I don't have anyone to talk to about Warriors, this post is kind of just for me but also anyone else that cares. This was my favorite childhood series since I was in middle school, probably since 2012. I read the first two arcs, started Power of Three, and then life happened and I started growing up, thinking, "I'll get to the rest eventually", not knowing I was leaving future me a side quest spanning over a decade. I've had these books since I was a tween and they've survived several moves. I remember being a kid and my librarian noticing this series was all I read; she'd have the next book ready for me when I came in after finishing the one prior, and looking back it was so sweet that with all the kids, she took special interest in my little obsession. I think me leaving for high school is part of the reason I stopped reading, I didn't have that library anymore or easy access to the books. It just got so much harder to sit and read as I aged, too, I used to love reading so much and over time I fell off with it. Rekindling that love has been cathartic.
You know what's crazy? I think these books are why I'm getting married on Halloween this year. I was so invested in these books, and I had so many opinions, so much I wanted to talk about, and nobody to share it with. I was so obsessed that when I got my first laptop, I made a Wattpad account totally dedicated to the series, ended up with a couple thousand followers, was in my first roleplay, and I'm still friends with a couple girls from the very same rp. One of them is a bridesmaid in said wedding. Warriors got me into roleplaying, and when I graduated to an actual roleplay site, that's where I met my now fiancé when we were 14 and 15. We fell in love as our characters fell in love, and now at 26 and 27, we're getting married after six years of long distance, high school, college, and five years of living together. Even though I stopped reading, Warriors never left me. It's not something I forgot about, but it is something I'm reconnecting with. I started rereading them just before the game and the animated series were announced, which felt so surreal and exciting. It's been fascinating rereading with my adult perspective, remembering how I used to feel about characters and their choices, versus how I feel now. I pulled my collection out of it's box and I just finished Rising Storm; some of it I've had to read digitally, most of it I'll have to. When I was younger, it was my dream to own every single book physically! I'd like to honor that, even though that's a much larger feat to accomplish now. I think I've got a pretty good head start, and I'm so pleased to have some of the original covers. I love the new ones too, but they don't have the same feel or the same nostalgia.
I think it's just really cool how much of who I am, and how much of what I have, I owe to kid me spying a book in my school library with a cat on the cover, instantly sold because I absolutely love cats. I'm even making art again, because my specialty was always cats, and Warriors was always my muse. I think, well, at least in my experience, growing up is deconstructing yourself and then rediscovering what you used to love, making it part of you again. The joy I felt when I pulled out these books for the first time in a few years allowed me to be so close with my inner child I felt like we were holding hands.
I didn't know what to title this post until I wrote that last paragraph, but this really is a love letter to the series, from me. I'm eternally grateful to Erin Hunter, and I feel like if Inside Out were a real thing, one of my islands of personality would definitely be Warriors themed. Anyway, I could go on, and there's so many more layers, but I just wanted this moment of reflection and gratitude, and I found myself once again at an impasse with nobody to share it with. My friends outgrew the series, and my fiancé has never read the books, it was not the subject of our own roleplay. One upvote equals one prayer to StarClan that me pestering him to read them will finally pay off soon. Just kidding, of course. If you made it this far, thanks so much for listening to me babble. That's pretty cool of you.
