#doahins

[mallowstep]

Leafpool purred, bunting against Squirrel’s head. “I’m happy you’re back,” she said, in a voice that was quiet and small. “I’m glad I’m not alone.” Squirrel purred, guilt seeping into her chest. “It’s good to see everyone,” she said. “I missed you all.”

dream of a home i’ll never see

[mallowstep]

“I want to see Greystripe. If he made it.” Brook and Squirrel exchanged a glance. It was no secret how much Stormfur missed his father, but it was unlikely he had found the Clans, considering he hadn’t made it through Tribe territory.

dream of a home i’ll never see

[mallowstep]

dohins link please???

"dream of a home i'll never see"

i made the post about it before i knew what was going on, so i don't actually know how long it will be before i update it. i'm in the process of revising the first chapter and getting ready to draft the second one, but i'm just not sure what i'm going to be working on right now.

that said, i find schedule and regularity to be helpful in times of stress and crisis, so i do want to get back to it soon. thinking in the order of weeks, not months.

<3

[mallowstep]

Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: Warriors - Erin Hunter Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Stormfur & Brook Where Small Fish Swim & Squirrelflight (Warriors), Brook Where Small Fish Swim & Squirrelflight (Warriors), Brook Where Small Fish Swim/Stormfur (Warriors), Squirrelflight & Pine That Clings to Rock (Warriors), Squirrelflight & Lark That Sings at Dawn (Warriors), Crowfeather/Leafpool (Warriors) Characters: Squirrelflight (Warriors), Stormfur (Warriors), Brook Where Small Fish Swim (Warriors), Pine That Clings to Rock (Warriors), Lark That Sings at Dawn (Warriors), Sandstorm (Warriors), Firestar (Warriors), Leafpool (Warriors), Dustpelt (Warriors) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Exile, Homecoming, Grief/Mourning, Family, Found Family, Platonic Relationships, Book Series: The New Prophecy, Canon Divergence - Book Series: The New Prophecy Series: Part 2 of homecalling Summary:

When Squirrelpaw joined the Tribe with Stormfur, she didn’t expect to see the Clans again.

But that’s not what happens.

—

Stormfur touched noses with her. “Why don’t you make the nests, and me and Squirrel can hunt?” He looked back at Squirrel, his eyes shining. “Unless you think you’ve forgotten how to hunt here…”

“Never,” Squirrel said, her voice gruff. “But I’m a Tribe cat, now. Can’t blame me for that.”

Stormfur dipped his head.

“We all are.”

—

takes place two seasons after the events of “in the company of strangers.”

tumblr exclusive: i had a really hard time deciding how to post this. i really wanted to post it in one long chapter, bt i dislike reading chapters longer than 10k (seriously, to the 100k one shot i adore, please post in multiple chapters for my sanity every time the page decides to reload), so i broke and posted it now.

[mallowstep]

I wanna hear about the PO3 au's the anon left out! skyclan, loner, po5. Im guessing loner is Crow/Leaf raising the 3 outside of the clans. I love hearing you talk about your au's!

aww thanks! okay, same plan as before, details below the cut.

skyclan po3: it's, uh, pretty on the nose. crow and leaf run to skyclan with their kits.

loner po3: this is a catch-all term for three aus with similar premises, but i don't have a clear/short title to differentiate them. one is leafcrow, one is mothpool, and one is just leafpool. i'll talk about each of them.

po5: this is my internal name for the jaywing au. this, if you don't remember (and why would you), is a bit of a parallel to the dovefeather/med cat dovewing au where jaykit and dovekit are siblings.

skyclan po3: "they move on tracks of never-ending light" (title song)

the au title for this in my notes was "whitewater," but i think i'm going to save something else for that. (if you're confused why i have two titles for all of the aus: when i make a big au, it usually gets a temporary title that's short and easy to search, but i replace it with a permanent title later. sometimes they stay the same, like ashes, but usually i change it.)

so my only notes on this is

crowfeather and leafpool make it all the way to skyclan with a trio of newborn kits.

and like yeah, that's basically all i've figured out.

uhhh i know skyclan will come to the lake sooner, obviously, and i know that jay's character arc plays out really differently because there's less ableism.

