I Hate the Concept of Age Gaps and Related Mates by Crowpaw

Crowpaw shares their opinion on age gaps, related mates, and Dustpelt and Ferncloud’s relationship.

Hello blogclanners! Today I’m going to be talking about why I hate the concept of age gaps and related mates. Before we start, I need to make a warning, this is going to be a touchy article because I will talk about related mates, age gaps, and Dustpelt and Fernpaw. If these make you uncomfortable, I suggest you leave. Let’s start!

⚠️Minor ship spoilers!⚠️

Ships are a huge part of any fandom, especially Warriors. This can lead to a lot of love for certain good ships like CloudxBright or FirexSand. But, this can also lead to a lot of hate for some perfectly fine ships like BlossomxThorn or RavenxBarley. This is because of a little something called age gaps. People think these ships are bad because “oh Thornclaw was like 50 and Blossomfall was 20.” And they’re not wrong, there was an age gap in play here, but why should it matter? Blossomfall was an adult. She was capable of making her own decisions on who to date. People in real life don’t care about age gaps so why should Warriors? A lot of people also complain that RavenxBarley is “weird” when it’s not. Ravenpaw was the same age as Dustpaw and Sandpaw, so he was almost a full grown warrior. By the time we see Ravenpaw being comfortable with Barley, he was way past the apprentice age. That reminds me, it’s time to talk about DustxFern.

A lot of people don’t like DustxFern for two reasons: He’s her uncle, the age gap is weird, and he was in love with her when she was an apprentice. Let’s address each of these by number.

1. He’s her uncle.
This one is easily disproven by just reading the books. Dustpelt was never proven to be Brindleface’s sister. It’s a retcon like most of these from the awful family tree. Most ships aren’t related, but this is bound to happen when the writing team is putting cats together because ThunderClan is not very genetically diverse. Most cats are descendants of Frostfur, Goldenflower, or Willowpelt, which are all first arc queens. It’s hard to do this without things slipping through the net, and the website family tree doesn’t help much either.

2. The age gap is weird.
This is actually one of the shorter age gaps that people don’t like. Their age gap is exactly a year which is not really that bad.

3. He was in love with her when she was an apprentice.
Finally, something worth talking about! Yes, this is a good reason to dislike this ship. The moment Dustpelt gets Ashpaw as an apprentice, he immediately zooms to Fernpaw’s side to hit on her. Which is awful. Apprentices in Warriors are implied to be teenagers. Dustpelt was an adult and a massive creep. He also sort of neglects Ashpaw but the books don’t seem to care… (If you’re a teenager and an adult is trying to get with you, block them, run away, and tell your parents, a teacher, or any other trusted adult)

I really hope this influenced you to stop bringing up these claims in your ship discussions. It’s very rude to talk about age gaps and related mates (that are actually just retcons) because it’s uncomfortable and weird. You can hate on a ship if it’s toxic or something, but please don’t bring up age gaps or related mates. Thank you and good day. -Crowpaw/flight.