I read them without internet, so there was no drama, nothing, I just enjoyed the books as any kid should :))
Honestly it's so interesting how the internet kind of changed the landscape as far as fandoms and how series are perceived - anyway glad you enjoyed them and Redwall, that was another favorite of mine!
@@faliciaforward i know, right! some topics touched upon there were rather mature stuff, and don't get me started on how i was sometimes bawling my eyes out about some characters and what happened to them
I had a big warrior cats phase when I was younger, but nothing hooked me like wings of fire. I read all of them as they came out, they got me really into drawing dragons, and I still re-read them every so often. I would LOVE for you to cover that series like this!
I haven't read Wings of Fire yet, but it seems like people love it, maybe I will cover it! How would you compare it to Warriors? Is it same general vibe / target audience?
@exitsexamined As far as I can remember, both series have similar target audience and tone, (and a lot of the same type of violence) although WoF feels a lot grander imo because it takes place over a whole continent as opposed to one forest, and it takes time to explore all seven dragon tribes, each with a unique culture. Wings of fire probably also benefits from being a lot smaller than warriors, with only 15 books in the main series.
@@exitsexaminedif you do end up reading WoF make sure you read, Legends: Darkstalker, its the best book imo and a lot of people dont read it because its not part of the main series. WoF is also potentially getting an animated series but it might be a warriors situation
@@smiklosovic8971 I read the first book when it came out and loved it! Never went back to it because the books hadn't come out yet haha. Might have to revisit it and warriors now, been thinking about it since watching this video lol. Hopefully as a 20 yr old i'm not too old for these YA novels.
I loved warriors so much but the survivors series has my heart. The characters each get developed a lot more as there is a lot (and I mean a lotttt) fewer of them. The story was different from the whole “clans fighting each other” as it was more about a group of house dogs joining a pack of wild dogs after a horrible natural disaster fighting for survival in a changed world. I really really loved the series and it was a big part of my childhood! Sadly it doesn’t have an active fandom which is really sad
I think there also a book series about bears from the same authors. I remember reading something like that edit: Oop he ended up mentioning it later in the video
OML Survivors was literally how I got into Erin Hunter and reading in general and I read both arcs 16x times over but I remember being SO MAD it was underrated. I wish they didn't stop publishing it, Survivors deserves some love D:
I still remember obsessively defending Bluestar in Animal Jam, and then Scourge came along and replaced Bluestar as my favorite. I only read 3 books past the first series, but MAPs and other fan animations had such a huge impact on me. Urnam7’s animations made me realize that animation isn’t just something done by big companies and that there are tools out there for individuals to make animation. It seems obvious now, but as a kid I had never seen animation outside of tv and movies. It’s been years and I still have vivid memories reading those books lol
I read the entire warrior series, all field guides, all novels and novellas, all manga sidestories in chronological order...back when there were 4 main arcs. Can not even IMAGINE doing that now, god help the warrior fans. Even my child self eventually recognized the recurring plot motifs and plot devices driving drama-contested territory spats, cross-clan romances-but it was a lot of fun!
ayyyy clangen mention! i'm one of the lead devs, so that was fun to see lol I wish the fandom had more fan-made games tbh, it's really an untapped corner! Though it is amazing to me how animation focused the fandom is, from what I know it was pretty much the originator of MAPs and one of the first fandoms to ever be as animation heavy as it is. The OG animators like xxflightfeatherxx and sswarriorcats were so wildy influential, too. It all speaks to just how desperately the fans have always wanted some sort of animated media haha Anyways, for all the unhinged insanity of this series, it's something I'll always look back on with nostalgia even though I don't read it anymore. And I get neverending amusement these days from watching plot summaries of the new books xD
Hey that's so cool you worked on it! I would have loved to know about the dev process for that game, honestly I'm kicking myself for not trying to reaching out to you guys and other creators to ask a few questions about the games, anyway glad you found the vid! And who knows, maybe there will be more fan-made games in the future!
Yo!! I've been getting back into playing Clangen recently. It used to be kind of hard to get into a couple of years ago, but now it can hook me in for hours! The fangames are mainly how I got to know the series in the first place, and I'm grateful for all of them. And now that you point it out, the Warrior Cats fandom really is incredibly animation-focused, isn't it? ✨
What a throwback, this was my very first fandom. I picked up the first book of the second arc when I was 11, and when I finished that arc went back to read the OG arc. Those were all the books available at that point, and when I finished them I went online and read fanfiction. Since then I've moved on from Warrior Cats but never from fan communities online.
What I loved about Warrior Cats is the depth of the world. I like the idea that there is this entire universe within our own in which cats are living their own lives. Whilst our lives may seem mundane at times, this deep and exciting world is just around the corner. Another world that intersects with our own.
I was one of the managers of a huge RP group on scratch. every day I got back from school and wrote about cats beefing each other over territory. lol good memories
confession: I was obsessed with these books as a little kid, so much so I asked my mom to buy me yoga balls to ‘play’ with. In reality I wanted to attack said yoga balls like a cat, and I did once I obtained them. I pretended I was fire star and attacked the absolute sh!t out of them. Biting, clawing, pouncing, hissing, the whole 9 yards. The yoga balls would bounce back at me so it made it more immersive. There was a few times I even got injured by attacking them lmao. My mom caught me biting one and was extremely mad and a bit disturbed. That was strike one. I skipped straight to strike 3 when I popped one with me teeth, my beloved enemy cat balls were taken from me and deflated. IMO attacking yoga balls pretending you’re a cat is better then becoming a zombie to an IPad lol. At least I had an imagination
Mine sister actually is a warriors fan and as many fans have before after she found warriors she started drawing and now over 1 year later im now helping her to make her own original warriors fanfic about 3 apprentices, wavepaw, hollypaw and pinepaw that live in a slightly forrested tundra in one of the six clans, that clan name being boulderclan along side featherclan, lakeclan, iceclan, winterclan and hareclan❤❤❤
Fun lore; When I was younger I used to run a detailed Warrior Cat RP fandom page .. Through Neopets forums... I don't even know.. I'm 30 and still to this day have my old notebook where I kept track of my entire Warrior Cats Neopets Empire lmao! I had an entire system that to be honest, still totally checked out and impresses myself to this day. Had taught myself basic html coding in this time that I used to structure it all and would hand write it out in my journal. I still refer to my old notes from Grade 6 me on html often enough that every time is a reminder and a thank you to Warrior Cats and it both warms my heart and makes me chuckle.
Warrior Cats kinda brought me into being online, my best friend neighbor during 2012 showed me all the speedpaints on youtube of the characters. I didn't read, but I was instantly in love with the Warrior Cats style of animal focused stories. Wings of Fire was what got me into reading actually, years later. Wings of Fire is also walking in the footprints of Warrior Cats, which makes me happy! I think 2012 me would of loved to see Wings of Fire stuff too, if it was like Warriors then.
Nice to see a shoutout to Clangen here as someone who helps work on it 🤗 Gosh, I remember playing Untold Tales back before Cattails was a thing, haha! It felt so amazing at the time!
Whoa so cool! It was so much fun going back to play it for this video, would have loved to talk to before to know what the dev process was like for it!
@@exitsexamined oh, honestly working on it is wonderful! The lead devs are very helpful and encouraging. I've learned a ton from them and it's fun to chat about possible new features and to see stuff we're working on behind the scenes. There are some incredibly talented people on the dev team!
I have been obsessed with Clangen lately as a way to engage with the Warriors world without actually reading (as much as I used to love it, I have ADHD and it can be so hard to get through a book these days), and I've been having so much fun telling my own stories and developing my own clans, getting attached to characters and then being shocked when they inevitably get murdered lol. Much thanks to you and the rest of the team!!
