Post by halogen on Jul 20, 2021 12:23:36 GMT -5
Ok, after hearing a lot about it on this forum, I decided to actually read the first half of AVOS (not even bothering with the second half because I've heard so many bad things about it, I don't want to waste my life) and here are some of my thoughts on it:
- I thought the apprentices rebellion plot was really interesting. I've heard people on this forum complaining their ideology was incoherent (like arguing the rogues deserve to live in peace like everyone else and shouldn't be driven out, but also that ShadowClan needed to be tougher and more violent like before) and it was, but I thought that was perfectly realistic for disaffected teenagers who are more concerned with calling out the status quo than any coherent and well-thought-out ideology. Needletail and the others reminded me of the real-life people who left America for the Soviet Union in the 1920s or Cambodia in the 1970s, or similar regimes, because they hated everything about where they lived (and often had a point in some of that hatred, just as the apprentices had a point in the Clans being xenophobic). When you are naturally critical of everything you see in life to the point of not being able to see the positive in it (like all of the good values Clan life has), you want to find some sort of outlet, some sort of dream you can have of a better life and a purpose in it, rather than believe everything in life is detestable, and it's easier to do that for a completely different and alien lifestyle. And like Needletail, a lot of these people ended up getting killed by the very regimes they idealized.
- On the other hand, I thought the rest of ShadowClan (not just the apprentices) joining up with Darktail was very poorly set up. They didn't provide enough justification either in terms of the things Darktail had done to win them over (like he brought them prey once four moons before any of this happened, other than that he was a complete stranger to them) or the things cats were dissatisfied with Rowanstar over to make everyone suddenly joining Darktail not seem random and contrived. I could perfectly believe it for the apprentices, but not the older generation. It seems like most of their complaints were about Crowfrost returning Twigpaw, but ThunderClan couldn't stop WindClan any better than ShadowClan could and they had already made it clear they wouldn't go to war or even sneak into the territory for her, and they obtained the lungwort right after giving Twigpaw up anyway so it didn't even matter. I feel like this plot would have worked much better if it was a WindClan apprentice that was captured (so it wouldn't seem as far-fetched that it would have worked had they kept the apprentice) and if the lungwort had never been obtained or been obtained much later so that more cats died. It also would have helped if instead of having a time skip right after some of the apprentices joined Darktail, they would have shown how Darktail gained the trust of the other cats over the next few moons.
- Cinderheart had an interesting point about asking whether they were justified in attacking the Kin to reinstall Rowanstar as leader when ShadowClan had chosen Darktail. Sure, Darktail is a horrible leader and even if no one knew the extent of how tyrannical he would be within his own Clan, they still knew allying with him would potentially mean abandoning or watering down some important Clan traditions of caring for each other and honor, but if they won that battle and forced Rowanstar into leadership before Darktail had alienated all of ShadowClan, no one would be happy with the situation and Rowanstar would have to rule by fear and the threat of other Clans rather than genuine support. I was sad how they just dismissed this point with "because StarClan says so".
- Speaking of which, I feel like the plot suffered from having Darktail and his group be the ones who drove out SkyClan. It didn't really make sense that he would go through all that work to drive out SkyClan from the gorge only to abandon it as soon as some Clan cats came around. This could make sense if he was established as someone who just recklessly wants to conquer the most territory and get the best opportunities, but in the next book he's established as opposing Rain's wish to conquer more territory and wanting to be more cautious. They were trying to build up an interesting moral ambiguity from Violetpaw's perspective where the former ShadowClan cats understandably thought of the Clans as the aggressors because they had tried to overthrow the leader they chose and attacked them just for being there, which was all ruined by how we already know they aren't just trying to find a territory to settle in, they abandoned a perfectly good territory because they wanted to conquer again like they did before. I felt like it would be much more interesting if the story led you guessing at just how much Darktail wanted as much power and territory as possible and how much he was telling the truth that he just wanted enough territory to survive. Plus having Darktail drive SkyClan out rather than some other threat that was still there meant they had to rely again on "because StarClan said so" to explain why SkyClan didn't just go back to the gorge.
