like this. I'll look like this. There'll  be a lot more drawing than usual as well,  

a rarity for me as a person as well as a  channel. But this is going to be a bit of a  

special occasion. A couple of years ago, I had  the idea of making an illustration with every  

Warriors protagonist included, along with a couple  of others if the protagonists were obviously part  

of an incomplete set. This idea was quickly  put aside as I had much more pressing projects,  

including the start of Paws of Stars. But now,  as I have just finished that massive project,  

and with how busy I've been for a multitude of  reasons, I kind of wanted a break, so I've decided  

to revisit my old idea and give a brief rundown  of my thoughts on each protagonist as I draw them.  

Euick warning then that there will be spoilers  for each cat's story in their section so you can  

skip over any cats you aren't familiar with using  the chapters or timestamps in the description. You  

can see me now just figuring out the layout and  future shading for this piece; I actually spent  

about 15 minutes before this just reorganizing  and trying to remove or add the bubbles with  

names in them to even get this far. But now, we  should be about ready to get into the drawings.

And who else could I start with besides the  famed first figure and future fiery forerunner of  

Thunderclan, Firestar! Even though he isn't one of  my personal favorite characters or protagonists,  

Firestar is undoubtedly a great introduction into  the world of Warriors. As the lens through which  

so many people had to learn about this new world,  his kittypet background and everlasting curiosity  

driving him to actively seek out as many cats  and plot points as possible made for a good  

combination, and we got to see much more of the  world through his eyes. He had a strong will and  

moral compass, one that slightly differed from  that of the clans in a way that allowed him to  

take heroic actions that other cats were too  scared or too rooted in tradition to consider,  

leading him to befriend Yellowfang, Onewhisker,  and Mistyfoot among others. When a cat from any  

clan was hurt, Fireheart felt it and wanted  to help, leading us to care too. However,  

he was also not lacking in flaws. He has a  tendency to take matters into his own paws  

rather than ever going to others for help, even  when they would both be willing and able to.  

He can also, at times, be impatient, clueless,  and he has a tendency to hold onto the past  

for too long, be that the weight of his kittypet  heritage (especially as it applies to Cloudtail),  

Spottedleaf's kindness to him, or especially  Tigerstar's legacy in the cats connected to  

him. He's overall a complex and likable character,  a good start to and representative for the series.

But now it is time to move on to  his daughter, well, one of them:  

Leafpool. When people are thinking about  the protagonists of The New Prophecy,  

a lot of times it comes down to the six cats in  the traveling crew, but two of those didn't even  

get a point of view and one only got two chapters  while a fourth only got a piece of one book. In  

reality, the cat with the largest total chapters  across the arc is the resident camera: Leafpool,  

with Brambleclaw in second place. There's a  clear reason Leafpool is there so much and  

it's because she's a character in a position to  show us what's happening in the clans while the  

traveling cats are away or not interacting with  many cats outside of their small social circle,  

but almost any cat could do that job. When  Leafpool finally does get her own storylines:  

being subtly pushed out of her role by  a desperate Brightheart and bonding with  

the grieving Crowfeather…well it's not my  personal taste. Her story at that point,  

as much of Twilight (the Warriors book) is,  is very melodramatic and silly and the sort  

of thing that hundreds of teens in the late 2000's  would happily make love and drama style PMV's to.  

That's not to say it's a bad story, necessarily,  just not as rich as some others in the protagonist  

mantle. Leafpool's deepest material actually comes  after this arc is complete, with her training of  

two of her children and actions in the fallout  of her secret being revealed, but none of this  

happens in the arc where she is supposedly  in focus so I'll leave that to be for now.