(even in the windclan au, jay is intertwined with ableism: in that case, it's "either you're the same, or you're not capable." but leafstar is a sensible leader who doesn't have that problem.)

otherwise, yeah, i don't really know where i'm going with this, other than i think it'll be fun to explore, since leafpool is firestar's daughter and named after leafstar.

loner po3: the common thread in all of these is what happens to thunderclan's medicine cat after leafpool leaves?

(tbf, that's a common question in quite a few aus. but it makes itself a central conflict in these three.)

loner po3 I: leafcrow. "on and on we run in loops"

uh, yeah. they run away, and stay away. this one isn't supposed to focus on the kits that much, but rather, leafpool's struggle with duty and desire.

i've got this:

“There’s a loner,” the kittypet said, her voice languid, claws extended, but with an air of ease, “named Leaf. She’s been helping out loners for, oh, a season or two.”

as a quote from it. it's my least favorite of the loner po3 aus.

loner po3 II: single mom leafpool. "between us, i'd trade you for them every time"

i've talked about this one actually quite a bit, but it's probably going to take me a while to write it. it's inspired by "butterflies and hurricanes," but instead of leafpool dying, crowfeather dies.

also, the chapter titles come from "marjorie" which is basically 90% of why it's going to take me a while to work on it, that song makes me cry a lot and uh, things are a lil Much right now.

i've got a few scenes sketched out, from holly running away, and leafpool panicking, to leafpool worrying about bringing her kits to thunderclan.

loner po3 III: mothpool. "to make a choice in all this mess"

this is the au competing with divided po3 for next po3 au to write, and i'm...i love it. (as a note, i won't write two aus for the same time period at the same time. that's why i was waiting to finish wfmisus before i got back on doahins. now it's all messy. but i get confused lmao.)

anyway, i have the least written for this, but i'm very excited. in my first warriors fic ever, "if you love me any, let me know it now", leafpool thinks this:

(Leafpool should have left. She should have found Mothwing and told her and left. Maybe pause to say goodbye to Squirrelflight. Mothwing would have gone with her, and things would be alright. Not like they are now, all tangled and impossible.)

and well. i'm weak.

i don't have a ton of concrete stuff to say about it, especially considering it's so high on the list, but i mean, i'm excited.

po5: "wing and feather"

alright, this is an old one. since it's also high on my list, i want to explain where it came from rather than what it's about, because that will cover what it's about in a broad sense, without tempting me to give away the details.

(also, w&f is a working title. much like "feather take flight," i may change my mind.)

anyway. i started getting into warriors with "cloudtail's daughter," an au where dovewing and ivypool are brightheart's kits.

in a post so old i had to go to my main blog to find it, i said this:

i also want him to be dovewing’s brother. but the au where brightheart gives birth to dovekit, anxiety child, and jaykit, blind, and feels like a failure despite the fact that its not like her half-blindness is genetic, is not this au. that is another au.

and the seeds were planted.

so right, i'm writing up ctd around when i'm first reading "flightless dove, poison ivy," which will go on to inspire dovefeather (med cat dovewing au, but as you'll see, dovefeather is the assigned working au name. after i decided i didn't like feather take flight, i reverted back to its initial working title, dovefeather.)

so i've got these two things rolling around in my brain.

dovefeather comes first, because i reread fdpi so many times and i just. i want dovepaw to stay in riverclan. i don't want her to leave. i want her to be happy. (also please! i'm still finishing ch 2 of fdpi no spoilers it's taking me embarassingly long to finish.)

but anyway, consider this a bonus au talk because explaining what po5 is, imo, requires me explaining what dovefeather is. like, in an au talk scenario. they're unrelated aus, from a reader perspective.

so i come up with this list of "things i want to be different in oots":

dovewing should be cloudtail's daughter

dovewing and jayfeather should be siblings

dovewing should be a medicine cat

dovewing should go to riverclan

ivypool should be the fourth cat (but i'm not revealing which aus this applies to bc big time spoilers)

and this creates a bit of an au matrix. pick and choose, you know? ctd is (1).

dovefeather is (3) and (4).

but i still wanted (2), and so it seemed pretty natural to make a (1), (2), and (3) au.

but that's a retrospective analysis, what really happens is, i get like fourteen "what ifs" deep, until i'm writing fic for my fic for someone else's fic. kind of.

dovefeather diverges pretty sharply from fdpi, especially based on what i've read of ch2. it takes the same core idea, and because my idea of riverclan was inspired by fdpi, there are plenty of similarities, but i think it's functionally very different, and superficially similar.

