Original Post: Ember, March 31, 2017
Hello everyone! It’s been a fairly hectic March, between new members, Lightningstar’s assassination, and the looming DawnClan/NightClan merge. While the overarching plot has already been planned, we have a bunch of unresolved details I want to hear your opinion about, such as exact how EarthClan’s council will be arranged, when the EarthClan merge will actually occur, and (my favorite hobby) coming up with new and fun ways we can torture SunClan.
Before we jump into the demographics, we have a little bit of housekeeping to attend to. From now on, SunClan head warriors and EarthClan council members will not be considered high ranking characters, but members cannot have a high ranking character in the same clan that they have a council member or head warrior. So, for instance, you could have a MoonClan medicine cat and an EarthClan council member, but not an SunClan council member and the SunClan medicine cat. As well, from now on members will be expected to clearly indicate which clan their characters belong to on their profile page clan lists. All members are expected to have their pages in compliance with this rule by April 7th.
Now that that’s over with, we can get to the fun part! This is part three of the series of Monthly Meows comparing the canon universe to this roleplay, this time with a focus on clan demographics. Previous topics included The Warrior Code and naming conventions, if you haven’t read those yet they are in the previous two Monthly Meows. As in the previous other Monthly Meows, I used the Avon paperback 2004 American edition of Into the Wild, my somewhat sketchy memory of the rest of the books, and the Warriors Wiki to write this; if you see anything inaccurate please speak up. All demographics from the original books are from ThunderClan and should reflect what the clan looked like at the beginning of Into the Wild, just after Firepaw joined the clan, but, as explained below, gathering the information to make the ThunderClan sections wasn’t as cut-and-dry as gathering data from our clans.
Previous demographics overviews were published in November 2016, May 2016, December 2015, August 2015, December 2014, and March 2014. Please note that all of the data for this demographics overview was gathered on March 10th, so these numbers do not exactly represent what the clans look like now. Currently, MoonClan has 77 characters, NightClan has 95, DawnClan has 61, and SunClan has 66.
📷Unfortunately, I couldn’t piece together demographics for canon clans other than ThunderClan, as the allegiances section in the front of my book only included the characters mentioned in the text and it proved nearly impossible to put together who was around when from the Warriors Wiki. If anyone knows where full clan lists separated by book or time period are, please share it with me and I’ll be happy to update this Monthly Meow. As well, kits were not listed at all, so I had to go through the book and the Warriors Wiki and figure out how many kits there were. I’m not sure if these are correct, but I eventually settled on Frostfur having four kits (Brightheart, Cinderpelt, Thornclaw, and Brackenfur), Brindleface having four kits (Elderkit, Tulipkit, Ferncloud, and Tulipkit), Goldenflower having two kits (Swiftpaw and Lynxkit), and Speckletail having two kits (Mistlekit and Snowkit).
I had to get a little creative to figure out the ThunderClan cats’ ages, so all of the ages are estimates and are based off of this website’s aging system, which doesn’t line up perfectly with how time passes in the books. For instance, in the books all cats are apprentices for about six months and kits for about six months while on this site cats are apprentices for twice as long as their kits. Our system also isn’t internally consistent- in the case of how kits age, one month is six months, but by how seasons pass, two months are six months.
So, between ThunderClan’s five elders and 12 kits, over half of the clan is composed of cats who can’t care for themselves, which stands in sharp contrast to our site where the population of non-working cats hovers around 20%. By my records, the highest percentage of non-working cats we’ve ever had is 32% in NightClan and DawnClan last November, and has been as low as 9% in MoonClan on December 15th, 2015.
Other than the working/non-working cat ratio, ThunderClan is remarkably similar to the other clans. The gender ratio is skewed male, but it isn’t too uncommon for our clans to fluctuate and SunClan had the same ratio at the time this Monthly Meow was put together. The average age is in the middle of our other clans, so nothing is too shocking there. The clan is smaller, but I remember that the clan seemed to grow over the books and wonder if it is much larger in the more recent books. If you have read them, could you post below how many cats are in ThunderClan in whatever book you have at hand?
I had to double check the records twice before I was certain that the clan count was actually so low, while we’ve been slowly declining in number of characters, I was expecting the number to fall closer to 350 than only 300. It’s been over two years since the clans were this small and the decline has happened fairly quickly. Nothing else particularly stands out to me from our clans. The average age is higher than last time but is in line with other previous demographics overviews. The clan sizes make sense given recent plot developments, the gender ratio is fairly even, the working/nonworking ration is what I expect to see.
