Warriors Fanfics: Specialized Writing Guide

Disabled Cats

August 15, 2019

This section focuses on disabled cats in fanfictions, and the mistakes often made when writing them. It also discusses what to watch for when writing them and the fandom's perception of disability. As a disclaimer, I am not disabled or impaired in any way.

Disabilities have always been a tip-toe subject in literature. In western fiction, they are often used for comedy or token representation with little to no outstanding character traits other than their disability. In the Warriors fandom, people flock and flaunt over them like celebrities due to the circumstances of the canon arcs. Some people actually look to disabled characters as a way to show that such a condition or state of mind does not have to exclude one from all the things that normal people do. In this and many other fandoms, those looking forward to disabled characters will usually be disappointed.

--------------------

DISABILITY IN CANON WARRIORS

Warriors actually has quite a few disabled cats. Many super editions and auxiliary stories feature them in some capacity, often physical disabilities. Though not one of these major examples is a good one that can be studied for writing purposes. Not one major disabled character is written well.

Our example cat was obvious: Jayfeather. He was, by far, the most unrealistic cat to ever grace the Warriors universe. No, it was not his powers or personality that made him so. It was his disability. Jayfeather was a blind cat. Ignoring the fact that a blind surface-dwelling mammal is a death sentence for all but humans and pets, Jayfeather was easily able to sidestep his disability with his power to walk in the dreams of other cats and visit afterlifes from time to time (even after losing his powers in A Vision of Shadows, his place has already been solidified in the fandom). His disability was treated more like a gimmick than an actual disadvantage. Replace it with a missing leg or a speech impediment and it would have no effect on the plots he was a part of. But fans love Jayfeather. If he was not blind, they would love him less. And, by the Erin's standard on disabled characters, he is a good example. He is not.

Jayfeather's disability did not reflect what his reality would have been; he was a romanticized cat. It was added for namesake only, or by an overzealous mind championizing disability instead of portraying empathy. No matter the origins, Jayfeather's personality or powers are not the discussion here. It is his blindness. Want a more realistic example from canon? Snowkit from The Prophecies Begin. Snowkit was carried off by an eagle because he did not hear it coming. Not nearly as interesting, but it is a more accurate depiction of a disabled mammal in the wild. Granted, Snowkit was nowhere near as important as Jayfeather to any event in canon, but his disability is not romanticized (and he does not get enough 'screen time' for it to be so). Romanticizing a disability does not have your readers empathize with said condition, instead allowing them to view it as an exotic advantage of some kind, or as a charming trait, or even self-indulge for those who may look to said characters for relatability. It may be nice in some areas of fiction, but disabilities are one trope romanticism should be left out of.

But this section is not here to bash the Erin's writing. It is here to help you not write disabilities like they have in regards to their main characters (unless that is your goal; romanticized disabled characters are common across fanfiction in all fandoms).

--------------------

DISABILITIES IN FANFICTIONS

As a disclaimer before going any further, real cats have a very small pool of schizophrenic and confusion-based mental disorders they can suffer from. And of course there are birth defects, just like any other mammal. Humans have a far wider array of disorders and disabilities they can suffer from, more than any other creature on the planet, and many of them are human-only conditions. That is just the nature of our ultra-complex biology.