Discussing Mapleshade by Dewtail

Dewtail takes a closer look at Mapleshade.

Hey BlogClanners, Dewtail here with a new article!

Iā€™ll be giving my opinion on Mapleshade from a simultaneously prosecuting and defending perspective- Mind you I do not defend Mapleshade in my opinion of her, but anyways-

So, at first, Mapleshade is a noble warrior, willing to fight for her Clan and all that warrior stuff. Then she meets Appledusk, a RiverClan warrior whom she likes, and he returns that affection. Mapleshade is pregnant with his kits, and ThunderClan collectively assumes the father is Birchface, who recently drowned- and is the leaderā€™s son. Keep all that in mind as I continue. Mapleshade thinks, ā€˜Meh, I guess they think the father is Birchface, so might as well just let them believe that-ā€™ and neither denies or affirms the father is Birchface.

Not too long afterward, Mapleshade casually brings her kits to the RiverClan border and lets them have some pool time- probably so she see Appledusk and show him his children- and she gets caught by a RiverClan patrol- led by Appledusk. The RiverClan patrol wonders why ThunderClan kits are swimming in their river (as they should) and chase Mapleshade away. Now Mapleshade is upset because Appledusk didnā€™t ask the names of her kits, even though he was with a patrol and not alone. Patchkit, who is his mamaā€™s boy, tells Mapleshade that heā€™ll never leave her. Mapleshade does the same thing most people do when babies say cute things.

The medicine cat, Ravenwing, gets an omen about three water reeds and a stream in his den, and he links it to Mapleshadeā€™s kitsā€™ mysterious father situation. He does his job and tells Oakstar, who gets angry- not only because she lied and disgraced his son- but because Appledusk caused Birchfaceā€™s death. He exiles Mapleshade and her kits, -which is ridiculous- and against the warrior code. But Oakstar doesnā€™t care about the half-clan ā€˜creaturesā€™ and exiles them anyway.

Mapleshade tries to let her kits cross the flooding river instead of using the bridge, but this is either the Erins forgetting about the bridge or just plot convenience. Darkstar denies her a place in RiverClan. Her kits drown and RiverClan collectively says, ā€™Welp, flooding. What can ya do?ā€™ Appledusk blames Mapleshade for their kitsā€™ deaths and scoots closer to Reedshine. Mapleshade, both burdened by grief and incredibly angry about Appledusk being a no-good cheater, runs off. She starts having hallucinations of her kits calling out to her to save them.

Now itā€™s revenge time! First Mapleshade waits for Ravenwing to come to Highstones, ambushes him in his sleep, and murders him. After the other medicine cats bury him, she uncovers his body to be pecked at by birds. Rude- Then she lures Frecklewish, a she-cat who called her kits ā€˜half-clan creaturesā€™ and turned on her- to Snakerocks and watches her get bitten by an adder. Now that sheā€™s done that, Petalkit and Larchkit have stopped calling out to her in her mind. Now She wants special vengeance for her special boy, Patchkit, and goes to kill Reedshine for also being cheated on. Appledusk defends his mate, obviously- and as I mentioned before Reedshine is pregnant. So Mapleshade decides to kidnap Appleduskā€™s apprentice, Perchpaw, and wait for Appledusk. Appledusk shows up and Mapleshade slashes his throat. Perchpaw, who is now angrier, attacks Mapleshade. She runs away to Mylerā€™s barn and dies of blood loss. She wakes up in The Place of No Stars and wonders where she is for a second before immediately turning to plotting and scheming.

I am not going to discuss Mapleshade in OotS since I wanted to mainly focus on her while she was living.

