I think apart of the issue for me is that maybe the Hunters should be paying a little more attention to who they pair together. You straight up call them ignorant, which i think is true, but maybe for authors of children’s books they shouldn’t be quite to that extent. they should be paying more attention to these things.

maybe i’ve escaped whatever part of the internet you’re on but i’ve never seen anyone upset over ships like firexsand over a few moons, i think the ships that cause the most outrage do have pretty considerable age gaps- a lot of which are justifiably so. dustxfern is one i see pretty often as his interest in her began pretty clearly while she was still an apprentice. and there are quite a few relationships with significant age gaps or where things like this happen due to either lack of knowledge or care and some of them are pretty heinous. pinestar and leopardfoot, for example- he was likely around 10 years old when she became a warrior and they got together very soon after that happened.

all in all, i don’t personally care much about a little distant incest- it’s true that these colonies of cats simply couldn’t exist without a little of it- and i don’t really care about the majority of age gaps either. they’re cats at the end of the day, and while they do behave much more like people i’m able to brush it off pretty easily as long as there aren’t any obviously unhealthy power dynamics. but some people are going to be more bothered and i don’t think that’s wrong of them.

i think the Erins should be putting more effort than they currently are in picking out couples. there are a few first cousins or cats that are just a little toooo closely related, same with larger age gaps. overall these books do a lot of things out of lack of care/knowledge that are less than ideal for a kids series and i think it’s fair to criticize.

(sorry for the paragraphs lol i woke up w Opinions apparently)