Riverstar's Home – Sunny's Spiel | Warriors Analysis - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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I did not want to be doing this…It's September.
I'm busy.
And I was more than happy to have either a pretty good or mediocre super edition that
didn't need a video to be made on it, at least not right away.
But Riverstar's Home and my thoughts about it have finally made me realize some things
that have been happening with the series for a while, and this video has become unavoidable.
Just know that because I had to squeeze this in and couldn't spend much time on it, there
won't be as much editing as there usually is.
So Riverstar's Home, the newest super edition, came out last Tuesday, September 5th and…I
did not like it.
I can remember back when the poll came out asking us to choose between Mistystar, Ivypool,
and Riverstar, I said: [All of the super editions could be bad, Riverstar's
has the best chance of being good.]
And I stand by that statement because Riverstar's story functionally could not be told without
adding in new material instead of solely retreading old ground, which was and is the Erin team's
current favorite approach.
And as I suspected, this book *did* have to add in new material, running out of any Dawn
of the Clans stuff to cover about halfway through the book.
Yet it still turned out to be a disappointment and this is for…well, other reasons.
Let me dispel any ideas immediately that this was a doomed book, or that it was impossible
for it to succeed based on its premise alone.
The two arguments I have heard most often in this camp is that the present-day stories
and characters from A Vision of Shadows, The Broken Code, and A Starless clan will always
have more focus and care than the Dawn of the Clans time period and that Riverstar or
River Ripple himself offers no character, nothing to stand out, and no story to tell.
Both of these are, in my mind, simply not true.
To give you an idea, I'm going to take a look at every piece of supplemental material,
so super editions, mangas, and novellas, that has been written since Victoria Holmes left
and the new team took over.
Here we have the books that featured a Dawn of the Clans setting.
Here's the ones that featured an A Vision of Shadows or The Broken Code setting, two
arcs instead of one so it makes sense there's more.
And here are the ones that focused on arc 1 and 2 settings, things the new team did
not even write or conceive of.
It gets even worse when you look at the focus characters.
Here are the four books that had Dawn of the Clans cats as protagonists.
Here are the four books that had A Vision of Shadows or The Broken Code cats as protagonists.
And here are the *14* books that had arc 1 or 2 cats as the protagonists.
Notably, no arc 3 or 4 cats or settings have even been touched by them, and nothing in
the pre-arc-1 super editions period either in the way that Vicky wrote novellas about
Pinestar, Dovewing, or Mapleshade.
The new team seems to have two clear priorities when choosing cats and settings to focus on:
settings and cats they have personally created or written for, and the arc 1-2 cast that
always has been and always will be the money makers.
Ivypool is an arc 4 cat that they did not write and that is not enough of a popular
character to the hoards of elementary schoolers just reading arc 1 to be instantly worth it.
Mistystar was a character who would be prominent in their new arc for one moment but who wasn't
notable or popular as a character in any arc.
Riverstar, meanwhile is a character they wrote for in a setting and time period they created,
which is one of the things that *can* actually spark their interest based on what we've
seen them make.
He was also a character with a distinctive and unique personality, which I'll get into
later.
On a plot level, he was supposed to become Riverclan's leader, form and set expectations
for a group, and maybe even come up with the idea of or flesh out the idea of the mentor
system as a whole.
There was plenty to tell about him, if they wanted to, and it was all information accessible
to them since they were the ones who made his character in the first place.
I'd also just like to nip in the bud any ideas that only a Dawn of the Clans story
could fail in the way this book has because…no.
This book's biggest failings are in pacing and characterization which not only could
happen in other periods with other cats but already has, several times, recently.
It was entirely possible that this book could end up being great.
But it wasn't.
Let's talk about how, and maybe why.
First of all, I'd like to give a very brief summary for those of you watching this video
instead of reading the book itself.
Essentially, Ripple was a Cat of the Park, living with a semi-large group of other cats
as they mentored each other, relaxed, and took food either from twolegs or hunting,
whichever they preferred in the moment.
Ripple's mentor was named Arc and we already knew this because of a bonus scene, two chapters
long, about this time period from Ripple's point of view at the end of Thunder Rising,
the second book of Dawn of the Clans.
What we didn't know is that Ripple also had a beloved among these cats: his mentor's
sister Flutter who gets precisely one line of dialogue here in a dream made up by Ripple's
subconscious.
We'll get back to that one.
Ripple's home was being invaded and he had to run away, ending up separated from everyone
and floating down the river, with great difficulty and threat of death, until he met Night and
Mist, loners who lived by an island in a forest area.
