Thunderclan’s Top 3 Issues and How to Fix Them by Cherryblaze

Cherryblaze presents some critiques of ThunderClan – do you agree?

Thunderclan, the first clan we’re introduced to and the clan we learn more about with each new book. Despite being the clan with the most time dedicated to it and having the highest number of developed characters, Thunderclan isn’t perfect. These are the problems that other fans and I have noticed with Thunderclan. Very minor spoilers for The Broken Code ahead.

1. Too much focus

Thunderclan has been the main clan for almost every book. Other clans get their time in books like super editions, novellas, and graphic novels. Since Thunderclan has gotten a lot of time in the books, reading about them gets boring.

Solving this is simple: put Thunderclan in the background. They don’t need to completely disappear, but give other clans a chance to have their stories told. This also means not having one of them be a protagonist, because Thunderclan cats don’t always need to be main characters.

2. Too many cats

Modern Thunderclan has more cats than any other clan, but most of them aren’t talked about because they’re background characters. This is because of one major factor: more cats are born than cats dying. Cats not dying isn’t exactly a bad thing, but it’s causing Thunderclan’s population to be huge when it doesn’t need to be.

There are two ways to fix this problem. Either kill off some background cats, stop adding new cats to the clan, or both. New kits should be born when necessary, but recently this hasn’t been the case.

3. Most cats are related

The majority of cats in Thunderclan have three ancestors in common: Brindleface, Frostfur, or Willowpelt. What’s worse is that Frostfur and Brindleface are sisters, and cats can be a combination of the three ancestors. This makes it harder to pair up cats, especially since cross-clan relationships aren’t allowed at the time of me writing this.

Before I present the solution, there is a reason why a lot of Thunderclan cats are related: Firestar. Firestar’s daughters each had a litter of kits, and those kits had kits. Also, it seems the writers are reluctant to kill his descendants. As of The Place of No Stars, 6 out of the 20 Firestar descendants are dead or gone (note that I’m not even including Cloudtail’s family). However, cats like Ferncloud or Daisy have most of their kin die.

One way to solve this problem would also help fix the too many cats issue: kill more cats related to Firestar. Most of them are background cats, so killing them won’t hurt the plot, and if anything it could move it forward. Another solution is to allow cross-clan relationships. Most Thunderclan cats aren’t related to other clan cats, so allowing them to have mates from other clans means they’ll have more options.

That’s all for this article. Let me know what you think, because I want to see what other people’s opinions are on Thunderclan. Cya!