So what weā€™ve seen from Mapleshadeā€™s life- She believes strongly in vengeance for the sake of her kits. And a lot of people call this unreasonable because StarClan kits wouldnā€™t tell their mother to kill three cats. But- this was her hallucinating and not a vision. If anything she seems a bit schizophrenic after her kitsā€™ deaths. Her seeing her now-dead kits was a fragment of her broken psyche and grief rather than reality. Obviously killing three cats is wrong, and I donā€™t think any of them really deserved it, except maybe Appledusk. To be honest, a lot of people defend Apppledusk but Iā€™m putting it out there. He was cheating on both his mates and showed no remorse for Mpaleshade and even argued against her joining RiverClan with her kits. Several cats at this point have broken the Warrior code in negligence against kits, and Oakstar and Frecklewish treated her kits like literal trash because of their parentage.

But Iā€™m going to stop myself from going off on a tangent-

So Mapleshade undoubtedly deserved the Dark Forest, but it was wrong of Oakstar to exile her three three-moon-old kits. And if Oakstar hadnā€™t done that, he wouldnā€™t have lost his daughter, the medicine cat, and a RiverClan warrior. Mapleshade may not have joined the Dark Forest.
So in conclusion, Oakstar shouldnā€™t hate on children for things outside of their control.

Leave your thoughts in the comments! Dew out guys, hope you enjoyed reading.

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44 comments

  • Drizz is now an evil munchkin (declared by Moonblaze) and loves her gift from exchange! ć‚·ā£ļøŽš™³šš›šš’šš£šš£šš•ššŽšš™ššŠšš /šššš›šš˜šš™, ššœšš‘ššŽ/šš‘ššŽšš›ā£ļøŽ says:

    Nice!

  • Great article!
    The most innocent cats in mapleshades vengeance are: Reedshine and Mapleshadeā€™s kits
    Frecklewish is the second most innocent, but she called mapleshades kits creatures and leaped on mapleshade when she was leaving, so she isnā€™t completely innocent.

    • Also, the Warriors wiki shows Frecklewish’s sprite as a Dark Forest sprite, which makes sense because she broke the warrior code in a terrible way (Watched Mapleshade’s kits drown and didn’t do anything to help)

      • NO IT DOESN’T!!
        https://youtu.be/eKpDFm0S6C4
        https://youtu.be/yRPFlEELLXU
        I was saying she isn’t like.. a cute baby or something. How could she save the kits????!! All she saw was rain, mapleshade walking across, and a riverclan patrol coming! She is thunderclan, so she 99.999% can’t swim. WHAT ON EARTH COULD SHE HAD DONE TO HELP!!!????!!?!?! SHE DOES NOT DESERVE THE DARK FOREST!!!!!

        • She doesn’t deserve the dark forest but Mapleshade doesn’t too. There are so many cats before and after her that had kits with a cat from another clan. Yet they still became truly noble warriors. The only reason Mapleshade would want to get revenge is because her kits are dead. And guess who let the kits die? Frecklewish!

          • She should have moved closer or alert someone. She didn’t. “I can’t swim” is not a excuse. She had to do something.

            • To be honest, I think the fact that she couldnā€™t swim is completely valid. When I did a lifeguarding course one of the base rules was ā€˜if there is someone in the water struggling DONā€™T jump in yourselfā€™. What you were meant to do instead, was throw something that floated (like an empty plastic water bottle) to the person so they could hold onto it and stay above the surface, but Freckwish wouldnā€™t have known that and was probably terrified of the water.

              Plus, Freckwish wasnā€™t the reason they were in the river in the first place, so itā€™s unfair to blame it all on her. If she had pushed Mapleshade in, then it would be her fault, but she was just a bystander, not guilty of an actual crime.

              • Yea. Definitely. It’s like you saw a murder happening and didn’t even bother to call the police. Frecklewish doesn’t have to jump into the water, she just need to call for help!

              • she could have tried to call for help! Even if no one came, at least she tried! Or she could have stayed to see if the kits were okay or something.

  • Nice article!

    I also think that the book was a bit rushed and should’ve had more hardships in it. If it hadn’t been so fast, I think the book could’ve been even better!