There Ripple, now River Ripple, stayed, bouncing between trying to live with them, or twolegs,
or by himself, until he eventually decided he wanted to make a group there.
He took in several stray loners and kittypets but none of the wild and aggressive new mountain
cats who were arriving in the land next to theirs because they seemed obsessed with marking
specific borders, fighting with each other, and ignoring the peace River Ripple knew was
possible and wanted to create.
Through a lot of timeskips and observations, we spend roughly 17 chapters running through
the Dawn of the Clans story from the perspective of a cat not involved in it as he gets increasingly
frustrated with their worldview but forms his own clan of sorts and then joins them
officially when some of their ancestors order him to.
After Gray Wing is dead and Riverstar is made a leader with nine lives, we skip to a period
where Arc appears, heavily wounded and unconscious for two days because Clear Sky attacked him
for crossing his border, and eventually he explains that the Cats of the Park have been
invaded and taken over by Slash and his cronies, the perfunctory final villain from Dawn of
the Clans.
After a lot of hesitation about leaving his clan behind, Riverstar decides to join Arc
in returning to his old home to drive out the band of loners and Drizzle, a young she-cat,
ends up secretly coming along too.
Riverstar “wastes” two lives on the way while saving people and fighting Slash recklessly
but coming back from the dead lets him intimidate the rogues enough to scare them away and also
Slash falls off a cliff and dies.
One of the new Cats of the Park, Finch, becomes Riverstar's mate suddenly and follows him
and Drizzle home despite being pregnant and making it clear several times that she did
not like his home and was very attached to her own.
The three of them get back to Riverclan after almost two moons when Night, Riverstar's
deputy, was about to declare him dead and get her own nine lives.
There, they discover that Clear Sky, well-Skystar had been invading their territory because
a tree fell across the river and he said it was a sign from Starclan that Riverclan wasn't
a real clan without a leader and Skyclan was allowed to take their territory.
Riverstar still prefers pacifism but will fight for his clan now and drives Skyclan
away, pushing the tree into the river to throw away any claim Skystar had to their territory.
The end.
You might already be seeing some flaws in this story from the summary alone, or my tone
around it, but for organization's sake I am going to divide my problems into a few
categories that come up again and again, not just in this book but in Warriors as a whole.
Firstly, as has been *especially* common in the recent super editions, Riverstar's Home
has a major problem with pacing.
The story starts exactly when the bonus scene we already had did, skimming over even most
of that to get us to the point where he is fleeing and being drowned in the river.
The Cats of the Park are essentially just names on a page.
We don't get to know any of them aside from later meeting Arc and we don't get to know
their unique culture, values, or beliefs in the way River Ripple knows them, which creates
some extra problems down the line.
Through the entire first half of the book, the usual makeup of a chapter is having a
third-person description of stuff that happened in a random timeskip, having a single scene
in the present, and then timeskipping some more to avoid almost all character introductions
and key events.
Up until chapter 19 they really are just recapping Dawn of the Clans and even in that period
they skip large and important swaths of that time to avoid saying what River Ripple was
actually doing during it, other than moments where he already appeared in the arc.
To give some examples, River Ripple apparently spent several early moons in the forest being
a kittypet since he didn't like being alone and we only learn about this because Night
chastises him for it and he thinks back and narrates on how that's a thing he did after
the fact.
River Ripple isn't comfortable in the water or fishing for a long time…until the end
of Dawn of the Clans when we timeskip to a period where he is because he has become Riverstar
and he'd better be good at it by now, right?
Too bad we never see him practicing.
Almost every member of Riverclan aside from the original Night, Mist, and River Ripple
is introduced in a flash montage done through retroactive narration at the end of a single
chapter.
River Ripple is effectively a loner with a social group and then boom, suddenly he has
a clan.
Dappled Pelt, who becomes Riverclan's first medicine cat, comes to Riverclan for one scene
to treat a wound.
She stays for two days but we timeskip over that period and she says she had a lovely
time and River Ripple really liked her.
At this point she also mentions loving “the meditation” they did which they did not
ever mention or show before this point.
Actually, River Ripple mentions it to Tall Shadow later as well and it comes up a few
more times before anyone explains what the meditation is or shows it on the page.
It takes until Chapter 26 before we actually see what a meditation is or is like, once
we're in the modern Cats of the Park.
As a personal pet peeve, they time skipped over the entire period where “the group
of leaders” decided on a mentoring program for the clans.
Secrets of the Clans said Riverstar invented the mentoring program and even later in this
book, they make a big deal about Arc being Riverstar's mentor and that being an important
relationship for both of them…gosh I wish they had used this.
