Dovewing and Ivypool, both as individual characters and in their relationship, have been hot and

controversial topics just about since the characters were introduced back in 2012.

The general fandom opinions of both characters have oscillated in waves across the last decade,

and there are still wide divides in how Dovewing and Ivypool, as individuals and a pair, are

perceived in different nooks of the fandom.

I'll be honest up front as I always try to be that I have some serious bias in this

area because I have been thinking about and writing from the perspective of these characters

for years, and I have nearly finished getting each of them to the conclusions of their arcs,

ones that don't quite align with what they were given in canon.

That said, considering how heavily this topic has been covered in all corners of the fandom,

I also feel more freedom to spend some time in this video diving straight out of canon

to talk about what elements I see their potential in, and where that potential could lead.

First though, let's go through the basic facts and arguments around these characters

for anyone who may be unfamiliar.

Dovewing and Ivypool are sisters born at the very end of Sunrise, the last book in the

Power of Three arc, but they are most prominent in Omen of the Stars, where both of them are

point-of-view protagonists.

They're the daughters of Whitewing and Birchfall, but that relationship isn't as important

to them or their story as it is to many other Warriors protagonists.

By and large they have a fine but hardly-touched-on relationship with their parents and no mentioned

connection with any other more distant members of their family.

Their big conflict comes from their relationships with each other and some manipulative entities

in each of the sisters' social groups that drive their conflicts even further.

As kits, they were pretty close and really only hung out with each other, which likely

made it sting even more when, only a couple of days into their apprenticeship, Dovepaw

started being pulled away by her mentor Lionblaze as she was recognized as the third cat in

their prophecy with the power to hear, scent, and see things far away.

These insights and importance not only made her keep secrets from her sister and thrust

her into a scary and already-in-progress war that she was not prepared for as a brand new

apprentice, but also caused all four clans to launch a traveling mission in response

to her sights that ended up bringing back their water.

Ivypaw wasn't doing badly in her training by any means, but compared to her sister who

was very publicly special immediately, she didn't feel as though she stacked up, and

most notably, she didn't feel like they were a pair anymore like they had been as

kits.

Dovewing didn't either, mind you, but everyone from her leader to her mentor to the medicine

cat and Starclan were telling her that she was important and needed to join them in saving

the clans as quickly and secretly as possible, so she felt entirely without agency.

She did find some solace in Tigerheart, a warrior she met on the journey she spearheaded

who didn't seem to hate the other clans as much as most cats, but even that relationship

was…well, complicated, in canon.

I'll explain that later.

This divide left Ivypaw free to be taken in by her own external pressures: first from

the Dark Forest, and specifically her new mentor Hawkfrost.

Before they rapidly and without explanation transitioned into a boot camp, Ivypaw just

came to visit Hawkfrost to talk about her feelings regarding her sister and how she

felt like she was being left behind, fears that Hawkfrost stoked and provided saccharine

sympathy on as a means of manipulating her.

One big factor in the fandom perception of these characters was the way in which their

conflicts were presented.

Because Ivypaw was constantly thinking of herself in comparison to Dovepaw and outright

berated her or tried to force her into a competition for most of their life, the fandom also began

to consider them as a one or the other situation.

Either you were on Dovewing's side and think Ivypaw was bullying her sister who wanted

nothing but to be with her and whose life was spiraling out of her control, or you were

on Ivypool's side and thought that Dovewing should have done more to stop Ivypool from

being taken in by the Dark Forest, shouldn't have kept the prophecy from her to begin with,

or should have avoided showing off in front of Ivypool along the way.

The animosity from these sides also stemmed into the perceptions of the characters, with

fans of Dovewing labeling Ivypool as petty, vindictive, and lacking in empathy and fans

of Ivypool labeling Dovewing as a frivolous, flawless, boring she-cat character while Ivypool

is more emotionally interesting.

I can understand where this comes from, but I honestly believe that, had Dovewing and

Ivypool's arcs as individuals and with each other actually concluded, we wouldn't have

had as many wars about it over the last decade, and we might have a lot more people who appreciate

or even love both characters…you know, people like uh, me.

I think canon Ivypool definitely was petty and vindictive at points, and did treat her

sister very badly.

I also think she was treated badly by Blossomfall and the Dark Forest, which didn't help.

I don't think Dovewing was flawless, but I do think her ideology wasn't tapped into

nearly as much as it could have been and it sometimes became frustrating to see her constantly

reach out to and think the best of cats who had long since stopped being nice to her.

I also think that being told she was important and had to save the world alongside two adults

she barely knew and having to actually suppress what she could see to put up a front of aggression

would put her in a very difficult position.

Neither of these characters were totally at fault for or totally separated from their

faults or roles in each others' lives.

They are both, or at least both have the potential to be, sympathetic.

The key is in how the rest of the story resolves their turmoil and helps them come back to

appreciating each other again…which Omen of the Stars actually never did.

Ivypool started spying on the Dark Forest for the three but it didn't involve any

reconciliation with Dovewing.

Jayfeather and Lionblaze just demanded that she work for them using her position as they

had been doing to Dovewing and Ivypool reluctantly agrees to work with them for the greater good

of defeating her enemies.

They avoided talking about their actual pasts and feelings enough to fix any of the personal

problems, and this led to a point where *to this day,* Ivypool still holds a grudge against

Dovewing and doesn't understand why she left Thunderclan to be with Tigerheartstar.