I started reading Warrior Cats when I was 9 and have been a huge fan ever since. It's my favourite book series EVER and I love Squirrelflight, Yellowfang, Leafpool and Firestar.
I read all the Warriors books they had in my middle school library. The violence, death and disfigurement, and cat heaven and hell really caught my attention. Everything about Brokentail/star, Brightheart(?) getting half of her face ripped off and having to adjust to it, Ashfur's incel arc, some crazy shit went down in this series. Oh yeah, Scourge was pretty cool, too. I remember the Scourge/Ashfur crackship. I don't know too much about what's going on in the most recent books, tho. Just that Ashfur's ghost possessed his ex's man at some point
@@bigboi8207 To sum it up, Ashfur got really salty after Squirrelflight picked Brambleclaw instead of him. Later on in the series, he tried to burn her adopted kids alive so she'd "feel the same pain that he felt when she rejected him". His obsession with making her suffer and trying to force her to be with him continued into the afterlife. Yeah... Ashfur is/was a pretty fucked up dude. Idk how he was ever let into cat heaven in the first place 💀
Wow I’m feeling like I should return to this. It was such a huge part of my childhood from elementary school to middle school. I haven’t been in the fandom in over ten years but it’s still very near and dear to my heart
It's always interesting going back to series like this for rereads, there's so many new details to notice as an adult, sometimes in good sometimes in bad, but always interesting!
I’m just now getting that this series and Redwall are really similar -kids books -anthropormophic animals that look like normal animals (not animal-like humans) -extremely violent -deep lore
you can include Guardians of Ga’hoole to that list too! and Watership Down is of course the OG children’s book about cute animals and just so much violence
I went back and reread as many of these as I could a while back (I broke my foot, had a lot of time on my ass with nothing to do) and the absolute chaos of the series and fandom is honestly amazing. I don't get into it in a typical fandom kind of way, but it's always gonna have a place in my heart. ETA: wings of fire is great, and is complete (for now at least, who knows) and it might make for a good subject if you're about the lifespan of stories. (First time here lol)
Oh god. This vid couldcnot have found me at a better time!!! We had that very first warrior cats book in my schools library back in 2012, and I just ended up buying the rest of the series along the years. When i moved out for college my mom gave them away and I was devastated. Now at 24 I buy the books second hand whenever i have some money left over. My sister made fun of me for it but this vid is a clear sign xD It's so crazy that this vid poped up in my recommended!!
My first intro into the series was The New Prophecy: Moonrise, which was the second book in the second arc. So, I was thrown into the pool deep end first and then crawled my way around back to the first arc... and that was when I was in middle school. I'm an adult now and this accursed book series (lovingly) refuses to leave my head. Although my passion for it hasn't been as strong as it once was back in the day, I'm still happy that I got into the series and I'm forever glad about the time I've spent in forums, making fanfics, and indulging in a lot of the content. It's, to date, the longest I've hyperfixated on ANY thing.
0:17 "A little more edgy-" Animorphs of course! "Warrior cats" Well, yeah I suppose. Same goes for Guardian's of Ga'hoole. Which I'd argue, is darker than Warriors. Not only did it have death, but a lot of psychological horrors. Plus, it had the sense to end as a complete story.
Guardians of Ga'Hoole don't have as crazy deaths (Tigerstar...) but they defenitely didn't HAVE TO put a simulation of a brainwashing torture nazi camp
Guardians was crazy. Brainwashing, attempted killing by siblings, cannibalism. The world at times felt so dangerous and hostile,but it was also so interesting, especially the collecting of the coals for forging and stuff. The movie did the series dirty, as they made it too generic and took the dark elements out of it that made it so compelling.
As a child who was absolutely fanatical about all three series (warriors, guardians and animorphs) guardians definitely went the hardest in terms of fucked uppedness in my opinion but not by a huge margin (out of those three I think warriors actually comes in third for fucked uppedness but the race is close). Guardians also definitely had the most satisfying ending (I don't even know how warriors ended if it even does, I tuned out after the fourth arc due to a mix of growing up and just not enjoying the series direction anymore). Anyway tldr they're all great series everyone should read em have fun kids
I like how you reference the 90+ books on the series as its an achievement. Erin Hunter is a pseudonym for a team of 6 authors... Of course they can just pump them out.
I'm only just getting into Warrior Cats, and this video really helped me learn more about the series! Also, the game Cattails now has a sequel called Cattails: Wildwood Story, them and Clangen are my three favourite cat themed games!😊💖🐈
Man I've always felt like I missed out on this franchise. I was a prime target audience when the first book dropped. I was a teenager, weird loner, a cat lover and a bookworm. I think I would have been hooked on these books! But they just didn't exist in my country back then *shrugs* Didn't learn about them until I was well into my 20's...
@@exitsexamined you made a really good vid so people like me are prolly watching through the whole vid I just saw you made a artimes foul vid the nostalgia dude, all you need is a rangers apprentice vid and im a forever fan imao
I have been reading this saga since about 2011, and I will say it is amazing. And the community behind it is just as impressive. The imagination, creativity, and general atmosphere of it just makes for a great time... though as mentioned in this video just don't dive into drama... avoid it at all costs Side Note: Wings of Fire is also pretty good... from what I can remember, I made it to like the third book and then completely stopped because I could never get my hands on later books. But still, recommend it too
I forgot how crazy warrior cats sounds to non warrior cat readers 😭😭
It's about getting naked and joining a cult in the bush! :D And battles. And cats
@@Divint12 don’t forget about the child soldiers and cat Hitler
@@TiredBirb490 I love and hate how these are very accurate descriptions 😭
I have these books saved in my memory alongside Guadians of Gahool, and I think there was another animal one as well.
@@TiredBirb490 And Demonic possession
when i was around 12 i became the "deputy" in a warriors rp forum and got so excited i told my mom like it was a lifetime achievement 💀
Bro same! I was the second in command admin at one point of a Warriors rp forum and I felt (I still do, actually) so proud of myself lmao. I needed to leave the house more...
@@allywallydd the worst part is i would spend the next 12 years as either a med cat/deputy/leader on this forum
Please tell me it was warriorcatsrpg / feralfront
@@greahound nope, sorry 😭 mine was warrior cat clans 2
@@greahoundwarriorxats rpg was known for its awful admins tbf
Im 30 years old and still reading about these damn cats
Can't wait for the updated comment in five years.....then in ten years.....then in twenty years...etc.
Lol
31 and Im still reading and buying all the books and crying over cats
u r so real for that
33 and still crying over the damn fighting felines
"...stories have characters who should already be dead and are just mentioned casually to be alive."
Schrodinger Clan strikes again.
**ThunderClan
😂
I only now realised that i was reading actual GORE as a CHILD. It explains so much...
Same here x)
For me...The books was Watership Down with cats.
and this comment right here is making me realize that i am infact reading something that disgusts me (gore)
At least I am completely immune to violence in books now! What's worse, what Darkstalker did to arctic in wof or what scourge did to tigerstar. Same concept, different extra pizzazzy buts
The best thing that came out of being a Warrior Cats fan growing up is being able to tell people who have no knowledge of this series beyond "YA cat books for kids" the death of Tigerstar
Probably traumatized a few people telling them about that lol
I think that single scene desensitized me to all violence across all media.
@@charles3840omg same lol, those books were so violent
It is one of the single most graphic villain exits I've ever read.
9 lives, 9 deaths
When people tell me it's a book series for kids, I love to say "oh yeah, I loved this one scene where a cat named Scourge kills another cat named Tigerstar by using dog-teeth/bone laced claws and ripping him open, and I quote 'from throat to tail'. And the wildest part about it was Tigerstar had multiple lives, and usually when a leader sustains a deadly injury, they die for a moment and come back. But he was so messed up that he could only lay there and gargle on his own blood, dying and waking back up until he lost them all. It was wild"
No response.
