#TNP is written around Brambleclaw ergo his siblings are relevant

[bonefall]

hi!!!! thoughts on how you wish hawk/moth/tawny’s arcs went? always thought they were a billion times more interesting than their brother who is somehow still relevant and given all the screentime despite basically having his true arc wrapped up before he was ever given a pov

They were sacrificed on the altar of framing Brambleclaw's growth and ergo none of them got the satisfying conclusion they should have collectively had in TNP.

To talk about them, I first have to talk about what I think the Erins were doing with Brambleclaw

Brambleclaw

They decided that the arc that Brambleclaw went through in TNP did not actually end with closure. I don't necessarily think that's too bad of an idea; that watching his father get brutally murdered interrupted Bramblepaw's personal development, and made him possibly reconsider the idea that he was completely bad.

The choice in that moment, to reject Tigerstar or accept him, was taken from Bramblepaw when he saw him die. Now there's a new struggle, with BloodClan, and that FIRM rejection is off the table. In TNP, Brambleclaw is going to move on from Tigerstar in a way that TPB did not afford him.

That said... I think this was just a bad idea to begin with.

Because this is TAWNYPELT'S arc

SHE was the one who chose to side with him, who was seeing the real horrors of TigerClan, who saw her brother standing up for himself at that meeting, and watched Tigerstar die horribly. TAWNYPAW is the one who had to quickly move on and delay grappling with what she'd seen and supported; where Bramblepaw was in a clan WITH AN ENTIRE SUPPORT SYSTEM THAT AGREES TIGERSTAR IS BAD. His mom! Firestar! Longtail! Dustpelt!

Many people in ThunderClan were deceived by Tigerstar; but do not judge Brambleclaw for his parentage! God-- what about his cousins, even? The Snowfour are his FULL COUSINS on his mom's side!

TAWNYPELT is the one who should be struggling with fully rejecting his legacy, along with the ENTIRELY of ShadowClan, whose collective arc should be paralleling hers as they grapple with the fact they happily supported TWO dictators IN A ROW.

But I digress. I'll get to Tawny in a moment.

The bottom line is; in order to tell the story they wanted to tell with Brambleclaw, they did have to re-open his arc from TPB, and continue it in a new direction.

Tawnypelt

Was completely and utterly shafted by TNP. She barely does anything on the Sundrown Patrol, and only shows up to point things out about Brambleclaw. "Your actions affect the group, bro. Stop talking to our evil dad, bro. Hawkfrost is not trustworthy, bro"

If she's so wise, why aren't we following her as she confronts these things? It frustrates me that the writers keep her on hand as a tool to frame her mediocre manchild of a brother as he makes terrible choices, making her effortlessly competent while Bramble stays oblivious and ignorant to reality until his actions have violent, bloody consequences.

I can't stand how they just... keep a much wiser, more pro-active female character on-hand completely for the benefit of her brother's arc.

I wish they made her the leader of the Sun-Drown Patrol.

I wish she had more of a struggle with rejecting Tigerstar because she's so intelligent she's able to rationalize decisions she knows are bad.

I wish she actually had an arc in TNP instead of deciding Brambleclaw was going to TAKE hers because of author favoritism

Hawkfrost

I've written a lot about Hawkfrost, how I think TNP ends up implying that he inherited evil. The problem with Evil People being born occasionally and ruining a near-perfect society, their deaths allowing everything to Go Back To Normal

But I've also written a lot on how I think RiverClan should have had a better story about confronting how they welcomed TigerClan, how much I dislike A Shadow In RiverClan, and how Hawkfrost can fit into that... how he's such a good villain because he has EXCELLENT dialogue.

So I think my biggest issue with Hawkfrost is how he was executed. Hawkfrost should be failed by RiverClan, raised allowing to slip into the pawsteps of his father as a great man who did only a fewww terrible things, which shouldn't overshadow his good achievements.

Even, on some level... groomed by the cats around who see the similarities between him and his father, pushing him into the position to inherit this great legacy. To take up the torch where Tigerstar failed.

I wish that TNP had allowed for a greater tragedy in the ambitious young man resurrecting a deeply sick, evil ideology.

Becoming a symbol of it, even.

And in the end, being too far gone to save. Impaled by his own ambition.

Mothwing

Should have been the one to kill Hawkfrost, imo.

As TNP goes on, we see him becoming more and more demanding of her. He mistreats her even as early as the first book, calling her names, shoving her to the side. She's terrified of him. She's right to be.

I think when you're talking about fascism and fascists, you're missing the point if you ever downplay its hypocrisy. Hawkfrost and Mothwing come from the same situation, as outsiders raised by a non-clan mother. Hawkfrost has found a position where he could even play this to his advantage, "one of the good ones." But that same status for Mothwing is something Hawkfrost can exploit because she is gentle.

And he does. Getting her into the medcat den, wrapping her up in all of his schemes, holding the false sign over her head if she were ever to stand up against him.

She is a victim of him, and also of the dangerous sentiment he's raising in RiverClan. She fears him. She loves him. She hates him. She misses him-- the brother he once was.

I think it's a final trauma for her, to watch him impale himself on the stake she's holding. It should be self-defense, but more than that, Hawkfrost's own accident. Furious beyond reason, SO used to being able to bully her whenever, however he wants, he does not even notice that Mothwing can hurt him.

Blood spills blood, and the lake runs red. Mothwing doesn't like seeing the lake at sunset; it makes her taste something metallic.

Soooooooo TL;DR all four of them needed different arcs in TNP lmao.