Sorry for the wait guys, my inspiration decided to go on vacation without notifying me before hand. Thanks for those of you who reviewed and helped remind me to get off my lazy butt.
On another note, ever since the release of The Fourth Apprentice (which was surprisingly epic) I have been getting droves of people with metaphoric pitchforks calling for Berrynose's blood because of his new affair with Poppyfrost (lolz wat?) I assure you all that Berrynose will get his turn on the chopping board, but first I would like to get a few other characters out of the way. Do not fret, Berrynose will get his all in good time.
NOTICE: I have also decided to start adding chapter titles besides the character's name, just for the lolz.
Chapter 8: The Life and Times of a Third-Class Pro
Tigerstar; Because every so-totally-not-Mary-Sue protagonistneeds a so-totally-not-evil antagonist
What is This Evil You Speak of?
What would a story be without a good villain? Dead, that's what. Every story needs at least one real antagonist to keep things moving and make the protagonists look like they actually have a purpose besides making everyone else envy them – which they don't.
When the Erin Hunters sat down to create Warriors, they knew they needed a villain that was clever enough to fool an entire clan, and strong enough to pose a threat. And thus, Tigerclaw was born, the most infamous villain in the wide world of Warriors.
Tigerclaw was introduced in the very first Warriors book, when Firepaw was first introduced in to the clan, and is a clear demonstration of Erin Hunter's overwhelming gift of subtly in her plot intentions. From the very first scene you would never guess that Tigerclaw was evil. No, I know for sure that I certainly wasn't questioning his motives and loyalties in the clan in that first scene he was mentioned after Firepaw's arrival.
I mean, I never would have been able to guess he was evil. Just look at the comforting, concerned words he shared with Spottedleaf when his apprentice collapsed to the ground bleeding to death after running to tell the clan about Redtail's death. Mind you, these are the first lines he says in the series.
Into the Wild, page 45
"So Spottedleaf." Tigerclaw addressed the tortoiseshell with a confident meow. "How is he? Do you think you can save him? I've spent a lot of time training him up, and I don't want my efforts to be wasted at the first battle."
Isn't that sweet? Look how much he cares about his poor, injured apprentice? Surely such a caring cat could never be evil…
OBVIOUS PLOT IS OBVIOUS!
That's right folks, we never would have been able to even come close to realizing what terrible danger Thunderclan was in, if it weren't for the oh-so insightful abilities of Firepaw, and his gift of being able to see past plot devises.
Achievement Earned: Evil Scheming
Tigerstar will forever live in infamy thanks to his many evil deeds. But what exactly did he do to earn this place of dishonor?
Well let's take a look, shall we?
In the first book, Tigerclaw is probably at his most inconspicuous (which, trust me, isn't saying much). He mostly keeps to winning the respect of his clan, constantly tormenting a young apprentice just because his daddy never hugged him, and covering up the murder of the former deputy so that he could become deputy.
That's right folks, all Tigerstar wanted out of life was to be clan deputy, then later a leader. Then later a supreme ruler. Sure, he had to step on a few toes, take a few lives, and make a few difficult choices to achieve his goal, but who doesn't?
It all started with the murder of Redtail, the clan deputy. It was an elaborate scheme, involving the bribery of a few Riverclan warriors, a giant pile of rocks, and a roll of duct tape. It was a flawless plan, a genius one even. All would have gone perfectly according to plan, and Tigerclaw would have pried deputyship from Redtail's cold, dead claws without a single suspicion, had it not been for one tiny, little detail…
RAVENPAW! WHY MUST YOU HAVE SUCH HORRIBLE TIMING?
So, Redtail is murdered, but the horrendously evil event was witnessed by *gasp* Tigerclaw's own apprentice! And we all know how much Tigerclaw absolutely loved dear little Ravenpaw, now don't we? Truly, there is no greater apprentice/mentor relationship bond than this… unless you're a CinderXFire fan, in which case you might argue that Fireheart and Cinderpaw were closer.
