#i just find alderheart so boring im sorry lol i want a meaty protag

[the-owl-tree]

you said alderheart works more as a supporting character and you know what? THAT’S what I’ve been trying to figure out was so boring about the books since this new trend of male characters. they’re not nearly compelling enough to be mcs. they’re supporting characters that the plot revolves around simply bc they’re men and the much more interesting female characters are interesting on ACCIDENT and sidelined or altogether forgotten because they are women. I’m just trying to understand how it keeps happening. how many years of this has it been? I can’t remember when avos came out. it’s gotta be like 8 right? damn near 10 years of this shit 😭

AVOS came out in 2016 so that's around 8-7 years (which. got damn). Like idk Alderheart is...fine, I guess. I'm sure if I reread AVOS I might get some enjoyment out of him, but as a protagonist, he just isn't what the story needs. A key part of AVOS is the growing instability of ShadowClan, something that should arguably be established in the first book...which since we're locked into Alderheart's POV, we don't really get a good enough glimpse. He's got no real particularly interesting insights on the situation from afar, and a majority of the apprentice's quest is essentially him being ushered into the plot by other characters (becoming a medic, going on the journey, and so on). I get people like his more anxious/timid nature, it's fine, but is is just....not the character I would have picked to be the POV. I honestly think he'd be better as a cute little guy on the side trembling and being silly.

Even thematically wise, the plot they have for him is just sort of...meh? I'd argue a key theme of AVOS is family (dare i say. kin), and Alderheart's parental troubles never really go anywhere because the writing team doesn't really want to make Bramblestar looking bad despite him agreeing to separate two orphan babies (and he doesn't even break out into song and starting calling alderheart an entitled piece of shit just a pot smoking good or nothing-). The most we get is the rift between Alderheart and Sparkpelt growing + some Twigbranch issues, but even then the former has a lot of issues in the writing that have only been exacerbated and the writing team has dropped any sort of familial bond Twig has with Alder. As much as I'd like a Spark POV, Alderheart more so makes me wish we'd gotten a ShadowClan POV instead! seriously we need to break the thunderclan pov curse especially after the recent asc book there should not be two povs on the same damn plotline-

Note: not Needletail, i think she's at her best when we don't know what she's thinking. she's a good supporting character

I don't think there's anything particularly new about the disinterest in the women with warriors, but it is feeling exacerbated with the new team's reluctance to try and carry over plotlines to keep arcs more self-contained (at least to me).