WarriorCats needs cleanup

I originally posted this in Ask The Tropers, and it was suggested I post it here. So this is basically a copy-paste of that, hopefully explained better.

I'm new to cleanup projects, so sorry if I'm doing anything incorrectly!

What's going on/why does it need cleanup?

Basically, it started as a single Literature/WarriorCats page for the series, and over the years various tropers set up different pages in different ways without being aware of each other. This has resulted in a bunch of essentially duplicate pages with duplicate examples, some of which group the books together in odd ways, some of which are way out of date, and we aren't sure what the "right" way to organize all this is.

How is Warrior Cats set up as a work?

So to give context for how these pages came to be, Warrior Cats is a lengthy book series. It consists of a "main" series split into 6-book long subseries the fandom calls "arc"s, and dozens of side books which tend to be either side adventures/one-offs filling in gaps, perspective flips, prequels, etc. (The side content consists of shorter-than-usual "novellas", longer-than-normal standalone "Super Editions", short "Field Guide" books containing short stories, manga/graphic novels that tell side stories, and some short stories/plays posted on the official site). Altogether, these 100+ books/stories tell one long story and continuity, just pieces from different POVs, with lots of overlap between them (see this image◊ which is an accurate, up-to-date timeline). The Recap page lists all the individual books & short stories.

Basically how the majority of the fandom views it can be compared to a TV series, where rather than the arcs/side content being viewed as separate works, each "arc" is its own season and standalones are like special episodes, rather than viewing each series/book/etc as separate works. (Actual story arcs can sometimes carry over from one to the next; most notably 3-4 was one long plot with the same protagonists, and as mentioned, there's tons of overlap as far as side books.)

The things that I would consider separate works as it pertains to this are a tabletop game that came in the back of some of the books, some video games (browser games and an official Roblox environment), the movie if it ever sees the light of day, and possibly the graphic novel adaptation that's coming out next year (while the existing manga/graphic novels were original stories part of the overall canon/timeline, this is an actual adaptation of the main series, and we've seen at least one retcon in the 4 teaser pages they've revealed.)

And what specifically is going on with the pages?

So as far as the TV Tropes pages, originally it was just one long Literature page, Literature/WarriorCats. I also created a Recap page for the individual books since I felt it was the cleanest way rather than creating 100 work pages^{my reasoning} Mainly the way the fandom views the series as one whole work. Aside from that, there aren't always many examples, especially for the short stories, and in many cases the Funny, YMMV, etc subpages would be basically blank if needed at all. This would also make linking on trope pages cleaner as it can just link to Literature/WarriorCats - especially since several of the books are a perspecive flip that cover the same situations (some of which we've seen from at least three points of view) so the example would appear in multiple books. Other lengthy works like Animorphs have done similar Recap pages.

I've since discovered that other tropers have made individual pages for some of the arcs, books, groupings of books, etc. In most cases that I've looked at, the examples are just copied from Literature/WarriorCats or the individual books' Recap pages, or it just links to the Recap pages.

So yeah, the pages we currently have:

• Literature/WarriorCats, the original page containing examples from the whole series, which has often been used as the main page/the one linked to in examples on trope pages. It also contains Funny, Tearjerker, YMMV, Trivia, etc from all the books.
• Recap/WarriorCats with each book having its own recap page with examples
• Franchise/WarriorCats
• Pages for individual books or portions of the series, some of which have their own examples and ymmv, funny, etc pages. In many but not all cases, these are duplicates of the examples either on the equivalent Literature/WarriorCats page, or an individual book's Recap page.
  • The individual six-book-long arcs: Warrior Cats: The Original Series (note that this was a fan nickname until it got an arc name, "The Prophecies Begin", in the reprint... which is also going to be the name of its graphic novel adaptation), Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy, Warrior Cats: Power of Three, Warrior Cats: Omen of the Stars, Warrior Cats: Dawn of the Clans, Warrior Cats: A Vision of Shadows, Warrior Cats: The Broken Code, Warrior Cats: A Starless Clan
  • Warrior Cats: SkyClan Saga, a messy grouping of some of the Super Editions, graphic novels, and novellas, covering a sort of side story arc about the exile & rebuilding of a missing faction. The page is missing some books relevant to it but that story arc has since merged with the main story anyway.
  • Warrior Cats Prequel Super Editions, another messy grouping of some of the side books that take place around the same time as each other. They're not the only prequels, or the only books that take place during this time period anymore.
  • Warrior Cats Novellas, a grouping specifically of the shorter-than-normal novellas that take place across the whole series. Theoretically they could fit on one of the previously listed pages or multiple, depending on the novella, and otherwise have nothing to do with each other
  • Warrior Cats (manga), a grouping specifically of the "manga" side stories. Manga/WarriorCats redirects to this page. Note that there's some confusion as to what to label these as, since they originally were branded as "manga", then reprinted as & had new volumes come out as "graphic novels", they've been referred to as "comics" at least once when individual chapters serve as epilogues at the back of Super Editions, and as of the last week or so they announced that they're also going to be adapting the actual first story arc into its own graphic novel adaptation (the existing ones had all been original stories rather than a straight adaptation of a book).
  • Books/etc with their own pages (note that some are under Literature, one is under Comic Book, one is under Theatre): Bramblestar's Storm, Moth Flight's Vision, Tigerheart's Shadow, Crowfeather's Trial, Warrior Cats: The Rise of Scourge, Brightspirit's Mercy
• Just noting that Characters/WarriorCats contains characters from the whole series, split by faction and rank, except for the "Dawn of the Clans" page where they don't fall neatly into those categories. This is a logical way to split characters and I think it's fine, since as I mentioned this is one overarching story and so many characters appear across a large percentage of the main and side books, even after their deaths.
• TabletopGame/WarriorsAdventureGame for the tabletop game at the back of the books

