#acornflower

[everybody-loves-purdy]

If the Erins are intending for Moonpaw and Goldenpaw to become a couple when they're named warriors, then I'll really be looking forward to some sun & moon imagery of the two, with Moonpaw's name & split face + Goldenpaw's golden fur and radiant personality.

I don’t want them to become a couple mainly because of the incest implications (see the image below 💀) and also because the Erins love giving us main character het romance, but I cannot deny their vibe based on names and colour schemes would be immaculate

[everybody-loves-purdy]

a lot of people have noticed this, but Thriftear and Bayshine's grief for Morningkit has been incredibly written thus far. the themes of loss and grief have been expertly handled in more recent wc books and it's a trend i'm becoming very fond of. i honestly teared up reading this interaction between them bc you can tell that bringing up Morningkit causes Thriftear and Bayshine pain, but they know how important it is that Moonpaw gets the closure she needs about her sister.

"we loved her so much, it almost killed us to lose her."

"you've been our joy, but we should have brought you here before. even if you don't remember Morningkit, you have the right to say goodbye to your littermate. you lost your kin that day, too."

I imagine that having to tell Moonpaw about Morningkit was especially difficult for Thriftear. she lost her own sister and in Bristlefrost's absence, I'm sure she hoped that her own daughter would be able to grow up with a sister as she did 💔

This was genuinely a bit of a hard read emotionally for me, it’s handled really well.

I didn’t even consider that with Thriftear 😢

[everybody-loves-purdy]

honestly, spotfur canonically cursing so much that her son picks up on it is one of my favorite little tidbits about her character

She’s so cool I love her

[everybody-loves-purdy]

I don't expect the warrior cats team to be consistent with how grief is explored in the series, but I often wonder how the deaths of both of her littermates just four moons apart impacted willowpelt. if darkstripe and graystripe's fathers weren't in the picture growing up, then I imagine that willowpelt often sought redtail and spottedleaf for comfort when single motherhood became difficult.

Willowpelt is a character I think of often just because the authors accidentally gave her just so much going on. Like what do you mean both her eldest sons were fathered by two separate cats who are currently unidentified within the clan. Both her littermates died in the first book. Her baby daughter gets deliberately poisoned by her oldest son. Her middle son then kills her eldest son, in the same battle that kills her mate. Her daughter gets hit by a car. And then she dies to save her son from a badger, only for him to still get killed by a badger moons later. There is just quite simply so much going on.

I genuinely would love a Willowpelt novella. I am probably one of five people but I want one nonetheless. I believe you are correct in saying they never showed her grieve iirc. It is a shame they never showed that when the GNs have been better than the books with this sort of thing (thanks to family trees mostly being retcon material).

[everybody-loves-purdy]

Bristlefrost mention but at what emotional cost

I like how in the middle of the “my dad is dead and it’s all my fault and everybody knows it” chapter they dropped a Bristlefrost mention just to kick us while we’re down lol

[everybody-loves-purdy]

i can't wait for the day that a cat switches clans not for love, but simply bc the vibes sucked so bad in their birth clan that their only remaining option to make life somewhat tolerable was to move to a different clan. bonus points if the cat in question is also an older cat whose already given multiple years of service to their birth clan. i feel like Tawnypelt already checks these boxes but i need the reasons for switching clans to become even more unserious. the thought of a riverclan-born cat switching clans solely bc they're a drypaw or hate fish is hilarious.

I wish the Erins remembered drypaws existed it would be such a fun thing to have someone change clans for.

Imagine a WindClan cat switching to ShadowClan because of a grass pollen allergy or something.

[everybody-loves-purdy]

Stripebark's self-centeredness being called out several times by the cats around him and him being aware of and haunted by his flaws + their consequences is what actually makes him a very likable character for me. I already knew I was going to enjoy everything wrong with this dude when I read this.

Stripebark is questioning whether or not he really loved Fogdrift but this is something that the readers were doing well before this moment. Never before in the history of these books has a cat gotten with their mate's killer. Whether their mate's death was accidental or otherwise, there is always an air of resentment towards the one that took their love from them.

Fogdrift hadn't even been dead a full day before Stripebark leaped to ally his Clan with WindClan. While standing next to Fogdrift during the final moments they'd ever share before her death, Stripebark's thoughts are wandering to Galestar and he describes himself as feeling giddy to learn that she and Pebblenose are no longer mates.

You know something is truly wrong when Galestar grieved Fogdrift's death on a much deeper scale than Stripebark did. I really like reading about whatever tf is wrong with this dude.

This is why he’s so interesting to me to and ultimately why I’m on the side of liking him just because he has such interesting characterisation.

I’m so glad Fogdrift refused to even look at him during Whitestar’s lives ceremony. And we know those cats giving lives could see Stripebark because Rainkit directly addresses him afterwards.

[everybody-loves-purdy]

i've been toying with the idea that the reason why a lot of the new names in stormclan's folly seem strange or out of place is because the ancient clans are still transitioning from old tribe-era naming systems to the more modern naming systems that we know of today.

thrush's call → thrushcall → thrushsong

raven's cry → ravencry → ravensong

hunting heart → huntheart → ____pounce or ____leap?

floating weed → floatweed → floatstem, floatbranch, etc

either way, i really hope that as the main series continues, we see suffixes like -call and -cry make a comeback to diversify bird names. i feel like we have an abundance of -wings, -flights, and -feathers. i also like the idea of -screech being introduced (ex: owlscreeh, crowscreech)

i also have a headcanon as to why cats like crowflight, alderbranch, and icefoot seem to have strange names in this era for their pelt descriptions. with the deforestation in skyclan's territory, the species of crows (brown in coloration) were driven out. i also like to think that alder trees with very dark bark existed in parts of all the clans' territory, but were predominantly based in skyclan's territory. also, i think that icefoot has white paws or some kind of prominent lower-body white coloration. i myself have an OC named frostfoot (a black tuxedo she-cat with ice-blue eyes)

→ as a side note, i am very excited that names i've used for OCs in the past (crowflight and mudsplash) have made their way into the main warriors series. i've been dying to see mudsplash in particular being used as a name since forever

Those are very good theories! And I also share your hopes about diversifying the names and those suffixes coming back.

I’m glad you got some OC names in there! Mudsplash is a particularly cute name so it is great to see that in canon