#And Leopardstar is the worse one between her and Blackstar BECAUSE she has sooo many active choices here

[bonefall]

Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("

Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(

And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.

And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.

What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.

And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.

But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.

#I just wish people could be more critical of this #And im not entirely anti-retcon. Mind you #But I am here because i think these retcons make them WORSE characters. It's BAD for a character to GET a book with a redemption arc and-- #Then they don't change at all and act like totally different people later in the timeline #And Leopardstar is the worse one between her and Blackstar BECAUSE she has sooo many active choices here #Im confident in my choice for BB the more I think about it. Leopardstar's dismantling of the bonehill was good #But it works better as a tragedy imo with the rest of the series in mind #That for a brief moment. A fleeting whim. She could have changed. #But she never did. #And Blackstar who was FAR less repentant at the time DID eventually turn around. #At the end of the day one of them appointed Hawkfrost as codebreaking deputy. #And the other did not. #And I think it's fucking bullshit the way that Leopardstar's retcondemption implies that Hawkfrost was just so tricky he mislead her #The old and experienced leader who had been fooled by a tiger before and was soso sorry for it. Just got tricked. #Like fuck off. She never had a redemption. Stop trying to tell me she did 15 years later #She's a girlboss who empires too close to the sun in pursuit of power and drags everyone down with her #Not a sad weepy smolbean #Bone babble #Warrior cats analysis