If it were up to me...

• I'd axe the separate arc/manga/prequel-super-edition/skyclan saga/novella/individual book pages, and move anything from those that's not a duplicate back to the main Warrior Cats pages or corresponding book's Recap page. Those pages are for the most part duplicates, out of date, and honestly hard to categorize the side books since there's so much overlap (see image I linked above). Not only does it make it harder for users to find and read multiple pages, and us to link to, but also to edit and keep track of the pages themselves (many of them are years out of date, including one that mentions a book that'll be coming out in 2015!) Most existing ones are mostly duplicates, and many of them link to the Recap pages anyway.

• I'd keep Franchise/WarriorCats, Literature/WarriorCats, the recap pages, TabletopGame/WarriorsAdventureGame for the tabletop. If we create pages for the games, a VideoGame/WarriorCats could be created and link to those pages.

• Not sure what to do with a Manga(or comic book or whatever)/WarriorCats (not sure what the proper namespace would be - and at any rate they were originally called manga, rebranded as Graphic Novels, and also have been referred to as "comics".) As I mentioned, the existing works are original stories that are part of the same canon and treated the same as the novels - heck, they even blend *with* the novels since most of the Super Editions have a manga/graphic novel/comic epilogue chapter. I would tentatively get rid of a Manga(or comic book or whatever) page unless the upcoming adaptation has significant enough retcons/changes from the existing books, and use it for that.

• I don't think we need Theatre/WarriorCats. The plays are very short things posted on the official site which have very few applicable tropes which I think is sufficiently covered by a Recap page.

Anyway, I'd absolutely be willing to do heavy lifting to sort out these pages; we just don't know if there's a "correct" way to organize this, and if we do need to cut a bunch of pages, what the correct process for that would look like (if I've requested anything to be cut before, it's been years.)

i'm not 100% active in forums but im super willing to help out here!

Woops, sorry for vanishing on this, I've been focused on other things!

Moving here, I've been working on cleaning up Ashfur for a potential character page split: Warrior Cats: Ashfur

~War Jay 77 mentioned taking issue with the Evil Counterpart ones, and I'd agree with removing Thrushpelt (no interaction) and Lionblaze (it's a stretch), but I think Bristlefrost's example is valid given she literally sacrifices herself to defeat him IIRC?

And there's a wider issue in that The Mentor and The Apprentice have been consistently misused on Warriors character pages, as those tropes refer to character archetypes, while in Warriors it's just standard fare — every warrior is an apprentice at some point, and most end up being mentors. They're not noteworthy enough traits to list.

Edited by Serilly on Nov 13th 2023 at 1:18:07 AM

Yeah, I can't speak about how Bristle interacts with him. I do know the plot of the arc, just not all the important details. Lion and Thrush don't seem to fit, though.

And the Mentor / Apprentice stuff has been bugging me for a while.

Also, Re: OP, as conversation on this topic has stalled for a bit:

I want to advise against merging everything into one conglomerate as I feel it makes avoiding spoilers for current readers incredibly difficult, and also just generally isn't how TV Tropes handles work pages. While each book getting its own page is definitely unneeded, I believe we absolutely should be separating examples by arc so that people can avoid spoilers for future arcs, and given the scope of the arcs this is perfectly reasonable.