(also, hollowflight ends up in a completely different trio lmao dovepaw hangs out with rushpaw, troutpaw, and mossypaw.)

but anyway, i'm trying not to write another au of the same time period, but i just finished writing out the full outline for ashes, and the next chapter (i.e., ch 12, which i'm hopefully posting today if all goes well) gets me thinking, and i can't let it go: i want (2) to happen.

so i look at my outline for dovefeather, because the rule is, it has to be very different from this.

since dovefeather is like 70% drafted (altho that number seems low, because i suspect i'm going to end up adding a lot into the fourth chapter), i now know that was never going to be an issue, but at the time, i was very worried.

so i was like! well, that means i'm going to fuck with every part of po3, and we're going to get ivypaw and hollypaw roped in, and jaypaw is always going to be a warrior, and i think i made squilf his mentor? or maybe sandstorm lmao.

either way, it ended up being defined by jaypaw, which i didn't initially plan on. but that's po5: squilf's litter lionkit, hollykit, ivykit & brightheart's litter dovekit and jaykit grow up together.

it's got a similar vibe to ashes IMO.

okay wow that ended up being a lot i've been hyperfocusing on dovefeather all weekend, and in my head, it's inextricably linked to ashes, ctd, and jaywing/po5, so uh. yeah.

hope this was what you were looking for?

<3

[mallowstep]

quick update on where i’m at

alright three edits is my limit, so another post for what's going on in my life.

family/personal crisis, i'm fine, just not capable of sticking to my previous plan, etc.

it's been a few days, and here's what i'm feeling, as far as existing projects go:

wfmisus and mtbnsof just have to be put on hold. both of them deal with themes i don't feel like writing about right now, and both of them deserve me at my best.

ibtwicm is fine, i just need to give myself time to work on each chapter. so we're taking this wednesday off, and we may be moving onto a biweekly schedule, depending on how i'm feeling.

stolag is also fine, but it's going to take me a few weeks to get back on track. once i get going, i should be able to resume weekly sunday pain nights.

ashes will be fine, i just need to keep writing. it'll probably be the first to start posting again, depending on how i feel today, tomorrow, and monday.

this is mostly the same as where i was last time, but it's an update. requests and asks are still open, although i have no timeline for how fast/slow requests will happen. details for the future under the cut.

okay, here's what i'm working on:

dovewing medicine cat au. it's fun. it feels good. it's got a 20k word chapter. i don't know what me finishing this will look like, but i know i want to. and the first part is pretty close to done. so...shrug? maybe mid-june? we'll see.

i still want to pick another po3 au, once i finish ashes, but jury is out on which i'll choose.

doahins is coming back on. i'm going to post revisions for the first chapter...hopefully soon? and then i'll add the second chapter. i think i'm going to try to do those at the same time.

hopefully, by july or so, maybe earlier, i'll feel ready to add wfmisus and mtbnsof back in. i really miss them, but they're not going to get the attention they deserve right now, so i'm just meeting myself where i'm at. mtbnsof will likely be first, wfmisus might take longer. who knows.

<3

[mallowstep]

I'm dealing with personal/family stuff right now, so all bets are off for any plans I have.

I have some posts in the queue with schedules and plans — I don't know when they'll be more certain. I certainly plan on continuing to post, but I don't know how often and I don't know what.

We're still mostly business as usual: asks are open, and I hope to post at the least ibtwicm, but stolag will probably be on hold for a while. Everything else is...I'm not sure.

<3

EDIT 1: I'm taking at least a week off from everything that posts weekly to give myself a chance to breath and longer to write. I usually have a very quick turnaround time (for wind, e.g., about two days to outline, draft, and do my round of edits), and I just can't right now.

I'm prob going to work on some one shots? Idk.

EDIT 2: I’m going to be working on things that excite me the most (e.g., med cat dovewing au, etc.) for a while. Other projects are put on hold for various reasons, and I’ll be slowly adding them back in as I feel ready.

