#Cw Slash dotc

[bonefall]

What roles are Willow Tail, Quick Water, and Fern Leaf going to be like in your rewrite? I hate most of DOTC but I do enjoy a lot of the side characters, especially them

Willow Tail I know what I'm doing with, Quick Water and Fern Leaf I'm less sure of.

BB!Willow Tail -> Willow Flayed Bare

Willow is a young molly from the Wind Coalition who fought at the First Battle. Her first name was Tabby, and she earned her title for presenting a large, weaved willowbark basket to the Wind Runner. She's an artisan with a useful talent.

Since I completely overhauled Moth Flight's Vision into Moth Flight's Vow, which has a NEW origin for how the Cleric's Vow occured, I'm still reworking the Bunny Bones plot that I'm fond of.

I'm unsure if it's going to be a novella or a catalyst for the conflict of another book. It might be a good way to create an opportunity for Quick Water to run her rebellion

Willow has a petty dispute with one of Clear Sky's kittens; Tiger Sky. It's a TINY bananas squabble. She doesn't like seeing her rude ass sunbathing on the moor, so she starts leaving bunny bones on the border and accusing her of stealing to get her banned from the area.

Skystar, being the man that he is, takes the accusation that one of HIS warriors, his oldest (remaining) DAUGHTER no less, VERY personally. What started as a mean girl moment quickly exploded into total war.

I LIKE the way that the original plot was so unjustified and avoidable it's painful. I just wish it was framed as the miserable, violent moment it should have been. I'm planning on keeping Willow's blinding, but it's the final straw for Tiger who can't stomach this any longer.

Willow is likely going to end up in the River Kingdom, exiled for starting the conflict. She might still get retooled; in a later draft she may become a ShadowClan Mountain Cat.

Quick Water

Aside from a brief moment in Sun Trail where they give her the trait of being 'vain' and being woman 34 that Clear Sky smacks around to relieve stress in Forest Divided, she's suuuuper neglected in the main arc imo.

I haven't read past the part where they unceremoniously kill Sun Shadow in Shadowstar's Life, so I hope to revisit it before retooling Quick Water more. I hate how DOTC takes every opportunity to shit on Tall Shadow when she doesn't fucking do anything.

(Side note: it's kinda why i cant see Shadowstar as the girlboss ppl want her to be. Wind Runner is the girlboss. Canon!Tall Shadow is absolute girlfail. In BB, Tall Shadow is less girlfail but she still has the pervasive energy of... this isnt going to make sense to anyone but me BUT BB!Tall Shadow is SO girl obama to me. Well-spoken high road liberal who gets steamrolled by dirty fighters.)

So BB!Quick Water,

For one she's going to be part of a full family. It's either going to become the Water Family OR her name will change and she'll become Quick Tail.

I think she's going to become good friends with Shatter Frost, as Shadow's Clan early "conservative" types who think Clear Sky has a point.

They might end up with kittens, because DOTC is supposed to be about. Like. Ancestors. It's bizarre that they gave the Quiet Rainkin like 20 surviving descendants while everyone else dies off. Not cool actually.

In any case, I want to boost Quick's role significantly. Let her be one of Tall's key cats, either a hunter or a fighter. Something that isn't surprising when she eventually tries to toss Shadowstar out of power

Shadowstar actually survives this coup. She's one of the longer-lived founders in BB!DOTC, unlike canon where she was the first to go. Quick, meanwhile, is one of the VERY FIRST Dark Forest demons, which I can hopefully have a lot of fun with.

Fern Leaf

(CW: Canon!Slash and the racist trope he's written as that includes physical and sexual violence)

She is VERY up in the air currently, because I'm rejecting Slash as a villain completely. It was SUPER fucked up of them to make TWO stinky, born-evil native villains and then write one of them the way they did. Not only is it thematically RANCID, but it's also LAZY writing.

They have to make Slash a lustful creep so that Clear Sky looks better, because they DIDN'T WRITE A REAL REDEMPTION WHERE HE FACES ACTUAL CONSEQUENCES.

Like... I'm sorry, we understand that the way they wrote Slash is a really old trope, right?? "The natives will kidnap our women and hurt our children if we don't unite, and that's why the colonization of this land was totally cool" Warrior Cats is no stranger to xenophobia, but this time it went so far it invoked an outright racist trope.

(And then they just... totally gloss over that Star Flower is "young" compared to Clear Sky, who was less than 3 at the time, meaning she must be around the same age as the son he is actively abusing and EURGH Forest Divided makes me want to throw up)

SO.