For those of you who were thinking something along the lines of "heck yeah!" to that last sentence, may the pain and fire of a thousand evils descend upon your soul.
Anyway, disregarding that last note, so now Tigerclaw had the great internal dilemma of how to keep his beloved apprentice quiet, and on top of that he now had an annoying kittypet so-totally-not-Mary-Sue in his camp/future empire that seemed to be able to see through his ruse.
He didn't even get named deputy! After all that effort! Disgraceful, what a waist!
Sullenly, for the rest of the first book, Tigerclaw was forced into scheming in the shadows, going through the personal strife of having to deal with Ravenpaw. Of course he would have just gone up to the little runt and asked him nicely to keep his trap shut, but Firefreakingpaw was always hanging around. Drat! Oh well, he would just have to kill Ravenpaw then. Oh well, there would be other apprentices once he had his world domination.
As luck would have it, in all his scheming and plotting, karma seemed to show him kindness, and he was made deputy after all after the random but oddly convenient death of the new deputy, Lionheart.
RIP Lionheart; your sacrifice was for the greater good...
By the end of the book, Tigerclaw had reached his goal of deputy, and Ravenpaw had conveniently disappeared.
Now if only he could get rid of Fireheart as conveniently.
Frozen Fire and Secrets of DOOMUNDOUS Proportions
After the very convenient and secret happenings in Into the Wild, Tigerclaw would have been perfectly happy to sit back and let events fall into place where they were. Of course there would be the occasional plotting, the murder of Bluestar that he still had to arrange, and then there was the whole business of taking over the rival clans, but hey, come what may.
But, as if the case in the lives of all super villains, Tigerclaw soon realized after the much heroic return on WindClan from exile via Firefreakingheart, that ThunderClan's newest warrior (besides Grastripe, he doesn't count) didn't like him.
Tigerclaw was quite shocked, and a little outraged to find that there was one warrior in the entire series that didn't worship him with the acceptable amount of respect and fear…but mostly fear. Lots of fear. Fireheart not only disrespected him with his lack of hero worship, but he also insulted him with his downright expressions of loathing.
Tigerclaw was confused, and hurt. Never before had he ever encountered a creature like Fireheart. Never before had he encounter this, this anomaly: a cat that didn't love him. And at the moment of truth, the moment when Tigerclaw witnessed metaphorical fire in the kittypet's eyes as he glared at him after the severe injury of Cinderpaw (the little klutz) and he saw the heroic/so-not-Mary-Sueishness aura that could only be a gift from the authresses themselves, he knew that he was facing something so horrendous, so terribly sickening that it made him want to retch.
He was dealing with a plotline.
It was after that moment that Tigerclaw realized that he no longer had a choice. He would have to speed up his total annihilation plans, and stop this madness before it even had a chance to begin.
Poor, foolish Tigerclaw didn't have any idea what greater levels of horror that he was dealing with. For, Fireheart had already assumed his greater role in this cruel, sick plotline, and he had Tigerclaw in his sights. Having gathered information from Tigerclaw's former apprentice, Ravenpaw, he knew about his greater scheming, and decided that there could only be one supreme ruler of the forest.
Tigerclaw too knew that there could only be one ruler, and decided then, for the greater good that he would have to become leader now because if things were allowed to escalate, if Fire saved the clan, then there would be much horrors unleashed upon the forest. Unspeakable horrors. Death awaited the clans under a Fireheart centric story, and a vicious, slow and painfully sickening one.
Fireheart would kill the clans with kindness.
So, for the greater good, Tigerstar set his plans into action, and enlisted with an army of revenge hungry rouges and the mental ex-ShadowClan leader, who was being held in the ThunderClan camp, conveniently enough.
The plan was coming together, but every step of the way Fireheart grew spiteful, blaming him for more and more crimes that he did not commit. Honestly, why would Tigerclaw want to drown Fireheart? If this psychopathic kittypet was going to die, Tigerclaw was going the one to kill him with his own claws.
