It’s so frustrating to see people continue to put positive Thistleclaw content out and it get popular with barely any pushback.

It’s such a weird and hurtful hill to die on imo to ignore Spottedleaf’s Heart just to continue indulging in a falsified version of the guy where he isn’t that bad.

If you want to ignore it for any other reason then absolutely fine, especially if the content triggers you, I completely understand and sympathise. But it just really doesn’t sit right with me if the sole reason you ignore it is just to defend the p*do and make cutesy content about him being a good person as if this guy hadn’t already almost oversaw the killing of a kitten, beat up a pregnant woman, badmouthed his baby son and dead wife, expressed huge enthusiasm in learning how to kill other cats, through his teachings be the primary reason Tigerclaw grew to become such a big problem, and vowed to mark borders with blood.

I’m sorry for just posting a random vent, but I can’t just help feel frustrated when the actions of Thistleclaw in that book have reminded people of very real evils they have experienced in their life, but then having some people turn around and say “no I like to ignore that he’s actually really misunderstood!”. I have experienced this to a degree with the whole Bramblestar thing given my personal experiences with someone like him, I cannot imagine how so much more hurtful it must be when this is applied to Thistleclaw for those who have been affected by people like him.

Could you draw fenneldust and batear from spottedleaf heart (if it allowed unnamed retcon cats name)?

Don’t see why not!

sometimes i think about tigerpaw.

tigerpaw who just lost his father figure, and had thistleclaw as a replacement. His strong, brave, noble mentor. 

A mentor who taught him an ideology of violence, forced him to train with his claws out all the time (which is literally risking his life in addition to being abusive! in the warriors universe they don’t have antibiotics so every single time a wound happens you risk infection and death), and molded him into the perfect little hyperviolent warrior whitepaw could never be, despite his best efforts. molded him into the kind of cat who would think mauling a kitten is okay.

and I get very sad.

Thistleclaw, even pre-SPH, has a knack for traumatizing children (whitepaw, tigerpaw, tiny). It makes sense to me he’d become a groomer because hurting young cats around him is one of like 3 of his personality traits! He has been an abuser from his first onscreen appearance [although I do sympathize with former thistleclaw fans a lot; the concept of a morally ambiguous asshole you like suddenly being retconned into a pedophile is horrifying. I just don’t enjoy people claiming he was never bad.] The ripple effects from his actions and the way he hurt other cats stretch all the way into TBC, and I once made an au where thistleclaw died right after siring whitestorm and So Many Things do not happen, it’s insane.

This fandom doesn’t rlly focus enough on the fact that tigerpaw wasn’t just thistleclaw’s lackey. he was his teenaged victim.

my ultimate take on spottedleaf's heart is that I don't think hard topics are necessarily out of place in a children's story. unfortunately, many children will go through some bad shit in their lives. warrior cats already has really hard topics in it like imperialism, prejudice, murder, war, miscarriage, bullying, domestic abuse, and cheating, just to name a few. of course... it doesn't handle many of these well, because warrior cats is just... Like That, as we know. but in a hypothetical world where warrior cats approaches all of these tough topics with respect and care, i think that showing a creepy, predatory relationship like the one between spottedpaw and thistleclaw could actually be beneficial for young readers. spottedleaf's heart couldve been a story telling children "hey, if an adult acts like this to you, TELL SOMEBODY! IT'S NOT OKAY!" i think it couldve helped young readers in terrible, awful situations, to see a character going through what's happening to them, and to be told "this isn't okay. it doesn't matter who an adult is, if they are hurting you, it's not right, and you deserve to be safe. and if an adult ever acts like this, you should tell somebody you trust." i think that's like... a fine thing to tell kids, i don't consider that inappropriate. an alternate telling of spottedleaf's heart where bluefur, thrushpelt, sunstar, featherwhisker, adderfang, swiftbreeze, or any other adult in Spottedpaw's life sees what's happening to her and helps her, lets her know that it's not her fault? i think even if the topic is tough, that wouldve been a much better outcome for the story, and would be much more of a constructive message to give young readers who are going to relate to the protagonist who's their age. overall i just think the biggest issue is in execution and framing, making the overall message "spottedleaf was so foolish to fall in love with thistleclaw!!" instead of "spottedleaf was a victim of grooming, it's thistleclaw's fault for behaving inappropriately and hurting her because he's an adult"

