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[ailuromachy]

speaking of onestar and heathertail i think onestar should have been the cat that lionpaw attacked instead of crowfeather and in this case he maybe should have succeeded in taking a life from him because it would both further onestar’s beef with thunderclan and show just what lionpaw is actually capable of doing

[ailuromachy]

russetfur not getting to be leader is focken travesty like even giving her rowanstar’s arc of being too headstrong and losing the respect of her clanmates would have been good. they really had the audacity to kill her for minor lionblaze development

[ailuromachy]

shadowsight rewrite stuff

-shadowkit is born an only child, no hate to lightleap and pouncestep but if his siblings aren't gonna be relevant then he doesn't need to have them and i almost feel him being an only child would make more sense anyway

-shadowkit is often in the medicine den due to seizures, which is what piques his interest to become a medicine cat

-shadowkit's visions are in the form of not only seeing the future, but also seeing future or past events through the eyes of another. his visions of drowning are actually foretelling juniperclaw's death

-as a child, shadowkit has an optimistic desire to be helpful and good while also being a neurotic little sprite, often conveying his prophecies is strange and vague ways. although he outgrows his childhood sense of wonder and gains more self awareness, even as an adult, shadowpaw never quite fit in. he's a large cat even for his age for one, he seems off in his own little world most of he time, and he always has a wide eyed stare, as if he's looking at something no one else can see. his pelt is so dark he sometimes fades into the background and cats don't realize he's there until they see his dark-amber-almost-red eyes pierce the blackness

-furthermore, as a result his incident run in with the river he is wary towards bodies of water. shadowpaw did not enjoy being so close to the moonpool when puddleshine first took him there, and ran away in fright, which gave the medicine cats a bad impression of him off the bat because they thought that something about starclan's presence itself was what frightened him, like when tigerclaw ran from the moonstone in the first arc, as if he had something to hide. he's gotten better at being around it with more exposure to it, but he still prefers to keep his distance. he doesn't know why. to him, the moonpool feels like a hungry mouth ready to swallow him whole. when he looks into the moonpool he feels like something stares back at him- and it isn't starclan

-shadowclan views shadowpaw's eccentricities ostensibly affectionately, in a "ha ha shadowpaw you're such a weird guy" kind of way, although their unnease towards him is nonetheless palpable. but his strongest non-familial bond is, surprisingly, with blazefire, the local hard-headed, overconfident jock who hails from the city guardians. the two grew up together and bonded through their shared relationship with spiresight, and shadowpaw feels like blazefire is one of the few cats he can speak to without feeling like a weirdo. he's the only cat in the clan shadowpaw talks to as much as he talks to his parents and his mentor

-when it comes to the other clans, most of the time they could care less, but shadowkit's advent with the river, almost drowning himself and killing a warrior in the process apparently on starclan's command, didn't go unnoticed and has made everyone see him as a strange fellow. this, combined with his strangeness, his quietness, his stature etc. has made some of them wonder what else he's possibly capable of. if he's hiding something.

-internally, shadowsight is very sweet and well meaning who wants to continue to do good in spite of himself, even though he is a bit spacey and often lost in thought, as well as having some tics he's less good at being aware of such as his tendency to stare. he was never good at making friends because he found it hard to fit in with the warriors' way of life, but he still dearly desires friendship and this draw pulls him into the eye of the public, where he Cannot Stop Acting Strange. he is well aware of how people think of him, the things cats say when they think he isn't listening or is too caught up in a daydream to hear, but he doesn't know how to fix how other cats see him, or if he even can.

-the events that take place after the moonpool freezes over do not help any of the aforementioned problems.

-the reason the imposter goes after shadowsight specifically to relay the codebreakers prophecy is more selective; he tells shadowsight, the son of a thunderclan warrior and a shadowclan warrior, that he is born of an evil act and he carries his parents' transgressions in his blood. The only way he can redeem himself is by persecuting the cats that committed the same crime that brought him into the world.

-toying with the idea that since ashfur already has hold over starclan at this point he might send spiresight to send this message instead of doing it himself, knowing spiresight is someone shadowpaw would trust.

-shadowpaw doesn't know what he should do. "starclan wills it," spiresight tells him. "what happens if starclan is wrong?" shadowpaw asks. "starclan is never wrong," spiresight reminds him.

