This is not going to be a review of that book, but I will be using it as one of the main

examples to explore a phenomenon popping up in many of the recent stories.

As such, I will issue a preemptive spoiler warning for anyone avoiding material about

the new book.

I will also be going over Winds of Change, a recent graphic novel, and Blackfoot's

Reckoning, one of the newest novellas, so spoiler warning for those as well, in case

you haven't read them yet.

As protagonists, Leopardstar, Blackstar, and Mudclaw share something in common.

They are all...at the very least, morally gray characters.

Leopardstar put her clan in the paws of Tigerstar and ordered her deputy to murder two of her

apprentices simply in the name of purging half-clan blood from the clan.

Blackstar chose to be a loyal deputy to not one but two Shadowclan tyrants, both of which

went against the warrior code many times during their times in power, and Blackstar himself

murdered Stonefur before our eyes with no remorse.

Mudclaw, upset that he wasn't named as the new leader after Tallstar died, led a coup

against his own clan and new leader to try and kill Onewhisker before he could get his

nine lives.

These characters have done very bad things, but they also aren't purely antagonistic

forces in the ways that Tigerstar, Brokenstar, and most of our main villains are portrayed

to be.

Leopardstar and Blackstar, post-Tigerclan, were strong leaders for their respective clans,

and Mudclaw was a good deputy for Windclan, especially in contrast to Tallstar's more

lenient attitude.

The draw of these characters comes in rationalizing these two sides, and figuring out not just

how we feel about about them, but how they would feel about themselves.

And some of those questions have now been answered directly, because In the past year,

all three cats have been given books where we get to see their points of view.

Winds of Change has what I consider the best balance of protagonist and antagonist tendencies

in its protagonist of Mudclaw.

Throughout the book, we can see particular, trackable traits and values of his that lead

him to the drastic actions he takes.

Firstly, his ambition.

From before Tallstar's death through to his own, it is clear that he wants power,

and believes he deserves it.

Once Onewhisker steps up to be leader instead, with Ashfoot as the new deputy since he himself

refused the offer, he becomes self-pitying, wonders what he is without the power of a

deputy, what he could possibly do with his life.

He refuses to even step up and help the clan in the multiple times he was asked by various

different cats since he wasn't deputy.

And it isn't something he can get over easily, either.

Even in a casual, unrelated conversation with his littermate, Tornear, he still ignores

the topic and brings up Onewhisker's new leadership and his worries about the situation.

In a similar vein, Mudclaw also shows a problem with other authorities.

Even under Tallstar, the leader he does respect, Mudclaw is unable to follow his wishes and

orders to keep things civil between the clans.

Ultimately, the last of these refusals is what leads Tallstar to talk to Onewhisker

and give him the leadership of the clan.

And as soon as Onewhisker is declared the new leader, these problems become even more

apparent.

He outright challenges the new leader to a battle and considers killing him, first by

his own paw and then by letting him be slaughtered by a fox.

He won't even listen to the medicine cat when asked to accept Tallstar's choice.

Finally, and perhaps most detrimentally, he constructs certain narratives in his head,

and believes only in evidence that confirms those narratives.

His narrative that all the clans are ultimately out to get him, and then specifically that

Firestar is trying to make Onewhisker a puppet leader to control Windclan are ones he will

not let go for anything.

Even when his own littermate tells him he is going too far, and when he sees Onewhisker

making decisions to strengthen Windclan and being a strong leader like he wants, he doesn't

change his mind.

In the end, the only thing that made him realize what he had done was when Hawkfrost betrayed

Mudclaw, a rip in the lie he had told himself.

Two of the most important aspects of Mudclaw in Winds of Change that make him a good interpretation

of the character were, first, that he was distinctly and consciously doing and thinking

bad things for the majority of the story, and second, that most of the fault for his

beliefs and actions lies with him.

Without Hawkfrost, he likely wouldn't have joined himself with Riverclan or Shadowclan,

and he may have not created such a large group to launch a coup, but he already had delusions

and even murderous thoughts before he ever met the Riverclan tom.

Hawkfrost only amplified his existing plans.

This brings us to the other two, less successful examples: Blackfoot's Reckoning and Leopardstar's

Honor, and as such it's also time for the spoiler warning.

I won't go over many specific plot details for either of these books, but I will be discussing

the way they wrote certain key sections and the overall impressions they give of the main

characters.

If that is something you'd like to avoid, bow out now.

I'll give you some time.

…

All right.

So I will admit that while both books failed to properly portray their characters, it was

in very different ways.

In Blackfoot's case, he is presented as a completely good cat who has a constant conscience

through all of his actions...but who is also deeply stupid.

He felt bad for Brokenstar and Tigerstar based on their parentage and exile and only bound

himself to them out of loyalty.

