Despite many arcs and generations going by, especially with Dawn of the Clans in the mix,

the clans have remained relatively stagnant in their views, values, and culture.

Outsiders are bad, Starclan is great, the Warrior Code is unbending, and, as we will

be talking about today, Evil is an intrinsic part of who some cats are.

By definition, that means that evil is always a part of those characters.

In every version of the person, or character, they will be “evil,” which is a much more

serious label in fiction than in reality as it grounds the framing of their character.

Everything the characters do, or nearly everything, will be bad and will be combated by the heroes'

good.

Evil in fiction is a role they play in the narrative, and something they have had since

the beginning.

This means evil is also their destiny, the place they would always reach, and something

they can never change.

They will always be evil and the narrative and characters around them will treat them

as such.

Pure evil villains like this can actually be a lot of fun and work well in certain stories,

often because of their charisma, ability to stand for some value that the heroes can oppose,

or because they present a strong obstacle for the heroes to show their strength and

/ or creativity in defeating.

However, declaring characters to be purely evil does become a problem when you mix moments

of complexity or sympathy into these characters, and there is perhaps no cat better to demonstrate

this idea than Brokenstar.

He's introduced as a pretty stock villain, wanting power and control for its own sake

and hurting, bullying, or killing anyone who gets in his way, even kits of his own clan.

Later portrayals in Secrets of the Clans and then…Yellowfang's Secret, actually show

him as being literally born evil, growling and seething with hatred at the moment of

his birth.

The books have always portrayed him as one of the most purely evil villains the clans

have ever known, even making him the ruler of the Dark Forest.

Yet, when we saw his backstory, he was given a foster mother who explicitly hated him and

even later, a clan who bullied him because of his unknown birth mother.

Tragic backstories aren't required for purely evil characters, in fact they tend to detract

from the purity of that evil.

If he was literally born evil, destined for evil, and already filled with hatred, why

did he need to have a horrible family and clan to push him into that mindset?

If we are meant to get some sympathy for Brokenstar because of his rocky upbringing, what does

that mean when he becomes unequivocally evil as a leader and gets treated with no possibility

of sympathy or forgiveness until his death?

The inclusion of that backstory muddles the intention of his character.

In an even worse case, the Dark Forest itself has a myriad of problems in this area.

They are constantly portrayed and talked about as the den of pure evil, the place where cats

go if they were evil in life and, in a recent arc anyway, a place that actually makes cats

worse by corrupting them somehow.

Yet, we know for a fact that not every evil cat has gone there even if they did something

almost identical to a cat who did go to the Dark Forest and some cats who have gone there

either never deserved it or changed during their time in the Forest but cannot escape.

This creates a lot of cognitive dissonance and makes the clans' entire afterlife system

seem broken, as I discussed in my redemption and forgiveness video, but it could have been

avoided if the Dark Forest was actually pure evil with a cast list to match that judgment

or if it was allowed to be complex and change in response to that complexity.

Another issue that comes up a lot for Warriors in particular is retconning in an origin for

a character where their exact level of evil or good is set from the beginning just to

hammer in the lack of change, the inevitability of their destiny, or the intrinsic qualities

to their moral value…when that isn't true.

I brought up Brokenstar before who had a retconned birth as an already-evil kitten but Tigerstar

got this same treatment, seen by Goosefeather and then Pinestar as a kit destined for evil

without any possibility for change.

Goosefeather treated him very poorly and Pinestar abandoned him because both of them were certain

about Tigerstar's intrinsic evil, despite the fact that, even as late as the beginning

of the original arc, Tigerclaw was respected for his model qualities as a warrior: strong,

loyal, assertive, and determined.

The original arc implied that it was just his ambition overcoming his other values that

led him to the evil acts he undertook, and this was a more compelling narrative than

“cat born evil does evil that he was always going to do” ever could be.

The even worse case, though, is Darktail, who was built up in Hawkwing's Journey and

A Vision of Shadows to be the natural consequence of Onestar's carelessness, growing up with

no positive father figure and no moral center along with a fair amount of built up resentment.

Darktail was a cat formed from his circumstances, and while the blame still lay with him for

his choices, Onestar had a large paw to play in how his life turned out.

However, in Onestar's Confession, a book that wants to show Onestar as a somehow tragic

figure not truly at fault for most of his life and to absolve him of guilt by the end,

Darktail is made out to be a born-evil character who always was and always would have been

intrinsically bad, leaving Onestar without the need to feel guilty or apologize for the

harm he gave his son by lying to his mother and leaving him behind.

In fact, this retconning to give characters intrinsic moral value and general avoidance

of morally gray characters applies to more than just the villains.

In recent years, Leopardstar and Blackstar's dedicated books both tried to portray them

as inherently good cats who had simply been pulled along by circumstance when they ordered

or enacted the deaths in Tigerclan during the first arc.

Rather than facing the moral gray areas of both characters even after the first arc with

their continued guarded personas and insistence that they don't regret their actions, these

books actually lied about their motivations and actions as a way to make them morally

simpler and keep the inherent goodness of these two long-time clan leaders in place.

Similarly, we have Hollyleaf who murdered a cat who could have been dealt with by just

outing him to Firestar and, later, as she learned her own parentage, outed her own family

to all of the clans at once, leaving her mothers in particular to face the ridicule and trying

to murder one of her mothers as a punishment for making her life something she never wanted

it to be.