- I found Twigpaw pretty annoying with her obsession with finding her mother and SkyClan and all that, a lot more so than Needletail even though in the end they were both young cats who didn't have it all that bad but were obsessed with some ideal life over the one they already had to the detriment of everyone. The difference, I think, is that the narrative treated Needletail as exactly that, but treated Twigpaw as some kind of hero who was right all along. When she wants to leave to find SkyClan, everyone understandably thinks it's a horrible idea to send a patrol on some wild goose chase into dangerous unknown territory for a Clan that could be anywhere when the Clans are being threatened with destruction right now. And so she decides to go out herself, which by itself would be a stupid but understandable and sympathetic decision for such a young cat. But no, everyone has to be all like "Twigpaw was right all along, we should have listened to this wonderful cat instead of worrying about our own dumb issues, and now it's all our fault she's dead!", and she against all odds conveniently finds them after all (thanks to convenient help from StarClan) and gets welcomed back as a hero. She just strikes me as that kind of annoying protagonist who gets rewarded for doing stupid things and has the narrative treat anyone who opposes her for good reasons as wrong. What makes it especially annoying is how she's yet another character who thinks adoptive parents are all trash and one can only find happiness with one's biological parents, even though by all accounts her adoptive mother (and Alderheart too) are nice and loving to her, just as much as a biological parent can be. But we have to be treated to that horrible scene of Pinenose calling for her kits when she's sick and Twigpaw whining about how she will never have that kind of love just because Lilyheart didn't give birth to her, which again might be tolerable if she is presented as young and dumb and someone who will learn her lesson, but instead she gets to live her fantasy and find her perfect biological father. I hear this gets better in later books, where she actually goes back to ThunderClan after realizing she values them over Hawkwing and SkyClan, but at least for now it was frustrating.
- I know a lot of people complain about Darktail being killed halfway through, but honestly with the way it was set up, it would have been contrived if he wasn't defeated when he was. Darktail's group was clearly outnumbered by the Clans even with ShadowClan; once most of ShadowClan abandoned him and WindClan finally joined in, it was already clearly over for him and keeping him winning battles would just seem like a contrived way the narrative was favoring the villain for drama. It would have been better if they just made this a 3-book series rather than feeling they needed to keep it at 6. And then there's SkyClan, which they treated as some kind of savior but honestly the Clans clearly would have been able to beat the kin at that point anyway without them for the reasons I just listed.
- I thought the apprentices rebellion plot was really interesting. I've heard people on this forum complaining their ideology was incoherent (like arguing the rogues deserve to live in peace like everyone else and shouldn't be driven out, but also that ShadowClan needed to be tougher and more violent like before) and it was, but I thought that was perfectly realistic for disaffected teenagers who are more concerned with calling out the status quo than any coherent and well-thought-out ideology. Needletail and the others reminded me of the real-life people who left America for the Soviet Union in the 1920s or Cambodia in the 1970s, or similar regimes, because they hated everything about where they lived (and often had a point in some of that hatred, just as the apprentices had a point in the Clans being xenophobic). When you are naturally critical of everything you see in life to the point of not being able to see the positive in it (like all of the good values Clan life has), you want to find some sort of outlet, some sort of dream you can have of a better life and a purpose in it, rather than believe everything in life is detestable, and it's easier to do that for a completely different and alien lifestyle. And like Needletail, a lot of these people ended up getting killed by the very regimes they idealized.
- On the other hand, I thought the rest of ShadowClan (not just the apprentices) joining up with Darktail was very poorly set up. They didn't provide enough justification either in terms of the things Darktail had done to win them over (like he brought them prey once four moons before any of this happened, other than that he was a complete stranger to them) or the things cats were dissatisfied with Rowanstar over to make everyone suddenly joining Darktail not seem random and contrived. I could perfectly believe it for the apprentices, but not the older generation. It seems like most of their complaints were about Crowfrost returning Twigpaw, but ThunderClan couldn't stop WindClan any better than ShadowClan could and they had already made it clear they wouldn't go to war or even sneak into the territory for her, and they obtained the lungwort right after giving Twigpaw up anyway so it didn't even matter. I feel like this plot would have worked much better if it was a WindClan apprentice that was captured (so it wouldn't seem as far-fetched that it would have worked had they kept the apprentice) and if the lungwort had never been obtained or been obtained much later so that more cats died. It also would have helped if instead of having a time skip right after some of the apprentices joined Darktail, they would have shown how Darktail gained the trust of the other cats over the next few moons.
