Why I despise Squirrelflight by Shroomwound

Shroomwound shares their opinion on Squirrelflight.

Hello, hi BlogClan! My name is Shroomwound(Shroo/Aug) and I’m back with another article! I hope you all enjoy it!

☆Before you continue beyond this point, please be aware that there are spoilers for countless numbers of Warrior’s books including TBC, TNP, and many more. This article also holds mentions of obsessive behavior, lots of death, and speaking against Squirrelflight(so squilf lovers don’t come for me please, this is merely my opinion and insight on her. I say this out of respect, but please do not start arguments in the comments on why I’m wrong or how I didn’t recognize this or that. I ask all of my readers to please understand that my opinion is my opinion, and yours is yours. Thank you.)☆

So basically, I am against Squilf 100%. She is not only annoying to me, but she has ruined the Warriors series as we know it. Here is why: she makes reckless choices CONSTANTLY, she has a bad case of “main character syndrome”, and she is ignorant, irresponsible, selfish, pushy, and just flat-out annoying in my eyes. Squilf is one of the characters that I happen to hate most. Right next to Dovewing, Silverstream, Stoneteller, Graystripe, and Bluestar. But I will get to their articles soon enough. Onto Squilf!

I feel like I should start at the very beginning, which would be Firestar’s Quest. We don’t get to see much of her there so we are skipping to The New Prophecy… At the beginning of TNP, she is an apprentice, by the name of Squirrelpaw, her mentor being Dustpelt. Right from the start, she is shown to be stubborn, which is fine, believe me! I like stubbornness in a character. But after a bit more reading, she starts to get slightly annoying. She blatantly just doesn’t listen. Which is a bad quality to have. She is needlessly sarcastic towards Brambleclaw, which seemed to lead to a sort of resentment toward her. So that was kind of a red flag. From day 1. Like. Jeez. She reminds me of one of those toddlers that bother you 24/7 for no absolute reason. Anywho, moving on to when Brambleclaw gets his first prophetic dream, telling him to go to Fourtrees where he will meet the other 3 chosen cats. However, on his way, he discovers and identifies Squirrelpaw following him. That is:
1. Disrespectful
2. Plain nosey.
I don’t see what compelled her to follow him but eh, whatever. He tells her to go back to camp and she proceeds to tell Brambleclaw that if he makes her go back, she will spill her guts to Firestar. Okokokok, I get that she is technically SUPPOSED to tell Firestar, but like. The only reason she even blackmailed Brambleclaw in the first place is that she is nosey and wanted to know what was going on because somehow it had something to do with her. As per usual. Squirrelflight likes to think everything has something to do with her. Moving forward, he agrees to tell her everything and keep her updated, despite literally every other cat’s advice to not(except maybe Feathertail cuz like- it’s Feathertail). And she is ok with that. They grow (kinda) close during the time that all of this is happening, eventually to the point where when Cinderpelt gets the “Fire and Tiger” omen and Firestar separates them, they attempt to meet up a few times, getting caught Every. Single. Time. After Brambleclaw gets the 2nd prophecy about the sun-drown-place and doesn’t tell Squirrelpaw about it, she again follows him. The woman needs to stop that. And again refuses to go back because of the way Firestar was treating them. Now with Brambleclaw leaving, she could’ve taken the time to realize that with Brambleclaw’s vanishing, he would have more than likely cut her some slack now that he wasn’t around. But instead, she decided to be narrow-minded and ran off with Brambleclaw without even considering what she may be doing to her Clan. Squirrelpaw should’ve known that her Clan comes before everything else, even her life. That’s taught from the time a cat is a kit, to the time they go to join StarClan’s ranks. I’m actually starting to see why Firestar assigned Dustpelt as her mentor! Dustpelt is strict, with a sharp tongue and high expectations. Firestar thought he may be able to shape her into a great warrior. And he was right for the most part, Squirrelflight served her Clan as every other warrior did! But not in the best ways. When she made the reckless decision to leave with Brambleclaw, she put her whole Clan in a state of distress, especially Firestar seeing as he is her father. I can only imagine how he must have felt, having only just recently lost his best friend, Graystripe, to Twolegs. And now his daughter and his former apprentice had vanished together. Brambleclaw had probable cause for leaving, Squirrelpaw did not. See my point? She caused way too much trouble that she easily could’ve avoided. And worse than that, the entire time they were on the journey she just got under everyone’s paws! She ended up getting her and Brambleclaw attacked by the kittypets, she got caught under a fence and almost got 2 of the cats mauled by dogs, and she fought with Crowpaw the ENTIRE time. And when they go back you wanna know what happened? She got her warrior name. For being a literal pest. Lovely.