TW for pedophilia and grooming mention (spottedleaf’s heart or whatever it’s called)

I was 13/14 when I read spottedleafs heart and didn’t read thistleclaw and spottedpaws relationship as pedophilic or realise that spottedpaw was being groomed. I felt so guilty afterwards when watching people talk about the book. I didn’t ship it or anything I hated thistleclaw but yeah it sucks how the Erin’s portrayed it. It’s weird to think about what could’ve happened if I didn’t realise those relationships were so wrong

.

Tbh I don’t think the idea of Spottedleaf's Heart/thistleclaw being a groomer is that bad.

Warrior cats is a children’s book series at the end of the day and teaching kids about groomers is sadly necessary. A lot of children are going to understand a topic as serious as pedophilla if you use a story that they are already invested in to explain it. “Yeah this evil cat touches kids” sounds very weird and gross to an adult audience but (if it was done correctly) it could have been a good psa and taught a bunch of kids warning signs for predators.

A lot of WC’s fans think that it would be better if the book never got made but imo it would have been much better if the book was written well instead of just not existing.

who would ever believe you?

Human warrior cat AUs never seem to agree that Thistleclaw would be a minecraft youtuber. We all know he would be. Bro canonically groomed a minor in the book series.

(This is asked on my warriors design account, but I don’t really answer asks there. So @d1esel here’s your answer!)

Is there any other answer to this question? Spottedleaf’s Heart is icky and Vicky defended it.

Gonna be honest, I'm surprised it took until SpH for people to turn on Thistleclaw.

Thistleclaw.

The cat who canonically already had a messed up moral compass and who everyone even agrees contributed to Tigerstar's bloodlust (or at the very least, he most certainly didn't help).

That Thistleclaw.

Don't get me wrong, what he tried to do to Spottedpaw was absolutely horrible, but I also feel like if she'd been a tom like Tigerstar was (or even vice versa) or if it at least weren't for the... "romantic" aspect of it all, the reaction to the novella wouldn't have been as big as it had been, because we as a society unfortunately have yet to take male victims seriously and grooming isn't always necessarily rooted in attraction.

I agree

The reason Spottedleaf’s heart even exists is because of Thistleclaw defenders. The book was created to give Thistleclaw an absolutely solid as a rock excuse to be in the dark forest that not even his fans could refute. Unfortunately the message of the book was extremely botched and Thistleclaw defenders just called it non canon anyway in order to preserve the version of Thistleclaw they made up in their head.

(If you ignore Spottedleaf’s Heart for any other reason then I have no problem with that, it’s just instances where people ignore it just because they want to continue defending Thistleclaw)

At least nowadays Thistleclaw defending is a lot rarer and it is generally agreed upon that yes he was shitty before Spottedleaf’s Heart, he does belong in the dark forest even without that book.

What irritates me so much about the Leafpool and the three situation is: it's Starclan's fault. It never had to happen in cannon. Squirrelflight isn't barren. If the Erin's wanted drama, they could have made the three Ashfur's, and had Squirrel pretend they're Bramble's. I'm glad in BB you made her barren, but it still just irritates me. Leafpool got done so dirty. If I was in her paws, and after Bramble had me forcibly step down, I'd ask someone to honor sire (maybe from a different clan?) kits for me then look Bramble straight in the eye as I started showing.

It's one in a long list of "retcons that happened to reduce the agency of characters because the warrior fandom will otherwise find any reason to fucking hate women." I don't believe that Po3 was written with the revelation of Leafpool's Wish in mind.