Firestar's other daughter is quite different, yet  bound in the same pair. Squirrelflight certainly  

inherited his strong will and moral center, but  in her case, perhaps because of the cats she  

was surrounded by, the lack of an appropriate  mentor figure like Bluestar was for Firestar,  

or because of Squirrelflight's cute appearance  and status as a she-cat, she was never taken as  

seriously or given as much ultimate respect as  her father was. Here's hoping that will change  

if she soon becomes leader, but this is a focus on  her in The New Prophecy anyway. As far as how she  

was as a protagonist, I liked everything about her  personality and aggressive activeness in jumping  

into the story. The one thing I didn't care for  is what I didn't like about the whole of her arc:  

the inability to form any close relationships.  Almost none of the traveling group actually got  

close over the course of the arc, let alone on  their journey, and Squirrelflight didn't have  

any friends she was close to back home either. As  a result, by the end, her biggest bonds are with  

her sister, Leafpool, and three different men who  loved her: Stormfur, who liked her when she was  

an apprentice and left to be with Brook instead,  Ashfur, who coddled her in a way she didn't like  

and who later…well, you know, and Brambleclaw,  the cat she ultimately ended up with but also who  

never shared a balanced or peaceful relationship  with her. Whatever you think of Squirrelflight,  

or Brambleclaw's relationship with her,  it's fair to say she never got a peaceful  

resolution or an outlet for her seeming need  for connection and intimacy, which is a real  

shame for an arc that should have been about  bonding across differences to come into unity.

Up next is the big brown tabby himself, as if that  makes it any more specific, Brambleclaw! And um,  

his complete turn from a noble and resilient tom  facing a large amount of worry and ridicule in the  

original arc to a grumpy, closed-off, desperate  warrior despite a complete lack of any mistrust  

in The New Prophecy is an unmotivated and a  frustrating one. Believing the worst in cats  

around him, mostly Squirrelflight, refusing  to see or bend to other cats' points of view,  

and quickly attaching himself to Hawkfrost  and Tigerstar when he explicitly knows and  

previously rejected the latter's evil history and  when he hasn't ever tried to bond with Mothwing  

or even Tawnypelt that much is just odd and  can detach a reader from his perspective when  

the narrative doesn't give him any reason to  think in the way that he does. Additionally,  

as the second most prominent point of view in  the arc after Leafpool, his insistence on never  

forming friendships with or even giving care  to most cats who aren't Hawkfrost distances the  

reader from the other characters in the story  and gives us less reason to care about their  

journey at all, along with making Brambleclaw seem  like a pretty poor leader to his traveling group,  

a bad quality in a cat the narrative wants  us to think is the obvious choice for deputy.

Onto the slightly better Tiger-child, it's  time for Tawnypelt. She and Crowfeather are  

the main reasons that I decided to go for  more than just the point of view characters,  

because they're very much part of the group  as far as the fandom eye is concerned,  

even though neither ever got a point of view in  The New Prophecy. Tawnypelt is definitely the  

character I consider to have been most in-need  of attention and depth within The New Prophecy,  

as she didn't really get any growth or even a  definitive personality that wasn't contradicted  

elsewhere in the series. Tawnypelt is most often  known for one scene in this arc where Tigerstar  

asked her to train with him, much later than he  asked Hawkfrost and Brambleclaw, and she said no  

and then told Brambleclaw he was being stupid  for not doing the same. This is unquestionably  

a strong moment, but it is dissonant with  information from later in the series that  

she never told her kits anything bad about  Tigerstar and in fact named Tigerheart after him,  

apparently instilling in him the idea that he was  named after a great and strong cat. Even Tawnypaw  

in the first series, based on her willingness  to join and stay in her father's clan as long as  

she knew she wasn't going to do the same things as  him, feels like she wouldn't be the sort of cat to  

deny his training as long as she wasn't going to  take over the clans using it. This is far from the  

first time it's been suggested, but I honestly  believe they could have had a better and less  

confusing set of character arcs if Tawnypelt and  Brambleclaw switched places in The New Prophecy,  

with Tawnypelt yearning for connection and  joining her father while Brambleclaw says no like  

he has before and tries to use his new, greater  connection with his sister since the journey to  

lead her away from the path she already partially  chose seasons ago when she left for Shadowclan.

Onto uh my least favorite traveling cat.  Stormfur is unfortunately a very bland character,  

not because he didn't get any time to shine–he  had almost a whole book to himself–but because  

the time he did have was spent establishing him as  bland. He doesn't have any specific thoughts about  

the cats or culture of his home, has some emotions  but rarely acts on them, and mostly spends his  

time orbiting around four sources: his sister,  whose relationship he disapproves of, Squirrelpaw,  

who he hypocritically loves but decides not  to pursue because Brambleclaw is there, Brook,  

who he loves without any particular reason, and  the Tribe who he feels duty-bound to protect as  

part of their prophecy and then as a newcomer  in their ranks. Stormfur got tied up in a lot  

of the apprentice-loving and tribe-bashing  trends of his arc and the next which did him  

absolutely no favors, but even on his own  his story has few connecting elements in  

it to make us care about him, leading to  his book being a relatively boring read.

