#i have so many Opinions™ about books i am the most annoying person in a literature seminar

[willicebattlecatsblog]

pov : willice rants about The Broken Code Jayfeather (SPOILERS FOR THE BROKEN CODE)

It's been a full year now that I decided to re-read every single Warrior Cats books, as a teenager I stopped at OotS, so I re-read all of TPB, TNP, PoT and OotS. I am done with DotC (I have many opinions) and just finished AvoS, so I am starting TBC (currently at book 2).

Clearly the Writing Team™ has big, big issues with how to handle Jayfeather and his personality. Jayfeather was meant te be blunt and to freely voice his anger and concerns with little respects for other feelings sometimes, but he was never meant to be outright mean and antagonistic, was he ?

He went from a personal favorite of mine in PoT and OotS to a very unlikable character in TBC. He actively bullies and isolates Twigkit in AvoS (when he was previously known to be patient with kits??), but I can tolerate this mischaracterization i guess

But TBC Jayfeather ??? I don't know if it's just the Writing Team™ being extremely bad at understanding his character, or if it's the first symptoms of the Onestar disease, but I am kind of scared of how he will evolve in the 4 following books :(((

In the first two books of TBC, Jayfeather can hardly go through a single conversation with / about Shadowsight without straight up insulting him, his intelligence and competences. He had opinions about Willowshine and Kestrelflight, but he would rarely, if ever, straight up disrespect them to their face like that. Now, he actively participates in all the gossip around Shadowsight and characters will say "Jayfeather said Shadowsight is just a featherhead !" because Jay's opinion is that valued and important. (idk the actual English insults, all my books are in French, so you will have to suffer the French horrors sorry guys 😔)

At some point, during a Gathering, Jayfeather just tells everyone that Mothwing doesn't believe in StarClan. In front of the five Clans, the leaders, the deputies, the other warriors, like, everyone. Just because he was personally pissed at her opinion.

Just as a reminder, the Clans are all extremely faithful and the lack of faith has been a plot point several times, showing emphasis on how important it is for all cats to show devotion to StarClan. Medicine cats are literally meant to talk to StarClan. And in general, the Clans are known to be agressive to anyone who doesn't respect StarClan, thinking that if you don't follow StarClan's commands then you don't have any moral values at all.

Another reminder, Mothwing is not only the daughter of Tigerclawstar, she is also an ex rogue. She got her medicine cat title only because her brother created a fake omen, because her status as an ex-rogue made her an outcast in her own Clan. Mothwing has been known to be more vulnerable to isolation than other medicine cats.

So huh, yeah, Jayfeather just put Mothwing, an already vulnerable she-cat, in extreme danger, throwing her under the bus in front of absolutely everyone, including her own leader, her own deputy, most of her clanmates, and most of the other Clans members. Mothwing is shocked, obviously, and quickly says that she does believe StarClan is real, just isn't devoted to them.

The response of the Clans to this revelation is so out of character and disconnected from their agressive violent culture that I had to re-read the whole thing a few times.

The Clans just go "weird flex mothwing, but ok" and go back to their business (business being : questioning why StarClan isn't communicating with them anymore). From what I know, the revelation Jayfeather just made is never going to impact the story ever again because Mothwing gets banished for the crime of being a ShadowClan cat's child. So this whole scene is just there to show that Jayfeather will use precious informations against others if he gets annoyed at them ??? I don't know if this is bad writing or character assassination at this point man😔my po3 jayfeather would never.

None the less, Jayfeather KNEW how dangerous such a revelation could have been. Every single medicine cat, including her own apprentice Willowshine, kept the secret, because they all KNEW it would endanger Mothwing if the Clans discovered the state of her faith. This was literally a plot point in TNP with Leafpool like COME ON WRITING TEAM™ YOU HAVE TO LOCK IN !!!!!

I know this scene is canon (sadly), but this depiction of Jayfeather is just so alien to me. Jayfeather knows what it's like to be different and to be special, why would he insult Shadowsight over and over again when the kid is obviously struggling ? Also Jayfeather has been accused of murder and was on thin ice at some point, he knows what it's like to be accused in front of a whole Gathering, why would he do that to Mothwing out of all cats ???

Do you have any opinions on this ? Do you think this is just normal Jayfeather behavior, or do you think it is the Writing Team struggling to grasp Jay's personality ? I would like to know what you feel about that because from all the fandom discourse I did read, no one ever talked about how flabbergasting Jayfeather's behavior would be

In conclusion the real impostor is jayfeather

[the---hermit]

How We Read Now by Naomi S. Baron

I don't know where this book review will go, but to be honest I can predict it will kinda look like a rant at some point, because me and this book got beef. The worse 25 euros I have ever had to spend for uni. This is one of the books I have to study for my history of libraries and reading class, and if it weren't for that I would have dnf-ed this pretty quickly.

This is a non-fiction book that focuses on the differences between physical, digital and audiobooks. Its aim is to analize data to conclude on which is the best option for learning. It is said that the audience it is aimed at is made of teachers, educators and parents. I don't know if it was reading it from a student perspective, but the tone of the author felt so patronizing. It was incredibly annoying, and the worse thing is that I agree with a good amount of what the author is writing about, but the tone was so annoying it made it difficult to read and to agree with. There's so many things I didn't like about this book, I don't even know if I'll remember all of them. The general critique I have read about this book is that it's pretty dry, because there's a lot of statistics, and technical stuff about researches and analysis they did. It's true, but it's not the worse part of the book in my oprion. Firstly this book is so repetitive it hurts. If you could eliminate all the times the author adds unnecessary lines to say "as we have said in chapter x" or "as we will see in chapter y" the book would miss a good 50 pages at least, it was so overdone it made it difficult to focus on what the author was trying to say (and to be honest at a certain point it looked like it was simply a way to make the book longer). And then as if that wasn't enough the chapters in which she tries to give advices on how to have the best results from different types of reading the tips are always more or less the same for all three kinds of books, so again repetitive like crazy. While we are on the topic of these tips let's just say that they are beyond the line of being banal. I spent all that money and time to have someone tell me that to have a productive reading session I have to focus on what I read and minimize the potential distractions. As I mentioned reading it from a student perspective made the tone of the author feel incredibly patronizing, anytime she talks about students it feels like she comes from the point of view that all young people are drowned by technology and social media to the point of being stupid. I am not saying this is the opinion of the author, but it's the feeling I got while reading the entire book, and it was so annoying. Another thing I personally didn't like at all is how this person is trying to find the way™ to get people to read productively, almost without considering that not only everyone has their preferences but depending on what and how you study and who you are things might change drastically. The general idea given by the author is that at the end of the day you should mix mediums but physical books are the best for learning/studying. I do agree, because I prefer physical book, but the way this opinion is carried in the book made me want to disagree just to go against the author. Not the most mature way of dealing with this but that was my natural reaction. Overall the writing annoyed me so much to the point I struggled to focus, and against the author's advices I did way more skimming than close reading because of how repetitive this thing was. I do not recommend at all this book, it's not worth it. Read articles online if you are interested on the topic, this was a waste of money, ans if you couldn't tell I am still very much pissed at this book.

I read this for the non fiction prompt of the 2023 genre bingo.