Now that I have screamed about how ROTTEN this part is to stress WHY I need to gouge it out with a rusty spoon;

First of all, Slash has an updated name to help separate him from canon a bit. The Mountain cats call him Dashes for his leg markings, the Park cats call him The Silver Pelt for the color of his fur, his real name is Star-shine. Just "Star" in a casual context, his birth name. "Shine" is a leader suffix.

In-canon, Fern Leaf's purpose is to be abused by Slash enough that she reveals information to Gray Wing, and to contrast Beautiful Boy Clear Sky who beats the shit out of women and kids for good reasons so his abused underlings still wuv him.

So... no. Not keeping that. Lol, lmao even.

While I'm not totally against allowing Star to remain some type of harsh or even abusive towards his cats, IF that remains, I need to stress how much it is influenced by the constant stress and violence the Forest Cats are surrounded by. Harsh times don't cause abuse, but they do contribute, and even important, protective people can still abuse a victim.

Doesn't make it okay. Doesn't even make it easier to heal from. It robs you of the simplicity of it all-- being hurt by someone you desperately want to remember fondly.

Still, it's a very fine line to walk when I already have a big problem to fix here. I'm dealing with an egregiously racist trope, even if I HAVE already removed the MOST awful parts related to Canon!Slash's behavior (it's not appropriate for the tone I'm setting or something im comfortable writing).

But the physical abuse is a huge part of Fern Leaf. So, do you see my conundrum? I am confident handling the nuances of abuse, but this part of the story could use bleach.

I have a few ideas, one I'm leaning towards, but I'm still open to suggestions

Idea 1: Fern Leaf is one of Misty's kits

This was an earlier thought I'm moving away from, but it's worth mentioning. I already have Birch and Alder I'm doing this with, with Alder Claw eventually defecting from SkyClan, so adding Fern Leaf to the litter might be redundant.

In any case, Milkweed was mates with Misty. If this idea stays, Fern could be the one kitten she managed to escape with, forced to leave the other two behind. But then I wouldn't keep Fern's abuse, y'know?

(Plus Milkweed has so many kittens to pick from that I already need to shave some down. She's got like 6 in canon; I've gone over it before but a massive reason why WC's family trees are so tangled is because of "superqueens" like this. They tend to give one parent a lot of kits instead of giving a lot of parents a few kits.)

Idea 2: Fern Leaf is Star's daughter

Either with or without abuse, this is the one I'm leaning towards. It would mean she can show up a lot through the story as his ""lackey"" until Thunder and Bright learn that her and her dad are just like them.

If I nix the abuse (which seems wisest at the moment, honestly) then Fern can still be covered in her iconic scars, just from tangling with Park and Mountain cats constantly. Naturally she's at the forefront of battle patrols, she's fighting alongside her dad.

Plus, there's lots of opportunities for overhauling the dynamics from canon. Her mom didn't "abandon" them, she was probably attacked by the settlers. Star can be a good parent or just one with more complexity, instead of whatever canon was trying to do with Slash and this unrelated kid he hits.

(Re: very strange they refused to acknowledge that sometimes biodads are not worth forgiving or coddling. Interesting that Tom the Wifebeater and One Eye are sympathized with by the narrative for having kids. Curious they decided Canon!Slash of all characters would NOT be a father.)

Idea 3: Shuffle Fern into a Mountain or Park group.

AKA: prioritize the portrayal of intense physical abuse and her recovery, while avoiding tying it to the Forest cats entirely.

I feel like this one is the least interesting, but I'm keeping it on hand just in case. Like it says on the tin, she'd get any association with Slash/Star removed. I'd try to keep her developing a bond with Bright Storm though, since one of Gray Wing's... okayish moments was his interactions with Fern in trying to encourage her to leave.

(Even then, i really cant stand how the narrative concludes through Gray Wing that Slash is super evil because he doesnt feel love. And that he just decides to not tell Tall Shadow there's an evil group of cats spying on her and planning to invade because... Wisdom idk.)

If I do this, I will probably put her into WindCo. Their "homestead" system where individual families own mini-territories is a ripe situation for abuse to occur in, and the very structure of WindCo means that there's no one around to stop it or seek out for help.

Plus, maybe I could find some way for her to help out Thunder's crew as a WindCo insider. It's not a total wash, I just find Idea 2 more interesting.