(For example, while it's fair to assume most fans who are up to date know that Firestar dies in The Last Hope... People who are currently reading Omen of the Stars don't know that! There are still people getting into the series who may want to see tropes for books they have read without being spoiled for new arcs, given the series is still very much ongoing!)

I also seriously do not like the idea of merging things like the games, which do not have any relation to each other besides being in the same world. The New Prophecy Quest, Medicine Mission and Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition have nothing in common.

In general I want to emphasize that Warriors current merging is the exception and not the norm for Franchise pages. Just look at Star Wars or Pokémon for example. Most franchises do not merge all their entries the way Warriors does and I frankly don't see a reason we should continue to do so.

//wall of text over

Edited by Serilly on Nov 13th 2023 at 1:30:30 AM

^ Agreed.

I agree, too.

I feel like the character sheets could be organized in a more intuitive way than they are now... The Warriors pages get absurdly long including every warrior in the Clan.

Would it not be more intuitive to split by Protagonists, Antagonists, Major Supporting Cast, and then the rest by arc they were introduced in? Since for a lot of these characters they don't tend to end up getting notable development outside that arc outside of the occasional novella.

Besides, characters are usually more relevant to cats from other Clans in the same arc as them than they are cats in their own Clan from several years prior or after...

Also, how do we handle Squirrelstar and Brambleclaw? < Spoilers for Thunder.

Edited by Serilly on Nov 21st 2023 at 9:18:03 AM

I kind of like the Clan-based way of doing it, if only because it helps avoid inevitable spoilers by having an entire "antagonists" section (unless I'm wrong and Ashfur is the only villain who wasn't outright obvious).

Granted, it only really works for ThunderClan since even the minor characters have had some degree of development simply due to exposure. But the other Clans have just had much less time, even with the newer books giving them some focus.

I can't speak as how to handle those two cats in the spoiler since I haven't read the books since OOTS and have just been living vicariously through spoilers and fan discussions.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 21st 2023 at 12:20:43 PM

Actually, okay, wait, double post because this gets long, but re: work page organization — is there a reason not to just group side books with the arc they take place in?

Like, Tigerheart's Shadow and Hawkwing's Journey take place in the middle of A Vision of Shadows, so why not just include them there? Moth Wing's Vision and "Thunderstar's Echo" are just extensions of Dawn of the Clans.

We could probably fix the Prequel Super Editions page by just adjusting it to cover all of the books that take place in that Post-DOTC, Pre-TPB timespan, such as "Mapleshade's Vengeance", Leopardstar's Honor, "Redtail's Debt" and "Spottedleaf's Heart", etc...

Note that I still think other mediums like video games, the plays, the comics, should remain completely separate from the book pages.

(On an only tangentially related note, we really should move Warrior Cats: The Original Series to its actual title, The Prophecies Begin...)

Edit: Fair, I don't think the Clan system rn is completely broken, it's rather just a bit annoying how long the Warriors pages are than anything else. I think it's probably fine until a better solution is proposed, and like you said the one I mentioned isn't great.

Edited by Serilly on Nov 21st 2023 at 9:26:17 AM

On the subject of Ashfur, do you people think Ashfur isn't a BBC anymore, due to his changed characterization? But Ashfur is literally Tigerstar I meets a Yandere Brokenstar now. He's become so much of an entitled prick you'd be more likely to find fans of Light from Death Note now. He's the epitome of Draco in Leather Pants given his so called "fans" use Ron the Death Eater on the heroes.

Edited by Klavice on Dec 24th 2023 at 5:53:24 AM

I think he should keep as a historical example. Ashfur was the divisive character for many years.

If it wasn't clear by my rebuttal in the above post I feel his fans are way too Draco in Leather Pants-y to really count as true fans. Fair enough. I mean DILP or not he still has fans. Like the aforementioned Light Yagami.

Edited by Klavice on Dec 24th 2023 at 5:54:49 AM

...Look, I hated Ash. But to say that people aren't "true fans", well, that's a No True Scotsman fallacy. Fact of the matter is that when Power of Three and Omen of the Stars were written, the Erins did in fact see him as sympathetic (or at least Vicky did) so it's unfair to say that his horde of fans don't count as true fans of the books. We don't have the right to discount opinions we disagree with