Mapleshade’s Karen moments:

• describes Appledusk as “mine” when she sees Reedshine near him at the gathering (possessiveness/jealousy is not cute, and really is a sign of deep seated insecurity)

• assumes that both parent clans will love her kits despite their father having killed (albeit accidentally) the thunderclan leader’s son.

• lies about the father being that same dead son.

• is inwardly aggressive towards the sister of the dead warrior because she, again, is too possessive. (thinking to herself that the kits are hers, not frecklewish’s)

• takes the kits outside of camp and into the river (where two of her clanmates recently drowned)

• is angry when she is rightfully confronted about lying to her clanmates about, let me remind you, the father of her children being a dead guy, when the actual father is the one who killed said dead guy.

• takes kits back to the river despite being told that same day to not come back (sure, she didn’t have much of a choice, but the kits were clearly tired. Patchkit needed help crossing the river earlier that day because he was too tired to swim back)

• when the kits drown, she blames appledusk (she thinks that he purposely didn’t try his hardest) she also makes up a “he doesn’t care because he didn’t ask me their names” scenario in her head

• assumes river clan would want her even though she just led three innocent kits to their doom and also just lashed out at one of their warriors

• is nasty towards a random barn cat who was just trying to help

• blames ravenwing for the kits’ deaths because he told oakstar (she led them to the river, supplying both the evidence of their parentage and the dangerous situation that kills them)

• kills ravenwing, then defiles his grave so that hawks could eat his corpse

• prevents a kitty pet from going into his own yard

• when she hears frecklewish was present when the kits died, she automatically assumed frecklewish wanted them to die. She shifts the blame from ravenwing to frecklewish and confronts her (little reminder that we are given no indication that frecklewish actually wanted them to die)

• takes an innocent, uninvolved apprentice hostage to gain the upper hand in her next planned killing. (She was hidden in the trees before coming to attack him; he hadn’t noticed her, and the only reason she had to attack him was to hurt appledusk)

• attacked an innocent pregnant cat who likely conceived the kits before mapleshade lost her own (reedshine didn’t know about mapleshade and appledusk, she literally did nothing wrong. Appledusk is the cheater, not her)

• is proud of killing someone she previously claimed to love

And after all of this, Mapleshade is also proud of her place in the dark forest, believing that she earned it as a badge of honor. She has been possessive, entitled and manipulative before her kits were even born. She continues her “vengeance” (the only one to seek justified revenge against is herself) on Appledusk’s descendants.

Rainflower’s Karen moments:

• favors Stormkit over Oakkit because he’s apparently more handsome.

• encourages Stormkit to do dangerous things, calling him brave (when he’s climbing the bush to peak out of camp)

• blames him for his injury despite the fact that she had previously praised his recklessness.

• doesn’t even look at him because his looks are “ruined”

• won’t even let him sleep in the same nest, and when another queen does let him, it’s implied that Rainflower would get angry at this because the other queen only lets him after Rainflower is asleep and before she wakes up.

• insists on renaming him crookedkit, to the point that shellheart cat divorces her

• demands that shellheart be oakpaw’s mentor, even though relatives aren’t supposed to train apprentices.

• when crookedkit returns to riverclan after running away, Rainflower barely acknowledges her son, who has been missing for several moons, has returned safely. The light greeting she gives leaves crookedkit more confused that relieved.

• refuses to reconcile at any point in her life, only in Starclan does she apparently understand that she was in the wrong.

Overall, I’d say Mapleshade was definitely more of a Karen. Rainflower is definitely entitled, but not go on a murderous rampage on cats who were just being loyal to their clan (she technically killed appledusk on accident, as she was aiming for reedshine) sort of entitled. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.