mistyfoot does not tell anybody what happened that day, when hawkfrost intended for brambleclaw to kill her. who would help? she cannot forget how her clanmates turned on her, the sneering remarks about her heritage. she cannot forget that leopardstar appointed her deputy only to push tigerclan into the past. she cannot forget riverclan's compliance in the moons of hawkfrost's scheming and undermining and stirring trouble.
so she cannot tell. she can only hope to outlive leopardstar. she can only hope that, once she's leader, riverclan will be receptive to change.
years later, bramblestar's life is stolen by a vengeful ghost. good riddance, mistystar thinks, relieved to never sit beside him in the great oak again.
but squirrelflight is shattered, and mistystar respects squirrelflight. the daughter of her old friend, brave and loyal. moreover, mistystar sees herself and blackclaw in squirrelflight's own tumultuous relationship.
and... if she's being honest... mistystar understands her birth mother a little more, after watching squirrelflight's life fall apart and be put back together again.
so mistystar approaches the grieving cat to offer her condolences. but squirrelflight hasn't forgotten those arguments over hawkfrost, those nights spend burning with anger. she hasn't forgotten hawkfrost's mysterious death or the way brambleclaw avoided her gaze after. she hasn't forgotten what her mate has been hiding from her.
is anyone else getting bombarded with ai ads for that fucking ghost logo dating app. why is every platform calling me a lonely loser bitch who needs a dating app for weirdos. also that woman is not real.
hollyleaf and nightheart for my au. explanation below
tldr, nightheart is the son of lionblaze and cinderheart and is constantly compared to hollyleaf. idk how i would fix the rest of his arc because asc is a shitshow, but this is at least how i would characterize him in river.
i am okay with nightheart as a concept. i am okay with a character who experiences neglect in his childhood, who is constantly measured to a deceased family member, whose unhappiness makes him bitter and unlikeable, and who learns and grows and makes a place for himself.
it was just executed so poorly. firstly, warriors can't write unreliable narrators. secondly, sparkpelt's son wasn't the right character to do this with. sparkpelt had an arc about healing from her partner's death and connecting with their children. we didn't need to spit on that.
thirdly, firestar was the wrong relative to compare nightheart to. firestar has closer, more identical descendants (sparkpelt) who could be expected to be his second coming. nightheart has closer, more identical ancestors (larksong) whose name he could struggle to carry. either way, the entire clan is related to one another at this point, and we have half a dozen other legacy names who seem to get by with no issue.
to solve these problems, nightheart needs parents who (a) criticize him and compare him constantly to some cat they cared deeply about, and (b) fail to meet his needs as a child. look no further than cinderheart and lionblaze!
in my mind, cinderheart and lionblaze have a really toxic relationship, and it's centered around hollyleaf. lionblaze misses his sister deeply, and cinderheart is still in love with her; she and hollyleaf would have become mates, if hollyleaf's life hadn't been cut short. so lionblaze turns to cinderheart, his sister's best friend, and cinderheart turns to lionblaze, her lover's brother, to try to fill this hole in their lives. and they try really hard to make it work.
when nightheart is born, they name him hollykit. i imagine that cinderheart is a little distant from her kits (it reminds her of the future she lost (let more characters be bad mothers (but not after they have arcs about becoming good mothers (sparkpelt)))).
on the other hand, lionblaze is harsh and reproving. i kind of like his trajectory as a hard-ass in canon; it tracks with his treatment of dovepaw during oots, it parallels nicely with ivypool's own descent into traditionalism, and it provides some opportunites for conflict. thus nightheart struggles to feel loved or like he can do anything right.
i don't know what i would do with nightheart for the rest of asc. the bigger problem is idk what to do with asc. asc is ridiculous because at its core, it depends on the riverclan cats not being able to maintain their own camp without a leader telling them to. i just wanted to provide nightheart's character with a more solid foundation.
the protagonists of the broken code. who's rootspring
i am tbc's number 1 hater! negative thoughts below
shadowsight: other characters sometimes acknowledge that he was manipulated by ashfur, but the narrative puts all of the blame for the ashfur situation on him, neglecting that (a) he did exactly what he was supposed to do as a healer (obey and take messages from a starclan cat), and (b) the codebreaker hysteria was far more a product of clan culture than the actions of a single apprentice. he isn't treated like the victim that he is, and it is frustrating and not cathartic.
