I have stuff for the ddd!au that I’ve been sitting on since I don’t have time to write it out all nice! but since the whole au came out of a post I didn’t think twice about I’m just going to list some duplex story moments around bristlefrost’s power and rootspring that have been living in my brain (and my drafts)
• bristlefrost’s power is the radio that lets her tune into the living world, but it’s difficult to control at first
• it’s also time-agnostic and so she hears into the future, the past, or the present at random when she first discovers it
• it might be easier to tune into rootspring (and other cats related to the sisters) since they have a connection to the afterlife
• bristlefrost definitely connects with her ivypool once she has a hold of rootspring. like “pass the you phone! I wanna hear my mom”
• that connection makes the whole “ivypool finds out that bristlefrost is in some sort of afterlife with hawkfrost” moment possible. that could be the first time bristle gets through to ivypool but the line goes dead after since it’s tied to emotions and it shorts out because ivy starts to panic
• there’s room here to work in rootspring and his family — especially after that ask earlier about tree’s dad, root! I like the idea of bristle learning about rootspring’s family and imagining what it’d be like to be a part of it (I’m about to listen to tree’s novella so I’ll have more later)
• also — if I can use the parents to get hawkwing in here that’d be great because I like him a lot after reading his super edition!
• rootspring, unaware at first that bristlefrost still has a connection to the living world, eventually moves on
• she knows, she watches him move on
• rootspring and shadowsight grow close after surviving the impostor and the dark forest together, as well as going through the strained guilty grief that comes from surviving a day that others (especially bristle) didn’t
• it doesn’t take long for them to become close friends, but they take a lot longer to admit that they feel something more
• but they do! and they’re happy together
• (I’m not too pressed about canon compliance but since the code and its interpretation are changing rn, maybe I’ll incorporate that. ideally the medicine cat “no mates” rule gets removed because it sucks)
• eventually, bristlefrost does manage some kind of two-way connection even temporarily and is happy he’s living his life even if it has to be without her.
• bristlefrost didn’t get to join rootspring’s family the way she’d hoped for in life (although they are in their own way still family I’d say!) she’s found a family of her own in the duplex.
• sometimes, a family is a girl and her gay aunts who share a murderer, three uncles who trained in hell together and now just share a cool apartment (oh my god they were roommates), and maybe even the guy who she died killing.
I genuinely hope this doesn’t make any bristleroot shippers upset — that’s part of why I was holding onto this. I just love mess and tragedy and falling apart, and then the slow-going, up and down journey that’s putting yourself back together after.