#Also for the record I imagine Spottedleaf actually has a skull-like marking on her face

[bonefall]

tpb spottedleaf,you'll always be famous to me. her personality was so good in tpb and now she's just forever remembered as "firestar's stalker med cat crush he was willing to leave his wife for" and it's so dumb. personally,im fully using and exploiting the fact that she seems to be starclan's primary messanger upon death,even encouraging cats to break the code in the case of leafpool,which is so interesitng

I knowwww, it sucks! There's no reason for it! She wasn't like that in TPB, if it was anything, it was a one-sided crush on Fireheart's behalf. She did not return those feelings until weird authorial statements and additional content much later

And it makes it worse, imo! Just let Spottedleaf be there to guide Fireheart. That's good. I LOVE the idea of Spottedleaf being a bit of a 'rogue' StarClan cat, one who will appear to cats and encourage them to do what they think is right.

Personally I like to approach it as her not even being explicitly sent BY StarClan. I just see her as the sort of person who would, and that's why she bonded so well with Firepaw. She recognizes a lot of her own traits in him, and encourages him to march to the beat of his own drum.

I'm gushing about her now but I also compare her to her brother Redtail. HE'S prim and proper, he's the drill sergeant, the one who does things by the book, does as StarClan commands. Gets told, "Redtail, go watch your sister to make sure she doesn't run off to tell Fireheart about that new prophecy" and he follows the order, only for her to go,

"Reddtaaill... I need you to help me with these flower chains."

"...you're trying to trick me. you're a horrible starclan cat."

"Whatt? How could you? That's so rude... You can still watch me and braid these, can't you? How could I possibly be tricking you when it's so simple?"

"....hmph. fine. you're right, I'm absolutely capable of that."

But, of course, Redtail is too meticulous to just braid subconsciously. So he makes the first one and it's not great, and the perfectionist in him comes out. He's still watching her, but now he's glancing at her from the corner of his eye... aaaand this flower chain is worse. So he pays better attention to it, and this one looks excellent.

"Looks excellent! See, I'm still here!" She assures him, making sure he has a big pile of sparkling daisies next to him.

And fellas. He doesn't even notice when she vanishes 15 minutes later.