What’s wrong with beneath the blood moon? If you feel comfy answering
Nothing is wrong, it’s just — something I posted because I was in a very vulnerable place, and didn’t have the proper chance to ask myself what I was willing to share.
Some of you may know I have (had?) DID. I had some severe traumas I didn’t know about that were reflected in BTBM (I won’t spell it out but you can assume) and I wasn’t able to make an informed decision about it.
It’s kind of like I painted a self portrait but didn’t know it was my face I was sharing.
Now that I’m very much in the middle of recovering and thriving, I have the chance to reevaluate how I feel about it. And while I think I could have posted the same fic today and been okay with it, it will always make me feel like I am small and hurting with no idea why.
So yeah. TLDR? I shared something without realizing how deeply personal it was, and now I’m reconsidering if I want it available.
nohmttf/btbm related ask — i’ve been turning that au over in my mind and got to thinking about tawnypelt growing up and having a Lot of fucked up emotions regarding having kits as an adult. i imagine it being kind of a strain on her relationship with rowanclaw (if she even decides to have a mate at all, after all that) — and not to play into the “oh you’ll change your mind” idea when she says as tawnypaw to featherpaw that she’s not having kits, ever — but the idea that maybe, as an adult, years after tigerstar is dead, maybe struggling hard with the idea of wanting a family but not wanting to bear kits, of not being able to get the way tigerstar would say the word “queen” out of her head. i know the whole story is featherpaw’s and stonefur’s at its core, but tawnypelt is my favorite wc character so my thoughts are bound to drift to her in anything skndjdn
oh hell yeah. no no no trust me tawnypelt is a crucial character to nohmttf. little spoiler-y under the cut.
you'll see that feather and tawny will get closer and closer and continue to be friends. because they're bonded on this very specific level. feather's thought process about a lot of things is...fucked up? but also sensible. i'd get into spoiler territory if i said everything i want to, but basically, the cats around her cannot necessarily tell apart fucked up trauma logic and an honest and fair assessment of the situation. but tawnypelt was there, so she can.
and yeah, tawnypelt is herself messed up about this. kind-of a spoiler, but not really, is that i do continue her romance with rowanclaw. y'know, cedarheart's brother, rowanclaw. so they went through this thing together, a lot of it. and there's a lot of difficulty: tawnypelt wants him, but she doesn't know how to actually act on that want, if that makes sense.
also, an aside, but rowan and cedar are dawnpelt's kits here. i generally like to do that because who gives a fuck about darkflower, but also because if you've ever see me hint at dawnpelt's tragedy, then you probably have a sense of the parallelism.
(have i mentioned that explicitly in btbm? i can't remember. it will come up, but i can't remember if it has.)
so yeah, like...the story is about feather and stone, but it's not just about them. it's very much about the effects it has on everyone around them, and tawnypelt is a major player.
re: nohmttf/btbm ask - did you mean to say dawncloud is rowanclaw and cedarheart’s mom, instead of dawnpelt? i got a little confused since dawnpelt is rowan and tawny’s daughter in canon - but if you’re doing something totally different then my bad!
i did mean to say dawncloud, thank you. i get the confusion, totally my bad. too many dawns in my head.
sorry i keep sending asks about nohmttf please feel free to ignore me if they’re annoying
i was just thinking about it Again and i think to me what makes that story so compelling is that it feels like… in spite of the horrible, evil, ugly reality that all the characters are in, there are these nagging flickers of hope that they’re feeling. that someday things will be better, that someday tigerstar will be gone and riverclan can be what it was before. stonefur can’t bring himself to kill featherpaw and spare her suffering because he has to believe that this can’t be the end, for her and for himself. there’s the hope that he can reunite stormpaw and featherpaw, that he’ll see mistyfoot again, that they’ll come up with some way to survive and get through. it’s not hope as a beautiful shining beacon but hope as the cockroach that survives the apocalypse - even if you don’t want it to be there and even if it feels ugly and wrong and out of place it’s still there. and nothing you or anyone else does can kill it.
and so much love, too. stonefur loves featherpaw, so does mosspelt, so does mudfur. mosspelt loves featherpaw and dawnpaw and she doesn’t know how to save them both and she’s stuck. featherpaw and stonefur love their kits right away, even though they were born from the hell tigerstar put them through. it’s just another one of those things that hangs on and pushes through and makes it possible to even think about choosing to live.
i just think you’ve really tapped into something powerful with this story and i am basically always thinking about it. it’s so good. it’s such a compelling and meaningful piece of fiction.
i love ur asks i know it can take me months to answer asks but i love them.
idk like. the thing is that like. hope is a really hard thing to kill. you said it really well, "hope as the cockroach that survives the apocalypse."
there are times when hope hurts. when the idea that things could be better hurts, because they aren't better. how long do you have to listen to the cockroach skitter over the tile before the bombs start falling. why won't the cockroach die? because if you could just accept this as the best there is, you wouldn't have this fucking hope, that is hurt and crying and hates every minute of this.
but the cockroach doesn't die. and your hope doesn't die. and your love doesn't die.
thank you so much for this ask it means so much to me i'm not sending you a kitten photo because that means whenever i see this post i'll just see a kitten photo and not the ask.
Hey, in the ask you just answered about Tawnypelt, you said that in nohmttf, Rowanclaw is Dawnpelt's son, but canonically Dawnpelt is his daughter. Did you mean Dawnflower?
i meant dawncloud, actually. dawnflower's a riverclan queen.
thank u for this <3 even tho it took me MONTHS to publish it lzkdjf;a
oh, i just had the most evil idea: can you imagine tigerstar finding out that mosspelt had kits far too young in the stonefeather au? he'd absolutley weaponize it; everyone in camp knows that mosspelt is both furious and terrifyied for her daughter. i can see him taunting moss, telling her that she must be so proud feather's following in her pawsteps..
i don't like leaving asks in my inbox for too long, and it seems like this writing block won't just...blow over. i'm not forcing it.
so...yeah, nonnie, this is good, and i would really like to add more thoughts to it, but for now, thank you for writing in.
"why aren't you doing anything?" shadepelt growls. "that's your daughter!"
"don't you think i know that?!" mosspelt looks like she wants to shout, but it comes out trembling. "she's not my only kit, shadepelt. and i---" mosspelt's mouth keeps moving, but no words come out. her paws are pressed to the ground, and her ears are folded towards the ground. "i can't," she gasps out.
shadepelt falters, because she wants to be angry that mosspelt doesn't care, but she knows that's not true. mosspelt would die for featherpaw without blinking. if she's not doing anything, it's because she thinks trying will make things worse.
"i'm sorry," shadepelt says. she sits next to mosspelt, beginning to groom her denmate. "i'm sorry."
"i haven't seen her," mosspelt says. "not since...not for a long time. but she's alive, and dawnpaw is alive and safe, and i'm terrified, shadepelt. i can't sleep, i can't eat. but there's nothing i can do."