What?! That happened?? 😂
My favorite thing about the Warriors fandom is everyone's innate need to spoil the books for people who show interest in starting them. Not one comment section on anything relating to introducing the series to new people can be spoiler free. It's pathetic.
@@atiithe yea, first season
I literally just used this to explain how it is believable that there are just some wounds that can't be healed, not even by magic. It was in reference to FXIV where we can rez, but never seem to rez our friends when they die in the story. This attack by Scourge to Tigerstar shaped the way I think about magic trying to heal wounds.
It's still written for kids or do you consider 8-12 year olds adults ?
Litteraly Game of Thrones as cats in later books for sure almost having Targaryen bloodlines
I can not believe I missed that connection haha oh man didn't realize there was levels to this
@@exitsexaminedthat and the amount of visceral descriptions during birth giving and death scenes feel very... game of thrones-y. They've kiddie-fied it later on, but, shit, dude. That was disgusting
@@LeBongFairylike Moth Flight’s super edition…
@@LeBongFairyI mentioned in a comment how the birth scenes made me uncomfortable and got slammed for it. Idk man they're just TOO descriptive 😭
@@echidna7970 lmao as someone who absolutely lovessss Warrior Cats and a fan who’s keeping up with the most recent episodes of House Of The Dragon ( finished GOT ) I can safely say that these 2 series ARE indeed QUITE alike. They both have SOOOOOO MANY characters, to the point where you often forget names, some characters having little backstory on parents ( which forces you to go onto the wiki for explanation ) but in the end being very entertaining with the insane battles and political intrigue. Firestar and Jon Snow are great protags that audiences can easily side with due to their uniqueness ( one being a kittypet, the other being a bastard ) and having a good set of morals that makes them immediately likable. Along with a child seeing something they were NOT suppose to see ( Ravenpaw seeing redtail getting murdered, Bran seeing… well THAT ) etcetcetc it’s extremely fun seeing how alike the series REALLY are haha.
The Nine Deaths of Tigerstar is still one of the most brutal deaths I've ever read or seen on fiction. Not only was it perfectly placed within the story to be shocking, but also showed how serious and scary things had become with Scourge. Also, the 9 deaths couldn't have happened to a worse cat, so it was a little bit cathartic, even if still horrifying.
Despite how many mistakes and plot holes were in those books, I still loved ALL of them. They were a large part of my childhood.
My only memory of this is seeing all the horse and wolf girls reading this in elementary 😭
Those close ups are the new covers, there was only maybe a tiny cat staring back at you sometimes in the 2000s.
this inconsistency was bugging me lol
Extremely fair point, I acknowledge that is an inaccuracy and I will repent to Starclan
@@exitsexamined TO THE DARK FOREST WITH THEE
Unless you lived in Germany at that time, the german books always had giant cat faces on the covers! So at least he described my experience discovering the books pretty accurately 😂
@@bird-freakk You’re so right lol! I love looking at the covers from other countries. My favorites are the Polish and Taiwanese ones.
I have memories of flattening the plants in my friend's front garden because that was my "nest"
Memories? I still do that...
What the sigma
when i’m outside i look at areas that would be appropriate spots for nests
King
Awww, that's cool XD
I read all the way up till Firestar left us. And I f*cking cried and put the books down and said I was done. There's not been a better Warriors protagonist since his series, and I just couldn't keep going knowing he was gone.
me too, his death did something to 11yo me 😅, im 18 and still wont read past that arc
For me it was darktails arc. After that I decided that it was a solid end to a story and I haven’t regretted it since mostly
I actually had the exact same reaction, even went as far as to scramble on a bit of paper how in the next arc he was going to be revived because StarClan would have realised they'd messed up. Then I learned the next arc was the prequels and I wouldn't get to read about Firestar, I just stopped the series.
And then 3 years later I read the whole thing again, then caught up with the later arcs and to this day I keep reading (and crying) about these StarClan-damned cats
for some reason Firestars death effected me less than Whitestorms lol. Whitestorms was one of the few times i genuinly cried reading a book
@@fabiopauli420 Oooh Whitestorm was a great character too. I actually don't remember how I felt when he died cause it was so long ago, but it must have affected me quite a bit as well, since Whitestorm is still among my favourite characters of the series
The only scenes I remember is that kitten getting yoinked by a bird and some kind of badger or something attacking a den.
You're thinking of Snowkit😭 That second one happens in the new prophecy.
RIP Snowkit chain rn
RIP SNOWKIT REST IN PIECES
Rip snow kit
Rip Snowkit
Just a little FYI, "Queen" is actually the technical term for a female cat -- whether or not she's expecting kittens -- as used by people involved in cat husbandry, veterinary science, etc. Females are queens, and males are toms. I'm assuming this is where the Erins got the term.
Warriors, Guardians of Gahoole, and Wolves of the Beyond are all Core memories. And Survivors, can't forget the doge.
I loved Wolves of Beyond!! I remember my grandma going to thrift stores to try and find all the books for me
oh man i was so obsessed with wolves as a kid so i loved wolves of the beyond. all of those series are like core memories for me tbh
Guardians of Ga’Hoole is crazy to look back on because the villains were like. Literal owl Nazis.
@@caleigh3547 lol Nyra was even an anagram of "Aryan" with the extra A removed!
Otulissa is my spirit animal
@@Snowstar38otulissa my beloved I named my dnd character after her haha
I will never escape the fact that I got into tabletop roleplaying games because I was obsessed with the now-defunct WarriorCatsRPG forum. My favorite hobby as an adult got latched into my brain because I used to roleplay a cat on a forum.
Whoa, what is the WarriorCatsRPG forum? Is that different from the tabletop RPG? If this is another thing I'll have to add a correction to the description!
@exitsexamined in my experience it is different cuz it's text based so your characters can get into way more long discussions and politics and religion stuff than in a dnd game which is more "Do x y z to kill the creature".
Ik dnd can have long discussions too but you're not literally writing an essay from the point of your character
@@exitsexamined Forum boards roleplay has been around for a while, i can't speak to the warrior cats board but i did see it around. i used to roleplay wolves in this fashion. Forum RP is different from tabletop RP in that there can be more time between responses, responses can be multiple paragraphs, there are no "skill checks" or can you do this or that? as long as you can create a plausible way for your four legged animal to do something, they can do it. my old board had a system for fighting but that was only because fights involving two characters played by two people needed a form of mediation to prevent "my character wins because they're simply better" things like "god modding" or making another characters choices for them were very frowned upon. but yeah, it's very likely that the warrior cats forum board developed their own lore in regards to families and dynamics and what form of drama was happening. i find forum RPers also focus far more on character dynamics, drama and building relationships than table top players. table top players tend to focus on action and fighting and taking their party on a journey instead of chatting up bill over there just because you happen to be at the same river bank and then accomplishing nothing meaningful because of it.
You can stop being a furry if that’s what you’re saying
@@drhapi5308 I dodged that bullet, thankfully
There's one about PANDAS? How can a bear that spends most of its time and energy digesting make any drama?
"Insert blood panda clan"
😂😂😂😂😂
There is also none about lions and baboons and elephants and one about dogs and bears I only read the cats one though it’s the best of them all
I remember in the one about baboons there was literally a caste system
There was a flood and food and territories have become rare. They think their prophet will help them but it turns out he is a false prophet. Meanwhile there is a prophecy that 3 pandas would become the new prophets or something but the current one doesn't want to become outed as a liar and fake prophet so he spends the series trying to kill the 3 main pandas or make them joining him by manipulating them and also kills other pandas who find out his secret
did not expect to come in here and see my old wfc clan namedropped on an iceberg. terrifying start
Which part of the iceberg?
