For the most part, our protagonists are cats who succeed or excel at their usual clan tasks,

and the only things they might briefly get wrong are huge clan-altering decisions to

do with the plot.

It's very rare to see a perspective where an apprentice isn't good at the hunting

or fighting they are trained for, and even rarer to see that failure extended long enough

for us to see the insecurities ingrained in their mental states.

Because of that, it's not at all a surprise to me that so many fans enjoy the character

of Alderheart.

By his initial concept at least, he is a unique character with an interesting and realistic

set of faults who may well be deeply relatable to plenty of readers.

It didn't last forever, but the version of Alder we were presented with at his introduction

is certainly an interesting character to examine.

When we first meet Alderkit, in the very first page of his introduction, the first thing

we learn is that he worries about and questions things around him that others find exciting.

Nearly every cat we've ever seen facing an imminent promotion has reacted with anticipation,

excitement, looking ahead to the future that is open to them, and so on.

Alderkit though, seemed deeply afraid of the unknown world that would come with this next

step in his life, worried about the possibility of a test that, we implicitly get the sense

here, he didn't believe he would pass, and gets so lost in thought and the what-ifs of

the situation that he doesn't realize his sister is near him and is startled by her

sudden presence.

As far as we can tell at this point in the story, he has no reason to be especially worried.

No one has told him that the ceremony will be anything but a right of passage or that

he already has to know how to be an apprentice or warrior, and his sister Sparkkit who grew

up under the same parenting and care is as excited as we've come to expect from a kit

about to become an apprentice.

Lacking any clear source for these nerves to come from, at least so far, it does seem

at this point like Alderkit's worry might be a more intrinsic part of his personality,

rather than a result of circumstances.

These worries don't stop in kithood, of course, and once he actually is an apprentice

they begin affecting his performance rather than just his thoughts or feelings.

On his and Sparkpaw's first day out of camp, he starts rather well, scenting an unfamiliar

clan and logically deducing based on what their mentors told them that the scent is

from Windclan.

However, after completing a tour of the territory, Sparkpaw is still eager for more and asks

for a hunting lesson, which Alderpaw doesn't believe he's ready for while he's trying

to keep so much in his head already.

When both apprentices are asked to look for prey, Alderpaw does catch the scent of a shrew,

but questions his own certainty, leaving just enough time for Sparkpaw to speak up and make

the same point, confidently and aloud.

Sparkpaw's continuous and seemingly easy successes only make it more difficult for

Alderpaw to perform as he begins worrying about how he can measure up to her, and the

extra hesitation he adds thinking about how he can't fail or doesn't know if he has

it perfect yet causes him to miss opportunities altogether.

All this was on the first day alone but similar patterns continue through his apprenticeship,

as he can't help comparing himself to Sparkpaw's exceptional performance and getting nervous

about the possibilities of his own failure, leading to many wasted opportunities, poor

performance, a weaker reputation, and low self-esteem.

All of this is only heightened further as other cats' disappointment in him leads

him to feel validated in his negative view of himself and his own potential, once again

leading him to hesitate even more, perform even worse, and continue this cycle without

much improvement.

I'm going to take a step back to talk about this situation in a more general way, one

more applicable to our lives in this world.

In the realm of education, mistakes are a very good thing.

Different school systems in different eras have often done poor jobs of communicating

this properly, but mistakes are the only things that give us room to grow and direction in

which to grow, and in more than just a philosophical sense.

Making mistakes actually, physically, improves your brain.

With each mistake made, more and stronger physical connections between different parts

of the brain are formed, allowing you to get to the right answers or do the right things

more easily in the future.

On a functional level, mistakes literally make you smarter.

With that said, mistakes can also be painful, especially when they are made in the view

of people you want to respect you, or when you can compare yourself against someone who

is making less or different mistakes.

And even this early, Alderpaw falls into both of those situations to a tee.

His mother and father are the leader and deputy, so he already has a lot to live up to and

people he wants to impress, but he also wants his mentor to be proud of him so that he knows

he is doing well, and stack up against Sparkpaw so that he can say he and his sister are on

even footing.

As time goes on and he wracks up failures while she does nothing but excel, the very

cats Alderpaw had hoped to impress start expressing subtle and sometimes overt disappointment

in him, which makes the mistakes hurt worse.

Because of the sheer levels of nervousness he feels around his own worth and performance,

and the sometimes paralyzing fear of failure that stops him from doing anything, Alderpaw

hasn't had a chance to learn or grow stronger from his mistakes.

He has only been able to suffer and grow less healthy on a mental level.

His poor performance and a supposed connection with Starclan eventually lead to him being

forcefully removed from his training as a warrior and made a medicine cat instead, which

only makes him feel worse as he considers this to be a product of his failure as a warrior

apprentice rather than a good opportunity.

It isn't helped by the fact that no one asks him for his opinion in the matter and

instead just tells him he will be a medicine cat after discussing it behind his back, but

they make it clear that it isn't a punishment and he does not, cannot believe them.

This is anxiety, a fairly textbook expression of it at that.

Anxiety as a feeling just means particularly intrusive nerves in relation to some upcoming

or believed-to-be-upcoming event.

An anxiety disorder, meanwhile, which I believe Alderpaw can easily be argued to have, is

a more long-term experience.

The specifics of what precisely defines an anxiety disorder are still being debated and

the sources and severity of one person's anxiety and another's can vary wildly, but

what is clear is that anxiety disorders are characterized by persistent fear or doubt

in average daily activities.

