Warriors Fanfics: Specialized Writing Guide

Using Different Animal Species

July 29, 2024

This section covers the use of animals other than cats in Warriors fanfics and what they can bring to a story regarding characterization, motifs, or just fun and unusual twists.

Warriors is inherently xenofiction. That is, stories from the point of view and perspective of a non-human subject. Aside from highschool AU's and fanart, you won't find a human's perspective. There are plenty of non-cat species, but rarely as major characters and tropes and even less so in fanfiction, animation, and other fan works, aside from a few well-known events. Why is that? And how can you write things to be different?

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OTHER ANIMALS IN CANON

The overwhelming majority of non-cat animals in canon are prey animals with no characterization. Small mammals, frogs, birds, rabbits, fish and anything likely found in an English park or countryside like the story's setting is based on. They are hunted and eaten, and rarely express anything beyond basic instincts.

Aside from the rat leader who can speak the cat's language and acts as an obstacle in Firestar's Quest, prey animals are never characters. In the context of Warriors, this makes sense. With such an extensive list of named characters, plot threads, and over a long period of time, the cats require most of the focus. Prey animals are too necessary as prey to warrant such attention. This doesn't make it impossible for fanfiction, but it means you are unlikely to see them as anything more than food.

Larger animals, like dogs, foxes, badgers, and birds of prey, are rarer but far more impactful when they show up. They always appear as hostile brutes or hungry predators, though, terrorizing for sport, hunting and maiming cats, speaking unintelligible babble. Dogs are the most represented here, having injured and killed dozens of characters. Like prey animals, dogs and other larger animals rarely show anything beyond basic instincts.

Midnight the "badger" is the only exception. I say "badger" because she is, technically, an ancient spirit who presents more like a guardian to the clans than an actual badger. Badgers are shown with the same ruthlessness and desire to attack cats as any other large animal in Warriors; Midnight even fights against them at one point. But her being a badger instead of another StarClan cat shows characters, and the audience, that the coming Great Battle is bigger than just one cat, or clan, or StarClan to handle alone. A guiding hand and ability to speak cat exemplifies this. While her role and characterization is limited, it's an example of what a non-cat character can be.

In canon, other animal species are plot devices, story beats, and momentary obstacles, but never characters. At the time of writing this, even other cat species rarely make any appearances and have never done so as full-fledged characters. That isn't to say it's bad; Warriors is a story featuring a massive cast of characters over a long stretch of time.

But, in my opinion, it feels limiting that so many animal-specific scenarios go unexplored in Warriors. The series does have a narrow focus when it comes to characterization, and that's okay. But stories featuring animal protagonists have so much potential for situations that would feel out of place in stories about humans.

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POWER IMBALANCE BETWEEN ANIMALS IN FANFICS

Since canon only offers a few appearances of other animal species, we'll have to do a bit of guesswork with how best to add them to our fanfictions. And just because we're trying to make them more than one-off plot devices doesn't mean we have to ditch their malevolent attitudes or frightened chirping or anything like that.