brambleclaw and my issues with the new prophecy
i recently finished reading through the new prophecy, and. yikes. it was actively a chore to read a lot of the time, especially in the later books. a LOT of the plots and decisions the authors and characters made were frustrating and just bad. there were things about tnp that i liked, but they were heavily outweighed by my irritation at everything else.
before i go into it, i just want to say that this post will not be going into the tribe of rushing water and the racism and native american stereotypes present there. those are very important issues, which i will be delving into in a separate post.
first of all, i know a lot of people do not enjoy the earlier travelling books and the amount of walking happening in them. honestly, that didn't bother me too much. i felt like they did a decent job of having enough interesting character moments and interactions that i wasn't really paying attention to it.
crowfeather is one of my big issues with tnp. as a character, i think he's interesting and mostly well done, if a bit annoying sometimes. i wish they had explored his motivations a bit more. however, as a part of two separate romances that i either don't care about or actively dislike, i'm not a fan.
crowfeather and feathertail are one of those couples that are honestly just there. i think you can read interesting things into their relationship if you consider feathertail's experiences in a shadow in riverclan, but as they are in tnp they're just kind of boring. they're a device to make us care about each of the characters more, and to make it more tragic when she dies.
they're also there so stormfur can be mad at them and get over it because he has a crush of squirrelflight that comes out of nowhere and immediately disappears a couple chapters in to his pov. for some reason. this is an especially stupid plot that i think is absolutely pointless. it does nothing for his character and makes us dislike him for being mad at feathertail for no reason, and then immediately becomes irrelevant when he meets brook two seconds later. they didn't even have any weird love triangle or even any conflict with brambleclaw and squirrelflight, either.
stormfur and brook are also a couple that just exists so that stormfur has a love interest and a reason to stay with the tribe. she has zero personality besides "cute" and "interested in stormfur" and contributes more to the native american stereotypes (which, again, i will get into in another post). she does become slightly more interesting in the later books, but it would have been nice to see something else in the earlier ones as well.
back to crowfeather, it would have been a fine end to his arc to grieve for feathertail, name himself after her, and have to readjust to clan life. however, leafpool needs her forbidden romance (for some reason. please please please erins can we just have one prominent medicine cat who doesn't have a secret affair? yellowfang was the og and the only one that was fine, it got old immediately after that and just continues to be worse) so she gets shoved together with him. they have literally no chemistry. the only times they interact before getting together leafpool is annoyed by him and has zero romantic feelings of any kind. the only thing even resembling buildup is cinderpelt warning leafpool about him on a couple occasions where she genuinely was not interested in him and/or wasn't even looking for him. then crowfeather confesses to her and she's immediately in love with him?? like what?? their relationship after that isn't even shown on screen at all. the only scene we get of them being together and in a relationship is in leafpool's wish. after the entirety of tnp is already over. it's ridiculous.
one thing that i do think was done well about that situation was leafpool feeling isolated and left out by the couples and romance around her. that was actually interesting and good setup, but i think that would have been much better suited to be taken in a different direction. leafpool could have thought she was in love with crowfeather because of her desire for romance and affection, or that he was her only chance to get any of those things. she might have realized when they left the clans that she doesn't actually want this, or crowfeather might have pressured her into leaving so they wouldn't be found out. that angle would be significantly more interesting than their pointless and boring romance that we don't actually see any of. i also think that in this scenario, leafpool would be aromantic, and might just be sexually attracted to crowfeather and mistaking that for romance.
the other option i see is for leafpool to run away with mothwing instead, or at least have a forbidden romance with her instead of crowfeather. they have so so so so so so so so so much more chemistry, and an actually established relationship with on-screen time together. even if mothwing wouldn't abandon her clan, leafpool might have gone to riverclan and midnight could have come there to get help or warn them about the badgers.
my biggest issue with tnp is brambleclaw. in the earlier books, he's fine. he's a pretty standard protagonist who does pretty standard things, like argue with someone who he thinks is annoying and doubt everything he's ever known because he's in warrior cats and that's what they do to their protagonists. i don't really like the way he treats squirrelflight, but she's usually just as much to blame for their trouble as he is.
however, the moment that hawkfrost is introduced, he becomes unbearable. he doubts squirrelflight's intentions and constantly blames her valid concerns on his dad, when she has never and will never think that he's evil because his dad was evil. he does not listen when she tries to talk to him about hawkfrost like a normal person, and dismisses her attempts to make up or start a conversation about it. once he has decided that their issues are her fault, he becomes incredibly awful to her at every opportunity, taking out his power as a warrior when she's an apprentice and his assigned deputy powers once she becomes a warrior. he constantly harasses her and ashfur, when he is just trying to make sure brambleclaw isn't awful to her every second of every day.
even when hawkfrost is part of mudclaw's coup and mudclaw tells him what hawkfrost's intentions were, even when he literally trains with him under their evil dad, brambleclaw trusts his half-brother he barely knows over his best friend/love interest who he's known literally his whole life and went on a life-changing journey with. he also. trains with his evil dad. when the whole time he's been accusing squirrelflight, baselessly, of thinking he's like his dad. and somehow thinks that it's fine and harmless???????? even when tawnypelt tries to snap him out of it????? he is ridiculous and stupid and downright abusive.
on top of all this, when he and squirrelflight finally make up, he never apologizes. never! not once. they have a whole thing where brambleclaw is like "i'm glad we're so close again that we just know the other so well we don't have to apologize or even talk about our previous mistakes or acknowledge that they happened at all", which is patently stupid and and horrible to squirrelflight, again. no wonder squirrelflight doesn't trust him enough to tell him about leafpool's kits. also the fact that firestar forgives him for almost being influenced into murdering him so quickly is ridiculous. he should not go unpunished for that, let alone be allowed to continue to be deputy!
in conclusion, brambleclaw is stupid and forbidden romances are stupid and the new prophecy is just bad. in a lot of respects. not in all of them, but many.
jacobvanloon
ellievsbear
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
snowghoul
areudirty