-shadowpaw anxiously mulls over the information he's been given. restful sleep is near impossible to achieve. in his dreams he's standing on a ledge surrounded by fire. it's hard to see but he knows there's a molly in front of him. his lips curl into a snarl as he percieves her foggy shape. he hates her. he wants to hurt her so bad. even as the smoke chokes his lungs and burns his eyes all he can think about is how much he wants her to hurt, how badly he wants to be the one to instill all that pain and sorrow in her. god he can’t wait to see the look on her face as it contorts into a scream of fear and horror at what he's about to do-

-shadowsight never slept peacefully again after that.

[ailuromachy]

thinking about sparkflower au...

although sparkpaw seems to outperform alderpaw at every turn, she is, ironically, a bit jealous of him. he can live without being constantly being compared to an impossible standard, and is allowed to go at his own pace, as oppossed to sparkpaw who feels the need to vindicate everyone’s perception of her as firestar 2.

although she did not initially choose to be a medicine cat, the more sparkflower settles into her craft, the more right it feels. she’s finally found a way to be her own person, and help her clan out in her own way, no longer feeling the need to live in the shadow of a man she’s never met

[ailuromachy]

i wrote an outline attempting to make thrushpelt a fully fleshed out character rather than just a narrative crutch for bluestar’s prophecy

-thrushpelt is born alongside thistle/rose/sweet so he's closer in age to bluestar and is tighter with thistleclaw

-he and bluepaw have been friends since apprenticehood, as have thistlepaw and snowpaw

-he becomes goosefeather's first apprentice. his dad wants him to be a warrior and is disappointed. thistlepaw doesn't get it either and thinks he's a puss

-whiles gathering herbs he comes across a group of loners and offers to give them a share of the herbs, which inadvertently leads to them raiding thunderclan camp

-ashamed, thrushpaw switches with featherpaw to begin training as a warrior

-things proceed mostly as they happened in canon. thrushpelt is seen as a good if not awkward and weak willed guy and kinda a pushover by the rest of his clan

-thrushpelt develops a crush on bluefur, she does not reciprocate

-thistleclaw is idolized by his clanmates but thrushpelt is afraid of him and pissed off by his dangerous political agenda. because thistleclaw holds so much prestige and is probably physically stronger than him thrushpelt is too weak willed to challenge him on his beliefs though. the two begin to drift apart (exemplified by the scene where thistleclaw attacks oakheart and assaults bluefur while thrushpelt does nothing to alleviate this situation)

-thrushpelt receives spottedpaw as an apprentice but she wants to be a medicine cat. having been in her position  before, he switches her out to featherwhisker

-thrushpelt finally grows a pair and poses as the father of bluefur's kits. he finally feels like he did something right this time, something good.

-bluefur never tells him but thrushpelt does eventually find out about what became of mistyfoot and stonefur

-when bluestar becomes leader she appoints him as her first deputy

-he finds out about the spottedpaw thing and is shocked and horrified before resolving that thistleclaw should not be allowed to live

-together with rosetail, they kill him and chalk his death up to a border skirmish. thrushpelt doesn't know if he did the right thing and is consumed by guilt

-he confides what he and rosetail did to no one but bluefur, who assures him he did right and will keep his promise as he once kept hers

-as a deputy, he does everything he can to sustain peace between riverclan and thunderclan, for reasons both pragmatic and personal

-tigerclaw has never particularly liked him, by osmosis from thistleclaw and because he thinks he is too soft hearted and weak

-in a particularly dramatic border conflict thrushpelt sees misty and stone present and retreats thunderclan, even though thunderclan seems to be winning

-tigerclaw gets pissed and offs him. maybe in the argument before the murder he has a dramatic epiphany about who killed thistleclaw

[ailuromachy]

thinking about my au where darkstripe survives the bloodclan battle and is tasked by tigerstar’s spirit with ensuring that his sons will some day meet

[ailuromachy]

i don’t mind that darkstripe died in the first arc (his entire life being a daisy chain of trying and failing to impress tigerstar to the point that at an attempt at avenging his death was the last mistake he ever made fits) but i think it would have been fun if he survived into the new prophecy. like instead of the prologue where he wakes up in the df and meets tigerstar it could instead be him running around half dead and neurotic from disease and starvation- he sees no reason he should continue trying to survive, everything he believed in is gone now, but then tigerstar’s spirit presents itself to darkstripe and tasks him with uniting his sons, and of course darkstripe jumps at the opportunity to continue lickspittling for him. then he could just be some weird old guy running around in the woods saying weird shit. hawkfrost doesn’t know who tf this guy is but his ears perk when the strange loner says he can tell him about his father

[ailuromachy]

runningnose was the first addition to yellowfang’s collection of adopted children

