The Slow Decline in the Warriors Series by Clownpaw

Clownpaw discusses the state of the Warriors series.

Hello! Keep in mind this is just my opinions on the series, and if the direction the series is going in is what you personally enjoy, there’s no problem with that! These are just my opinions, and take them with a grain of salt.

NOTE: SPOILERS FOR PRETTY MUCH ALL OF THE SERIES, IM SORRY IF MY THOUGHTS ARE DISORGANIZED, AND KNOW I HAVE N O T READ RIVER YET SO MAYBE ITS BETTER

Howdy Blog-Peeps. I’m Clownpaw, and today I’ll be explaining why I personally think the Warriors series is slowly declining.

Now, you might be wondering what I mean by this.
Well, put simply, I mean is the series has gone on for too long. Far too long. After writing 8 different arc thingies, super editions, the graphic novels/mangas, and the novellas, I think that ideas are just running low.

Why this is causing problems for the series:
Now, I think that the books are experiencing a drop in quality of writing. Which is understandable, due to the fact there is
A. Lots of characters to keep track of
B. We’ve already used up some pretty interesting ideas
C. The series is also really long
But I feel as if they’re now becoming desperate for new ideas, to the point of resorting to…Really weird and poorly written plotlines. At this point the series is much more than just a simple series about fighting cats in the woods. Personally, I do not like that, I miss how the older series were written. If your cup of tea is reading about the cats all going down into the Dark Forest, fighting a mysterious imposter cat (Ashfur), weird body possession and mind control, then go ahead. But this is a drastic change from the beginning of the series, don’t you think? Is the series trying to appeal to a slightly different audience than originally? I’m not sure. The series has always been classified as fantasy, except now it seems to just be..very unrealistic fantasy, though course, a bunch of cats fighting out and the woods and forming groups and having a group of dead cats up in the sky is already unrealistic, but it’s more realistic than the weird Ashfur stuff.

The Plot Spiral
I have nicknamed the point where a series gets..really out of control, a plot spiral. The point where the plot spirals into chaos.
I’d put the plot spiral point down around the Power of Three series, or Omen of the Stars
This is the point where it started to get a bit..Strange. A little bit funky, so you could say..
Now, Power of Three is probably my favorite series. I still think that the books were rather well written and a bit less unreasonable than now. But afterwards, pretty much everything started spiraling into more ✨MaGiC cAt PoWeRs✨ and ✨Oh PoOp ThErEs A nEw ClAn AnD mOrE pLoT cHaOs✨ I mean, we had a whole arc involving a very broken SkyClan (more on that later) and then…A Broken Code was..Uh.. weird and honestly? I don’t like it at all.

Subsection of Evidence
Here’s where I list my actual evidence. I am going to list out the plot for The Prophecies Begin and The Broken Code.

Prophecies Begin (also this is a recall using the warriors wiki and the amounts I do remember, this may not be in order since I have not read the series in a LONG time):
Rusty, an ordinary kittypet, jumps over the fence of his house and meets Greypaw, a “ThunderClan apprentice” and end up fighting. Unbeknownst to the two, Bluestar and Lionheart watched, and ended up inviting Rusty to join their really cool cat gang (ThunderClan). Rusty agrees and gets renamed Firepaw. Now there’s the prophecy of “Fire Alone Will Save the Clan” which duh, involves Firepaw. But pretty much throughout the series Firepaw does stuff like help WindClan rebuild itself after getting driven out by ShadowClan. Defeat Brokenstar (ShadowClan’s really evil and immoral leader) with help of others. Get caught up in a weird conspiracy that Tigerclaw is going to try and kill Bluestar and do other evil stuff (true). Tigerclaw makes bad decisions and then ends up making a deal with Scourge, taking over ShadowClan, and then being betrayed and killed by Scourge. Then there is a final battle, and Fire(now Heart) kills Scourge. Yay. I left out a lot, but that’s pretty much the simplest explanation of the major events.
Now this plot is a lot nicer to me, it’s just…a lot simpler than what i’m about to give you, and there’s a lot less weird supernatural themes in it.
Now for The Broken Code:
So we have 3 protagonists now, Shadowsight, Rootspring, and Bristlefrost.
The basic plot rundown?
The cats all lose their connection to StarClan, except for Shadowsight supposedly (spoilers, it’s just Ashfur) and the voice goes on about these Codebreakers that need to be punished. Bramblestar falls ill, and Shadowsight is like “oh well the voice said that you need to go out in the snow and you’ll be okay…” and they try that and Bramblestar dies. But instead of Bramblestar coming back okay..Ashfur shoves his way into Bramblestar’s body and poses as him. Then does all sorts of really weird stuff that causes a lot of conflict and plotlines, all that good stuff. But anyways. It ends up where Ashfur can apparently possess dead cats and stuff, and that causes a lot of problems because the cats realized they need to go down to the Dark Forest and go defeat Ashfur (who also kidnapped Squirrelflight at one point?? Ugh, this plot is confusing..) and stuff. So Ashfur is like trying to stop the cats with all these dead mind controlled cats, and then at the end of the book Bristlefrost falls into this weird water and dies?? Sorry this plot is really confusing.

So. One plot was confusing but the plot was more realistic, easier to imagine for me, and MORE MEMORABLE!! The other plot was also confusing, but rather hard to imagine, and not very memorable as it relied on a LOT of more common tropes in other fantasy books. At one point I even found myself getting some of the events mixed up with another fantasy series (those details shouldn’t be included, gosh I hope), just because of how some of details are so common. Honestly, I don’t really think that’s something you want. A plot that can be confused with other series because of how common it is.

SkyClan:
Now I have a WHOLE problem with SkyClan. Sure I like some of the new characters, but its only purpose was just a plot device. It was only added as something to continue the plot, which honestly, stuff like that never gets very far or very good, since it’s normally never thought very far ahead about it’s purposes beyond keeping the plot going so they can getting money.
Poor SkyClan definitely falls under that.
I think if SkyClan hadn’t happened, the series would probably be over at this point. Or the plot would be some other wacky idea. Now to some, you’re probably glad SkyClan was added because it helps continues your favorite series about fighting cats! Personally, I feel the opposite.

The Character Problems:
Now here we go with the characters. After hearing a bunch of forbidden romance tropes (it was nice at first but now, it’s like really?? At this point they should just change the rules since it happens so much..) and stuff, it’s all old. None of the new characters feel as genuine or interesting, especially all the Firestar kin copies. I haven’t read River yet, so I can’t say much about Flamepaw/Nightheart (?), although I have heard he finally spoke out against the whole Firestar child shadow thing, so good for him, maybe there’s hope..But anyways. Like I was saying, none of the characters have quite the authentic and genuine feel, and..they’re forgettable. After having so many cats to keep track of, the main protagonists don’t feel as interesting or noticeable to me. Just..The original feel the characters had is gone.

Ending thoughts:
Personally, I feel as if the whole series has gone on too long and it’s gradually ruining the nostalgic feel the original series had for me. No longer do the characters feel as engaging or interesting to me, and there has been almost no end. I feel like they COULD of ended it a lot sooner too, but they didn’t. This is going to become like the next Naruto series, and in all honesty, I dread that. I don’t want this to happen to the series, I want to be able to treasure the original nostalgic feeling I had when I first read the books in 3rd grade, not have to read a bajillionth sequel with the same themes. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, as I don’t think I’ve heard it shared before (though I don’t really look at anything Warriors themed anymore, so I could be wrong) but this is my genuine opinion on the series. Thank you very much for reading, now go take care of yourself. Ily guys
– Clowny