I'm Brownie (he/they) and this is my warriors Fanclan blog!
Everything on this blog is original content; mostly warriors FanClan worldbuilding, but some Clangen and miscellaneous projects too. I'm mostly a writer, but I dabble in art sometimes
✉️ My askbox is always open!! (now including anon!)
🔁 This blog is reblog friendly!
❤️ This blog is like-spam friendly!
@brownieee-reblogs <- where I reblog other people's cool stuff.
I also host warriors-themed forum-style games on tumblr! Links to those sideblogs are below~
Big Projects
I am currently hosting ScrubClan Daily, a Clangen blog that updates every evening with a new moon!
I also host @1000-years-of-bayclangen, a Clangen challenge where, you guessed it, I'm trying to reach 1000 years (12,000 moons!) fully annotated. Come join me on my journey and my struggle <3
My biggest project ever is the Clans of the Granite Circle (which I made a short overview post for tumblr) that has 10 Clans, three Orders, and currently well over 600 characters. Most of my doodles are cats from that project. the #granite circle tag should hold everything
Elementsign / Guildlands info post. A fantasy sandbox world where I can play with sparklecats and cats made of clouds.
(Currently I'm playing around with BloodClan (no connection to canon BloodClan), another edgy sparklecat setting. I just really, really like Sparklecats. And magic. It's not an addiction, it's a hobby)
Game sideblogs!!
@brownie-gives-cats where I make free warrior cat OCs for anyone who shoots me an ask! I am ADDICTED to making characters so please indulge my obsession and stop on by.
@brownie-rates-names where I rate your warrior names on a scale 1-10. Try to get a high score!
I also animate Clangen sprites on request! Want something of your own? Details here! The request box for animated sprites is currently : CLOSED
I altered bubbles sprite to give bubble more munchkin proportions. I'll have to do a scaled side-by-side of her and Duck/Tern eventually; she's only 6" at the shoulder while her daughters are both 10". Short legged queen <3
Follow along year-by-year with the #Bayclanmoon tag or the [chrono link]
Want to catch up more quickly? Every 10 years I post a summary of only the most important events under #Bayclanhighlight or the [chrono link]
Fanart is archived under the #Bayclanart tag.
All BayClan's cats are archived in the spreadsheet. If you're looking for family trees, cat sprites, or birth/death dates, that's the best place to find them!
Other Cool tags:
#Bayclancat
#Bayclanask
#Bayclanlore
#Bayclanmeme
Yall it's OVER. this stupid file is giving me such a juicy PLOT I can't EVEN.
Me: let's do a little Clangen story. Fast, fun, real casual like.
Clangen: okay so moon one's patrol (fully random btw) is going to be the outsider mate one, right. And Coral is immediately going to bring back a boyfriend--you still with me?--that has curly ears and is the same age as another cat in his former Clan, who also has curly ears. You get where this is going right?
Me: nononono
I couldn't even run a single moon without gaining another cat!! And he like, perfectly matches to have been littermates with a cat from his former Clan, a cat that didn't believe Coral died and managed to find him.
Seriously??? Seriously game??? Well there goes any hope of this being a quick and casual run, because this smells like a hella spicy plot and I'm not gonna refuse a good plot dropped right into my lap.
Clangen wins.
I guess I'm learning how to make a fucking webcomic now.
Coral collapsed onto the sand. The straight between BiteClan's island and the Cursed Island seemed so narrow in a canoe. Certainly, Pintailclaw liked to speculate that BiteClan would be the next to fall, if the corruption ever managed to jump to a different island, that unlike SilentClan or BubblingClan, BiteClan's jutting peninsula was basically touching the Cursed Island's sandbars.
After swimming the distance, Coral concluded that they were plenty far apart.
For all he was determined to do this, a small part of him--the part that still believed in kit-tales, the part that whispered: "certainly something must be wrong here, if every Clan believes it's Cursed"--flinched away, holding its breath in terror of some sudden and inescapable doom.
Moonlight glittered down, casting his orange pelt in edges of silver.