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This age histogram isn’t surprising, with a generally predictable decline as cats get older. The lack of kits is simply explained by the fact that all this data is from early in the month, before many kits had the opportunity to be born. We do have more old cats than usual, but I’m not quite sure why that would be considering how many new members we’ve welcomed onto the site and all the long-time members who have recently left.
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The individual clan histograms get hairy, though. Only MoonClan seems to be pretending to follow the usual pattern, with NightClan scattered all over the place, DawnClan peaking at young warriors (three months old), and SunClan having a fairly flat line in contrast to the sharp declines I’m used to seeing. I suspect the unusual age histogram shapes tied to the overall decline in clan population, though the details of why that’s happening are unclear.
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As stated above, I had to estimate cats’ ages from how they were described in the books (for example, Whitestorm is mentioned to be a very senior warrior, while Greypaw mentioned that Longstipe only recently earned his warrior name) and the aging system in the book doesn’t line up in the book. That said, this age histogram doesn’t surprise me. It’s roughly what I would expect for a clan where generally if you make it through kithood you’ll make it to being an elder, which makes sense from how nervous they were about having so few apprentices around despite nearly a third of their population being composed of kits.
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This is how the clan populations have changed over time from about a two years and some change ago, below I’ve cut it down to just the last year. If you want to see my guesses as to why we had certain booms and busts in the past, check out the previous demographics overviews.
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By far the most pronounced aspect of the clan populations in the past year is the steady decline in characters we’ve experienced since July. I’m uncertain why this is, as the website itself seems to be as active as ever and while we’ve lost a handful of long-time members, old members leaving and new ones being welcomed in has always been a consistent part of the site and we haven’t had the sort of mass exodus that would explain the decline in characters. Perhaps the decline is related to the relatively high number of elders, so members are simply holding onto characters longer rather than making more new characters. Possibly they’re getting the same amount of roleplaying time/interest out of one older warrior or elder as they may previously had from a handful of new kits and apprentices? That couldn’t be the entire explanation, but it could be a part of it. If you have any other possible explanations, please share.
The clans’ positions have remained fairly stable, especially between October and January. DawnClan’s recent decline and MoonClan’s large population follows what we’d expect with the famine DawnClan just came out of, while NightClan and SunClan have been left by the wayside in past months.
MoonClan
Apprentices:
Missingkit: Early April
Dutchkit, Reichkit, Regalkit, Pikakit, Leafykit: Mid April
Warriors:
Thistlepaw, Crystalpaw, Icepaw, Loyalpaw, Moonpaw, Saki, Peonypaw: Mid April
Asp-paw: Late April
Medicine Cats:
Early April: Gaia, Runepaw
Deaths: German, Swede
NightClan
Apprentices:
Elmkit, Whipkit: Early April
Carnationkit, Wolfkit, Lostkit, Lastkit, Lastkit, Smallkit, Legendkit, Nettlekit, Devilkit, Ashkit, Red: Mid April
Dottedkit, Flightkit, Pantherkit, Lightskit, Jaykit: Late April
Elders: Sunfleck
Deaths: Dogface, Toxickiss
DawnClan
Apprentices:
Wavekit: Early April
Tidekit: Mid April
Glowingkit, Willowkit, Sparrowkit, Speckledkit, Blindingkit, Toweringkit: Late April
Warriors:
Dreampaw, Lionpaw, Hauntingpaw, Crystalpaw: Early April
Redpaw, Nightpaw: Mid April
Medicine Cat: Whisperpaw (Early April)
Deaths: Twosouls, Alphaheart, Kingdomquake, Luminousowl
SunClan
Apprentices:
Pinekit: Early April
Dovekit, Kindlekit, Shadekit, Toxickit: Mid April
Warriors:
Rabbitpaw, Ashpaw, Tawnypaw, Stonepaw, Duskpaw, Lakepaw: Early April
Desolatepaw, Cryingpaw, Growlingpaw, Gorsepaw, Goldenpaw: Mid April
Lionpaw: Late April
Elders: Morningserval, Tigerfern, Qilinflames, Brindlesplash
Deaths: Sandfoot
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