Anyway, in Chapter 18 Clear Sky and Thunder show up to tell Riverstar second-hand that
Gray Wing died and told them they would be clans now and Riverstar's group was called
Riverclan and he just accepted all of that.
They then skip to the Moonstone where they use a single paragraph to say that Moth Flight,
Windstar's flighty daughter, was distracted and considered a not-good warrior until she
started the medicine cats and helped Windstar get nine lives and gave her kits away and
Riverstar now has one of them and is also at the Moonstone with Dappled Pelt, his new
medicine cat, to get his own nine lives.
All of this is, unsurprisingly, really jarring and makes it difficult to get attached to
any of the cats or stories flying by for most of the book.
Honestly though, even though this is the most obtrusive issue in the book, there is one
that is even more consistent and more off-putting to me personally: the characterization of
Riverstar himself.
In the previous material, Riverstar was always calm, confident, disinterested in the petty
affairs of the other clans and always willing to just say what needed to be said and do
what needed to be done when the time was right, never letting his emotions or others' get
caught up.
He was a loner but still mingled with cats around his land a lot and, thanks to growing
up in the Cats of the Park, knew about and valued mentorship before the clans thought
of it, and was overall compassionate but detached with no particular interest in growing closer.
The cat at the center of this book is…not like this at all.
He does have a character but it is entirely different from anything one could recognize
as Riverstar.
In his super edition, Riverstar is an anxious soft boy and an extremely pacifistic extrovert
who cannot stand being alone and also doesn't understand hurting cats at all, or placing
down boundaries.
This pacifism also seems less due to any specific aversion to pain and more to naivety that
leads him to believe no cat could want for more than they have and that it's possible
to get through every confrontation without a fight.
That said, this particular belief is the one that slowly fades over the book as part of
his “character arc” of learning to fight when necessary.
When he's left to his own devices he prefers to find someone, be it a cat or a twoleg,
to join up with and he has an extremely hard time making any decisions on his own, even
as a leader.
He's also very young and inexperienced, being completely insecure in the water and
not knowing how to fish, let alone well, for several months and even when he is Riverclan's
leader he had to be reminded about how to cross a river properly and that the river
can be dangerous.
He ignores this and drowns, losing one of his lives by the way.
The end of the book actually portrays him as a bit reckless and impulsive too, despite
still also being excessively hesitant about most decisions, losing two lives in the space
of a week and jumping into a relationship after a single day.
Oh yeah, River Ripple is also a romantic.
Delightful.
You might ask then, if this is how he is portrayed, and about half of the book was dedicated to
running through Dawn of the Clans, how did they explain River Ripple's actions in that
arc, or integrate his clear personality and values there with what they are writing here?
Well, it's a little thing that the Erin team has actually used a lot in their supplemental
material lately called lying.
Or rather, having the character lie.
Also just being sloppy and not caring about the dissonance works wonders.
When River Ripple gives some wise advice, especially at the beginning to cats like Night,
it appears to come from nowhere, having no build up in River Ripple's own mind like
most of his thoughts do.
In fact River Ripple is often utterly surprised at the words that came from his mouth because
it doesn't sound like who he-who super edition he, is.
In sections of the book copy-pasted directly from Dawn of the Clans, River Ripple speaks
the words confidently and then internally monologues about how he's actually not confident
and has to force this for no reason or how he doesn't know what he's talking about.
When it comes to things like why he stays out of the Dawn of the Clans plot, the answer
for Dawn of the Clans River Ripple would have been that he wasn't involved and he decided
to show up when they needed him.
He was distant, mysterious, calm, and wouldn't really let himself or his motives become knowable.
The answer for super edition River Ripple is that either Night or Gray Wing or Arc or
Starclan Cat #6 told him what to do and he did exactly what they told him.
Starclan tells him to stay out of the First Battle in the climax of the third book.
They tell him to go in afterwards and help the mountain cats.
They tell him that he will be their special link to bring peace to the clans.
Woohoo.
Sometimes he even feels undefined spiritual pulls to specific moments where he's needed
(because we saw him there saying those words in Dawn of the Clans) but that's really
the only time we get a sense of his spirituality that was supposed to be a unique part of him
even according to this super edition because of his culture as a Cat of the Park.
Regardless of the reason, every time they need to have him do something he already did
in Dawn of the Clans they just pull him out of his super edition character and then have
him internally monologue about how he isn't like what he's saying or doesn't understand
what he's doing.