Finally, after many moons, two Warriors books, a few new marketing schemes, witnessing Fireheart get almost killed several times (because he's too important to actually get killed) witnessing the anticlimactic death of Graystripe's FORBIDDEN LOVE, busting a few heads, and a few babiez later, Tigerstar was ready to put his genius plan into action, and launched his attack on the ThunderClan camp.
And he might have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling plotlines.
Right as he was about to land Bluestar's fatal blow, ending the madness once and for all, Fireheart, having fought against impossible odds and gotten past all of the enemies attacking the camp, stopped him, sending Tigerclaw into exile, and bringing the first waves of the plotline crashing down on all of them.
A Clan of Blood, a Pip-Squeak's Claws
After exile, Tigerclaw knew he only had one more shot at winning this losing battle against the plotline; he was going to find more people to worship him.
So, deciding to completely screw his original plan, Tigerclaw decided to skip past being clan leader of ThunderClan and move on ahead to taking over other clans. That works, right?
Seeing that things couldn't get much worse, he decided to go to his bestest friends ever, ShadowClan. With any luck, he could kill their honored leader and take the clan as his own, rising from the ashes of his own defeat and finding leverage that he could use to end the coming reign of madness before it could begin.
Surprisingly enough, it didn't take much to be accepted by ShadowClan. Heck, he didn't even have to prove himself, all he had to do was waltz in and offer to fill their currently empty leader position. Presto, they loved him. If he had known it would have been that easy to take over a clan that was right across the thunderpath, he wouldn't have even bothered with ThunderClan.
After gaining control of a chaotic ShadowClan, Tigerstar received nine lives and made an alliance with Leopardstar, using his charm and appeal to make her understand the genius behind his motives and goal (lol mind control.)
Things were going surprisingly well for once. Fireheart (the new clan freaking SUPER deputy) was totally confused, and Tigerstar had more allies, and the upper paw.
But something was wrong. In an odd plot twist, Tigerstar received a vision of what was to come. Fireheart's not-Mary-Sueishness was growing to tremendous, DOOMUNDOUS levels, and clearly it was going to take more than two clans to defeat him. No, Tigerstar was going to need something big to bring down this greater evil. And so, realizing his impending loss, he brought in something so surprising, so unforeseen and shocking, that the Erins would later copy the idea and use it for marketing purposes.
He decided to bring in a fifth living clan.
ALL HAIL BLOODCLAN! ALL HAIL BLOODCLAN! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
…*Ahem*
Anyway, so Tigerclaw and his new 'ally' the leader of BloodClan, Napole– erm, I mean Scourge bring an unbeatable, tremendously huge and totally evil army of BloodClan cats to the forest to stop the madness. It was a genius plan. A perfect plan. A plan that would have been impossible to defeat. But Tigerstar had forgotten one things, a simple fact that so many warriors before had overlooked, and paid the price for. The one and only truerule of the Warriors world.
Thou shalt not trifle with the will of the author overlords.
And thus, Tigerstar was struck down in a single blow by his own ally's paws, an anticlimactic death that would forever be the center of shame and many lolz in the Warriors fandom.
And thus ended the great life of Tigerstar.
EPIC FAIL!
Aw, Cheer up Little Emo!
Now that we have reflected upon the Tigerstar that is revealed in the greater series, let us back up to a time before the reign of the greater plotline, and back to a time before, a time of Tigerstar's own growing up.
Tigerkit's birth will forever be known as a quite disturbing tragedy and plot fail. In Bluestar's Prophecy, we learn that not only was his own father the great Pinestar, ThunderClan leader before Sunstar, but his father was also the only leader to abandon his clan shamefully for the life of a kittypet.
Is it no wonder this guy hates Firepaw when that kittypet shows up?
But wait, there's more. His mother, Leopardfoot, is a very young warrior, born moons after her mate was made leader.
Okay, does anyone else see anything, oh, I don't' know, PERVERTED about that? Sheesh! We finally found something more disturbing that FernXDust! IT'S A SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE!