Hollyleaf unequivocally did bad things, regardless of where you specifically draw the moral line

with her.

Yet, when she returned, Brambleclaw lied for her about the nature of Ashfur's murder

and everyone who knew about her attempted murder of Leafpool never brought it up.

They once again lied and then had her die in sacrifice rather than confront her moral

gray identity so that she could be immortalized as one of “the heroes,” an inherently

good cat despite everything.

When we hear about her later in Starclan, getting along peacefully with Ashfur of all

cats, this is solidified, and we still have no word on what she thought about Ashfur actually

turning out to do more evil in The Broken Code.

If they have her voice anything other than perfectly peaceful opinions on any of it,

they will need to admit her to be more than one of the heroes, and the Erins don't seem

to want to handle that.

Of course, one of the worst consequences of this is the characters who, over their entire

lives, are framed as good cats despite their continued bad deeds and lack of substantial

change.

I'm going to mainly bring up Bramblestar and Clear Sky for this, both of whom I know

are controversial, but this is for a good reason.

Bramblestar is a gruff character who rarely expresses warmth except to those closest to

him and who doesn't have any strong heroic deeds to counteract that.

He is often volitile and jumps to conclusions with his mate and friends, didn't put much

effort into forming relationships with cats on the journey, and had to honestly consider

whether killing his leader was worth it to become leader himself, and this is without

including any of his actions *as* a leader that tend to be more obviously bad to readers.

He is consistently framed as the obvious leader of his group and choice for deputy along with

being a good cat and great warrior, but this is told to us more than it is ever shown and

he generally relies on being the protagonist or not as bad as his father in order to seem

great.

Clear Sky meanwhile was introduced as a very determined, ambitious, single-minded cat who

often got lost in ignoring or harming the cats he meant to care for in his quest for

high heights, and this really only got worse when he went to the forest, created the first

clan, and abandoned his brothers, son, and the cats he traveled with to focus solely

on creating strong borders and warding off or killing anyone who would get in his way

to make sure he is taken seriously as a strong force.

Moreover, though he was supposed to change halfway through the arc after The First Battle,

they fumbled the writing of the back half that would include his actual change and redemption

and most of the supplemental material for the arc was written before that back half

was finished, leaving him to act exactly as he did in the beginning with no sign of change

at all.

Both of these characters are now divisive in the fanbase, and it makes sense.

Because the framing of the story and the opinions of other characters don't match the actual

moral value of the actions these characters are shown to take, there is an easy divide,

both among people who read the books and especially people who only learn about the books from

second or third hand opinions about whether or not these characters are good, bad, or

anywhere in between.

The “truth” of the matter is hard to even pin down because their presentation is inherently

contradictory.

They are shown to do and think bad things and are also shown to always be redeemable,

heroic and protective leaders and mates in the eyes of the protagonists we are meant

to sympathize with, being ultimately good cats whatever they do.

What version of them you draw away from that presentation is probably most determined by

what specific scenes stuck with you, what your personal sensitivities or wishes for

them are, or what style you use when consuming the material: analytical or creative, through

animations or reading, even listening to the audiobook versus reading the paper copy might

provide different experiences that would alter your opinions.

Stating a character's inherent worth when it doesn't match all of their actions or

details does create a dissonance in how that character can be perceived, but there are

other issues as well that ultimately makes the “born evil” excuse boring when applied

to characters with any backstories or complexity.

Firstly, it ignores any relationships, personal motivations, or environmental factors that

lead characters to actions.

If a born evil character does something evil, the reason they did that is because they are

evil and that's what they would always do because of their purpose in the story.

It ignores factors like a clan culture that rewards aggression and strength, a father

or mother figure who mistreated or ignored them, or a willingness to follow anyone who

can get you what you want.

Making characters born-evil also effectively wastes any moments where they weren't evil,

because a character conceived as pure evil doesn't require a backstory or moments of

sympathy.

We are supposed to know their narrative role as an obstacle and feel gratified rather than

regretful to see them taken down.

When characters are declared purely evil when they have other moments or arcs that contradict

that notion, we aren't nearly as able to see them that way.

It may end up making us care less about these characters in retrospect because all of the

fun or engaging potential in either the pure evil or complex characterization is nullified

when the inverse characterization is included as well.

With all of this said, it isn't impossible for Warriors antagonists to avoid this pitfall,

and in fact there are a few that I think work as great examples of how more villains could

be.

First is Ashfur, who, after a first arc and a half of being a stock background character,

steadily and visibly devolved into possessiveness, obsession, and vengeful anger that led him

to do despicable things.

He wasn't born evil and he wasn't pure evil but by the time of The Broken Code he

had had enough chances to change that cats knew he wasn't going to and were willing

to treat him only as an enemy.

Splashtail, from the latest arc, also may fit into this camp by the end because at the

moment he does seem to be pure evil with no goals beyond power and no reasons for that

goal beyond the joy of it.

He's willing to manipulate and kill anyone to get what he wants and nothing about his

framing asks us to sympathize with him, so he can remain a good obstacle.

No one knows what will happen when the new book comes out next month or what will happen

in the last two books beyond that but I'd like to be optimistic here because, frankly,

Warriors has an awful lot of villains and characters in general that fail to land because

of the dissonance between their presentation and the actions and traits we see in them,

and having another antagonist we can either love to hate or sympathize with without reservations