Distantly, a night-heron called, a sharp Quak that echoed over the still ocean straight, the sound hollow by the time it reached Coral's ears.
A breeze swept across the beach, hissing as it catches the sand. A few dull grains smacked against Coral's muzzle.
He stood, more sand falling from his fur in a shower of plink-plink-plink. The dark water-stains beneath him might linger until morning, but not long after. Besides, no Clan canoe would dare come close enough to the Cursed Island's shore to notice such a small, faded smear; even if they did, it would not bear investigating.
Coral didn't look back--he pushed into the leaves (the darkness hid their true nature; they almost looked healthy under the moon's glow), and hid his bright ginger fur behind a low dune. He needed to take what rest he could get; tomorrow was going to be a long day.
Morning came hesitantly, as if it wasn't sure it was safe to shine here. The canopy was thin and sickly, but somehow the sparse branches cast even darker shadows than BiteClan's lush forests. A gloom hung about the place.
Or maybe that was just the fog.
Coral could barely see a dozen tail-lengths in front of him. Scraggly bushes faded into a haze until they lingered like ghosts; the ocean, across a thin high-tide beach, was invisible to his eyes, only detectable by the rhythmic sound of breaking waves.
Coral shivered. He'd never felt a cold like this before, a chill that seeped into his bones and settled here, wrapping around his heart and lungs until he quaked with every breath.
He really, really hoped the curse of pestilence hadn't already gripped him in its piercing claws.
A few stretches had his blood moving, enough that he thought his eyes were clearer, his reflexes not quite so sluggish. Or maybe the fog had burned off a little? His stomach rumbled, setting his priorities straight.
Right, Curses aside, Coral had to fill his mundane needs first: food, water, shelter. Preferably in that order.
He wanted desperately to retreat to the beaches--away from the fog, to a place that felt more familiar, safe--but the whole point about faking one's own death wasn't to be immediately caught out by the next dawn patrol, and so Coral's paws were forced deeper into the Cursed forest in search of prey.
While Coral could be decisive, he could also be patient. An excellent hunter knows both are key: a slow approach, a lightning strike. And so he didn't rush through the fog that obscured unknown hazards; he didn't push to explore or cover ground.
He lingered in promising patches of shadow. He watched and listened and observed.
His patience was rewarded: in a hollow of brackish water, surrounded by a tumble of slime-slick rocks, hidden beneath a slick layer of scum and protected by an arch of decaying roots, was a catfish burrow.
If Coral was any bit less desperate, he might pass this one up. Sticking ones paws into an unknown dark hole--especially without being familiar with the water, or having a good place to land a catch, or without another cat to help pull you out if you snagged more than you bargained for--was the height of folly, after all. But Coral would not be here (here, on the Cursed Island; here, away from BiteClan; here, alone) if he didn't have a little burning ball of recklessness simmering in his gut, coaxing him into bad choices, and so when his stomach rumbled again, as if on cue, Coral made his choice.
He was a capable warrior, a great hunter, and was determined to see this through. He would not survive here without taking a few calculated risks.
And he made sure this was a calculated risk. He examined the environment as best he could; he made an escape plan, in case the murky, scum-veiled pool hid unexpected dangers; he grabbed a thick, sturdy stick (and at least there was plenty of wood littering the ground, a veritable feast of dead trees and deader logs to choose from), and maneuvered it into the pool, shoving the end deep into the thick mud at the bottom until it hardly moved when he bounced his weight on it. Hopefully it would provide him leverage if he needed it, as the slick rocks and thick mud certainly would not.
All this preparation took time, giving Coral plenty of opportunities to abandon this endeavor if it seemed even the slightest bit too risky. But when he'd finished, he'd only steeled his determination, stuck it into the water just as he did that stick.
He climbed down slowly, carefully. The brackish water was cold; the muddy bottom just as unstable as he thought it would be. His white-tipped paws haven't been white since he woke, but now they were black to the hock with acrid anaerobic sludge that clung to his fur like it wanted to be a part of him. For a few moments, Coral stood there, still and silent, but the pool seemed to be as empty as his stomach.