Anyway, Pinestar left to be a kittypet when Tigerkit was only a young kit, leaving him and his two sisters behind with his emotionally shattered creeper of a mother. His sisters died of shame shortly after.
After his lonely, tragic kithood, Tigerpaw strived to do his best under the wonderful guidance of his hotheaded mentor, Thistleclaw, who was aptly pricklier than a porcupine , angsting constantly after the death of his mate, and more than slightly sadistic.
…*facepalm* Thanks Sunstar, we can all see how excellent you are at placing apprentices.
So the little emo turns into a little emo sadist. Wow, didn't see that coming.
And from there it was all downhill, a matter of angst and ambition all mixed into one ball of fun.
Let There be Kits
Amongst all of the misunderstood spite and ambition that is Tigerstar's life, there was one unnoticed aspect that no one has ever seemed to fully begin to understand about him.
You guessed it, true love!
Tigerstar only had two real relationships (no this does NOT include the nonexistent pairings I have seen of LeopardXTiger or BlueXTiger, which I'm not even going to go into.)
TigerXGolden
This is probably one of the more complex relationships mentioned in the Warriors series, and frankly I feel that it is often over looked because of some of the confusion it causes. I mean, why brood over an actually interesting and potentially deep pairing when you can just explode all over the LionXHeather fandom?
It will never truly be known why Tigerclaw and Goldenflower were mates for a span of two books. Personally I believe it's just another sick twist of the earlier workings of the plotline so that the evil villain could have babiez for the clan to shun.
TigerXSasha
Okay, I'm going to be quite frank with this pairing: it sucks. I hate this pairing almost as much as I hate DaisyXCloud or, even worse, JayXWillow *shudder*. It makes little sense, even from the little that I have bothered to read from the 'manga' (AKA marketing devise) about Sasha and Tigerstar.
This pairing is definitely a plot device. There is no other explanation. I don't care how many books are used to explain it. It is a not-even clever plot device used to bring more of Tigerstar's babiez into the story and compensate for the plot-gap at the end of the second arc!
CANON FAIL!
Loathing
Why did Tigerstar hate Firestar? It's a question that has been asked all too many times over the course of Warriors fandom. I am now going to kill this incredibly stupid question with an overly long list of answers and then burry it for the rest of eternity, and I beg of you all, never speak of it again.
He's annoying
He's perfect
He can defeat a highly skilled warrior before he's an apprentice
He's a genius
He had a prophecy
He's a kittypet
He's nosy
He's a do-gooder
He wants to help EVERYBODY
He loves EVERYBODY
He has no foresight
He can't figure out the obvious (YES YOU DUNCE! YOU'RE THE FREAKING FIRE THAT'S GUNNA SAVE THE FREAKING CLAN!)
He is immortal
He sees dead people sometimes
He loves dead medicine cats
And yes, this all amounts to one, simple answer:
He's so-totally-not-a-Mary-Sue
Seriously, I think that majority of you would want to kill him on spot if you ever met a person like this in real life. If not, you need help.
The End of a Legacy?
So, where in the plot is Tigerstar now? Is he walking peacefully walking among the stars, freed from the DOOMUNDUS plotline that ensued fully after his death?
Hahahahaha! Yeah right.
As always, the Erins are a vicious and unforgiving force. Tigerstar must pay for his interference, and so he lingers in the plotline still, striking fearing into the hearts of protagonists, walking in their dreams.
What did Tigerstar get for his ambitions? What of his attempts to save Warriors? Is he unjustly accused, or is his punishment what he deserves.
Only you can answer that. (I lied, let him burn for failing to stop the madness of the plotline!)
All that we can know for sure is that we'll see Tigerstar yet again (in the fourth freaking arc) in the new plotline that will, once again, determine the fate of the Warriors world.
Let's just hope, if he does get a second chance to stop this DOOMUNDOUS plotline, he won't screw up again.