[ailuromachy]

heatherkit with her biological parents, gorsetail and onestar

onestar never had any interest in taking a mate, but he did come to want children, and gorsetail volunteered to be the surrogate mother. although she was born to gorsetail, heatherkit was beloved and raised by pretty much every molly in the nursery. being spoiled by the queens of windclan combined with being the leader’s daughter and rarely being disciplined by any of them gave heatherpaw a very haughty disposition early on in life

[ailuromachy]

dreams are unique to the person who’s producing them’s psyche, so no two are alike by design. while starclan cats can just astral project their existence into any mortal cat’s dream they are completely at the whims of that cat’s mind, and are subject to change based on said cat’s bias and perception of the world around them and exactly which starclanner they are talking to. the starclan cat’s purpose can become altered; any message that a starclan cat is trying to send through dream walking can become contorted and misconstrued, clouded by the intricacy of the brain they are intruding in.

this is why, although any cat can receive a starclan dream, the connection that medicine cats specifically have with them is considered to be special. the visions that they receive are said to be the 100% unadulterated gospel of whatever message starclan is trying to send without being filtered through the outside influences of another cat’s psyche. starclan dreams are not to be taken at face value; there’s a strong possibility that this cat might only be hearing from starclan mostly what they want to hear.

[ailuromachy]

i’m juggling some ideas for alternate ways to go about brambleclaw and squirrelflight’s relationship and one of them i liked was for them to be (adoptive) siblings rather than mates.

in the au i think brambleclaw would be somewhat younger, born only a few days prior to tigerclaw’s exile. fireheart is the adult male figure most prominent in his life so he internalizes him as a father figure and is close with sandstorm by extension as well. when leaf and squirrel are born, they are raised to see him as their big brother.

when it comes to the drama with hawkfrost, i guess the main theme happening would be if you can ever be as close to your adopted family the same way you would be with biological kin. squirrelflight is hurt because even though brambleclaw has only known hawkfrost for a few days and hawkfrost is obviously a fucker, he still treats his relationship with him as if it’s more important than his sisters solely because they share the same blood. feeling othered by his adopted family and beginning to question if he can even consider them family, he is further pushed towards tigerstar and hawkfrost. they’re his ~actual~ father and brother, so their kinship must be innately stronger and more meaningful than anything firestar’s family could give him... right?

hawkfrost telling brambleclaw to kill his father, and brambleclaw choosing his thunderclan family over his biological relatives, that’s when he realizes that blood ultimately doesn’t matter. firestar, sandstorm, leafpool and squirrelflight are much more his family then tigerstar and hawkfrost could ever be. also he realizes what an entitled little bitch he’s been and abdicates his status as deputy cuz we all know that’s what should have happened anyways

[ailuromachy]

oh my goodness this is so pretty and so so cute!!! i’m so glad my design is enjoyed, thank you so much!!!

Saw @ailuromachy‘s Sparkpelt design in my feed and I loved her little face so I wanted to draw the design. 

I had no idea what to do for the background. 

[ailuromachy]

sparkflower, aka “medicine cat sparkpelt au”

i know everyone is tired of hearing me harp about how sparkpelt should have been the main character of avos so i’m just gonna cut to the chase and start spitballing

-sparkpaw is a brash and overconfident apprentice- traits instilled in her because she is constantly being compared to literal most important man in the world by her peers, who also happens to be someone she’s never met. but she knows firestar’s destiny involves saving the world, meanwhile she is stuck with the fate of “become a doctor,” which immediately diverges her path from her identical grandfather’s. i think that seeing how she deals with these things would be interesting to explore since avos is, after all, the first arc taking place in a post firestar world

-of course everyone is shocked when jayfeather relays her apparent destiny in the medicine cat den, since she showed so much promise as a warrior. nonetheless she is surprisingly good at what she does; she seems to be very fascinated with insects and prey animals so she has no problem treating ticks or acquiring mouse bile. her role as a medicine cat comes to humble her

-i feel like her dynamic with jayfeather would be fun. unlike the easily imposed-upon alderpaw sparkpaw is not someone who would have trouble telling him to shut the fuck up

-her relationship with needletail; she doesn’t like her much at first but comes to value her intellect as they journey together. getting lost together and playing parents with twig and violet- as well as the later ventures to let the sisters meet after they’re separated- helps to strengthen their friendship

-she’s very close with twigkit and isn’t afraid to tell jayfeather to fuck off and stop bullying the orphan child that lives with them, she becomes very protective of her.

-combining this with twigbranch and violetshine’s relationship, sparkflower’s frienship with twigbranch and needletail would give the arc a heavy focus on molly/molly relationships, which i personally think would be neat!