Coral didn't give himself time to doubt himself. He took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and dove. He didn't dare open his eyes, blindly groping forward until his paws found the decaying roots and ducked underneath, reaching, grasping, until--
The catfish's bite nearly knocked the wind from his lungs, and it was only with great discipline that Coral kept a level head, his hind legs questing for the stick... there. He latched his legs on as tightly as he could, inching and pulling, using his shoulders and legs and spine to slowly, slowly, tug the fish free. It was like trying to stroke a snake's scales backward, or swim against the current. Every whisker was won with great effort, and any slip of his paws cost him long seconds of progress.
But as Coral's lungs grew as empty as his stomach, leaving him hollow and shaking, he finally felt the resistance give way and he shoved to the surface, gasping, the slippery catfish clenched tightly between his claws.
It was just as painful as he imagined to get it to shore, and he nearly slipped on the slimy rocks more than once, but with the help of his trusty stick, Coral managed, fighting with the fish until he could throw it into a pile of leaves and collapse beside it, panting.
He caught his breath, shivering in the chilly fog, dripping with water and mud and slime and sludge, and finally had the chance to examine his prize. The catfish certainly looked different from the ones he'd caught in BiteClan's marshes, but it wasn't particularly scrawny, nor did it look diseased, and it certainly wasn't mutated like some of the elder's stories said the creatures of the Cursed Island were: no extra eyes, or fins, or venomous ooze, at least as far as Coral could tell.
No, the catfish was slick, black with a faint lighter diamond pattern down its spine, with paler fins and a wide, gaping mouth that was free of fangs--and thank StarClan for that. It wasn't even particularly small or scrawny; Coral wouldn't be able to eat it all today, that was for sure. He wished he could smoke it, but that would take more than an afternoon to set up. At least there was plenty of salt around.
Coral pulled himself upright with a groan. He finished off his kill, flicking his ears to the sky as he thanked StarClan for the meal. He wasn't sure StarClan was watching--all the stories said they'd abandoned the Cursed Island, cut this star out of the constellation that was the archipelago--but he made sure to finish the prayer regardless.
It didn't hurt to err on the side of caution, just in case. This would be hard enough without turning the stars against him too.
Five islands. Five Clans. They lived in harmony for generations, staying within their borders and existing peacefully. Then, seemingly overnight, TideClan disappears. Two dozen cats, gone without a trace. Their island, once lush with life and growth, becomes cursed: herbs wither, prey is scrawny and rotting, and any cat that steps paw on their cursed beaches falls mysteriously ill within days.
Generations more pass. The isle is no longer remembered as TideClan's homeland, but the Cursed Island: a forbidden place where even the most daring warrior would never set paw. It is a thing of ghost stories, a warning, a lurking beast.
Then: a single patch of spider lilies, red as blood, blooms along the edge of the withered forests. Most cats see it as a bad omen, flicking their ears to StarClan every time they pass that haunted beach, praying the pestilence doesn't attach to their canoes and keeping far, far away.
But Coralbranch, he thinks this might be a sign of something more.
Because if one flower can survive on the Cursed Island's shores... then what else might be hiding deeper within?
A young, confident cat with everything to prove, Coralbranch only had his warrior name for a few short days before discarding it entirely, running away from BiteClan to chase a new destiny: one where the fifth island is restored to its former glory, a fifth Clan put in place to restore order and balance to the whole archipelago.
He doesn't take one of BiteClan's canoes--he'd be too easy to track, too easy to find. No, he'll have to craft his own, bend the Cursed wood to his own paws, prove to every cat that it can me tamed. Coral slips off in the dead of night, leads his pawprints to a dangerous shore. He hopes Erminemoon assumes he drowned. It would be kinder.
He doesn't swim out into the current, but slips into mirror-quiet water and edges along the shore, the ocean smudging his pawprints away as soon as he takes them, his scent erased by the saltwater and moonlight. It's slow; he moves quietly, silently, circling around BiteClan's beaches until he reaches the tip of the peninsula that reaches out towards the Cursed Island.