I still think it would be super sick if the Warriors team collaborated with Rockstar Games on an open world video game with its own, unique storyline where you had free reign to do whatever you wanted as a cat, but you still had underlying obligations to serve your Clan/obey the Warrior Code etc.
Omg, it would be a dream
I just know some mf’s would be terrible and start committing cat war crimes
There’s Roblox warrior cat games that might scratch that itch for you
@@jadedesigns6171Those are role play games, but i think OP is thinking of like a mmorpg but for warrior cats
I found these books in my elementary school library as a kid. Here I am 26 still reading about cats
Saaaaaaame😂. I became obsessed!
@Endaretainer what's sad about being able to keep your childhood joy for a piece of media even into adulthood?
@Endaretainerwhen did your sense of childlike whimsy and wonder die? when did you become the sad shell of a human being we see today?
@Endaretainer yeah I don't read warriors anymore, but I do still love Wings of Fire! Plus the first arc of warriors was pretty decent
@Endaretainer I'd say up until 5th arc is worth reading, although you do notice the decline by then. I enjoy seeing what the fandom is cooking up animation wise but I grew out of the books.
nearly 20 years old and it’s like i have a soul tie to this series 😭 i wont be able to escape until the series ends and even then i’ll never be able to deny how much these books have impacted me
I think there are a ton of people in their 30's 40's and so on who feel the same way haha
I'm about to turn 20 lol. The thing that got me into the series as a kid were all the animatiom projects here on youtube. They are all so good it's insane. I loved this series so much. Even my first manga was a warrior cats book named 'the rise of scourge' lol.
Mate I'm 30 and I feel ya
I'm 21 and been a fan since I was 9, when my mum brought home the "Into the Wild" book, oblivious to what it was like.
Personally I'd even go as far to say that I literally wouldn't be who I am today without it
(Even tho I only read 11 books)
When I was a kid, I read every book in the series at the time like 3x's over each. I learned to draw specifically for Warriors. I participated in RP forums and did the quizzes that gave you your warriors name and clan. When I was in elementary school, the principle banned "playing warrior cats" on the playground because kids were actually scratching and biting each other. SpottedLeaf was my favorite character and I'm still upset.
haha it's people like you that made the fandom what it is! Do you still keep up with the books?
@@exitsexamined I haven't in a long while, but I still look at fan art and animations xD
One day I'll own the whole series!
💀I'm sorry what??
@@xbreezee Yeah that's pretty close to what the principle said LOL. I was part of River Clan xD
I'm a veteran rper of Kugyay. Started in 2006 (when I joined) and still exist. Kugyay is a warrior cats rp forum. I was a freshman in high school when I got into the series. I still rp and read the series. I'm now 32. 😂❤ warrior cats forever.
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but Survivors, Seekers, Bravelands, Bamboo Kingdom, and Wings of Fire aren't spin-offs, they exist in their own universe with its own worldbuilding that isn't the same as the Warriors books. I'm a big fan of Wings of Fire and I feel that it often subverts tropes found in Warriors, and has much better characters with much more nuanced explorations of how things that happen in the book affects them.
oh yeah no that annoyed me too, there are definitely things in this video that arent 100% correct
Yeah 😭 Warrior cats does not have a monopoly on animals as humans that’s not a warrior cat exclusive thing. I bet some pre date WC
Yep. Seekers predates warrior cats. Didn’t check others
And Tui is WAY MORE than an Erin…
survivors, seekers and bravelands i can understand the confusion because they're all made by erin hunter. the other two though, yeah they're very unrelated.
Another fun Warriors game is called ClanGen. It's a clicker story generating game where you generate a clan name, pick out what you want your starting cats to be, assign leader, deputy, and medicine cat, and then send your cats on patrols and make decisions to do or not do something, and there's a whole risk/reward thing where if you do something you'll either gain like prey or herbs or more cats for the clan, or your cats on the patrol will die or get hurt, or nothing will happen. And to proceed you "skip a moon", which gives you a run down of what's happened in the past moon like deaths, illness, injury, relationship statuses, stolen prey/herbs, wars starting or ending with other clans, pregnancy/outsider kits brought in, and even murders (where you may or may not be told who the killer is in the clan).
I seriously want someone to make a game of thrones clangen challenge.
The atheism thing actually makes sense to me, especially with Mothwing.
She was so excited to be a medicine cat, and so nervous to meet StarClan. They didn't come to her.
She found out her own brother faked the sign that made the clan believe she was destined to be a medicine cat. How could StarClan let that happen, if they were really there? Wouldn't they stop the evil and lying, or at the very least, tell Mothwing or their leader that she shouldn't be the medicine cat?
I don't blame her for rejecting StarClan when they finally appear to her.
Honestly she has a point, Starclan is not always on top of it haha
One of my least favourite thing about Warriors is how StarClan are all idiots, and it's never really acknowledged in the series. I like Mothwing's story because that's the only time it was.
I could be remembering it wrong, but didn't she kinda confirm at one point that she DID see them? And thought that they were just a weird dream or something?
@@purplepartytigerd1598 she originally thought she was having dreams from them, but it ended up just being normal dreams
@@purplepartytigerd1598I think she finally sees them *officially* at the end of Omen Of The Stars, but she shifts her stance from "I don't believe in Starclan" to "I acknowledge Starclan's existence, but don't think they have as much sway as everyone says they do."
Which... She gets proven pretty damn right (and screwed over relentlessly) in the arcs after that one.
I stopped at the place of no stars, I got married and had kids and life just hit me, up until then I read every single book, re-reading whenever I was waiting for a new release. I still have the place of no stars sitting on my nightstand to this day ready for me to pick it up again but I just haven’t had the wherewithal to begin reading again. I think I might have to now that UA-cam’s beautiful algorithm he fed me this gem of a video. It’s been 3 years and I’m 21 years old now.
Damn you got a lot done in 3 years 😂
@@Count990 no kidding lol it’s been crazy, I regret nothing
OMG Same. I just put the books down one day and never finished.
Hope you read them to your children when they’re older and you can all bond and cry over fictional cats!!!
@@faithdahlquist-tookey4619 yeah spottedleaf and bluestar are gonna traumatize them
It’s always fascinating to see what Warriors looks like to an outside viewer who isn’t acquainted with the books or the fandom. I’ve been in cat purgatory for years.
Honestly, cat purgatory doesn't sound too bad if it's the kind that involves cats with you in purgatory
@@exitsexamined The cat purgatory I’ve been in hasn’t been so bad, so you’re not wrong. Speaking of purgatory, you didn’t even mention there’s a cat hell in Warriors to go along with StarClan, cat heaven.
I have someone in a animation community that loves cat warriors and I wanted to approach/understand their obsession with cats lol they gave me a quick summary and hoooo boy u can really make ur own cat fantasy ahahaha
I work with kids, and whenever they see me reading a warriors book, they'll go, "hey!! I love those books!!"
The fact that even now in 2024 kids are still walking around with these books under their arms makes me so, so happy.
The best thing about the Warrior Cats was on the old website, there was Warrior Cats forums where you could roleplay, draw art, chat, and so much more! I spent years on the Warriors Forums and it’s actually where I got my username from and have used for over 10 years now. Skyfawn was my Warrior Cat name and it’s been a part of my identity for so long I can’t see myself as not being Skye Fawn online. I met some amazing people on there and to this day I actually still text and keep up to date with one of them on how our lives are going. It was always a warm and fun community to interact with and I have so many memories from the forums. Getting the email it was being shut down was heartbreaking, but I’ll never forget my time there!