bristlefrost: what the hell does she even do. what does her spy arc accomplish or contribute (like mother, like daughter). she finds out that bramblestar isn't bramblestar far too early. she's so perfect and she has no flaws and she's so empty. i want her to be worse. how much more interesting would she be if she was sneaky and selfish? if she was loyal to the imposter because she truly believed in what he was saying? not to mention how she reciprocates rootspring's feelings with literally zero warning, and ceases to have what little character she'd had to begin with. i genuinely don't care that she dies, they did nothing to make her an engaging character. miss bristlefrost, i'm sorry they did you so bad.
rootspring: first rootpaw thinks he's weird because of his father. i hate this because i hate tree. later, rootpaw thinks he's weird because he can see ghosts. so they give him this "i just want to be normal" deal, and the clans suddenly pretend that ghosts are silly and not real. sure, rootspring and tree are the first clan cats with this specific power. and i get that the clans have very rigid beliefs, and they are afraid of anything that contradicts those beliefs, and that's interesting! but ghosts have been appearing to clan cats all the way back to tpb. fireheart tries to kill clawface at one point and he senses spottedleaf's spirit beside him, there to avenge her death. so rootspring's issue is stupid and he's nothingburger to me.
bramblestar: the arc really depends on me giving a shit about what happens to him. which i don't.
i think bramblestar is unintentionally a bad person and a great character. he proves himself by rejecting tigerstar, but he's still deeply insecure. he makes mistake after mistake (conspiring with tigerstar; hesitating to save firestar from the fox trap; forsaking his children after finding out they're not biologically his; using his power over squirrelflight as a warrior, deputy, and leader to control her), and for none of these mistakes is he held accountable (no thunderclan cat except leafpool learns that he plotted with tigerstar; he is allowed to remain deputy; his children think he was the best father ever; in every situation, squirrelflight seems to bear the consequences of his actions).
in other words, bramblestar gets chance after chance to redeem himself, and he keeps fucking it up. again, that's interesting! there is a story here about how difficult childhoods affect adults, and how powerful men are not held responsible for hurting people. except that's not how he's written. he's written as a completely good person, a brave and noble leader, and all of the clans respect him and they need to get him back.
there's a crazy amount of bramblestar worship in this arc. even rootspring, a brand new skyclan apprentice, thinks about how important bramblestar, the thunderclan leader, is, and how all the clans wouldn't be the same without him. i can't take it seriously.
graystripe: graystripe also got a crazy amount of worship. i couldn't stand reading every few paragraphs about how great he is.
side note: shadowsight, bristlefrost, and rootspring all want the same thing. they advocate against killing bramblestar's body. wouldn't it be more interesting if the protagonists had different perspectives and opinions? if they wanted different things? for example, it makes sense that shadowsight wouldn't want bramblestar dead. he feels like the only way to make up for his mistake is to recover bramblestar alive. but bristlefrost could be in favor of killing bramblestar, because the only way to make up for her mistake (supporting the imposter) is to get rid of him. putting our protagonists at odds would generate some interesting conflict.
conclusion: i also have problems with ashfur (why does ashfur try to stir up trouble with codebreaking which will certainly get him caught when he could just take over bramblestar's body and live quietly with squirrelflight), tigerheartstar, mothwing, starclan, the dark forest insta-death water, firestar possessing rootspring, the pacing (oh my god! they were debating whether to kill bramblestar for like three books! and for three more books they were running in circles in the dark forest!), etc. but i've already written a lot and i'm out of steam lol.
let me finish by saying these are kids books, and i'm not expecting them to be the cream of the crop, but there are a lot of writing choices which are incredibly misogynistic and/or completely baffling from a narrative standpoint. i still have a soft spot for this series though. dammit. okay bye
the voice in moonpaw's head being the littermate she absorbed aligns perfectly with the worldview of erin "all kits that die before being born go to starclan and are suddenly super knowledgeable and mysterious" hunter