Coral takes one last look at BiteClan's familiar shores, towards the tall trees at the center of the islands where Erminemoon and Spiderstripe and Lilacwave still sleep. He whispers a silent farewell.
And then he sets his eyes on a different shore, slips into the ocean, and swims.
Hello! Brownie here with a short and sweet (hopefully) annotated Clangen challenge run. A very early version of Cruel Season is on the Clangen development branch, and ever since I saw the challenge cards I knew I needed to playtest some of the new features!
I have no set goals or win condition for this challenge; I simply want to explore the game with higher difficulty settings and see how things go. Hence this slapdash post on my main blog instead of like, making a separate sideblog for it. Maybe it'll get to the point I'll need one. We'll see how things go, how long the moons get, and how I want to format this. Who knows, maybe this will be the project that will finally convince me to try making a comic.
A few meta settings to get out of the way:
As per my preference, I'm using the genemod mod for the multi-Clan features and configurability. And because I like the more realistic cat sprites.
Cruel Season automatically makes the game more difficult: patrols have a higher chance of failure (especially if you don't have a cat with a relevant skill), prey and herbs are rarer, injuries and illnesses are more common on moonskip and take more herbs to treat.
Additionally, Cruel Season has the Challenge Cards system, which allows you to pile on additional difficulty modifiers on top of this. Naturally, I have all of them toggled.
All Clans and Outsiders are permanently set as "hostile". Wars will be more common, patrols more dangerous, and loners more likely to fight us than join the Clan.
All cats will require more prey per cat, and feeding is locked at experienced first. Only the strongest can survive here.
StarClan has forsaken us. A cat may take the mantle of leader in name, but they will not receive any extra lives with their title.
This land is plague-ridden. Even healers can't stop the spread of disease and pests.
Our stockpiles start barren. Coral didn't bring any prey with him, after all.
And perhaps most importantly, the Lone Steps card: the Clan begins with only one member.
Will Coral be able to survive on this Cursed Island? Will he manage to revive TideClan? Or will the island simply claim yet another victim?
Yall this was supposed to be a small side project. it was supposed to be like:
Moon 0 - Coral caught a small, scrawny mouse
Moon 1 - he explores the Island and comes across remnants of a decaying canoe
Moon 2 - Coral builds a fire pit
But no!!! The writing bug ate me alive last night and moon 0 is over 1k words of prose and it's not even finished!! AHHH
Five islands. Five Clans. They lived in harmony for generations, staying within their borders and existing peacefully. Then, seemingly overnight, TideClan disappears. Two dozen cats, gone without a trace. Their island, once lush with life and growth, becomes cursed: herbs wither, prey is scrawny and rotting, and any cat that steps paw on their cursed beaches falls mysteriously ill within days.
Generations more pass. The isle is no longer remembered as TideClan's homeland, but the Cursed Island: a forbidden place where even the most daring warrior would never set paw. It is a thing of ghost stories, a warning, a lurking beast.
Then: a single patch of spider lilies, red as blood, blooms along the edge of the withered forests. Most cats see it as a bad omen, flicking their ears to StarClan every time they pass that haunted beach, praying the pestilence doesn't attach to their canoes and keeping far, far away.
But Coralbranch, he thinks this might be a sign of something more.
Because if one flower can survive on the Cursed Island's shores... then what else might be hiding deeper within?
A young, confident cat with everything to prove, Coralbranch only had his warrior name for a few short days before discarding it entirely, running away from BiteClan to chase a new destiny: one where the fifth island is restored to its former glory, a fifth Clan put in place to restore order and balance to the whole archipelago.
He doesn't take one of BiteClan's canoes--he'd be too easy to track, too easy to find. No, he'll have to craft his own, bend the Cursed wood to his own paws, prove to every cat that it can me tamed. Coral slips off in the dead of night, leads his pawprints to a dangerous shore. He hopes Erminemoon assumes he drowned. It would be kinder.
