Warrior Cat Clichès

Part 7 - Heart of a Hero

Why hello!  Today, I'm going to talk about heroes.  Most likely, this hero will be your protagonist, and there are most definitely a few things that bother me about the main characters in fanfiction stories.  We've gone through names, appearances and general inconsistancies, but now I want to rant about personalities.  Because if I see another apprentice like Sparkpaw, then I am going to bash your brains in.  I would rant to the Erins, but they don't have a Wattpad account.  

Anyway.  Although Sparkpaw is a technically valid character, I still dislike her.  Mostly because she's a perfect, competitive, arrogant, hyper little twerp, but . . . these qualities also work against her.  Basically, she does have flaws and strengths, but if she was an OC, flamers would come knocking at the writer's door.  The Erins can kind of get away with creating iffy characters because what they write in canon.  Before I get to what makes an original character, I want to rant about the stereotypical OCs in this fandom.  

Which is actually ironic considering OC stands for Original Character.  

There are too many of these to count so I'm just going to churn out a top five off the top of my head.

# 1 - Born a warrior but then made a medicine cat, which makes them really angry/sad/annoyed

Stopppp.  Jayfeather.  Alderpaw.  Yellowfang.  Cinderpelt.  Countless fanfictions.  No more, please.  If StarClan keep recruiting cats who want to be warriors, then I see serious trouble in the future of the Clans.  We already have Mothwing, who doesn't even believe in StarClan.  What next?  Are there really no other cats in the Clan who would fill that role willingly?  Because if the only way to get a medicine cat now is to drag them in by the ear, then eventually you'll run out of candidates.  It's not so much a bad character to have, but most people do it wrong and it's annoying to hear them angst for most of the book about how they don't want to be a medicine cat.  Just spare me.

#2 - SUPER SPECIAL PROPHECY KITTY (who happens to be related to Firestar)

These cats aren't nessecarily Mary Sues, but they start as the grandkit of Firestar, the newest addition to ThunderClan, the medicine cat has gotten a crappy prophecy about them, they angst a bit over destiny but end up saving the Clans at eight moons of age regardless.  There may or may nor be superpowers invovled.  No, actually, they always end up becoming Mary Sues.  I don't care if you think that Sparkleshine is a 3D character because 'she has had to face so many trials and challenges in her oh-so-difficult life'.  No.  Next, probably, I will write more in depth about how to make sure that your cat doesn't become a Mary Sue, but for now, this is it.  

#3 - My mother died in childbirth and my father hates me

Contrary to apparently popular belief, it isn't that common for she-cats to die when giving birth.  Especially not in the Warriors world, when there are hardly any of these cases.  This has happened a total of what - two or three times?  - in the canon world, and yet we have so many orphaned OCs.  We've gotten to a point where it is actually more original to have a character with two loving parents than to have one without.  Seriously guys.  And some fathers would blame their kits for their mothers deaths, but most wouldn't.  Logical fathers would see that it isn't actually the kit's fault, loving fathers would see them as a memory of their mother and therefore even be more protective of them, and so on.  Give these kits a break.

#4 - Kittypet, rouge or loner defies odds and a) enters a Clan b) is accepted and c) saves the Clans and/or becomes leader

Uggghhhh.  No more Firestar stories, because Firestar is a BIG FAT MARY SUE whether you like him or not.  Firstly, this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen.  Clans sometimes adopt adandoned kits (but please don't do that because orphans are angsty), but kittypets are looked down on, rouges are considered hostile and in general loners don't give a mousedung about the Clans.  Even if by some magical force *cough* author powers *cough* your cat manages to join a Clan, the likelihood of them becoming leader or being chosen for some destiny is every single cat in the series (there's 1,131) to Firestar.  Why would StarClan chose an outsider to save the Clans?  Unless for some reason they need someone who can see past Clan prejudices or something weird like that I see no reason whatsoever that a Clan-born can't do it.  

#5 - Bullied/abused teenager reads Warriors and wishes to enter the books, then somehow becomes a cat and saves the Clans/becomes leader/both

Okay this is pretty similar to the previous one for the last part of the sentence.  I'm not going to repeat that but how on earth does a human become a cat???  And don't you dare say 'it was a dream!' because I will break your face.  Never ever make your whole story turn out to be a dream.  No magical portals through space and time or blaming it on StarClan because they are cats just like the Clans and don't even understand what twolegs are.  No human unless you come up with a darn good explanation and are able to pull it off well.  

So far this has not been achieved but I'm willing to believe that miracles can happen.

And that about sums it up.  Thanks for reading, and tell me what you would like to see next :)