it's not illegal unless the Heads don't like it

After the death of all humans, domestic cats fled into the wild and formed clowders to survive.

[clowdersandclaws]

Description

Quint was wronged by someone he thought he could trust. Now, he wants to take what she stole from him, and the perfect opportunity is around the corner. However, his plots may not be worth the harm when the lives of a litter of kittens are at stake.

—

Links

Main blog is @mrnnki, regular art blog is @mrnnki-img. This is a story-specific blog.

Playlist of PMVs for the series is here (contains disturbing imagery); may become outdated or later contradicted as videos are for conceptualization and are not the final product

Rough draft writing preview is here (currently outdated; may be removed)

The finished written version will be posted on my neocities (in addition to whatever platforms I feel fit, such as here) and I currently plan to do a video version with very limited animation as well.

—

Blanket Content Warning

Clowders and Claws contains:

Violence and gore/blood (maiming, murder)

Animal death (again, murder)

Major character death (drowning, murder again)

Themes of ableism and eugenics

Themes of prejudice

Genocide

Abuse

Child (kitten) murder

Implied/referenced rape and dubcon

Discrimination against intersex characters

General reproductive discrimination

When possible (especially in the case of writing and discussion), I will insert warnings before the content begins in bold.

—

Tags

clowders & claws - anything clowders and claws related that I actually remember to tag

clowderclaws meta - anything meta about clowders and claws

clowderclaws thoughts - random thoughts and jokes that may not be organized

clowderclaws art - clowders and claws art

clowderclaws yt - clowders and claws videos

clowderclaws writing - self-explanatory

—

Last updated 6/8/2024. See here for preferences regarding reposts and derivative work.

[mrnnki]

decided to make a list of PMVs that are still "canon" to the refactor, since a good chunk of clowder history stayed the same but some character deletions and plotline removals shuffled a lot of things around

100% canon, little to no changes

Blood, sweat, & tears

Spiral

My Time

Little Mistake

some changes, but overall close to current plans

Death No More (minor timeline alterations; events are slightly out of order)

People ii

That's roughly 6/10 videos, which makes sense because a lot of the PMVs focus on history instead of the main plot (at the time I was worried that telling the main story in PMVs would make people not want to see anything else I made about it). The rest of the PMVs are still worth watching if ya feel like it, since they provide insight into the characters and potential events. :P

[mrnnki]

Very tempted to see if I could truncate Clowders & Claws

[mrnnki]

Reading Jumalanpelko really made me think of it and I kiiiinda wanna try my hand at making something that vaguely resembles a comic because that was one of the formats I originally contemplated for it, so hmmm. Would have to sit down and see if I can in the first place, but we'd probably start off with Tinel and Quint, then go from there. Refactoring the whole thing would get rid of the "my PMVs already tell 90% of the story so why make anything else" issue

[mrnnki]

we're gonna go for it and see how far we get. already starting an outline

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

The divine right of kings but it's a curse

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

You will wear the crown, you have no choice, the spikes growing on your head have a metal sheen to them and coalesce into a mock halo. You will command, for your voice is a terrible thing, you are a terrible thing. You will be just, and you will be fair, for any grievances you cause to your people scar your body and leave lasting pain and false promises sizzle on your tongue like hot oil. Your god is watching and it won't forget what your ancestor did and it won't let you go

[glowcowboy]

intergenerational trauma has me losing my mind bc it’ll have you looking at your mama like “well i woulda been batshit crazy if i was raised by her mama too.” and then you look at your grandma and you’re like “well i woulda been batshit crazy if i was raised by her mama too!” and rinse and repeat

[mad-dyspunktional]

I am being so serious when I say that when you are first confronted with deradicalization and any huge challenge to the incorrect world view you've inadvertently made a huge part of your personality it will feel like the world is ending.

Our brains do not like this one bit.

Your kneejerk reaction will be to bury whatever you just saw, read, listened to (whatever) that made you Question because of how deeply, unsettlingly uncomfortable it makes you.

You have to have the strength to instead take a step back and find your rational side again and push through.

[mad-dyspunktional]

Not to push my own post, but this is really important. Aside from the difficulties of leaving an isolated support group of equally radicalized individuals without always having other people to fall back on (because radicalization tends to push other people away), this is probably the #1 difficulty of deradicalization.

Deradicalization is hard, immensely uncomfortable, vulnerable work. It's not just a simple matter of 'changing your mind'. All the more reason to celebrate those who make it through, in my opinion.

[mageplasticbag-deactivated20260]

I’m gonna add my two cents to this:

You can be ‘wrong’ without being ‘bad’.

If you learned wrong, and centered wrongness in your understanding of the world, it will hurt to shift it once you learn ‘right’. There’s so much about you that hinges on your understanding of the world around you that when you realize some of it was ‘wrong’, the adjustment will hurt a lot. Even just emotionally, realizing you were wrong hurts sometimes. And understanding yourself once you realize some essential truth can also reveal some really dark and ugly truths about yourself.

It’s when you respond to your emotions and double down on the ‘wrong’ to prevent your sense of self from shifting that it becomes ‘bad’.

You can be wrong, but if you are not willing to see the wrong and fix it and instead you centralize your sense of self so thoroughly that you cannot be wrong, so everything else must be challenged? That’s when the wrong becomes bad.

[mad-dyspunktional]

This is an excellent addition that summed up the end result of not examining things and sitting with the discomfort and instead caving to it so well. This is how conspiracy theories, cults, and other radicalization thrives. You get to a point where it's all so entrenched into your personality and sense of self that you cannot be wrong anymore because the idea of being wrong is so uncomfortable. Fight it.