Thank you for your patience.

EDIT 3: also, not that I think this will become an issue, but we're in no discourse mode.

Please save any controversies, corrections, and criticisms for a later time. (Specifically, do not start shit about my comfort characters.)

No one has ever started shit with me, but I'm trying to cover my bases bc usually I'm open for like discussion about Squilf/Dovewing/etc but not right now. Comfort only.

Thoughts on a schedule below the cut:

all of this is subject to change, but...

may 27 to june 3 (a week?): probably nothing

wednesdays june 9+: ibtwicm

mondays june 14+: ashes

sundays june 20+: stolag

starting wfmisus and mtbsnof will be harder, for reasons related to their content/what i’m up for. maybe i’ll start them after that, i don’t know. i just know that i can’t finish wfmisus right now. mtbnsof will be easier, but i still don’t know when.

with that in mind, here’s what else i’ll be working on this summer. obviously my big plans are a little shot, and i don’t know when i’ll be up for them again.

dovefeather: this is about 50% written. roughly. it’s hard to tell, i’m trying to get it outlined. i do, however, have mad inspiration to write this, so out of everything, i should be able to get on it sooner. no hard dates, just...it feels good

doahins: again, i don’t have hard dates, i just want to write this.

probably another po3 au. i have a lot, and starting one will feel good. i’ll wait to finish ashes tho.

[mallowstep]

interstitial: hiatus announcement, blog update, mystery projects

from monday, april 19th, to may 1st, i'll be on hiatus.

exactly what that means is i'm not sure. i'll likely update, but no promises.

other blog news/updates below the cut

okay, to start with the fun stuff:

mystery projects

in this lovely month of may, i'll be doing windclan appreciation. the two major projects are...

i'll believe the wind is calling me (not the time i changed a title within twelve hours of posting, a different one.) feat. cinderpaw, deadfoot, and the old forest. i'm very excited about this one. so far it's looking to be pretty long, but i'm hoping i'll be able to finish it during hiatus and then edit the chapters before posting. because otherwise this is going on a very delayed posting schedule.

the only thing as holy as my love must be you feat. crowfeather, squirrelflight, and the three. (it's not a squirrelcrow au sorry i just realized that could be misleading.) anyway, this one is probably not going to post super often because of other demands, but i am excited for it. you may remember what it's about if you have a freakishly good memory.

other annoucements

i've decided after winds of change, i'm going to be doing a disabled character focus. that lets me finish ashes, i'll believe the wind is calling me, and waiting for me in some unholy sunlight, while also working on/posting dovefeather (med cat dovewing au). this was previously canon divergence stuff, but i almost exclusively write canon divergence anyway.

i'm pretty happy with this/looking forward to it so i don't see it changing.

also, dream of a home i'll never see is on indefinite hiatus. i wrote a post explaining this somewhere, but i'm just going to be upfront, i don't like the first chapter and until i can figure out why and how to fix it, i don't feel comfortable posting chapter two.

it's frustrating because i am excited for chapter two, but i just...there's some stuff i can put my finger on (the reunion scene is all wrong, for one), but there's a deeper, underlying issue i can't pin down. i try hard not to let this happen, but doahins escaped my notice.

ao3 updates

aka the self indulgent section where i list the top 5 fics

ashes remains most read, and it's second overall. which is pretty impressive. i don't think it's going to ever beat my drarry long one-shot, because, uh, that's very popular, but it's closer than i ever thought. so thank you guys.

ashes tops all the charts, but in second place...

better left unsaid still has the most kudos. its companion piece, "ilex aquifolium" (which i can now spell from memory) is also doing insanely well. both of these are two of my favorite pieces, so i'm glad y'all agree.

waiting for me in some unholy sunlight is also doing well. i'm glad, it's got a soft spot in my heart. the chapter updates are slow (at least, compared to ashes), but i'm quite fond of it.

may there be no sadness of farewell is nearly tied with ashes for bookmarks, which is frankly impressive. i'm working on the next chapter for that but lord knows when it'll be out. probably not today, i want to post the next chapter of ashes so everyone can lose their head again.