Moving on to something that is still in TNP, but is still an issue alone that needs to be addressed. Hawkfrost. I get that she had suspicions or whatever about him being evil, but she had no reason to. Leafpaw was the one who had reason to think he was evil, not Squirrelflight. I think she got scared that Hawkfrost was gonna tell Brambleclaw that she is how she is, and he would leave her. Wait wait wait, oh right. She and Brambleclaw weren’t ever mates yet at this point! They were close friends. Nowhere before then had it been clearly stated that they were mates because they weren’t! She tried to keep Brambleclaw from his literal brother. From his KIN. Imagine Brambleclaw telling her, and being against her about speaking/seeing Leafpaw? No one would agree. It’s the same scenario here. I get that she had an odd feeling about Hawkfrost, but she could have respected that Brambleclaw only wanted to have something to do with his brother, and kept her mouth shut, which is something she is horrible at regardless. I believe that Brambleclaw should have had that right. The right to speak and to see his brother. They had only met in secret once, and that was right before he killed Hawkfrost for trying to make him kill Firestar. And during all the drama, Squilf chose to mess around with Ashfur. Why Ashfur? I don’t know. She could have spoken to Leafpool about all this but no. She chose to mess around with another, more ambitious tom. And then spoke down about Brambleclaw’s heritage a few times. Like. Really. I never thought Squilf would be so low considering her father was once a kittypet. If I were Brambleclaw, I would have never gotten with Squilf from the get-go. After everything she put him through, he ran back.

Now, this part of the article will be a bit beefy, so go and get some water and food, take a break from screen time and come back in a minute or two! Take care of yourself :D. <3

You back? Great! Onto one of the biggest screw-ups, Squilf has EVER done. Ashfur.

Now, Squirrelflight is the cat to blame for the ENTIRETY of TBC. Ashfur possessing Bramblestar? Her fault. Getting trapped in the dark forest with Ashfur? Her fault. Bristlefrost’s death? HER FAULT. The literal near destruction of ThunderClan, of ALL the Clans? HER. FAULT. Here’s how: she decided it would be a good idea to play with Ashfur’s feelings to get to Brambleclaw. Literally, it may not have been her intention to do so, but she did. She and Ashfur were never mates, but she blatantly KNEW that he had feelings for her for a while before he even ‘confessed’. I know, I know: “But Keek! How do you know?” Take this quote,

“But I love you!” Ashfur protested. More hesitantly, he added, “We’d be great together, Squirrelflight, I know we would.”
“I’m sorry,” Squirrelflight went on. “I never meant to hurt you, but Brambleclaw—well, I think StarClan has destined us to be together.”
“I don’t know how you can say that!” (Sunset, page 62)

Alright, normal yes? No. You have analyzed this wrong if you think this was Ashfur’s confession. Yes, this is the first time we have seen Ashfur say up-front that he loves Squilf, but was this the only time before then? My theory is no, I think he confessed in between books.
Squilf very plainly said “I never MEANT to hurt you”, meaning she KNEW what she was doing, but never thought it would hurt him. Therefore, she knew he loved her. She knew she was leading him on. But oh no, the little innocent Squirrel-angel never meant to hurt his little feelings because Squirrelflight never does ANYTHING wrong. She does, but batts her eyelashes and pretends as if nothing happened 30 seconds later. News flash Squirrelflight, you didn’t fool me. You never have, never will. Moving forward, this “break-up” sets a blazing fury of rage inside Ashfur, which is only shown a few times when he looks at Squilf and Bramblestar dirty or makes a smart remark. That is, up until ThunderClan’s Fire. When he finds Squirrelflight and her kits trapped, he knew he hit the jackpot. This is when everything was put on the table. He confesses to leading Firestar down to the fox trap, where he died, and he laid out all of his bottled-up hatred towards Squilf. All in one big attempt to make her see what she did, he goes as far as threatening to kill her kits. That is when it was revealed that she had lied to everyone. Even then, Squilf has nowhere to run when he lets her and Leafpool’s kits go, and he swears her suffering had only just begun. He was not lying you see, he had plans to get her exiled at a Gathering. In front of all 4 Clans. Firestar would have no choice but to exile her. If he let her stay, it would start a war, and all the Clans would turn against Firestar due to his decision. Now, let’s pause this here and try to sort out why she lied to everyone about Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf.

Okay so when Leafpool went to go have the kits, she had originally asked Squirrelflight to take them in. Now Squirrelflight was hesitant on this, which is 100% reasonable and she gains a little bit of my respect for not wanting to take them in seeing as it wasn’t her place nor responsibility to pick up her sister’s mess. But then, of course, StarClan is all like “Gurl you can’t even have your own kits just take hers” so she decided to which just drops what little respect I had for her into a bottomless pit. The concept of Squirrelflight not being able to have kits is the same as Millie being able to speak dog- It’s brought up ONCE, then completely forgotten forever considering Squirrelflight had her own kits later on-

Why Squilf didn’t tell Brambleclaw, I have no idea. She knows he would’ve protected her and still loved the kits the same so I don’t understand why she lied about it- Especially to him. So TECHNICALLY she had no reason to lie, but it’s Squirrelflight so I’m honestly not even surprised anymore-

Gurl literally almost destroyed the Clans because she can’t seem to act straight :D. I mean even after Hollyleaf kills him he STILL tries to find ways to show Squilf what she did and it led up to TBC, which is a whole other article in itself.

With that being said, this sums up only a sliver as to why I despise Squilf and I hope you all enjoyed reading my article 🙂 Give me suggestions for my next article(s) in the comments below ^^ Have a wonderful day/night!!

Shroom out!