I could talk about how poorly their resolution is handled or how it impacts the perception

and identity of each character individually, but both of these topics have been discussed

extensively and I don't want to either retread well-covered ground or reignite any wars.

Instead, and because the biggest faults with both of these cats is in how their relationships

with and arcs around each other resolve, this is the point at which I must say I am diverging

heavily.

From this point onward, I will be mainly discussing the potential they had and the diverging journey

I took them through and am taking them through in Paws of Stars.

Firstly, we need to clear up some very specific relationships.

On Ivypool's side, we first need to tackle her frenemy bully thing, Blossomfall.

The books both try to treat them as being each others' closest friends and have Blossomfall

insult or belittle Ivypool more often than not, without ever really pointing out or fixing

that behavior.

As far as I'm concerned you either need to make Blossomfall not a bully, or acknowledge

that behavior and have there be some consequence to it.

Either of these options would be perfectly fine, depending on their execution, but since

Ivypool doesn't have a lot of genuine friends around and I wanted the Dark Forest trainees

to be more sympathetic anyway, I chose to just make Blossomfall less antagonistic.

On a similar note, Tigerheart was a truly horrible boyfriend to Dovewing during Omen

of the Stars, using her for his own benefits, abandoning her and her sister without any

logical reason, and generally existing in a very shallow romance that mostly took place

when Dovepaw was still an apprentice.

I believe that he genuinely liked Dovewing; she wasn't just a tool for him and there

was some mutual care on both sides, but it never stopped him from manipulating her and

often treating her poorly.

As with Blossomfall, you can either fix this or acknowledge it, and as with Ivypool, Dovewing

doesn't actually have that many friends, so I chose to give them a real, more balanced

friendship initially built on their mutual distaste for the forced aggression around

borders that only eventually becomes the beginnings of a romance when they are both adults and

have known each other for a long time.

Second are the wider pressures on Dovewing and Ivypool: the power of three prophecy and

the Dark Forest's plan respectively.

Having a sympathetic and knowledgeable point of view on either side of this conflict is

quite advantageous from a writing perspective, assuming of course that both sides actually

have a coherent plan to discover or talk about and that there is any sort of progression

for the readers to see but hey we're just talking about the characters here, not the

plot.

Dovewing is coming into an ongoing fight and is expected to catch up quickly with her older,

emotionally distant peers along with Starclan's orders, which is an awful lot to lay on a

kid and makes for some great conflict.

The only thing I would really change about it is that I think Jayfeather and Lionblaze's

attitudes should have something to do with the mess Hollyleaf left behind, and that they

should be able to resolve those feelings and work better with Dovewing, perhaps by getting

her own help in finding a way to move past their sister's apparent death.

For Ivypool, meanwhile, most of the big problems with her pressure are the same problems that

plague the Dark Forest in general: they are trying to simultaneously appeal to sympathetic

characters and be a purely evil entity, they don't have a coherent plan or one that is

remotely likely to be successful, after they suddenly bring all the trainees together they

make no attempt to hide their intentions and still expect the loyal clan cats to fight

with them when they've given them no reason to stand at the Dark Forest's side, etc.

Making the Dark Forest at least *seem* more sympathetic will lend credence to their manipulations,

and I don't think those manipulations should stop with Ivypaw.

Nearly every trainee who is recruited would have to be coerced in some way by feeding

into their desires and uniting them under a single goal, one that appears like it will

serve the trainees but would, in reality, serve those leading the Dark Forest.

We then understand the manipulations, can root for Ivypool to escape them, and can watch

her learn more and do more within that world before the battle begins.

With their individual journeys ironed out, let's turn our attention to their combined

resolution and reconciliation.

This is a scene I have written out and published and it's one of my favorite moments, looking

back, so I don't want to spoil it too heavily if you'd like to read Paws of Stars but

the gist is that their resolution should be a separate, albeit connected event to Ivypool

realizing she was being manipulated and joining the three as a spy, and should draw on the

insecurities that both of them have had in relation to each other since the beginning.

Making Ivypool less constantly cruel before this is a good way to put them on more even

ground, but this sort of resolution should involve both characters admitting their weaknesses,

seeing the blind spots they had for each other, and resolving to move forward as a pair, not

in the way they were as kits, but as two individuals who can understand and protect each other.

This puts them in a place to face the numerous emotional and physical conflicts to come in

the rest of the arc as a team, but doesn't require that either of them sacrifice their

identity or join themselves to the hip of the other.

One girl was chosen by Starclan and one was chosen by the Dark Forest, each rising to

prominence in those groups at the promise of safety on the other side of a war.

Both of them were lied to.

Both of them will need to be themselves, and not pawns of the groups they are a part of,

in order to succeed.

And at this moment, if they can put aside their differences, understand the others'

struggles and wishes, so different from their own and yet so similar as well, and choose

to move forward together, perhaps that is enough to signal that the coming war doesn't

have to end with one side's death, or total victory.

Perhaps, if Dovewing and Ivypool's conflict was truly resolved, they could serve as a

blueprint for what is required of every cat in the clans.

Thank you for watching, and always remember to listen to those with a different perspective

than you.

It won't always lead to good results but some may just be ready to listen to you in

return.