This method, while technically compliant with previous canon, is extremely frustrating and
still counts as a retcon for inserting a lot of information about Riverstar and his character
that was the perfect opposite of what we were led to believe in the material he previously
appeared in.
Meanwhile when he is acting in-character for the super edition version, he does things
like waste several days mulling and worrying over and whether or not to help his old mentor
Arc get rid of Slash at the Park because it could mean leaving his clan for a little bit.
There is no harm in going and everyone should understand why this would just be a good thing
to do, even putting aside how important it is for Riverstar specifically.
But he's an anxious little boy who can't decide things on his own anymore I guess.
Late in the book they even have Arc point out how Riverstar doesn't do anything by
himself and waits for the river (or Starclan, or Night) to tell him what to do, at which
point he will do anything even if it's something he doesn't want.
They do nothing about this.
It's just the one-off line.
The one new moment that does seem in-character for the River Ripple we knew before this book
is when he stands up to Slash after coming back from the dead.
He overstates his powers and lets the potential and mystique of them drive Slash's group
to fear him and run away, a rather River-Ripple thing to do.
But here he says it while monologuing about how anxious he is in his head and only did
it in the first place because Gray Wing told him to from Starclan.
Personally, if I were tasked with writing this scene, I think I'd make it sound a
little more like this:
[Slash:] What?
How- We already beat you.
You died!
[Riverstar:] I had other things to get back to.
Couldn't very well leave when I've got cats to protect here.
[Slash:] How could you possibly-!?
[Riverstar:] There's a lot I can do that seems to allude most cats.
I don't fear water, or twolegs, even mountain cats.
I've made each of them mine, and they all bend to me in the end.
I am who I am: limitless, adaptable, and the strongest force you'd ever have to face.
Personally, if I was in your paws, I might think about leaving us alone.
[Slash:] Eek!
You know what?
I've spent enough time talking about River Ripple.
Let's at least cover some of the other characters.
You know who does act like this, like Dawn of the Clans Riverstar?
It's Arc.
And Riverstar now looks up to him for being so confident and mysterious and wise and spiritual
like he could never be…
Aha…haha let's try someone else!
Gray Wing is really prominent in this book as the primary representative of the mountain
cats and River Ripple's main contact in Starclan.
He acts like Gray Wing at least but he's primarily here as a device to tell River Ripple
what to do like many cats are so not really enough to save the book on its own.
How about his brother, then?
Oh he's worse?
Delightful.
So Clear Sky never lets up on his aggression, wounds Arc to the point of being knocked out
for two days just for passing through his territory, and later tries to take over Riverclan
because Riverstar was away and a tree fell over the river.
Clear Sky being a flat-out evil villain guy is really hammered in even in the aftermath
of Dawn of the Clans.
That said, after so much material showing him not being redeemed that might even be
an accurate choice.
How about the she-cats, then?
Well uhhhhhh the first one we're made aware of is Flutter, a perfunctory throw-in mate
that Riverstar just brings up every couple chapters to think fondly of despite not us
actually being shown any of their relationship on the page.
She has no discernable personality even in River Ripple's musings about her and she
only even comes up to give Riverstar a life and say that he will be able to move on and
have a new mate and kits.
Yay.
I know I have a bias because River Ripple was one of the few Dawn of the Clans toms
to never show interest in a she-cat but what does Flutter's relationship add to this
book at all?
Why does the connection he reminiscences on infrequently even have to be a romantic one
to be compelling?
Why didn't they even show us their relationship if they were so intent on using it as a motivation?
With that said, Night, River Ripple's deputy, is characterized much better.
She joined Riverclan because Riverstar was her best friend, pointed out explicitly that
it wasn't “like *that* you flea-brain" and generally acts as a great balancing force
for our protagonist through the book.
It's a nice change of pace.
We still skipped over most of their bonding because of the wacky pacing but hey.
One quote I really loved from her was what she said when Riverstar made her deputy, that
"a dreamer like you needs a practical cat beside them," a quote we only learn retroactively
because we did not see the scene where she was named deputy.
Oh and Gray Wing actually told Riverstar point-blank during his nine lives ceremony to make Night
his deputy so even this can't be a moment of agency for the guy but Night was also the
only noteworthy cat in his camp and the one who taught him everything he knows so it makes
sense.
She keeps the clan grounded while he's gone.
Drizzle is nice too, a peppy young she-cat enthusiastic about the clans she has grown
up in, one of the first in that regard, and she too acts as a great balance to super edition
River Ripple during his journey.
There is one other she-cat and…do I have to talk about her?
Haaaaaaah I guess so.