dream of a home i'll never see is subscribed to and frankly given i'm not sure when i'll be updating it again, i recommend subscribing to it if you like the squirrel that leaps into flight au.

general updates

okay, the twice a day thing worked for me over april break, but i'll be going back down to once daily updates starting in may. when my semester is over, i'll consider upping it, but don't hold your breath.

also, as far as ongoing projects go...

ashes it's physically impossible for me not to work on this, so i'm sure i'll continue to update. but it might get demoted down to weekly updates until june. we'll see.

waiting for me in some unholy sunlight in a good place right now, so probably won't see an update for a while.

may there be no sadness of farewell shrug? i'm not sure. it's got the longest chapters out of anything on-going (although once i start posting ibtwicm, it's going to lose that honor, because that has 3-4k chapters), so it takes the longest to write, and i also take it the most seriously. squils is important to me, i want to do right by her.

five clans alike in dignity will continue to update, albeit, in a somewhat slower fashion. i've got three+ works for this nearly or almost done. but they'll get posted here, to tumblr, first.

the elders' den i'm workign on it. we'll see.

vanishing point i'm not sure when i'll next be adding to this, but there are two more fics for it — a jay piece and a lion piece — so i will be adding to it.

here is the deepest secret shrug? we'll see

alright, that's all! y'all are wonderful, see you in two weeks.

<3

[mallowstep]

“I think we should see ThunderClan,” Squirrel said. “I want to see my family again.” “We’re your family.” “I know, Lark. But I left family behind in ThunderClan.” She had already explained this to them, but the kits didn’t quite seem to understand that Squirrel was born into the Clans, same as Stormfur.

da capo al segno (dream of a home i’ll never see, ch. 1)

[mallowstep]

i feel like i've gotten a handle on doahins, so if you were waiting for that, the indefinite hiatus is still indefinite, but i feel like i can start on edits, so i can cap the hiatus at 6 months to a year, although it's likely to be less.

like i said, i'm excited for chapter two — chapter one is barely anything compared to the rest

[mallowstep]

dream of a home i’ll never see

is on indefinite hiatus.

i'm sorry, i hate doing this, but the first chapter just...does not feel good. it was fine, and then i read it like four days later, and i'm just unhappy with it.

i do really want to finish it because i'm excited to finish the au, but right now, i need to sit w "da capo al sengo" until i figure out why it's not working right for me, and i can't do that if there's any update coming in the future

this isn't a popular fic so i don't think many people will mind, but i wanted to annouce it anyway

[mallowstep]

looking to the future

seems like an appropriate time for an update.

(or, if you're new, a posting schedule)

first things first, i'm doing better than i was a week ago. that's good.

i'm still staying on the delayed schedule, as much as it pains me. but i think it's better, in the end.

anyway.

this is going to be more streamlined than the first, but here's what my plan looks like. i've included start posting dates looking at a calendar this time.

mondays — ashes

wednesdays — requests, alternating with chapters of "i'll believe the wind is calling me"

fridays — may there be no sadness of farewell (june 25)

sundays — saccharine tithes of love and glory (june 19)

after i finish each project...

the next po3 au will be on mondays. (and after that, an oots au.) mondays will probably remain my day for the fics with the highest chapter count. i'm still undecided to next po3 au, but i'm working on a squilf one-shot that starts off a potential au, so probably something with that. we'll see. the mothpool au is...very tempting.

doahins will be a "mini" project after i finish ibtwicm, and then wednesdays will probably be a dedicated requests/one-shots night. who knows, though! something could pop up.

after i finish mtbnsof, i'll pick up with the last two chapters of wfmisus, and then friday's slot will be open for...who knows, honestly. i don't like planning too far ahead because i never know what will crop up in the meantime. but let's say, if nothing else comes up, i'm going to probably use it for lore.

and after i finish stolag, "i'll come back to you someday soon myself" will be sundays. since there's the longest posting gap (friday to sunday), i'm going to put projects with longer segments here.

anyway. i've decided i'm going to try to keep it so i don't have overlapping aus, which means (because i'm bad at math) i can't super predict for certain what the next project will be, but that's what things look like.

love y'all! just figured now that things are on track again, i'd make an updated pinned post.