  • She definitely had reason but Reedshine I donā€™t think deserved it. She shouldnā€™t have ratted her out, and just said the dream and not the meaning. But it was mainly Oakstarā€™s fault, not Reedshineā€™s. Apple dusk deservered it. Frecklewish sorta deserved it.
    But I donā€™t think she shouā€d have gone to the place of no stars if Ashfur went to Starclan. Just because he attempted murder doesnā€™t make it any better. Also he lost his girlfriend and went on a murderous rampage and tried to kill her ā€œkitsā€. And Mapleshade who was literally being haunted by her dead kits, had been cheated on, rejected, exiled, her kits drowned and she went insane.
    So ashfur should also be in the DF if Mapleshade is, since he did worse.

    • yes! StarClan just has no brains sometimes. “Love too much”? He tried to kill his girlfriend’s kits because she dumped him! Mapleshade was going crazy and was driven by hallucinations of her kits telling her to kill!

    • Yeah! starclan obviously has favoritism or else Mapleshade would have been forgiven/ given a second chance.

  • I agree that if Oakstar had not exiled the kits, there would have been a lot less death. Honestly, it seems like they were harder on half-clan relationships before Into the Wild, where Feathertail and Stormfur were not exiled when they were brought to Riverclan, and Thunderclan actually wanted them, instead of exiling Graystripe and his kits. (Same with LeafxCrow’s kits, and TigerxDove’s kits.)

    • And Bluestar, she managed to hide the fact that her mate is from another clan. Thrushpelt is really nice that he kept the secret

  • Honestly, most of Mapleshade’s victims deserved it. All of them broke the warrior code, but one broke a rule that is often overlooked by StarClan, and the other two broke it in a bad way, and only ONE of those two was sent to the Dark Forest. Appledusk was an alright cat, but I really started to hate him after he literally disowned Mapleshade and his dead kits, not even showing an ounce of remorse or sadness. He moved on way too quickly, but was sent to StarClan anyway. He was the most innocent out of Mapleshade’s victims, and even then, he wasn’t that innocent.
    Ravenwing. Broke the warrior code by sending kits to their death, but it doesn’t matter because he’s a medicine cat who “doesn’t always have to follow the warrior code” YEAH? HE STILL SENT THREE INNOCENT KITS, WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN LOYAL TO THUNDERCLAN NO MATTER WHAT, TO THEIR DEATHS. HE WAS ONLY SENT TO STARCLAN BECAUSE HE’S A MEDICINE CAT. HE STILL DESERVES TO ROT IN THE DARK FOREST FOR SENDING KITS AWAY, KITS WHO WEREN’T OLD ENOUGH TO TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.
    And then we have Frecklewish. *sigh* Don’t get me STARTED on her. She broke the warrior code (and was sent to the Dark Forest, thank StarClan) by watching Mapleshade’s kits drown and not lifting a claw. And the SHE played the victim. That’s right. She acted as if she didn’t see ANYTHING after watching kits DIE and breaking the warrior code by not helping them. So Mapleshade made sure that she was correct and would never see anything again. Frecklewish and Ravenwing both had it coming, and I guess Appledusk was partially responsible.

    • (Would like to note that Frecklewish did not know Mapleshade’s kits died until after Mapleshade told her, so Frecklewish did not watch her kits die. She is still morally in the wrong for being okay with exiling them, but she makes it clear in her final interaction with Mapleshade that she never wanted them to die.)

  • First, Mapleshade is on my favorites list and I will defend her forever. Oakstar was wrong to send them away. Ravenwing can go die in a hole. Frecklewish can eat dirt. Appledusk can join Ravenwing in the hole with Reedshine.

    • yeah ravenwing! hope you fall into a volcano! And appledusk, you go eat deathberries! Reedshine, please bang your head against a rock until you die.

  • You have to keep in mind, the leader’s word IS the Warrior Code at the time this takes place. So, it’s not against the code if he expected Mapleshade to take care of her kits. And, on top of that, Mapleshade is the one who REALLY broke the code. It’s her stupidity that caused her kits’ deaths. I mean, making them swim in a river while it’s flooding?! Her judgement also makes no sense. Appledusk showed he didn’t want to makle public that he was Mapleshade’s kits’ father. So ya, not exactly on her side here. We need to protect Reedshine!

