#Ik Clear Sky goes on a redemption arc journey in the rest of DOTC but like

[willowheartswarriors]

I really think DOTC could have been significantly better if both Clear Sky and Gray Wing had justifications for their actions prior to The First Battle. As it is, even though we get chapters from Clear Sky's POV, he still comes off as completely unreasonable and kind of unhinged because his actions just do not make any sense. The books come so close to attempting to give him a justification for his actions and then just fail spectacularly at doing so, even though for whatever reason all of the cats living in the forest are undyingly loyal to him after like 3 seconds of doubting him.

The idea of Clear Sky acting irrationally because of the past trauma of losing his mates and watching cats starve to death in front of him is interesting, but they never commit to it. Clear Sky keeps saying he's expanding his borders because he doesn't want to see another cat starve like his sister and Tribemates, which would make sense, except for the fact that time and time again we're told that there's an excess of prey available and all Clear Sky is really accomplishing is getting cats killed for no good reason.

It would have been far more interesting to have his actions motivated by a real prey shortage, and maybe have the problem be made worse by both Clear Sky and Gray Wing, despite good intentions - ex. Gray Wing's refusal to enforce borders means rogues and kittypets are coming to the forest/moor and taking prey during a difficult time like leaf bare; similarly, Clear Sky's brutal enforcement of his borders with little care for its effect on other cats is turning what could have been a mild prey shortage into starvation on the moor, though he believes he is protecting his cats from suffering the same fate as Gray Wing's group. Then at least the battle could have been a real conflict of interests, with both Gray Wing and Clear Sky seeing different ways to resolve an existing problem and coming to blows over it. Instead, what we get is "Gray Wing is normal and Clear Sky is Fucking Insane but we end up with Clans with borders anyway even though it sounds like a totally unnecessary thing to do"

#Ik Clear Sky goes on a redemption arc journey in the rest of DOTC but like #It would have been more interesting to set him up as a 'good leader but bad person' type and then improve from there #rather than 'bad leader bad person but somehow all his cats are willing to fight to the death for him' #warriors #warrior cats #Sorry ik a lot of people really love DOTC but it really isn't doing it for me so far #The First Battle