Does anyone else not like ShadowClan?

god damn failed state

I don`t really like them. After all, they disbanded for a while in A Vision of Shadows and their leader was too weak to make an impression on me. 

Shadowclan is basically the evil clan. It shares a lot of similarities with Slytherin in the sense that while we're told "Oh, it's not actually the evil group", in practice this ends up being true most of the time anyway.

Cedarstar apparently looked outwardly reasonable but also tried to get rid of Windclan twice with some pretty savage attacks along with making probably the worst choice for deputy in Warriors, Raggedstar. At this point, Shadowclan as a whole is already kind of morally tenuous. Then we get to Brokenstar and things start to get worse for the clan in general. Shadowclan actually supports his destruction of Windclan, even if they later on start to hate him for the abuse he put them through. Nightstar is Shadowclan's saving grace. He should have ceded the land to Windclan without a fight, that's true, but if nothing else he showed a zero tolerance policy for the kind of crap that went on with the rogues.

Then Tigerclan shows up and you suddenly lose all sympathy for Shadowclan. They were cheering on the executions of apprentices and a respected warrior over their bloodlines, they were entirely willing partners to Tigerstar's monstrous actions and then got let off with a slap on the wrist with the very executor of the murderers being made leader. That really set a bad tone, that war criminal Blackstar isn't even treated poorly by other cats. It makes sense politically, they need to reconstruct Shadowclan and he's the only one acceptable, but even so, it's kind of gross for Shadowclan to accept this.

PoT and OOTS actually is rather okay for Shadowclan, and you think they're getting better(the Sol incident was bad, but Sol played his hand masterfully) when wham, AVOS happens and Shadowclan is essentially revealed to just kind of love dictators, I guess. Rather, they love dictators, realize they're awful, and then crawl back to do the same thing over and over again. It really just irritates me that without fail, you can count on Shadowclan to be doing some morally awful thing most of the time. No other clan is as bad when it comes to random acts of brutality. Only Windclan even comes close, but that was only under a single leader and his clan didn't seem to be enthusiastically cheering about it unlike with Shadowclan.

The leader sets the tone for the rest of the Clan. A bad leader can turn an otherwise great Clan into a terrible mess. We've seen this happen with Onestar and WindClan. But a good leader can work miracles. We saw this with Blackstar and ShadowClan. It is up to the leaders to enforce the warrior code and dole out the appropriate punishments for breaking it. ShadowClan is not a "bad" Clan. They've just had a string of bad leaders.

Cedarstar is sort of a mixed bag. He was well liked by his Clan and seemed to run it pretty well. But he was unnecessarily aggressive towards the other Clans. To be fair though, so were the other Clans at the time. It's also unfair to blame him for Brokenstar's rampage. How was he supposed to know that his successor was going to appoint Brokentail as deputy? All in all, I'd say he's a decent leader.

Raggedstar is when things started to go downhill. He never really struck me as a strong leader. He wasn't terrible though, but he did seem to be rather soft. This is especially true when it came to Brokenstar. He babied him and never disciplined him for bad behavior. And this is really his only flaw: not properly parenting his son. Now this really wouldn't have been an issue had he not appointed his son deputy. Foxheart and Cloudpelt respected him and followed orders. Brokentail had no respect for anyone and did as he pleased. Raggedstar realized to late the monster he had created. He's not an awful leader, but not good either.

Brokenstar is obviously a terrible leader. I don't really have to go into too much detail here. This is when things got really bad for ShadowClan.

I pity Nightstar, to be perfectly honest. If ShadowClan wasn't a completely mess when he took over, his leadership would've have been very different. ShadowClan needed a really strong leader to restore them to their future glory. Nightstar gave it his best effort, but his lack of nine lives severely hindered him. He was basically set up to fail. He was a good, but ineffective leader due to the circumstances.

Ignoring what he did to the other Clans, Tigerstar completely turned around ShadowClan. He took a crumbling Clan and completely rebuilt it. He gave ShadowClan their pride back and that in of itself is amazing. The only problem is how he did it. He mistook pride in his Clan to mean dominating others. Had he just left the other Clans alone and focused on rebuilding ShadowClan, he would have gone down as one of ShadowClan's greatest leader. In principal, a good leader. But he still used ShadowClan for his own selfish ends. He's a gray area for me.

Blackstar heralded in the ShadowClan renaissance. He is a true ShadowClan cat. He understands that having pride in his Clan doesn't mean he has to throw its weight around. Blackstar is not afraid of showing his claws when necessary, but he also didn't go out of his way to start trouble. He took the groundwork that Tigerstar laid and successfully built on it. For the first time in a decade, ShadowClan was restored to its former glory. Blackstar is truly a great leader.

Rowanstar isn't a bad leader. He is a soft one. Let's make that distinction very clear. As a deputy, he seemed to do a pretty good job. He was well respected by his Clanmates and he was pleasant to the other Clans. He simply wasn't prepared for leadership. I think he was comfortable taking orders and panicked when he became the one who made those orders. He just wasn't comfortable with his power and that is his main fault. Had he felt more comfortable enforcing the rules, ShadowClan wouldn't have fallen. His Clanmates wouldn't have been blatantly breaking the code because each transgression would have been punished. Another leader who was kind of in a gray area. He just lacked confidence.