Even as an adult, this series has an iron grip on me and likely will for the rest of my life. Shoutout to warriors for being my clinical brain-worm 💕
A great breakdown of the series and fandom, i believe the reason for a specific app, is for the kids whose parents who don’t want their kids on a browser for safety reasons (aka the non ipad kids with parents who are actually cautious)
Hey thanks so much, glad to hear you thought it was OK! It was a beast of a series to go through haha. That makes a good amount of sense actually now that you mention it!
The books didn’t have those “weird close up pictures of cats” until recently
Wayne Mcloughlin’s covers featured full-body dynamically posed cats and a character portrait in the center
Way nicer imo, but it could be I just love those covers cuz they were the dominant ones around when I had my warrior-cat-crazy phase XD I use them as my background on my Mac
Those were the covers I read as a kid, I’ve stopped reading them but I was sad when they changed the covers
I think it depends on the language, the German editions in my childhood (maby 15 years ago) had a single big picture of a cats face on it. Maby not as close up as the new covers, but very similar.
I think both covers are fine, I know people like the older ones but I don’t see the reason to hate so much on the newer ones
the old style was so much better. Like, I can't even accept a "maybe you know" about it
Just wanna point out that those are NOT the original book covers; the original book covers were gorgeous and iconic, and the fandom mourns both then and their artist every day.
I do like how these spines match up though. :)
Yea, I remember them from my childhood. What happened to them, why did they change them?
The warriors fandom is so silly and crazy. But the passion and imagination is astounding. I still love it all these years later. I still love to poke my head in and see what's going on. I'm happy to have stumbled on the books as a kid and to have been there for the RPs on forums. To see it all transform and have new generations go through it all. Thank you for making a video on it!
One has to wonder if the world of “Warrior Cats” shares the same universe as “Watership Down”.
Honestly, that would make a lot of sense lol. There has to be a fan fic on this haha
Watership down was peak
Always was my headcanon
Cats rule all things. Why should the fantasy genre be any different?
I thought the squirrels ran things 😆
@@RealLifeIronMan That's just what the cats want you to think!
@@ahmedshaharyarejaz9886Well then, why don’t the squirrels run things?
Well except for badgers or foxes
Only got through the first three sagas of the book series. I was obsessed with these books as a kid.
Hey honestly not surprised you just got through the firs three, that's already what 18 books? What did you think so far / reading it as an adult?
@@exitsexaminedwell, from reading the recent series (A Starless Clan, A Vision Of Shadows), I can say that the authors are repeating the ‘Trauma Medicine Cat Apprentice’ POVs, with ones like Alderheart, Frostpaw(that one might have a name change since I haven’t read the end of that part cuz I can’t find the book), Shadowsight, and a new one called Moonpaw(probably the same). One tiny good thing is that they left a the ‘Apprentice POV’ for a full Warrior/med cat like Sunbeam, but only Sunbeam.
This is my own opinion btw
@@Phantom_Of_Fandoms I mean, they're making elders the protags next series which will be interesting
The power of three still has to be my favorite in the entire series. Feels much more slice of life somehow.
@@voxicwaste Lol I started on that one, it was good
When I was a kid, I was OBSESSED with these books, but unfortunately only 3 of them were translated to my language and I didn't know English back then. I hugely blame the series for my fondness of forests and medicinal herbs, I just enjoyed it sooo much. I think this is a sign for me to finally dig deeper
Thanks for the video!!! I read the first Arc when I was like 12. They were my moms attempt to get me to read more and she read the alongside me so we could chat about them. I stopped after the second Arc I think. Most of the caracters I grew up with were dead and I just kinda lost touch with the series, but it always keept a special place in my memory as the books that got me back into reading and the first book to make me cry.
A few years later when I was deep in the anime hole I stumbbled over a bunch of Warrior cats fanart. I tried googling around to find out what had happend to the series but quickly gave up as it was quite ... convoluted. This video is EXACTLY what I was looking for back then. So thanks for explaining and the trip down memory lane!
As someone who has read every piece of warriors media ever and indeed has a gold star, this was great.
Hey honestly really appreciate you saying that! It was an intimidating series to speak on because there are so many nooks and crannies but glad you thought I gave it justice. Your gold star will arrive in the mail shortly
how???
bro you’re rich (im also very jealous)
@@buffcommie942 dedication
Cat atheism is basically “believing Starclan can always be trusted.” Rather then “believing Starclan is real.”
At least that’s what Mothwing seems to believe in newer books.
It’s not atheism as we think of it in the real world. But it’s the closest thing you can get in a world where magic is real and cats have 9 lives. Without the character being just dumb, of course.
To fair, I do feel like Starclan has some hiccups lol like I get where Mothwing is coming from
They had a few books where it was stated that she believed that the DF attack was rogues who attacked the Clans
I think they changed it because of how actually insane that made her sound
well cloudtail was full on "they're just fairy tails". even when he was fighting darkstripe in the great battle and gets taunted for that he responds " I might not believe starclan is real, but I know evil is" and keeps fighting
To be fair, I would put it closer to agnostic people than atheists people. Knowing there is a god (or here Starclan) but refusing to believe in them, pray for them and/or live your life "for" them.
Being athiest also caused Scourge's death, unfortunately. 😔
Wait, a channel that doesn’t talk about Warrior Cats talking about Warrior cats? I’VE NEVER CLICKED IN A VIDEO SO FAST
haha is that really most of the channels?? Most of the reference videos I was watching were about the series itself so I didn't go too off the rails into the characters themselves but I can imagine there probably are entire series dedicated to it
This is the Gospel: Jesus loves you so much that He gave His life for you as a willing sacrifice to reconcile you to the Father and give you eternal happiness and peace. Romans 10:9-10 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.
@@justincrackedatfortnite9691 okay.... so?
@@exitsexamined If I read this correctly and understand correctly- there ARE some Warriors UA-camrs who have series dedictaed to talking about characters themselves. The one I actually know, is Moonkitti, were she goes into the stories of some suggested characters. Sometimes only a little bit. (Her Talking/Mini Talking series)
@@VioletScar-Star1589ohhh I love MoonKitti!
Your channel is such an underrated hidden gem.
It's really good to see someone covering & explaining all these book series i would see on shelves but never got around to actually reading.
Firestar's Quest will always be my favorite of the series.
It got me into the series as well
it was so refreshing at the time... I don't know why, but I always had this impression of the book
That's my favourite super edition!
I'm reading this for the first time now!
My daughter was very into this series.
She named our cat "Raven claw"and we have a family tradition where our pets are given titles and that gives us Countess Raven Claw. She goes by Miss Kitty to us commoners.
I read 40k, Horus Heresy, and many, many, many other book series are up in my head. Robotech, Battletech, Forgotten Realms, Varayan Memoires, etc. So I never saw anything wrong with her loving a series.
I started reading the Horus heresy, when i was at book 6 i thought id be done soon.......
This is really sweet :) not instantly saying “oh grow up” to her, rather realizing you were the same at your age. You are a good parent ❤️
💖 I named one of my cats Greykit after Warrior Cats names.
I had a whole Logclan, the Kittypet clan lore for my cats a few years ago but I'm not sure where I wrote it all down
i’m 20 and i’m still in LOVE with these books, i still keep up to date with the newest releases although i prefer the writing style of the original couple arcs
@@GraceWhitaker-v3s same hahaha I'm 25 and still enjoy the books but also still haven't read most of the side content
Me too! I agree, the first arcs are more special to my heart. Something about the writing style of the original authors
I'm 35 and I still tell my fellow adults all about the silly cat books I love so much. The looks on people's faces sometimes when I tell them battle cats is my favourite series is hilarious, I'm sure they expected something else.