He doesn't swim out into the current, but slips into mirror-quiet water and edges along the shore, the ocean smudging his pawprints away as soon as he takes them, his scent erased by the saltwater and moonlight. It's slow; he moves quietly, silently, circling around BiteClan's beaches until he reaches the tip of the peninsula that reaches out towards the Cursed Island.
Coral takes one last look at BiteClan's familiar shores, towards the tall trees at the center of the islands where Erminemoon and Spiderstripe and Lilacwave still sleep. He whispers a silent farewell.
And then he sets his eyes on a different shore, slips into the ocean, and swims.
Hello! Brownie here with a short and sweet (hopefully) annotated Clangen challenge run. A very early version of Cruel Season is on the Clangen development branch, and ever since I saw the challenge cards I knew I needed to playtest some of the new features!
I have no set goals or win condition for this challenge; I simply want to explore the game with higher difficulty settings and see how things go. Hence this slapdash post on my main blog instead of like, making a separate sideblog for it. Maybe it'll get to the point I'll need one. We'll see how things go, how long the moons get, and how I want to format this. Who knows, maybe this will be the project that will finally convince me to try making a comic.
A few meta settings to get out of the way:
As per my preference, I'm using the genemod mod for the multi-Clan features and configurability. And because I like the more realistic cat sprites.
Cruel Season automatically makes the game more difficult: patrols have a higher chance of failure (especially if you don't have a cat with a relevant skill), prey and herbs are rarer, injuries and illnesses are more common on moonskip and take more herbs to treat.
Additionally, Cruel Season has the Challenge Cards system, which allows you to pile on additional difficulty modifiers on top of this. Naturally, I have all of them toggled.
All Clans and Outsiders are permanently set as "hostile". Wars will be more common, patrols more dangerous, and loners more likely to fight us than join the Clan.
All cats will require more prey per cat, and feeding is locked at experienced first. Only the strongest can survive here.
StarClan has forsaken us. A cat may take the mantle of leader in name, but they will not receive any extra lives with their title.
This land is plague-ridden. Even healers can't stop the spread of disease and pests.
Our stockpiles start barren. Coral didn't bring any prey with him, after all.
And perhaps most importantly, the Lone Steps card: the Clan begins with only one member.
Will Coral be able to survive on this Cursed Island? Will he manage to revive TideClan? Or will the island simply claim yet another victim?
The rainy season comes with a vengeance, washing the scrublands of any last signs of war. Wounds heal, cats pick themselves back up, determined to make their loved ones in StarClan smile with their success.
StarClan must be smiling back, as ScrubClan is blessed with plenty of prey. Their prey pile dipped low after such a long, troubling period, but all four apprentices pick up hunting quickly, and after several hunting patrols each, the fresh-kill pile is fit to burst. (Tortrixpaw and Toadpaw work together to take down a massive rabbit, and they won't let their mentors carry it back for them; they learn to walk in step so they can carry it home between them).
Glorypounce has never really struggled with allergies before, but this moon is brutal for her and she can't stop sneezing. She spends even more time in the healer's den with a runny nose, miserable. Spittlebugspeck warns her that some allergies develop later in life, and that Glorypounce might always have seasonal allergies around the monsoon season every year. Glorypounce almost wishes its an early sign of whitecough instead.
Thistlegaze seems to have his paw in everything now: from training Dragonflypaw, hanging out with Cypresstooth, chatting with Thymebush to make sure the elders have everything they need, helping Fireleaf renovate the nursery, and double checking that Pikeshell is okay on border patrols now. Patchbat invites him out to a short race, just around camp, and though he's tired, he obliges her. After all, it'll be good to have fun after doing so much work.
She wins, easily. He finishes the race, though is a bit wobbly at the end, far more tired than the simple exercise should have left him. Patchbat, worried, brings him to the healer's den, where Spittlebugspeck diagnoses him with heat exhaustion.
"Sleep it off," Spittlebugspeck snaps. "Use the nursery, or something. It's cool there." Thistlegaze doesn't argue that the healer's den, also underground, is a better place to rest. It would not be restful here, with Spittlebugspeck glaring at him.
At the Gathering...