[patricia-taxxon]

the thing is, if your younger self was a bigot or an abuser, u can't make people forgive you. but you still gotta forgive yourself, like that's non-negotiable, dude. that happens before u can even ask the question of earning forgiveness from anyone lese

[patricia-taxxon]

oops, in your attempt to martyr yourself out of respect for your victims you accidentally sabotaged your own ability to conceptualize yourself as anything but a perpetual evildoer who is always one bad day away from hurting everyone you love, all but guaranteeing history to repeat itself. rookie mistake

[patricia-taxxon]

im gonna try explaining myself, cus im a gambling addict and im waiting for the day that it actually works.

"forgiveness" is personal, that's why I said in the post that you might inflict harm on people for which they can never forgive you, but that's their quest. if you abuse someone, you can't go no-contact with yourself. you actually keep living in your own head indefinitely, and ultimately you need to learn to live with yourself in order to continue living a full life without further harm. this is not necessarily an anti-carceral thought, although i am generally anti-carceral myself. I simply want people to like, fix their heart and atone for real with measured accountability & self love instead of dissociating, self-marking themselves forever and guaranteeing their recidivism.

You and a remorseful abuser would both think I'm giving the easy, coddling path. It's actually the tough pragmatic path in disguise.

[dark-fire-thoughts]

Ok. I see where you going, but I strongly disagree. The one person who can't be allowed to forgive ones crimes is oneself.

Even if everyone else has forgiven you for the abuse you did, you must never allow yourself to let what you did be forgiven. Once you've done that, you've gotten to the point where you might do it again.

Never let up. Always strive towards improvement. Never let yourself live down the horrors of the past. Only by comparing ourselves to who we were can we grow.

[patricia-taxxon]

this is called OCD

[yuyurana]

It’s so fucking frustrating to argue about this on tumblr.com. Because people might pay lip service to the idea of criminal justice reform or even prison abolition. But deep down they always come back to the Calvinism of it all: there are good people (victims) and bad people (abusers) and once someone has revealed themselves to be an abuser they can never be forgiven, never be part of society again.

And if you believe the world works like that one other thing also has to be true: You know you are a ‘good person’, so nothing you ever do could be truly abusive. You could never truly harm another person. And if you did they must have deserved it. Because you are a good person.

And wow, does that not just sound like something abusers usually say, when confronted with their own behavior?

I would leave the rest up to the reader but because we are on the piss on the poor reading comprehension site here, I’m going to spell it out: get comfortable with your own fallibility. Acknowledge that you could indeed severely harm someone else. And that means that you NEED to learn to forgive yourself.

[aromantic-diaries]

Cannibalism as a metaphor for I Was Hungry

[aromantic-diaries]

Cannibalism as a metaphor for. Dinnar.

[aromantic-diaries]

Cannibalism as a metaphor for when you're stuck in a lifeboat and your buddy starts looking a lot like a hamburger

[elvendove]

i am TIRED of the cycle repeating. *repeats the cycle*

[all-the-bones-ever-deactivated2]

this hit me like a truck

[clowdersandclaws]

One of the things I want to emphasize with the Mouse Catchers is that while they do fully hold their prejudices, they aren't active about it. Their cruelty is based on opportunity and more related to a want for resources than anything else. They think they deserve those resources more because they're closer to Mouser.

Their ideology is a defense for their greed and fear, not the cause of it.

[clowdersandclaws]

CW: implied execution, discrimination

A version of That Scene. Definitely not the final one. Unedited and short.

—

Tobi wriggled against the ground, his claws scraping against her legs. Eklis slammed her paws on top of him. Stunned and out of breath, he froze.

"Please," he muttered. "This wasn't what I intended."

"It seems exactly like what you intended," Eklis said.

"No!" Tobi squeaked, making another fruitless attempt to struggle. "I just wanted to talk. I want the darkfurs treated fairly."

Hisses echoed across the two-floor. Blood dripped onto the furniture. Sal's body laid in a puddle, never to rise again.

"Well, congratulations," Eklis said, curling her ears. "You've convinced me alright."

She leaned in close, his frantic breaths caressing her ears.

"You don't deserve this treatment. You deserve far worse."

"No!" Tobi cried.

Eklis put a paw on his face and forced it to the side.

"Look around you! I see loyal cats fighting against inferior scum. The only threat to me has been your kind from the beginning. I hear the whispers—'Poor Eklis, those terrible Leaves tried to kill her!'—and I know they'll never betray me. As long as they've got their sights on you and your degenerate lot, I can do anything I want."

Tobi stammered, attempting to pull his head away. Eklis released his head, waiting for him to lift it, then slammed her paws down. His head hit the ground with an unsatisfying dull thud.

"Now, stay still while I avenge my sister."

[clowdersandclaws]

torn claws

[clowdersandclaws]

the end of suffering, or the beginning? the wounds that killed him were ones you inflicted. but was it really the wounds?

[clowdersandclaws]

all-consuming servitude

[quoms]

The ends justify the means, the ends are the means, the means justify the ends. In the logic of racial supremacy, to abuse and kill the enemy proves that you are strong and they are weak; weakness is intolerable and demands to be abused and killed. A single act generates a moral order to the universe, and sets things right according to that order - proposition and conclusion at once in a single perfect loop. What expression of thought/word/deed could be more pure than turning an entire city block into a crater? The cruelty is the cruelty is the cruelty is the cruelty is the cruelty is the cruelty is the cruelty is the point.

[sevenxseveneyes]

i love you female characters who make selfish choices they know will be bad for everyone. i love you female characters who think they're making the right choice but make things worse. i love you female characters who are making the right choice but noone else understands it.