- Cinderheart had an interesting point about asking whether they were justified in attacking the Kin to reinstall Rowanstar as leader when ShadowClan had chosen Darktail. Sure, Darktail is a horrible leader and even if no one knew the extent of how tyrannical he would be within his own Clan, they still knew allying with him would potentially mean abandoning or watering down some important Clan traditions of caring for each other and honor, but if they won that battle and forced Rowanstar into leadership before Darktail had alienated all of ShadowClan, no one would be happy with the situation and Rowanstar would have to rule by fear and the threat of other Clans rather than genuine support. I was sad how they just dismissed this point with "because StarClan says so".
- Speaking of which, I feel like the plot suffered from having Darktail and his group be the ones who drove out SkyClan. It didn't really make sense that he would go through all that work to drive out SkyClan from the gorge only to abandon it as soon as some Clan cats came around. This could make sense if he was established as someone who just recklessly wants to conquer the most territory and get the best opportunities, but in the next book he's established as opposing Rain's wish to conquer more territory and wanting to be more cautious. They were trying to build up an interesting moral ambiguity from Violetpaw's perspective where the former ShadowClan cats understandably thought of the Clans as the aggressors because they had tried to overthrow the leader they chose and attacked them just for being there, which was all ruined by how we already know they aren't just trying to find a territory to settle in, they abandoned a perfectly good territory because they wanted to conquer again like they did before. I felt like it would be much more interesting if the story led you guessing at just how much Darktail wanted as much power and territory as possible and how much he was telling the truth that he just wanted enough territory to survive. Plus having Darktail drive SkyClan out rather than some other threat that was still there meant they had to rely again on "because StarClan said so" to explain why SkyClan didn't just go back to the gorge.
- I found Twigpaw pretty annoying with her obsession with finding her mother and SkyClan and all that, a lot more so than Needletail even though in the end they were both young cats who didn't have it all that bad but were obsessed with some ideal life over the one they already had to the detriment of everyone. The difference, I think, is that the narrative treated Needletail as exactly that, but treated Twigpaw as some kind of hero who was right all along. When she wants to leave to find SkyClan, everyone understandably thinks it's a horrible idea to send a patrol on some wild goose chase into dangerous unknown territory for a Clan that could be anywhere when the Clans are being threatened with destruction right now. And so she decides to go out herself, which by itself would be a stupid but understandable and sympathetic decision for such a young cat. But no, everyone has to be all like "Twigpaw was right all along, we should have listened to this wonderful cat instead of worrying about our own dumb issues, and now it's all our fault she's dead!", and she against all odds conveniently finds them after all (thanks to convenient help from StarClan) and gets welcomed back as a hero. She just strikes me as that kind of annoying protagonist who gets rewarded for doing stupid things and has the narrative treat anyone who opposes her for good reasons as wrong. What makes it especially annoying is how she's yet another character who thinks adoptive parents are all trash and one can only find happiness with one's biological parents, even though by all accounts her adoptive mother (and Alderheart too) are nice and loving to her, just as much as a biological parent can be. But we have to be treated to that horrible scene of Pinenose calling for her kits when she's sick and Twigpaw whining about how she will never have that kind of love just because Lilyheart didn't give birth to her, which again might be tolerable if she is presented as young and dumb and someone who will learn her lesson, but instead she gets to live her fantasy and find her perfect biological father. I hear this gets better in later books, where she actually goes back to ThunderClan after realizing she values them over Hawkwing and SkyClan, but at least for now it was frustrating.
- I know a lot of people complain about Darktail being killed halfway through, but honestly with the way it was set up, it would have been contrived if he wasn't defeated when he was. Darktail's group was clearly outnumbered by the Clans even with ShadowClan; once most of ShadowClan abandoned him and WindClan finally joined in, it was already clearly over for him and keeping him winning battles would just seem like a contrived way the narrative was favoring the villain for drama. It would have been better if they just made this a 3-book series rather than feeling they needed to keep it at 6. And then there's SkyClan, which they treated as some kind of savior but honestly the Clans clearly would have been able to beat the kin at that point anyway without them for the reasons I just listed.