#it doesn't JIVE with his exoneration arc. so it cant happen | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bonebabbles · 2 months

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I remember when I was reading DOTC when I was around 10, and ever since Misty died I had been waiting for the moment where Birch and Alder learned about her murder, how everyone in their lives has kept it a secret. And then it just didn't happen.

I also remember obsessively re-reading the part where Quiet Rain blows up at Clear Sky.

Birch and Alder are two characters that are just so...

I WANT to say they were forgotten about, but that word doesn't feel right for how they're constantly showing up on the screen. Clear Sky occasionally feels guilty about how he murdered their mother, but for the vast majority of the time, that's described in passive voice. So you're not reminded of just HOW cruel he was, and still very much is.

It's like they're not allowed to be characters.

Like, how does Alder feel about Clear Sky, who seemed to be acting as an adoptive father until he beat her as a child? How did Birch respond later, when Clear Sky was so busy thrashing his sister that he was threatened by a dog? How do they feel about the man who took their mother away from them?

They keep getting cited as "Good Examples Of Non-Campborn Cats," dodging around the fact they were stolen and raised by Petal. Like a lot of the other "adoptions" in the series, she quietly stops mattering to them. But even this fact... like, they're being OTHERED when they were functionally raised SkyClan.

How do they feel about THAT? That their earliest memory is SkyClan, and yet, they'll never be considered truly, fully "clanborn."

Their whole life taken from them, by Clear Sky's cruelty, their formative years spent in his violent shadow, and the narrative is just not interested in that.

#birch wc #alder wc #I see a lot of people calling this arc So Very Interesting #Begging for more of it #but like... the more I think about this arc the more I hate it.#Both reading it and the deep dissatisfaction that settles over me thinking about how much potential it wasted #All sacrificed on the altar of Sweet Brother Love or whatever was going on there #Even people who go 'oh it was so exciting' like... when. did we read the same series #the entire thing is clear sky causing problems and then no one is allowed to react violently to them #because that makes us Just As Bad #what was interesting about 3 books of the moor cats doing NOTHING as clear makes the plot happen #And another 3 books of Clear just being a bastard and everyone feels bad about hating his guts #And here's Birch and Alder who have never really been explored ever #because it would require them to fucking hate the guy who ruined their lives #it doesn't JIVE with his exoneration arc. so it cant happen

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