This fear is often difficult to control, comes on quickly in response to both situations

that would and wouldn't otherwise be fear-inducing, and can often involve physical fear reactions

in your body and layers of doubt, berating, or worst-case scenarios in your mind.

Alderpaw has had doubts about himself and how well his life would go since he was a

kit, and those doubts have explicitly gotten in the way of his happiness and success numerous

times at this point, which itself is enough to say he's a good portrayal of at least

one version of an anxiety disorder.

Unlike with cats like Violetshine, Shadowsight, or now Nightheart, Alderpaw's feelings here

aren't created by endless external bullying or pushing his confidence down to force him

into a state of self-doubt, but by his own thoughts betraying him.

Even the prophecy and quest to find Skyclan that marks his first big responsibility as

a medicine cat ends in failure.

As both a real-world parallel and a remarkably unique setup for this fictional cat series,

the potential displayed in just this first book is enticing.

And then it all disappears.

Even in the second book of the arc, Alderpaw's characterization turns away from self-doubt,

anxiety, and the weight of failure and onto caring almost exclusively about Skyclan and

the kits he and Needlepaw found: Violetkit and Twigkit.

You might note that these two elements make up the main plot of the arc's first half,

and encompass the two new protagonists he was, in a sense, passing the torch onto.

It *is* important to make sure the protagonist is invested in your plot, but it is coming

at the cost of losing much of what made Alderpaw unique and compelling in the first book, without

much reason as to why he would act this way.

When his failed mission to find Skyclan comes up in the beginning of Thunder and Shadow

as Alderpaw recaps the previous book for us, he doesn't dwell on his failure, doubt his

abilities, or even decide that he can't be focused on himself when there was still

someone to save.

Instead, he seemingly does no thinking, loudly and impulsively defending Skyclan and arguing

that they still needed to save it.

Later, when he's thinking over the prophecy again, he doesn't hesitate or think over

the possibilities at all like he likely would have in the first book.

Now that he's been given a plot to follow and a drive to pursue, nearly every trademark

of his anxiety seems to have melted away.

I say nearly because there are still some moments where his heart will quicken or he'll

wonder why someone wants to see him, but in the same page they will still have him confidently

bustling about the medicine den or getting irritated with rather than worried by Jayfeather's

attitude.

I should make it clear that anxiety disorders are definitely not a matter of being constantly

miserable or never getting better.

Anxiety is absolutely something that can subside or be managed with time and help, but a turnaround

that comes on this quickly after Alderpaw just returned from a failed mission from Starclan

and with no reason for the change seems jarring.

At this point the only topic or cat he seems nervous around is Needlepaw, and that's

because she's an unpredictable pseudo-friend of his who is the only cat able to take care

of Violetkit, one of the two beings he has most chosen to care about.

Even at their worst, most battered and hopeless moments in the following book, Shattered Sky,

his thoughts read identically to any other protagonist worrying about current events:

more dejected than anxious.

And of course, through all of this, Alderheart is still acting as a nearly flawless medicine

cat with no worries about his own skills or abilities.

I've often heard people say that it is in the fourth book, Darkest Night, where Alderheart's

original personality fades completely, but I honestly think it came earlier than that.

The only difference is that in Thunder and Shadow and Shattered Sky, Alderheart still

had immediate, valid things to be worrying about, so he still expressed the standard

protagonist amount of worry for those things and, because of that, his change was less

noticeable.

Darkest Night quite literally opens with Alderheart happily declaring that everything is fine

now, he has nothing to worry about, and that worry, and his original potential, never return.

Given how much I discuss characters' potential and my disappointment in the routes they actually

went down, I feel it is important to point out that wasted potential isn't, by itself,

a criticism of quality.

If a character or plot seemed to be heading down one route or had the elements that made

it possible to head down that route and then actually went down another, that's just

a choice of the editors.

There are very few conceptual choices in writing that are inherently flawed.

The issue only comes if you choose not to go down a route at all and leave the characters

or plot hollow, contradictory, or aimless, or if the execution they ultimately used under

the choices they made was poor.

Alderheart is a significantly less appealing, unique, and complex character after his first

book, and even more so after his third, but ultimately I don't think that there's

anything *wrong* with that.

He's boring in that he becomes a vehicle of the plot, but A Vision of Shadows, especially

in its first half, was clearly intent on telling a good story and making the plot into their

focus, so there's no doubt in my mind this was an intentional choice.

And given the number of people who genuinely love the plot the arc came up with, I can't

say it's an inherently awful choice either.

The fact is, the first book of A Vision of Shadows presented us with a picture perfect

view of anxiety, with doubting thoughts and poor performance in a prevailing cycle, making

each other worse and creating a rather painful life for our protagonist.

That situation could have, and if I was making the choices, likely would have, led to a character

arc about managing and getting past that anxiety with continuous monitoring to recognize and

restructure his irrational anxiety-induced thoughts and positive, balanced relationships

for him to rely on with cats who could point out when his trains of thought weren't aligning

with reality and motivate him to acknowledge his own successes.

Of course, anxiety is a complex and varied issue so even this hypothetical portrayal

wouldn't cover everything a person with anxiety might go through or need, but showing

even one version of its struggle could help people who have anxiety themselves to recognize

and take steps to confront it in their own lives.

However, that did not happen.

Alderheart is, for most of his time in the spotlight, pretty boring.

And that's okay; it's just the reason he doesn't appear on my list of favorite

cats.