The first arcs are good after that tough.... It becomes realy repatative and boring and to be fair I personally don't like the first books as much as when I was a child lol. Those are children book after all.
However the animation they produce I'm interest.
Those books started my english journey...back in 9th grade i sucked at english...stumbled upon those books in German. I thought - okay those are books for kids - I will start reading them in English to improve! So the fandom, the books and the world will always have a sweet spot for me!
Warrior cats has been such a insane inspiration for me, it inspired me as a young elementary schooler to start drawing, i’ve created an entire universes with more than 100 different characters, but all somehow important to this story i’ve made, all in my head. It’s such a hyper fixation that not even a day goes by that I do not think of this series, or my characters. It’s so very dear to my heart. I miss roleplaying, so much but unfortunately most of my friends have drifted away.
I’m in my 20’s now but I adore this series with my whole heart.
i had such a fondness for this series
i was dyslexic and never really read much but LOVED cats - i found these books and read the first 18 in like three months which was the most i had ever read in my life.
we used to have yearly tests to find our reading age and i had been stuck at six my entire school career, read these then shot up to a reading age of fifteen. (i was like 9/10 at the time)
i’m still a reader now as an adult and honestly think it’s because of these books! i’d completely forgotten about them, tysm for reminding me!
May starclan light your path
May your heart be your guiding Key.
Warrior Cats is one of the franchises that I'd rather appreciate from afar [and avoid the dark side of the fandom as well], and I especially dislike how Squirrelflight was treated in the books. On a different note, I'd love to see you talk about Cosgrove Hall's rise and fall, they were so iconic in the UK and I feel like they could've even rivaled Disney and Hanna Barbera had ITV just gave them an actual chance. Will Vinton Studios also has a really bittersweet story, and Will himself deserved so much better. The documentary Claydream goes into details of his life, how he founded his studio, and how he lost everything no thanks to Phill and Travis Knight. Will Vinton Studios was turned into Laika, and Laika has had many controversies [OSHA violations as an example], that I don't think would've happened under Will's watch.
Honestly, I can understand appreciating this one from afar haha. Cool to know about Cosgrove Hall, not super familiar with it but I put it on my lost! I might reach out to you when I get around to it, always good to talk to someone familiar with the series!
@@exitsexamined Cosgrove Hall made a ton of classic British cartoons, such as Danger Mouse, The Wind In The Willows, Engie Benjy, Little Robots, and Roary The Racing Car [made in collaboration with Chapman Entertainment]. I am so excited it's on your list! Will Vinton Studios would also be a good one, given the bittersweet circumstances behind everything that happened to the studio. I recommend watching the documentary Claydream to get a basic idea of what happened to Will Vinton Studios.
i'm 30 now and was obsessed with these books as a teen. a re-read might be in my near future i fear....
Thank you for this. I never interacted with the fandom myself, but... I did love these books. To know such a big part of my love for reading and writing wasn't some niche topic nobody else knows about is comforting. I didn't really have internet access as a kid and by the time I did, I was a teen obsessed with FNaF. A shame that I missed out on such a dedicated fandom
I’m so glad I was a loner kid. I enjoyed my Cats of Thrones without any extra fanatical input, and managed to get out around the time of the Upside-Down invasion before the rising tide of supplemental material drowned me.
SAME!
Literally me
Cats of thrones isn't far off
Same here. Helped me alot in my lonely childhood
This series was my childhood. I outgrew it now but I still have my books stored away to pass on to my own children. I’m surprised this series is still going. Last one I read was the one where Firestar died.
It seemed fitting that Firestar dies when as I become an adult and say goodbye to childhood .
RIP flame boy.
I never realized there were multiple authors but that makes ALOT of sense. As a kid i was super confused. Some of those books had VERY contradicting takes on philosophy, religion, tradition, morality, war, killing, and even indevidual characters.
Like first series was like "He died honorably in battle and the warrior who killed him is a hero for his clan and will not be resented by the enemy" and the 4th or 5th series was like "wtf wtf why are you trying to kill that guy sure he invaded your home and terrorised your elders and children but wtf r u doing warriors don't kill!"
Warrior cats is a goldmine of shitty and changing morals, let me tell you...
I think with more fans coming bearing a more leftwing attitude, the authors might have felt that honor, war, blood and soil would leave bad tastes in their mouths. This is why I think the first arch, along with dawn of the clans, bear some of the most "real" ideas of the clans.
Thank you for this trip down memory lane! I "only" read the first four "seasons" of Warrior Cats (and some of the specials) and stopped after those, because I felt the series got to a pretty good conclusion at the end of season four; but still, this series holds a special place within my heart. I always loved how the authors were able to present their characters as belivably cat-like in describing their instincts and how cats would experience the world and simultaneously managed to portray them as "furry humans" to make them relatable. I always felt that Warrior Cats evaded the trap of falling into repeating storylines by taking a focus on its characters, giving each of them very distinct personalities, which is probably a great groundwork of preventing to fall into predictable writing patterns. I believe the best sign of how well the series is written is that I only realized how crazy it actually was, once I summarized season 3 to a friend of mine in the briefest way possible, because season 4 came out at the time and they were contemplating skipping season 3 to be up to date with reading (but still decided to read season 3 after this conversation). It is one of those stories that takes some very simple concepts (religious Clan Cats in a forest fighting for survival) and just brings all the potential hidden in there onto the page for readers to enjoy and to inspire them.
Warriors was my favorite book series growing up, I haven’t touched these books since middle school! I’m amazed there’s a fandom dedicated to this series and it’s ever growing. It’s heartwarming to see that kids today get to enjoy the same books I grew up on.
I remember crying in my elementry classroom whenever one of them died in a battle scene 😭
I was really into these as a kid. REALLY into them. Had ALL the lore memorized. It's completely wild that it's still going.
and seems like they most likely will be still going on for quite some time haha
They’ve really been pumping them out. It’s been what, three, four generations now? Plus the series for dogs, the series for bears, and the series for African wildlife. Take a break Erin Hunter😭
@@exitsexaminedI’ve seen they have at least 4-6 books coming out between this year and next 😂
Same here. Kinda glad I stopped when I did tho since the new stuff seems a mess
same, its crazy that this series was already around before i could even read and now its still going??
I was in a very specific part of this fandom. There was this host of people on Animal Jam who participated in the AJCW (Animal Jam Clan Wiki). We coded pages for our clans and even some of our characters for the wiki, and we would create clan camps on Animal Jam and roleplay in them. Oh how I miss those days..
my zeniths perked when i read this comment
i never got to be a part of any AJ warriors roleplay groups, but i always admired them! their coordination/battles kind of reminds me of Club Penguin Armies back in the day. it's always nice to stumble upon cool little internet communities like that!
@@nuniyoaOMG STOP LMAO
I would have loved this, I wish I knew about them when I was playing AJ
me roleplaying in seripia forest as my edgy warrior cat oc (i was a wolf with a pirate sword and a fox hat)
The first series of books is definitely worth reading. It's so much better than you'd expect.
I just started reading these books recently and I love them so much!
i loved the series as a kid, remember saving up some pocket money so I could go to the book store and get a brand new book that just came out. it was on the same level to me as Redwall series and other fantasy books with animal characters, these books really sparked the love of reading in me when i was around 7-10 years old. now listening to this video essay I'm also really happy that I read them without internet, so there was no drama, nothing, I just enjoyed the books as any kid should :))
Honestly it's so interesting how the internet kind of changed the landscape as far as fandoms and how series are perceived - anyway glad you enjoyed them and Redwall, that was another favorite of mine!
Redwall is a series I would love to reread as an adult! Some of those books were very adult!