Even as he did horrible things, he knew and continuously told himself that the deeds were

horrible, but continued to do them because...his leaders ordered him to, we can suppose.

But if he knew they were bad cats asking him to do bad things, what exactly was stopping

him from just...not following orders?

We didn't see any deep-seeded reason for his commitment to duty over all other things.

He regretted every one of his actions immediately after or even as he was taking them.

So why didn't he stop?

Well the book doesn't give us a good answer, and it can't, because it refuses to compromise

his moral purity.

From the reader's point of view, the blame still lays with him because he had every chance

to stop and never did, but he is also framed as a good cat who knows what is right and

wrong and won't struggle to lead Shadowclan properly once it's in his paws.

That doesn't quite fit with the unapologetic, stubborn, stern picture of him we get in the

first and second arcs of the series, and as a result this whole book feels like an inaccurate

depiction of his character.

Leopardstar's Honor, meanwhile, does give Leopardfur faults, early on at least: her

being too impulsive, temperamental, and quick to hold a grudge.

Her ideals and belief that she will be special and save her clan in some way also lead her

to make rash decisions and trust in her own judgement rather than the advice of others,

which let's her be manipulated by Tigerclaw's suggestions that she take advantage of her

deputy position and later, that she needs alliances to stand against Thunderclan and

its treachery.

All of this could have been good reason for her to accept Tigerstar's offer and create

such a warped state of mind for herself that she made the horrible decisions she did, and

only later came to regret them when she realized what all she was wrong about.

However, the latter half of the book changes the direction dramatically.

Rather than being rash, aggressive, irrational, and self-aggrandizing, the combination of

a bunch of deaths she couldn't prevent and the rhetoric her leader Crookedstar and her

father Mudfur have been forcibly pushing on her for the whole book turned her into a hesitant,

self-deprecating mess who worried about every possible risk and didn't do anything at

all for fear that it could hurt her clanmates.

And this new character...is one who doesn't fit nearly as well into the role she has to

fill when the topic of Tigerclan comes up.

Even before Tigerclan was formed, Leopardfur had already been witness to plenty of examples

of Tigerclaw betraying her and his own clan, and had assessed him to be untrustworthy and

someone she would keep at arm's length.

However, in her desperation, she did decide to ally with Tigerstar's Shadowclan and

together take down Windclan and Thunderclan too so that all the clans could live as one,

and her clan would have more places to find prey with the river poisoned.

Very quickly, Tigerstar abandoned all of his promises and started subjugating Riverclan,

now Tigerclan, and Leopardstar herself.

Leopardstar is angry and knows everything he is doing is wrong, but is scared of him

and unwilling to even speak up and help her clanmates when they look to her.

It would be bad enough if her brand new subservient nature was causing her to passively let her

clanmates be hurt, but under this premise, she also actively hurts them by exiling Mudfur

and ordering Stonefur to kill Featherpaw and Stormpaw.

The only reason Leopardstar ever became submissive in the first place was because she had a fear

of risk instilled in her, a fear that actions she chose could hurt her clanmates.

Here her lack of assertiveness is hurting her clanmates, and she continues to do it

anyway.

And like with Blackfoot, even while she is doing these bad things she already recognizes

them as wrong.

A younger Leopardstar, or even one who still remembered why risks were scary, would have

stood up to Tigerstar, booted him out of her camp, and declared him a mortal enemy forever

at the first sign that he *might* hurt her clanmates.

The character this book established for her, one that was in line with what we saw her

be in prior works, wouldn't have taken the actions she did at all.

And even if you do believe the book's later, more submissive Leopardstar would have lost

the will to care for her clanmates, there is still a large issue that the reason she

got to that state was because of Mudfur and Crookedstar constantly hounding her for being

too brash and reckless.

By making the attitude they encourage the same one that leads her to allow Tigerstar

to reck her clan, they are inadvertently shifting the blame off of Leopardstar, who wouldn't

have let Tigerstar do anything in her original state, and onto her father and leader.

Reading Mudclaw's manga, you are able to grasp that he is wrong and blame him for his

actions while still seeing his thought process for how he came to believe he was doing what

was right.

However, in Blackstar's case he is given far too much moral purity and in Leopardstar's

case the blame is shifted off of her and onto other cats.

In both cases the portrayal feels inaccurate, and a reader will come away not with the understanding

of how someone's mindset could be warped to cause them to do bad deeds, but with confusion

or pity over seeing good cats do bad things when they could have, and even would have,

made different choices.

Characters with gray morality were never going to be easy ones to pin down and write properly,

but I can't help but wish that, for characters this popular, their points of view were given

a little more care and allowed a little more darkness.

Thank you for watching, and always remember that wrong things can sometimes feel right.