Pikeshell shares some tracking tips with Lynxfeather, who after last moon's scare, is taking Tarantulapaw's training a lot more seriously. Patchbat bumps into Kestrelspot, and while she apologizes, Kestrelspot doesn't accept it and stalks off with a hiss. Ringletsplash pulls Spittlebugspeck off to the side of the Gathering and speaks with him quietly; he returns to the other healers with a sour look on his face (well, more sour than usual), and roughly changes the topic when Tickpatch asks about it.
In HoundClan...
Emeralddew catches Lynxfeather up late at night, training by himself in a secluded corner of camp. The former loner has always been a decent fighter, but he's always fought alone. He's worried that his strategies aren't proper outside a one-on-one. Emeralddew rolls her eyes and shoves his shoulder. She'll teach him HoundClan's battle strategies, and if he ever wants her help training Tarantulapaw, he just needs to ask.
"Even Ptarmiganstar recruits warriors to help with battle training apprentices," Emeralddew explains. "That's not something any mentor should do alone, even if they do know all of HoundClan's signs and tactics."
In BoulderClan...
On a border patrol, Ringletsplash smells a familiar scent: tar and sagebrush. The rogues. He tracks it to a small molly, orange with a splash of grey on her chest and chin, whom he recognizes from the fight. She has a limp, and a bad wound on her shoulder that looks to be infected. He doesn't give her any chance to explain, and the fight is hardly fair. Ringletsplash kills her and kicks her body off the hillside. Good riddance.
Tasselkit and Dogwoodkit get into trouble after their roughhousing in puddles ends up splashing one too many warriors in the face. Amazaquitldrop ends up stuck in the healer's den with heat exhaustion after volunteering to finish a border patrol by herself so her patrolmates could rest.
I found you via your awesome fanfiction of DuskClan and DawnClan. I saw it's a work inspired by your Clangen playtrhough and I would love to know how you accomplished this as I would love to try it out myself!
Thank you in advance for your help!
Yo!! I wish I could tell you there's a magic formula for making Clangen stories but uh... there's really not. I made the Caverns by sitting down and writing it. It doesn't magically appear; the game doesn't magically tell me what the characters are thinking, or how they react. It doesn't make the world or the monsters. That's all me, sitting silently on my bed, thinking about it for hours or sometimes days before the right idea fits into place. Then more hours of writing until the words fit the ideas, and more hours of editing to make it art.
You gotta figure out what kind of story you want to tell and how loyal you want to be to Clangen's rng (Dawn/Dusk is very loose; my other project ScrubClan sticks very tightly to Clangen's rolls. Both are rewarding and challenging in different ways).
Honestly the best part of writing a story based on Clangen in any capacity is the slight framework it lends you. Even if you only gen the cats, spam moons, and take no notes besides personality traits and births and deaths, you'll have plenty of drama to weave a story around.
With the Caverns, I simply play the moons out, and anything that I think would make a good scene or character moment, I make a note of. Rarely, there are events I know are important, but I don't have immediate ideas for; those tend to take longer to cook, but in my experience, the harder I have to work for a scene, the better the end result usually turns out.
But seriously: there is nothing I can say that can help you write a Clangen story more than simply... starting one yourself. Gen a Clan, write a few scenes, see what works for you and what doesn't. Experience is by far the best teacher. Just be creative with it: the more of your own spice you put into it, the better the characters and plots will be. You never have to share it if you don't want to.
You don't have to go crazy with it either; you can start by simply writing a scene of something that happens directly in the game. A patrol, a relationship event, an event. Get into the characters' heads. Why did they do what they did? How would they react? How did this make them feel? Overarching storylines can come later, or never. You can play many moons in advance so you can plan your character arcs, or you can figure it out moon to moon. Just do it, and have fun with it, and everything else follows.
Adderdawn is an idiot, but he's my idiot //squishes him// Him and Flurrydusk are like... stereotypical buddy cops in a cop show. They absolutely share the same singular braincell. Literally one of their favorite activities is poking a bear and trying to get away before it can eat them. They get into so many hijinks off camera.
