Tawnypelt’s Logic Explained by Brightkit

Brightkit shares the logic behind Tawnypelt’s decision to join ShadowClan.

Hello! It’s me, Brightkit, again, and today I’m going to be talking about Tawnypelt and why she decided to join ShadowClan.
A lot of people say that if she didn’t want to be judged for who her father was, she shouldn’t have become more like him, but I disagree.
Let’s remember that Tawnypelt was an apprentice when this happened. She was also quite young, considering that she was an apprentice for less than a half of A Dangerous Path, and she leaves in The Darkest Hour. She does become a warrior in the next book, but it does state in the very beginning of Firestar’s Quest that three seasons have passed since the battle with BloodClan.
And to young Tawnypelt, it might have seemed like if she went to the Clan that had originally accepted Tigerstar, she would be safe from judgement. Tawnypelt didn’t look like Tigerstar like her brother Bramblestar, but she definitely had an ambitious determination to carve her own life instead of sitting back and letting others do it for her. This ambitious quality, in the eyes of most of ThunderClan, made her similar to Tigerstar.
And since she and Bramblestar had no defense because of the fact that the entirety of ThunderClan at least had tiny doubts about them, she left. She felt that the criticism was too much.
And before you ask me, “Why wasn’t Tawnypelt strong enough to suck it up when her brother was?” They’re different cats. Of course they have different reactions. She left ThunderClan because cats didn’t trust her just because of who her father was, which she obviously didn’t get to choose. They didn’t trust her even after she’d proven many times over that she was loyal to them. Given that Tawnypelt is very feisty, we can expect a feisty reaction from her. Her decision to leave, I think, was fueled by her anger that the cats that were supposed to care about her no matter who was her kin refused to accept her.
Think about it. I understand if ThunderClan didn’t like them, but there was no real reason why they shouldn’t have been trusted.
That, my friends, is why Tawnypelt isn’t stupid.