-since she takes alderheart’s place during the “gotta go to shadowclan to help puddleshine” ordeal she also gets to meet a fellow identical grandchild; tigerheartstar, and we get to introspect the different ways having to share their grandfather’s face has affected them personally

-alderflight is probably only as relevant as sparkpelt is in canon because i can’t think of a better role for him other than briefly serving as twigbranch’s mentor when she comes back to thunderclan lol sorry alderheart fans but it’s equality

-i guess larksong and alderflight get together. flamepaw and finchpaw still exist and sparkflower is still their biological mother; she offers to be the surrogate dam for them. because she doesn’t have a mate and technically isn’t going to be raising the kits herself (and it wouldn’t be like they don’t have leafpool and jayfeather for when her pregnancy prevents her from performing her medicine duties) as well as the advantage of being the leader’s daughter, bramblestar allows it so long as no one speaks of it outside of thunderclan.

[ailuromachy]

thrushpelt

moonflower and poppydawn had been essentially joined at the hip ever since they were apprentices, so it was no surprise to thunderclan when their litters were basically raised in tandem, especially when stormtail - the father of moonflower’s children - was hardly present in his kits’ lives. the two litters were very close and friendly with one another right from the start.

thrushpelt was never quite cut out for the life of a warrior. his intrigue with nature along with his sensitivity to the suffering of others lead him to pursue medicine at six months old, and he would become goosefeather’s first apprentice. he was alway very empathetic to all forms of life, well-meaning with his intentions but often spastic in how he went about them; one particular instance of his disposition involved an incident where, when searching for herbs, thrushpaw came across a camp of loners and offered to bring them prey and medicine, which eventually culminated in said loners raiding thunderclan camp, which thrushpaw immediately went down for. his father windflight, a very conservative warrior who valued physical strength and clan loyalty above all, never cared for his son’s chosen path in life. although he never directly pressed him to quit, he made his disdain palpable, and eventually thrushpaw would stop training under goosefeather by his own volition, being apprenticed under swiftbreeze. thrushpelt never forgot goosefeather’s lessons however, and even as an adult is much more adept at the healing process than the typical warrior, and he would often offer treatment of minor wounds to his clanmates after a battle.

it was often expected by clan that him and bluefur would end up as mates, given how close they were raised in their upbringing. although he was attracted to her for her ethics and strong-willed personality, he understood and accepted that she didn’t reciprocate. when she turned up pregnant and confided in him that they were the product of a forbidden affair with a riverclan tom, he offered to pose as her mate to keep the kits’ identity a secret, and would love her kittens as if they really were his own. he would mourn for them as if they were his own too after they had been supposedly taken and killed by a fox.

it was unsurprising to the clan when his bleeding heart mentality and tendency to value compassion over the warrior code was what did him in when he, for some reason, refused to fight with riverclan patrol during a border scuffle, and was killed at the claws of riverclan warriors that day.

[ailuromachy]

i’ve been seeing a lot of cool AU’s from other folks and i wanted to share one of mine. it kind of ties into the whole lore expansion thing

Keep reading

[ailuromachy]

if i were to rewrite hawkheart i wouldn’t make him like, smug and bullying towards bluefur like he comes off as in BP but he still wouldn’t be exactly sympathetic towards her either because he doesn’t think he should have to apologize for acting in self defense which makes the whole “you should be nice to the traumatized child you left motherless” thing hard for him. anyway hawkheart novella when

[ailuromachy]

s’more details about the canon divergence in that darktail au: onewhisker meets smoke during the journey instead of in the original forest because 1. it makes sense 2. smoke begging windclan for shelter occurs after tallstar has died and windclan has been torn in two, which means that tallstar wouldn’t have been able to strive for a peaceful input like he might have done if he was alive and knew what was going on (what with the fact he dated a kittypet and then being all palsy walsy with said kittypet’s thunderclan leader son he obviously wouldn’t be strongly opposed to the idea of a loner staying in windclan) and also tensions are very high and everyone is freaked out and high strung, the state of windclan is the scene in mean girls where regina starts tossing pages of the burn book everywhere, which is probably what causes everyone to flip the fuck out over a loner in the first place. and plus onewhisker knows this is just one more thing that his detractors are going to hold against him and he’s already afraid someone is gonna like, murder him in his sleep over this so that certainly influences his decision

another tiny difference is that smoke is a loner instead of a kittypet, but after windclan refuses her she takes refuge in a twoleg neighbourhood until one of them eventually takes her in, where she would raise darktail and spend the rest of her days as a kittypet