On Warriors and Its Popularity Within The Online Writing Community

 

Recently, I found myself pondering the qualities of my creative writing, in particular my tendency to gravitate towards writing anthropomorphic fantasy; after considering the fact that my experiences with the online writing and roleplaying communities have had a major influence on my writing, I have realized that my prominent usage of sentient animal civilizations is most likely due to a great amount of exposure to the fantasy series Warriors. An ongoing saga currently spanning seven major arcs and roughly forty-one books, it tells the tale of five clans of sentient cats living in the wilderness, in particular narrating the heroic journey of a former house cat named Firestar (Rusty) and exploring the fates of his various descendants. This book series has become extremely popular within the online writing and roleplaying communities, with many roleplay forums of a “fanfiction-y” nature using it as source material; in fact, the very first forum I ever joined was set in the world of Warriors, albeit with different clans and a slightly altered setting. Thinking about how Warriors has inspired so many roleplayers and aspiring writers, I began to notice how certain characteristics of its worldbuilding make it especially suitable as a setting for online roleplaying; below is a discussion of two of these characteristics, and how they contribute to the overall popularity of Warriors as a “roleplaying medium” in the online writing community.

 

Perhaps the most prominent aspect of the fictional world of Warriors is its simplicity and familiarity. Much like Harry Potter, another popular fantasy series, Warriors takes the mundane and ordinary (i.e. feral cat communities) and imbues them with traditional elements of fantasy (e.g. prophecies, protagonists with magical abilities), thus making it relatively easy to understand; the basic underlying principles of the world and the society that the cats inhabit are also explained rather straightforwardly within the narrative. This simplicity happens to make it easy to expand on and build more complex worldbuilding structures on top of in fanfiction and online roleplaying, making Warriors particularly attractive as a starting template for roleplay forums who want to explore new themes and plotlines within a preexisting world; it also makes it easier for less experienced roleplayers to join and participate in roleplaying forums set in the world of Warriors, as the setting is easy to understand and insert oneself into.

 

Another characteristic of Warriors’ worldbuilding that makes it especially suitable for roleplaying is its great attention to detail; the clans have their own terminology and sayings that reflect their worldview and cultural values, and several aspects of real-life feline behavior as well as traditional herbal medicine are included to flesh out the world. Along with the aforementioned simplicity of Warriors’ worldbuilding, these details serve to create a sort of “template” that can be easily referenced by roleplayers when writing characters and plotlines, making it easier to improvise and therefore roleplay smoothly.

 

Overall, the simplicity and thoroughness of Warriors’ worldbuilding makes it quite useful as a setting for roleplayers to explore and build upon, explaining the popularity the series enjoys within the online writing community. As a writer and roleplayer, I find it important to examine my writing from time to time and the influence that my experiences have had on it; thinking about the impact of Warriors on the roleplaying community and the reasons for its popularity has helped me understand my writing and how I may develop it further.

- Jade