    • Just because a readers word is code doesn’t mean its right. He was completely in the wrong. And saying that she broke the code by letting hermits die” is stupid. It was an accident, she didn’t break it. Apple dusk didnā€™t care for the kits and didnā€™t Mapleshade. He cheated on her. She has been rejected betrayed and her dead kits haunt her every day. She wasnā€™t right to kill the cats but every time she does the voice of one of her kits leaves her head. She lost her mind to the point where she wanted revenge so bad that she lost life getting it. But she just keeps on plotting revenge. She lost the value of her own life and the life of other cats.

      • Yes, it isn’t right in many ways, but it wasn’t totally against the code. I was replying to a sentance that said in the article that he was totally breaking the warrior code too (I couldn’t find the exact one). Just trying to keep it light hearted. . .don’t take it personally.

    • Protect Reedshine if you want, we are not on her side here. Tbh she’s one of my least favorite character. Also she did not let them to play in the water, it’s either the kits went themselves or she wanted to take the kits to Riverclan. Also Oakstar is um idk CRAZY at that point, she just broke the warrior code! And it is one of the least important warrior code that many among many cats have broke! So yea, DEFINITELY not on Reedshine’s side here. Maple Shade doesn’t deserve the Dark Forest. Tbh, it’s Oakstar, Ravenwing, Appledusk (and about Appledusk it’s Reedshine’s problem too) , and Frecklewish who caused the trouble, not Mapleshade.

    • cats are expected to stand up to their leader if they are breaking the warrior code, and mapleshade told them to hop across the river with the stepping stones, it was only bad luck they got swept away.

    • ok but did you realize that the only possible way to get her and her kits to safety was to cross the river to riverclan – if they stayed they could have been killed by former clanmates. She had to take that risk. Also Reedshine has a filthy personality and I will stick to this even after death.

  • Personally I think no one who Mapleshade killed and/or attacked was that at fault. Frecklewish, Reedshine, And Ravenwing (is that his name?) did not deserve anything Mapleshade attempted to do to them. Appledusk, though not in the clear, made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her yet she expects him to protect her kits in Riverclan. Maybe the kits, but never her! And Oakstar? He is not at fault almost at all! He exiled Mapleshade with good reason. It would look weak to his clanmates and the other leaders if he didn’t. Like I said in my other comment, it’s only Mapleshade’s stupidity that killed her kits. Also, why would you ever want a cat capable of murder in your clan? But I suppose they say “any one is capable of murder if you push them to the edge.”
    ANYWAYS, I am not going to side with Mapleshade! Side note: Oakstar ended up losing more than Mapleshade. šŸ™

    • Oakstar banished kits, so he is somewhat at fault for their demise. If he’d just banished their mother maybe they would’ve survived.

      • Yes, that’s very true. It should have been Mapleshade. But how can we say she wouldn’t have tried to kill cats when that happened (maybe just Oakstar and Ravenwing though)? At the same time, the kits would be treated like rogues. But yes-I pretty much agree.

    • How was Oakstar in the right? Yeah she made him believe that she she was the mate of his dead son. But she never even said it. And she wasnā€™t a killer whenever she was in the clan she started killing after she was exiled. Apple dusk honestly deserved to die. After everything he did.

      • No, he wasn’t exactly in the right, but he is justifiable (unlike Mapleshade in many ways). She intended him to think her kit’s were his son’s. And yes, Mapleshade was a loyal warrior. But many a warrior have lost kit’s of their own and broke the code in the process, and they didn’t go on a rampage. Appledusk was never a good cat, tbh, he’s pretty devious but that’s a perfect match for Mapleshade. He cheated, killed (cats from other clans), and just was a bad cat. But honestly he didn’t do that much to Mapleshade specifically besides denying her and her kits.

        • If Frecklewish is in Dark Forest, Oakstar should as well. Oakstar is all at fault.