(WARNING: Minor spoilers for Warriors!!!) So sense I went over the whole "everyone is related problem" I decided to go over this as well. Once again this is based off of the laws I live with and I'm not sure if it's different in some places so pls keep that in mind, and some of this is also my opinion. This one should be a lot shorter then the "everyone is related" problem one. Let's get started. So, the ones we'll be using as examples are Blossomfall x Thornclaw and Ivypool x Fernsong as the good ones as Thistleclaw x Spottedpaw/leaf as the bad one. SpottedThistle are /really/ bad for some reasons I can't mention on Scratch, but I will go over it the best I can. Spottedpaw is a /child/. Thistleclaw is a pretty much a thirty-something year old. That is not ok. It is manipulative, abui$iv3, and is not on any level ok. If I could address it by what it's really called I would but I can't. Spottedpaw is as I said a shild, who is still easily impressionable, and still learning about the world and what's right and wrong. What Thistleclaw is going isn't even legal. If an adult tells you to not tell anyone /go tell someone/. Something is /wrong/ and you need to /run/. It's not Spottedpaw's fault but she wasn't at the age were she could consent to it properly and Thistleclaw was taking advantage of that and hurting her. This ship is not ok. However, let's go look at BlossomThorn and FernPool. These are both ships that have big age gaps but they're not bad or illegal. Why? Cuz Ivypool and Thornclaw didn't have feelings or anything until Blossomfall and Fernsong were both /full grown adults/. By this time Fernsong and Blossomfall were both old enough to consent to it properly. They both knew what was going on and what they were doing and Ivypool and Thornclaw weren't being creeps or anything. Ships like these don't make the series not kid friendly. There are real couples like this who have children, children see them around in public and while the age gaps might be a bit big both these relationships are actually healthy. There are lots of people who have like 20+ year age gaps and children. While this is less common it's not necessarily bad, unless it's like SpottedThistle and one of them is a child at the time of this going on. Then it's bad and unhealthy. But if both people in the relationship can consent and haven't been messed with sense they were a child it's fine. That doesn't mean you have to ship them tho. I'm not saying "Omg ship FernPool and BlossomThorn!" Far from it. I don't ship them myself. I'm just saying these "problematic" age gaps probably aren't that problematic after all. At least where I come from. As I said not sure how it works in other places and stuff. Thanks for reading this! I hope you enjoyed and that this made sense. ~ Aspen <3
Erin Hunter for Warriors.