So Finch, Riverstar's second love interest goes through a romance with him *very* quickly,
in the space of a single chapter, but at least it is mostly on the page this time.
We are told in retroactive narration that Finch had a mate and kits she lost, that she's
self-reliant and not flighty or dainty like Flutter was, and that Riverstar loves her.
I would have loved to learn more of that by seeing her actually say and do things but
the two of them sitting together after hunting and meditation is on the page and they at
least show their comfort in each others' presence through touch, checking in on each other,
and comfort in silence.
That said, after all of that Finch still doesn't want to come back with Riverstar to his home
because she doesn't like fish or fishing or how the mentoring system takes kits away
from their parents or how the clans are always threatened and threaten others over borders
or that she would be leaving her old mate and kits and friends behind or that pregnancy
with Riverstar's kits would make a long journey difficult.
Because of these completely reasonable points, she decides (and reiterates to Riverstar many,
many times) that she will stay at the Park and raise their kids there, naming one of
them in Riverstar's honor…and then in the next scene she chases after Riverstar
anyway and follows him home despite still not liking it.
Boy do I love forcing more she-cats to give up their lives, wishes, and comfort to follow
their tom mates to wherever their destinies are so they can be great soulless moms forever!
None of the things I've talked about today are unique to Riverstar or the Dawn of the
Clans time period.
All of it has been done before in books like Leopardstar's Honor, Blackfoot's Reckoning,
Exile From Shadowclan, Redtail's Debt, Crowfeather's Trial, and if we go back far enough, Bluestar's
Prophecy and Yellowfang's Secret.
The mistakes, sloppy characterization, and stock romance plots are all pretty symptomatic
of not having any time to do things like review what they had already written, flesh out new
characters, or decide on the overall message or arc of their stories.
Even the atrocious pacing could be solved if they had a specific story, arc, and message
to tell rather than just trying to fill up as much space as possible by retelling existing
material and then fumbling on the rest.
Stuff does happen in this book, and a lot of it was new stuff because it had to be.
That is good.
It's what makes it unique from what a Mistystar or Ivypool book would have been if they had
been released at this time.
Do you know just how much A Vision of Shadows or The Broken Code recap with Ivypool watching
from the sidelines and saying nothing would have happened if she had gotten this book?
I would wager even more than Riverstar got, considering they can't push too much further
into her story without intruding on the current main series.
And just a note there: I love Ivypool.
I want her to have a good book.
But the current team doesn't want any specific character to have a good book.
That's not how they've been operating…well, ever, but especially since Vicky left.
No one here has a specific vision or love for the series that drives them to dive into
characters or tell specific stories.
They don't think about new books in the series in the way a fan does, in the way we
*did* when the poll for this book first came out.
There being a story to tell for a character or time period isn't enough, THEY, the Erins,
need to have a story to tell, and they need the time to think creatively about what it
could be, what they've already written, who their characters are, and where they should
go with their ideas.
But that isn't how Warriors is written; it isn't the goal of the series, so they wouldn't
pick that choice, and they don't.
Over and over again, they keep making choices that we disagree with and make lackluster
books that avoid trying anything new and often screw up what they have already written in
past years.
The thing is, going by their own goals they are doing great.
They're producing A LOT, getting their name out, selling more copies of the old books
and some of the brand new ones, getting into school libraries and classrooms and little
kids' hands where they don't care about or remember the things we, the tiny minority
of hardcore fans, do.
Sometimes they even happen upon a story that is genuinely good, to someone or to a large
amount of people, and that book gets taken in by even the most dedicated fans as a reason
to love the series and continue reading it.
But those instances are rare, because they have to be.
Warriors is not designed to be a series of good books that flow together well.
It's not designed to have character arcs that are unique and resonate or to produce
social commentary by examining the flaws in the cultures the clans live in.
It's designed to be a book series about cats that produces a lot of books quickly
enough to always be new on the shelves.
And it is.
It's time we stop assuming they have the same goals as us.
We can still love the books, we can still have fun thinking of ways they could have
taken the stories if they had more time and care.
But we need to accept that that's not what Warriors is at its core.
And it's not what Riverstar's Home was going to be.
This isn't the worst book in the series, not by a longshot.
It's mediocre in exactly the way that so many Warriors books are.
Just…don't get your hopes up too high, and know what it is when you go into it.
Thank you for watching, and always remember that everything's cool, man.
You should just sit back and let the waves wash over you…
unless you CAN'T because the water is super scary
and it feels all quiet and alone down there.
Ah! Gray Wing, tell me what to do!