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cloudbatcave · 6 years

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Firestar’s Quest - REMIXED (10.2)

and we’re back on the bullshit.

“I promise you,” he added, “we’ll do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t settle in our territory.”

brah it was already there. you’re going to have to kill it. or just wish really hard that it goes elsewhere. you can’t be patrolling for it always, that’d be a waste of time and manpower. catpower?

“Ferncloud didn’t look convinced”

Yeah I wouldn’t be either, what with the whole “let’s not kill the badger now and just follow it for some reason despite it being a very clear threat that already murdered one of us.”

“They’re badly shaken,” Graystripe commented

I for one always sleep better at night knowing that my leader makes well-informed, decisive choices.

“This is a bad time for them to lose their mother.”

Is there ever a good time to lose your mother? Sandstorm’s logic either operates on a level I don’t understand, or more likely, it doesn’t exist.

Firestar nodded sadly. “It’s the first cat we’ve lost since the battle with BloodClan. I think it’s hard for all of us to understand that even if we’re at peace with the other Clans, the forest isn’t completely safe.”

That makes perfect se - oh, no, wait, all of these cats know full well what Clan life is like and know it’s often dangerous and harsh because they were raised this way.

No, Firestar, it’s because death is a sad and traumatic thing as your narration has told me repeatedly and yet you put forth THIS bullshit reasoning instead.

It’s the inconsistency that bothers me more than anything! I’m used to Firestar being an idiot, but usually what he says and does at least matches up with his internal monologue. Not so in this chapter, apparently.

“She was much loved.” Dappletail rasped, smoothing the gray warrior’s fur with one forepaw. “And far too young to die. She had much more to give her Clan.”

“I know,” Firestar agreed, feeling hollow with grief.

See? Dappletail the minor character gets decent dialogue that shows her emotions. Firestar does not, for some inscrutable fucking reason, even though he’s the protagonist and thus the one we’re supposed to sympathize with. Spoiler alert, but I sympathize more with Sootpaw in this one chapter than I will with him during the whole damn book.

That’s four hundred more pages in which I will feel flickers of sympathy that are always rapidly extinguished by whatever massively stupid thing he does next.

“He had been with Willowpelt when the badger attacked Sootpaw, but he had been unable to save her. Call yourself a leader? He asked himself savagely.”

Oh, would you look at that, finally some internal narration that isn’t as cardboard as a rice krispies box! Tragically it won’t last.

Shame, because if Firestar’s self-doubt, guilt, and helplessness over his limitations as leader were ever explored in any depth he might actually be sympathetic. He’s young! Practically the only reason he’s in charge is because everyone more qualified conveniently died off! It’s very reasonable for him to be feeling this way.

But they’re never lingered on, just touched on in throwaway lines that get passed over because status quo is god and Firestar must forever remain a blank slate for me to scream at.

He decides he can’t leave his Clan to look for SkyClan, because even if he can’t protect them from everything, they need him. Sensible!

“Firestar looked up at Silverpelt, wondering if the starry warriors approved of his decision. But the glittering specks of light seemed very far away, and they gave no answer.”

It’s actually something of a sad moment to see Firestar looking to StarClan for validation, as is his habit, despite knowing they’ve lied to him, and it makes sense because he’s desperate right now.

but naturally by the end of the book his faith will be totally restored and nothing changes, because god forbid someone be negatively changed by a crisis and also remain a titular good guy.

Willowpelt gets buried. Firestar goes to sleep and, not unusually, is dreaming. For some reason instead of Spottedleaf, his former lust, we get Silverstream, Graystripe’s dead lust and baby mama.

She catches him a fish, and tells him that the life she gave him for loyalty is for what he knows to be right.

“I always knew it was right for me and Graystripe to be together, even though we came from different Clans. There are some things that are too big to be contained in the warrior code.”

...right, that romance that essentially killed you because you wound up having your children on your own to hide them being half-Clan and bleeding out. I’m glad that felt right, Silverstream.

I’m not going to comment on whether she’s right or not, the morality of the warrior code is its own big discussion I don’t feel like having right now, but the validity of this advice is...low, at best, because it doesn’t really mean much.

You could argue Firestar should go help SkyClan, or what’s left of it, because it’s the right thing to do regardless of his other obligations. However, as he points out earlier, his first duty is to his Clan. Not that SkyClan is less worthy of help, but going to help them is a gamble; while he has lives to use up, leaving his Clan would immediately make them more vulnerable to attack by other Clans.

But Silverstream addresses none of this and basically tells him to be a Disney princess and follow his heart.

Not useful advice for a guy who, as we just got a very graphic reminder of, is responsible for several lives.

Firestar wakes up and ponders this sage wisdom from beyond the grave.

“The warrior code did not account for everything that happened beneath the stars, and now he had to make amends for what the other four Clans had done so long ago. Since a StarClan cat had come to tell him this, was it the will of his warrior ancestors that the lost clan be restored? Perhaps StarClan even felt guilty for what they had allowed to happen.”

There’s a lot to unpack here.

While this is true - naturally, there are other morality systems and ways of life out there - Firestar is, as Clan leader, expected to both obey and enforce the code. There’s literally a tenet in it saying that the word of the Clan leader is the warrior code. He’s slightly important, both as a symbol and in genuine power given his nine lives and authority.

So it’s not really optional for him, just sayin’.

Also, I don’t buy this turnaround from StarClan for a second, mostly for reasons I’ve detailed in past blogs (namely Bluestar’s attitude toward the whole thing, but admittedly Bluestar is terrible and I probably shouldn’t judge everyone just because she behaved badly) and while I wouldn’t cite guilt as a reason, I would say that StarClan wants Firestar to do the dirty work because they know they can easily influence him by using people he trusts to whisper in his ear (Spottedleaf, Silverstream).

I wind up being basically proven right later, but that’s a ways off.

Additionally, this raises the question of - just how united is StarClan? We’ve seen them disagree before, and Bluestar said the complete opposite when Firestar visited the Moonstone. Does Silverstream speak for them all now, or just herself? Is this genuine remorse from her, all of them, or just manipulation agreed on by her and them? Is she being coerced?

We never know, because StarClan is always assumed to be morally in the right; even during this book, the idea that they can make mistakes doesn’t stick, because the characters still rely on them wholeheartedly. It’s annoying and it prevents a lot of exploration that would actually make them interesting.

StarClan’s approval itself is fairly worthless in-universe in regards to their poor judgment and general impotency, but I’m treating it as meaningful in the context of Firestar’s belief and how they’re using it to push him one way or the other.

doing actual in-depth analysis makes these posts longer (who could’ve known??) so I’m once again stopping here and I’ll hopefully finish in the third part.

#cloud blogs #firestar's quest #warrior cats

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