Why Brackenfur didn’t have to be a ‘patrol guy’ by Shatteredmask

Shatteredmask shares their thoughts on Brackenfur and his role in the series.

Hi! I am Shatteredmask. This is my first article with my new name, soooooooooo…
SPOILERS FOR AVoS, MAPLESHADE’S VENGEANCE, CROOKEDSTAR’S PROMISE AND YELLOWFANG’S SECRET!
This is about Brackenfur, who I’ve really never thought about before. Lots of people say he’s a ‘patrol guy’ (nun uh, that position’s taken by Thornclaw) and that he’s a background character. I don’t disagree with these statements, but I do believe he could have been so much more. He could have been evil, or a really interesting character. I’ll tell you why.

First, let’s examine some of the evil cats’ motives.
Tigerstar – bad mentoring, absent parenting
Mapleshade – vengeance for the ones she loved
Brokenstar – bullied, absent parenting
Sleekwhisker – blamed someone for her loved ones’ losses
One Eye – bad kithood (apparently. It says in The Blazing Star, “if One Eye had been that easy to kill, he’d never have survived kithood.”)
Darktail – absent parenting, bad kithood

Now let’s examine Brackenfur’s life.
Brackenfur was captured by Clawface when he was a kit (One Eye, Darktail). Then, he was apprenticed young and his mentor, Greystripe, didn’t mentor him properly as he was too interested in his forbidden girlfriend (Tigerstar). His sister, Cinderpaw, was run over by a monster because SOMEONE didn’t stop her (Sleekwhisker, Mapleshade). He has all the traits for someone evil, and he has all the reasons too. It would make so much more sense for Brackenfur to have helped Hawkfrost kill Firestar than, out of the blue, just shove Ashfur randomly in there so that you can see he’s got a bit of evil in him.
At least Brackenfur has a reason to kill Firestar. Firestar let his sister get run over by a monster, while Ashfur’s reason is that he’s angry with Firestar’s daughter and Firestar’s enemy’s son.

Or, if he’s not evil, at least let him be targeted a bit. I will explain.
Hawkfrost and Mapleshade’s technique to get cats to join or to train with the DF was to idk the word, like, talk about their target’s weaknesses. Do you know what I mean? Like, Mapleshade targeted Crookedstar because of his injury, Hawkfrost targeted Ivypool because of her jealousy, he targeted Blossomfall because of her jealousy and Hollowflight because of him being bullied.
Brackenfur has had pretty much all of these things happen to him, yet he wasn’t recruited. Why?
Oh, that’s right, because YOU MADE HIM A BACKGROUND CHARACTER ERIN HUNTER AND IF HE WAS RECRUITED, EVERYONE WOULD BE LIKE, “UH, WHO’S THIS DUDE?”
Okay, sorry about that.

Thank you for reading! Hope it changed your mind about ‘the patrol guy’!