[jurassicshields]

Look at these guys!

[assorted-soups]

Faithless healer x pious practitioner. I freaking love mothpool…

[skinwretch]

fascinating

[skinwretch]

whenever i see it implied that leafpool is treated better by the fandom at large than most other female characters ie squirrelflight or nightcloud or mothwing i really want to build a time machine and show them how people talked about her from 2013 to 2019 because we still haven't fully recovered from the "leafpool is single handedly responsible for everything bad that happened to squirrelflight" era

[skinwretch]

to preface: i am not actively holding this against moonkitti because the video is four years old and i know she's disowned some of her older opinions but if you want an example of what i'm talking about her leafpool's wish video is a great example

the video starts off with the implication that leafpool is hypocritical for being unsure of squirrelflight and brambleclaw's relationship because she told squirrelflight about her omen dream and is therefore "100% responsible for this outcome." very many people liked to paint this as leafpool manipulating squirrelflight into staying with brambleclaw against her will. however if you actually read the scene being referenced you will notice the actual context is very different!

squirrelflight is feeling guilty for rejecting ashfur and asks leafpool if she thinks she did the right thing by choosing brambleclaw. leafpool wants to comfort her sister and assure her that she did the right thing, and she does so in the only way she knows how, but she very clearly did not want to. she has been wary of brambleclaw and his relationship with squirrelflight since day one, but keeps her opinions to herself because she doesn't want to hurt squirrelflight. she doesn't even want to confirm the meaning of her dream ("that's right, i /think/ so") and is described afraid when relaying this information, and immediately regrets telling squirrelflight when she sees her with brambleclaw. she extremely did not want squirrelflight and brambleclaw to be together and only encouraged their relationship because god told her to and she thought it would make squirrelflight happy.

(there's one point in the video where it's stated that leafpool sending crowfeather away is "ruining her best bet of keeping these kits a secret" and i to this day have no clue what she meant by this lol)

the video then goes to talk about how she makes her pregnancy "squilf's problem." she is characterized as selfish and nagging for being more concerned about her pregnancy than squirrelflight's personal issues and indifferent toward's squirrelflight's suffering. her concerns are painted as frivolous and self centered while squirrelflight's social stakes in the matter are emphasized as if leafpool is not also at risk for the exact same kind of retribution. she's depicted as relieved when squirrelflight is guilt tripped into accepting the kits and there's a bit where the joke is that leafpool is a bitch for being upset that she doesn't get to raise her own kids. this ignores the context of this whole plan being a desperate measure that leafpool only went through with for her kits' safety and how she dearly wanted to be able to be a mother

and yeah obviously these videos are to an extent jokes where certain details are hyperbolized for the sake of humor, but i have regularly seen people who don't read the books cite them as accurate abstracts of canon events, and regardless, the way leafpool was villainized in this video for the sake of emphasizing squirrelfight as sympathetic just never sat right with me, even if it's just a bit, especially when very many people truly do see leafpool this way and posit this characterization as an accurate criticism of her character!

[mommyclaws]

It will always be 10000x easier to hate Spottedleaf on a surface level within the text than to dissect the multi layers of misogyny behind the authors writing choices and fandom discourse surrounding her and thats why I will truly never hate Spottedleaf. I don't think there's any other character in warrior cats that has so accurately fossilized the cycle of how a female character's mistreatment in universe can be very tied to her popularity or lack of it in the fandom and how the authors themselves enable that.

Spottedleaf going from irrelevant female character who died to make room for Yellowfang to suddenly a love interest to beating a dead wife to retconning her repeatedly then killing her off to avoid the narrative complications they created. And her only crime was being a woman who happened to speak to the male protagist a total of 3 times while alive, none of which were in an even remotely romantic context.

This is also seen very clearly with characters like Ferncloud, who was killed in the same book as Spottedleaf due to fan complaints of her "being useless" because she spent alot of time in the nursery. And as easy as it would be to try and blame a fandom largely full of children at the time for making those complaints, warrior cats itself is full of misogyny and those ideas can very easyily rub off onto young or casual readers who don’t have a deeper context. (ex. 2010s having large waves of hate and discourse towards Leafopool and Squirrelflight, both of whom are victims of their situations whether that be their relationships or their society)

Because ultimately no matter how much anyone complained or shipped something in the earlier fandom, it’s the authors who decided Ferncloud should die for being a useless mother, its the authors who decided Spottedleaf should be a love interest to Fireheart despite the questionable age gap in children's book series, and the authors who decided Leafpool and Squirrelflight are more guilty than the man who tried to ruin their lives and threaten the lives of their children. And I think that says alot.

[cacw]

[harriertail]

If StarClan has spoken, then it must be so. Fire will save our Clan.

print available as part of my monthly print club until end of jan!

[thornclaw]

we drawing cats again

[laserwalnut]

Brightheart cuteness I forgot to post :3

[andyztoyz]

auntie leafpool let me sort herbs with her!

[murkshade]

need more pissed off littlecloud. dude goes from child soldier to having to be the doctor for the shittiest leader lineup in the series. id be mad as hell dude

[savanemon]

deathberries

[savanemon]

dad n son hunting patrol!

he’s making excuses to go see his wife goldenflower in the nursery. he love his big fluffy ray of sunshine

[blodwyrm]

hawkfrost!

[thornclaw]

goldenflowersupportteam you'll always be famous

[skinwretch]

a lot of people think of nightcloud as immediately scorning and seperating herself from crowfeather after the reveal that he fathered lionjayholly but i don't think that's true. sure it probably dealt a heavy blow to their already strained relationship, they probably fought about it, but crowfeather and nightcloud hadn't even officially stopped being mates until crowfeather's trial. the scene from oots that everyone talks about where she pulls crowfeather away from leafpool very much reads to me like she was still at that point telling herself she could still salvage the marriage

[skinwretch]

and controversially i do think nightcloud was being an asshole to leafpool in this scene. people will try to point to leafpool's "i'd give my life to save your kits crowfeather" comment in response and i know i'm biased but i don't care. i don't! it was a tactless thing to say at that moment but it wasn't her trying to put herself between crowfeather and nightcloud or intentionally undermine nightcloud's status as his wife, and i don't think it's in any way "insensitive" for leafpool to point out that breezepelt and lionblaze are brothers in this scene when everyone already knows the truth and she's pleading with their father to do something to stop them from killing each other. nightcloud watching this and going "he only has one son you dumb skank" was pointedly cruel and - considering the context of lionblaze and breezepelt beating the shit out of each other - vindictive. yes i know she's hurting, she has a right to be hurting, but she's blaming it entirely on leafpool being a homewrecker while defending crowfeather's refusal to take responsibility, which is pretty decidedly unfair. fucking crazy that all of the fandom arguments over who is being "victimized" in the scene center on nightcloud potentially harming crowfeather's delicate flesh pulling him away from another woman and not leafpool lying on the ground bleeding while everyone sneers at her and tells her this is her fault

[leafybfdia]

me fending off a bloodclan ambush: im fighting Tooth and Nail over here