@@faliciaforward i know, right! some topics touched upon there were rather mature stuff, and don't get me started on how i was sometimes bawling my eyes out about some characters and what happened to them
I had a big warrior cats phase when I was younger, but nothing hooked me like wings of fire. I read all of them as they came out, they got me really into drawing dragons, and I still re-read them every so often. I would LOVE for you to cover that series like this!
I haven't read Wings of Fire yet, but it seems like people love it, maybe I will cover it! How would you compare it to Warriors? Is it same general vibe / target audience?
@exitsexamined As far as I can remember, both series have similar target audience and tone, (and a lot of the same type of violence) although WoF feels a lot grander imo because it takes place over a whole continent as opposed to one forest, and it takes time to explore all seven dragon tribes, each with a unique culture.
Wings of fire probably also benefits from being a lot smaller than warriors, with only 15 books in the main series.
@@exitsexaminedwell, as an adult, i no longer read warriors but i still read wings of fire.
@@exitsexaminedif you do end up reading WoF make sure you read, Legends: Darkstalker, its the best book imo and a lot of people dont read it because its not part of the main series. WoF is also potentially getting an animated series but it might be a warriors situation
@@smiklosovic8971 I read the first book when it came out and loved it! Never went back to it because the books hadn't come out yet haha. Might have to revisit it and warriors now, been thinking about it since watching this video lol. Hopefully as a 20 yr old i'm not too old for these YA novels.
I loved warriors so much but the survivors series has my heart.
The characters each get developed a lot more as there is a lot (and I mean a lotttt) fewer of them. The story was different from the whole “clans fighting each other” as it was more about a group of house dogs joining a pack of wild dogs after a horrible natural disaster fighting for survival in a changed world. I really really loved the series and it was a big part of my childhood! Sadly it doesn’t have an active fandom which is really sad
Warriors may be my favorite series, but Storm my baby is my beloved favorite and I love her more than any character in Warriors!
Totally agree
I think there also a book series about bears from the same authors. I remember reading something like that
edit: Oop he ended up mentioning it later in the video
OML Survivors was literally how I got into Erin Hunter and reading in general and I read both arcs 16x times over but I remember being SO MAD it was underrated. I wish they didn't stop publishing it, Survivors deserves some love D:
@@meth_raccoon YESSS SEEKERS IS THE BESTTT also Bravelands (about animals on the African Plains) is pretty good too
I still remember obsessively defending Bluestar in Animal Jam, and then Scourge came along and replaced Bluestar as my favorite. I only read 3 books past the first series, but MAPs and other fan animations had such a huge impact on me. Urnam7’s animations made me realize that animation isn’t just something done by big companies and that there are tools out there for individuals to make animation. It seems obvious now, but as a kid I had never seen animation outside of tv and movies. It’s been years and I still have vivid memories reading those books lol
omg I see the controversies iceberg I made, haha, thanks for including that. This video is really well made, I enjoyed it greatly ^_^
I read the entire warrior series, all field guides, all novels and novellas, all manga sidestories in chronological order...back when there were 4 main arcs. Can not even IMAGINE doing that now, god help the warrior fans. Even my child self eventually recognized the recurring plot motifs and plot devices driving drama-contested territory spats, cross-clan romances-but it was a lot of fun!
ayyyy clangen mention! i'm one of the lead devs, so that was fun to see lol
I wish the fandom had more fan-made games tbh, it's really an untapped corner! Though it is amazing to me how animation focused the fandom is, from what I know it was pretty much the originator of MAPs and one of the first fandoms to ever be as animation heavy as it is. The OG animators like xxflightfeatherxx and sswarriorcats were so wildy influential, too. It all speaks to just how desperately the fans have always wanted some sort of animated media haha
Anyways, for all the unhinged insanity of this series, it's something I'll always look back on with nostalgia even though I don't read it anymore. And I get neverending amusement these days from watching plot summaries of the new books xD
Hey that's so cool you worked on it! I would have loved to know about the dev process for that game, honestly I'm kicking myself for not trying to reaching out to you guys and other creators to ask a few questions about the games, anyway glad you found the vid!
And who knows, maybe there will be more fan-made games in the future!
Yo!! I've been getting back into playing Clangen recently. It used to be kind of hard to get into a couple of years ago, but now it can hook me in for hours!
The fangames are mainly how I got to know the series in the first place, and I'm grateful for all of them.
And now that you point it out, the Warrior Cats fandom really is incredibly animation-focused, isn't it? ✨
What a throwback, this was my very first fandom. I picked up the first book of the second arc when I was 11, and when I finished that arc went back to read the OG arc. Those were all the books available at that point, and when I finished them I went online and read fanfiction. Since then I've moved on from Warrior Cats but never from fan communities online.
What I loved about Warrior Cats is the depth of the world.
I like the idea that there is this entire universe within our own in which cats are living their own lives.
Whilst our lives may seem mundane at times, this deep and exciting world is just around the corner.
Another world that intersects with our own.
Im 15 rn and I still love that series, Im trying to collect all the books again!
Don't forget all the games and projects on Scratch. I can't be the only one.
I was one of the managers of a huge RP group on scratch. every day I got back from school and wrote about cats beefing each other over territory. lol good memories
Kit to Leader anyone?
@@pikathemimikyu6655 ya
@@pikathemimikyu6655YES OH MY GOD
@@pikathemimikyu6655 came to the comments to name drop this game specifically lmfao
confession: I was obsessed with these books as a little kid, so much so I asked my mom to buy me yoga balls to ‘play’ with. In reality I wanted to attack said yoga balls like a cat, and I did once I obtained them. I pretended I was fire star and attacked the absolute sh!t out of them. Biting, clawing, pouncing, hissing, the whole 9 yards. The yoga balls would bounce back at me so it made it more immersive. There was a few times I even got injured by attacking them lmao.
My mom caught me biting one and was extremely mad and a bit disturbed. That was strike one. I skipped straight to strike 3 when I popped one with me teeth, my beloved enemy cat balls were taken from me and deflated. IMO attacking yoga balls pretending you’re a cat is better then becoming a zombie to an IPad lol. At least I had an imagination
Bruh you couldn't waterboard that out of me..
I would pick random plants and berries and try to make poultices lmao
@@andrewgreen77 me and my brother used to do that all the time lol. Mix together some berries leaves and soda and dare eachother to drink it lol.
this is incredible 😭
Imagine losing a fight to a yoga ball 😆You're right about it being better than scrolling on an Ipad though
@@bigboi8207😂😂
Mine sister actually is a warriors fan and as many fans have before after she found warriors she started drawing and now over 1 year later im now helping her to make her own original warriors fanfic about 3 apprentices, wavepaw, hollypaw and pinepaw that live in a slightly forrested tundra in one of the six clans, that clan name being boulderclan along side featherclan, lakeclan, iceclan, winterclan and hareclan❤❤❤
That's adorkable
Fun lore;
When I was younger I used to run a detailed Warrior Cat RP fandom page .. Through Neopets forums... I don't even know..
I'm 30 and still to this day have my old notebook where I kept track of my entire Warrior Cats Neopets Empire lmao!
I had an entire system that to be honest, still totally checked out and impresses myself to this day.
Had taught myself basic html coding in this time that I used to structure it all and would hand write it out in my journal. I still refer to my old notes from Grade 6 me on html often enough that every time is a reminder and a thank you to Warrior Cats and it both warms my heart and makes me chuckle.
Warrior Cats kinda brought me into being online, my best friend neighbor during 2012 showed me all the speedpaints on youtube of the characters. I didn't read, but I was instantly in love with the Warrior Cats style of animal focused stories. Wings of Fire was what got me into reading actually, years later. Wings of Fire is also walking in the footprints of Warrior Cats, which makes me happy! I think 2012 me would of loved to see Wings of Fire stuff too, if it was like Warriors then.
