Post by Mayflower on Mar 5, 2020 23:04:52 GMT -5
I agree to an extent, but I think the thing that gets me is that our most recent example of this happening is Tigerheart. That's still fresh in everyone's minds, and rightfully so, imo. Fake!Bramblestar's circumstances make more sense, because he already had his nine lives. Canon has long since established that leaders obviously come back if they've got lives to spare, and we already know he does, so there's that. You explained how Squirrelflight's situation makes sense, too, because we don't really know if she actually died. She could've just been on death's door, sort of like how Poppyfrost's spirit was leaving her body before Jayfeather stopped her. There's clearly a thin margin where a cat can be saved, and I think Squirrelflight was within that margin.
With Tigerheart...though, he was dead when he came back, wasn't he? I definitely am not gonna reread his book to find out, but iirc, they dragged his corpse to the Moonpool and put him in the water...? Like, make no mistake about it -- the dude was super dead lol and he was just a regular cat. If he had already had his nine lives or something, I'd be more understanding, but this is his actual corpse we're talking about. He didn't have nine lives to fall back on...yet here we are, and he's no worse for wear (er...physically speaking that is, 'cause I still think he's terrible, but that's a subject for another day). I feel the Erins could've written that better (like he was near death instead) because him being alive is still ridiculous with the way they wrote it.
I feel that's where most peoples' wariness comes from, including mine. He was not leader when that happened to him, so something similar could happen to Shadowsight. We've already established that he is special (re: the prologue of the first book), so it makes sense that people are concerned that he might still be alive and that the Erins will come up with some reason for why he survived, just like they did with Tigerheart.
That said, the Tigerheart thing makes me wonder - does that mean back in Code of the Clans they could have just dragged Brightwhisker's corpse to the moonstone and that whole drama would have been avoided? Or for that matter, could Tigerstar number one have been avoided if someone had put Cinderfur on the Moonstone, since Brokenstar was dead by that point? That's assuming that Cinderfur actually died after Nightstar, though, I'm not sure if it would work if Cinderfur died first but Nightstar died before he could appoint another deputy.
Maybe if the code gets reworked, part of it will be removing the "appoint a deputy before moon high" rule, now that everyone knows you can still give deputies nine lives if they die immediately after the leader.
Instead, StarClan literally brought Tigerheart back from the dead. It doesn't make sense, when you look at what we've seen before. So now people are concerned Shadowsight will get similar reasoning. What's to stop the Erins from now saying medicine cats can be brought back, too, now because of their special connections to StarClan? Or that Shadowsight can't die right now because he has work to do? That's what they did with Tigerheart's deputy situation. They've basically reconned some stuff from what's been previously established. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Shadowsight is alive. I'd be disappointed, but not very surprised, so I'm one of the people who hope he's really dead. It isn't even that I dislike him, because I actually like his POV quite a lot...he's one of the very few ShadowClan cats I can stand, both in the past and present, and he makes ShadowClan interesting, when before I only ever found them aggravating. It would be sad if he died, but it would make the stakes that much higher. If he's deceased, that's something the Erins have never done before with a POV character in a main book.
That would be interesting, if they did change the code. How funny would it be if this became the norm? :'P I mean, I'd be flabbergasted and probably annoyed, because death was one of the few permanent things the cats had to face...things in the books have never been exactly realistic, but that'd be insane if the Erins wrote it to where deputies who die before they're able to ascend to leadership can be brought back within a timely manner. I prefer if what's dead, stays dead lol