His sister is significantly more interesting,  though mostly because of her graphic novel rather  

than because of her two chapters as a point  of view character. Within The New Prophecy,  

Feathertail was almost a polar opposite  character from who she was in A Shadow in  

Riverclan. She's pretty demure, nurturing, angry  only at her brother when he tries to comment on  

her relationship with Crowpaw, and despite all  this she also has a strong moral compass and an  

open heart for those around her, ready to befriend  and sacrifice herself to save the Tribe that had  

just kidnapped her brother and done little more  than be rude or closed off to her for a while and  

also being completely forgiving of Riverclan  for what they did to her and Stormfur in the  

first arc. In her graphic novel, she is instead  bitterly angry at Riverclan for that same deed  

and it is Stormfur who forgives them. She's also  much less open-hearted and more sharp-tongued,  

even sometimes to those who aren't at all  involved, like Hawkpaw. In The New Prophecy,  

she's an effective ancillary character, and having  concrete relationships with both Crowfeather and  

Stormfur gives her an edge over some other  characters, but she ultimately doesn't get  

much time to shine thanks to her early death  and later identity as a stock kind she-cat.

Wrapping up the New Prophecy crew with the  grumpiest boy himself, here we have Crowfeather.  

He's…really a bunch of wasted potential.  From day one he was the protagonist with  

the farthest character arc to travel, having no  connections at all and actively distrusting the  

other cats on his journey, but we neither got his  perspective nor saw him make any lasting friends  

or changes to his demeanor. Worse still, even  when it came time for the civil war in his clan  

between his mentor and a rightful ruler that  he respected, we didn't get his perspective or  

even much presence from him at all. And from this  point onward…well let's just say the controversy  

that pops up around his portrayal and actions  is something I have no interest in touching.

So instead it's onto his kits, starting with  Jayfeather! This is where my bias starts showing  

because every Power of Three and Omen of the Stars  protagonist is now near and dear to my heart,  

but Jayfeather specifically is also one of the  most consistently interesting protagonists in  

our set. He has a distinctive personality,  compelling strengths and flaws with reasons  

you can see behind them, and even a resigned but  simultaneously passionate investment in his stupid  

plot of an aimless prophecy, the absurd fracture  of Starclan, and a Dark Forest war that makes no  

sense if you look at it for more than a couple of  minutes. Honestly, my only complaint about the guy  

is that he doesn't really get a character arc, but  no one in his arcs does. He's pretty much the same  

Starclan-love-hating prickly but talented medicine  cat at the end as he is in the beginning, and  

that characterization has been stretched a little  too far since he left his time in the spotlight.

Speaking of cats who became more exaggerated  and aggressive after their arcs, hi Lionblaze!  

Within his *first* arc of point of view, I would  argue he isn't that bad. After the first book,  

he has some anger issues, impulsiveness, and  willingness to trust Tigerstar and Hawkfrost  

mostly because they agreed with him when his  sister didn't. That was all interesting. This was  

even briefly touched on again in Omen of the Stars  with his accidental murder of Russetfur. However,  

similarly to Jayfeather, none of this is ever  resolved, and additionally, a lot of it was set  

up poorly in the first place with some of the  problems that plagued all of the Dark Forest  

(namely a complete unwillingness to be convincing  or even nice to the cats they were trying to  

seduce to their side). A lot of Lionblaze's  time then, particularly in Omen of the Stars,  

was instead spent on a very bland romance and  forced conflict with Cinderheart or just being  

a stock tom devoid of personality, goals, or  flaws to take up space and remind you that he's  

one of those protagonists. I love the guy at  this point but it's due to a lot of headcanon.

Onto my absolute favorite gal though, here we have  Hollyleaf. There's no way I could succinctly sum  

up everything I love about her here, so I'll  quickly refer you to her dedicated video,  

but as far as her canon usage as a point of  view is concerned, I do have some thoughts,  

namely that she is a result of poor  planning, lack of an initial concept,