Nice to see a shoutout to Clangen here as someone who helps work on it 🤗 Gosh, I remember playing Untold Tales back before Cattails was a thing, haha! It felt so amazing at the time!
Whoa so cool! It was so much fun going back to play it for this video, would have loved to talk to before to know what the dev process was like for it!
@@exitsexamined oh, honestly working on it is wonderful! The lead devs are very helpful and encouraging. I've learned a ton from them and it's fun to chat about possible new features and to see stuff we're working on behind the scenes. There are some incredibly talented people on the dev team!
I have been obsessed with Clangen lately as a way to engage with the Warriors world without actually reading (as much as I used to love it, I have ADHD and it can be so hard to get through a book these days), and I've been having so much fun telling my own stories and developing my own clans, getting attached to characters and then being shocked when they inevitably get murdered lol. Much thanks to you and the rest of the team!!
Omg I found that game recently anf I've been OBSESSED !!!!
I started reading Warrior Cats when I was 9 and have been a huge fan ever since. It's my favourite book series EVER and I love Squirrelflight, Yellowfang, Leafpool and Firestar.
I read all the Warriors books they had in my middle school library. The violence, death and disfigurement, and cat heaven and hell really caught my attention. Everything about Brokentail/star, Brightheart(?) getting half of her face ripped off and having to adjust to it, Ashfur's incel arc, some crazy shit went down in this series.
Oh yeah, Scourge was pretty cool, too. I remember the Scourge/Ashfur crackship. I don't know too much about what's going on in the most recent books, tho. Just that Ashfur's ghost possessed his ex's man at some point
“Possessed his ex’s man” sounds like a plot for a paranormal romance or something lol
@@Lilyrose-Violet It really does. The fact that this is all about a bunch of feral cats just makes it even more out of pocket
You gotta tell me about the incel arc I don't remember this but now I'm deadly curious
@@bigboi8207 To sum it up, Ashfur got really salty after Squirrelflight picked Brambleclaw instead of him. Later on in the series, he tried to burn her adopted kids alive so she'd "feel the same pain that he felt when she rejected him". His obsession with making her suffer and trying to force her to be with him continued into the afterlife. Yeah... Ashfur is/was a pretty fucked up dude. Idk how he was ever let into cat heaven in the first place 💀
@@bigboi8207 no not the incel arc 😭
9:00 mothwing knows starclan exists! she just personally doesn't follow them and questions their helpfulness
This series was my childhood and yes, the lore is indeed absolutely crazy.
Wow I’m feeling like I should return to this. It was such a huge part of my childhood from elementary school to middle school. I haven’t been in the fandom in over ten years but it’s still very near and dear to my heart
It's always interesting going back to series like this for rereads, there's so many new details to notice as an adult, sometimes in good sometimes in bad, but always interesting!
I’m just now getting that this series and Redwall are really similar
-kids books
-anthropormophic animals that look like normal animals (not animal-like humans)
-extremely violent
-deep lore
Redwall was my childhood and Legend of Luke is surprisingly dark, especially what happened to Tan Loc.
you can include Guardians of Ga’hoole to that list too! and Watership Down is of course the OG children’s book about cute animals and just so much violence
I went back and reread as many of these as I could a while back (I broke my foot, had a lot of time on my ass with nothing to do) and the absolute chaos of the series and fandom is honestly amazing. I don't get into it in a typical fandom kind of way, but it's always gonna have a place in my heart.
ETA: wings of fire is great, and is complete (for now at least, who knows) and it might make for a good subject if you're about the lifespan of stories. (First time here lol)
Oh god. This vid couldcnot have found me at a better time!!! We had that very first warrior cats book in my schools library back in 2012, and I just ended up buying the rest of the series along the years. When i moved out for college my mom gave them away and I was devastated. Now at 24 I buy the books second hand whenever i have some money left over. My sister made fun of me for it but this vid is a clear sign xD It's so crazy that this vid poped up in my recommended!!
My first intro into the series was The New Prophecy: Moonrise, which was the second book in the second arc. So, I was thrown into the pool deep end first and then crawled my way around back to the first arc... and that was when I was in middle school. I'm an adult now and this accursed book series (lovingly) refuses to leave my head. Although my passion for it hasn't been as strong as it once was back in the day, I'm still happy that I got into the series and I'm forever glad about the time I've spent in forums, making fanfics, and indulging in a lot of the content.
It's, to date, the longest I've hyperfixated on ANY thing.
I'm so obsessed with how cracked this series is. I will always be a fan, even if I don't read it anymore.
0:17 "A little more edgy-" Animorphs of course! "Warrior cats" Well, yeah I suppose.
Same goes for Guardian's of Ga'hoole. Which I'd argue, is darker than Warriors. Not only did it have death, but a lot of psychological horrors. Plus, it had the sense to end as a complete story.
Guardians of Ga'Hoole don't have as crazy deaths (Tigerstar...) but they defenitely didn't HAVE TO put a simulation of a brainwashing torture nazi camp
Guardians was crazy. Brainwashing, attempted killing by siblings, cannibalism. The world at times felt so dangerous and hostile,but it was also so interesting, especially the collecting of the coals for forging and stuff. The movie did the series dirty, as they made it too generic and took the dark elements out of it that made it so compelling.
Ga'Hoole was my other childhood love, that was some amazing world crafting for a YA series.
Yeah my friends were reading warriors while I was reading Ga'Hoole.
As a child who was absolutely fanatical about all three series (warriors, guardians and animorphs) guardians definitely went the hardest in terms of fucked uppedness in my opinion but not by a huge margin (out of those three I think warriors actually comes in third for fucked uppedness but the race is close). Guardians also definitely had the most satisfying ending (I don't even know how warriors ended if it even does, I tuned out after the fourth arc due to a mix of growing up and just not enjoying the series direction anymore).
Anyway tldr they're all great series everyone should read em have fun kids
I like how you reference the 90+ books on the series as its an achievement. Erin Hunter is a pseudonym for a team of 6 authors... Of course they can just pump them out.
Was I expecting to watch a video essay about warrior cats? No. Am I excited about it? Hell yes
I'm only just getting into Warrior Cats, and this video really helped me learn more about the series! Also, the game Cattails now has a sequel called Cattails: Wildwood Story, them and Clangen are my three favourite cat themed games!😊💖🐈
Man I've always felt like I missed out on this franchise. I was a prime target audience when the first book dropped. I was a teenager, weird loner, a cat lover and a bookworm. I think I would have been hooked on these books!
But they just didn't exist in my country back then *shrugs* Didn't learn about them until I was well into my 20's...
I loved this series growing up, and I never forget it. It made my childhood.
The algorithm has blessed me today, I never expected to see a video on this series i hadn’t seen anything about it since i was in elementary school
I'm just amazed I'm showing up to people haha, well glad it got to you somehow haha
@@exitsexamined you made a really good vid so people like me are prolly watching through the whole vid
I just saw you made a artimes foul vid the nostalgia dude, all you need is a rangers apprentice vid and im a forever fan imao
I have read, and own all of the books of Warriors, have been reading it for 8 years and I still am in love with the series
It's people like you who keep the series going strong and what it is today
I love how you’re not hating on it like others. You”re just explaining it
That's what I try to do on this channel!
I have been reading this saga since about 2011, and I will say it is amazing. And the community behind it is just as impressive. The imagination, creativity, and general atmosphere of it just makes for a great time... though as mentioned in this video just don't dive into drama... avoid it at all costs
Side Note: Wings of Fire is also pretty good... from what I can remember, I made it to like the third book and then completely stopped because I could never get my hands on later books. But still, recommend it too