(leafpool's wish is where the "barren/StarClan telling Squilf to take the kids" Thing comes from)

In fact, most books that come out seem to completely forget the detail. Squirrelflight's Hope doesn't mention it. Bramblestar's Storm totally omitted it. Squirrelflight is never pissed that StarClan literally lied to her.

So it makes it really feel like a less egregious version of Spottedleaf's Heart; a poorly thought-out addition specifically aimed at the fandom misogynists who write screeds about how Brambleclaw/Thistleclaw Were Good Actually and their shitty behavior was just a Bad Woman Who Wronged The Poor Babies.

AND to be clear what I'm getting at with this comparison is that both these books are awful, because they're cowardly. They don't stick to their guns and say, "BLUESTAR AND SQUIRRELFLIGHT WERE RIGHT TO MISTRUST THESE MEN BASED ON THE REASONS THEY HAD." They badly retcon in EXTRA reasons for them to come to the conclusions they did.

They concede to the fandom misogynist. Their existence agrees that the original reasons they had were weak, so the writers shoveled in extra horseshit to make them "more correct" to do what they did.

"Don't worry guys, it's not that Squirrelflight took her sister's children to protect everyone involved, and that she's right to mistrust her mate who trained in HELL and never revealed any of his own secrets until his shitty half-brother killed her dad once. Nope! God lied to her and told her to. Told her she was barren, even. Now Squilf can remain morally pure while Brambleclaw abuses the shit out of her. Soblem Prolved."

So like... I don't even think that they should have been Ashfur's. This worked perfectly fine as it was in Po3. Just commit, assholes. Bramblestar's an untrustworthy piece of shit. Condemn him for turning on his children, confirming every terrible suspicion Squirrelflight had. Point out that the Three get treated differently when the secret comes out. Ask what, exactly, Leafpool could have done differently and have people have different opinions on this.

but like. keep squirrelflight being barren :/ Please let women just be unable to have kids sometimes. Please.

Are you keeping what Thistle did to Spotted? I feel like you should, but make the message a bit more clear. I feel like in some way Spotted should get revenge on him (killing him, etc)

I have decided that I am, but I will be changing it so Spotted actually tells someone and there are actual consequences to Thistle's actions (those consequences are assassination)

I'm thinkin Spotted doesn't kill Thistle, but she plays a part in his death, and I love the idea of him begging her for help and her just turning around and walking away, leaving him with Whitestorm and idk who else to get murked.

I feel like maybe Blue, White and probably at least one of Spotted's siblings, probably Redtail, were a part of the actual killing, bec they are NOT letting that shit slide.

Snowstorm also gets to be the cat to banish Thistle to the dark forest bec she deserves it.

Also yes, Im not gonna rewrite the whole book, but if I did, the fact that Thistle was grooming a child and that is BAD would have been made FAR more blatant!!!! I cant BELIEVE the Erins were even allowed to publish Spottedleaf's Heart to a CHILD audience, with how poorly they handled this shit.

So… what do you think about Spottedleaf’s Heart?

i dont liek it :(

i haven't read the book in a while though but from what i remember from it, i didn't like how mapleshade interacted w/ spottedpaw... mostly bcuz i really liked spottedmaple lawl

but aside from shipping stuff, i just read it as more of a forbidden "romance" than a story of a character being groomed because of how it was written. it didn't make me feel like: "SPOTTEDLEAF GET AWAY FROM HIM" more like: "oh... he's manipulating her... into training in hell..."

but yeah that's what i think about the book that isn't canon in any way!!! :D

thanks for the ask 😘

Spotted leaf's heart could've been a good lesson about recognising the dangers of grooming and teaching the audience that if an adult is interested in a kid, it's a huge red flag no matter how "nice" they come off as. But instead all of that is just... Brushed off and not even the in-story reason why Thistle's a villain... Its so upsetting.

ㅤ