Also Timberdip and Spittlebugspeck both have the worst bedside manners but in like, completely opposite ways. Spittlebugspeck just cusses you out; Timberdip is a mad scientist who will graphically tell you exactly how your body can be or has been broken. He gives you the exact percent chance you have of dying and thinks this is totally a normal thing to do. At least he has Cherryvalley to help correct him when he's going too far.
Adderdawn is an idiot, but he's my idiot //squishes him// Him and Flurrydusk are like... stereotypical buddy cops in a cop show. They absolutely share the same singular braincell. Literally one of their favorite activities is poking a bear and trying to get away before it can eat them. They get into so many hijinks off camera.
Also Timberdip and Spittlebugspeck both have the worst bedside manners but in like, completely opposite ways. Spittlebugspeck just cusses you out; Timberdip is a mad scientist who will graphically tell you exactly how your body can be or has been broken. He gives you the exact percent chance you have of dying and thinks this is totally a normal thing to do. At least he has Cherryvalley to help correct him when he's going too far.
I was thinking of the Caverns yeah! I was wondering where it had gone, i quite liked reading it! Guess i gotta follow the ao3 now!
Oh nuts!! I honestly didn't expect anyone to remember its short stint on tumblr, and I didn't want you to worry if it was a different blog entirely.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! The moon I just released is by far my favorite of all the ones I have written so far, so I'm really glad to finally be sharing it <3
(And rest assured that it won't be moving again. I don't remove anything from my Ao3; it's a true archive of my works)
did dawnclan-duskclan move off of tumblr and to ao3 only?
(I don't know if you're thinking of the same Dawn/Dusk? There's another active Clangen blog with a similar blog name, and as far as I know, it's still active. That one is a comic, I believe?)
But if you are referring to the sideblog I tried to start for the Caverns well over a year ago now... then yeah, I took that down a long time ago and moved the updates to Ao3. I realized it wasn't really feasible for me to keep up with the blog, not if I wanted to keep up the quality of content that I feel the Caverns deserves.
Maybe if I had a huge backlog, but I don't think it's very fair to run a blog that only has major updates twice a year at best. Especially because people can still send me asks/interact with the story on my main blog if they want to! Or comment on Ao3.
Honestly, Ao3 is just a better home for a written work in general, tumblr is optimized for comics/art heavy content. Blogs focused on writing are much harder to get off the ground, and usually require some sort of art as a chapter cover to even get picked up by tumblr's algorithm, which adds pressure that I didn't really have the energy/willpower to keep up with.
And I know I don't have to play the algo game, nor do numbers matter... but when I was running the Caverns blog, I posted 2x updates a week for three months on a queue, with scattered engagement posts, art, and extras... and only managed to accrue... like ten followers. Which is fine! it's a very niche concept, and I am acutely aware that written stories are far harder to get people interested in.
But I put a LOT of time into that blog (formatting, assets, extra art, trying to make engaging posts between major content updates ect), and I realized archiving on Ao3 (even including wrangling the site skin and images) would be a lot more efficient for me AND have an overall better reader's experience.
Running a tumblr blog for the Caverns felt like something that neither I nor readers wanted, and so I decided to host it on Ao3 instead. Where I can keep the moons bundled together how I always wanted them to be, readers can find the whole story in one place without having to deal with clicking through linked tumblr posts, and since the archive is how it is, I don't need to feel pressured to rush content updates and sacrifice my own sanity or the story's quality to make it how I want it to be!
(I'm much happier running ScrubClan Daily! The format comes with its own challenges, but I'm a lot less protective of the concept, and being okay with releasing subpar updates sometimes is so much healthier for me! Also those updates are only 300-700 words, which are much easier to work with on tumblr's format. Tumblr sometimes crashed when I tried to paste in a Caverns patrol, because they were often too long for a single text block)
(I really admire Clangen writing blogs for this reason!! It is really, really hard to run a blog centered around writing in such a comic-heavy space, and I am in awe of works like SaltClan and ForestClan for not only remaining active for so long, but for building a community around them. They are much stronger than I!)
