Hey! I sent an ask a while all the way back in February under anon praising your work, and I had been trying to follow along ever since but kept falling behind so I've just been reading a bunch of your pieces in a row in few-day bursts until I'm caught up to present lol. Anyway just now was the most recent burst I had finished, and I just gotta say. Yeah wow. Capital W Wow and the W stands for Winning. The way you're so committed to portraying real, almost tangible nuance in all your characters. How they all have deep reasons why they act the way they do but they start to be confronted and conflicted about the flaws in their views, the journeys they have to take to either change that or figure out if they even want to.
Namely with Ghost in the recent piece. Ever since I was introduced to him I knew there was more to him than just his blind following of his flawed society, that there has always been room for him to question his actions from the very start of the story and it may have always been there in him as a little inkling of an idea. But Fogpaw's confrontation was the moment that had really solidified it for him, driving it home even further since Smokyrose's death which also had to have taken a toll on his ability to trust his own thoughts (Been a while since I've read those pieces though so memory is fuzzy and I'm guessing there). He's someone who strikes me as someone who's always subconsciously suspected he's flawed, but never let it be an actual consideration until those actions he let himself carry out started having terrible consequences. And now he has to look back and face everything he's ever done, knowing full well he may never be forgiven by anybody he's wronged, but he still has the want to change for himself and I find that so inspiring. Having to face all those mistakes, learning just how much of your life you spent treating people unfairly... being confronted with all of that at once AND trying his best to make up for it all WHILE dealing with a new disability and terrible ear pain... it's no wonder he's deathly tired lol.
But the other character I want to highlight is the one who's been here and significant from the beginning - Scorch! A lot of people have talked a lot about her already but I'm in my own analysis flow state and I wanna ramble about how good of a character she is too. The walls and defenses she had to put up to protect herself, the lies she had to stick to to make other people believe things she didn't just to make sure she wouldn't die in the city... Razor's power over her and how nothing she did could convince him to truly loosen his grip on her during her time in the city, or even after she escaped and found RisingClan... The masks she has to plaster on herself and cycle through, and how the people who know her can just see right through them anyway... She's a person with immense trauma and like a solid two-thirds of her entire personality is a complex trauma response, but it served her well and protected her and so she keeps it up, and she even teaches a little of it and the affected worldview it gave her to her apprentice Fogpaw who is more confused than anything else haha. That's a very interesting dynamic too, someone who is thoroughly convinced every interaction is some kind of transaction where the other person always wants something in particular from you, and the other person who can't even fathom why or how interaction would work like that at all. Fogpaw is her perfect foil, someone who challenges her views and all the walls she's had to keep up more bluntly, and it's a very beneficial mentor-apprentice pairing that pushes them both to be better and that's a very amazing and interesting thing to see. How the student has things to teach their teacher in return.
It's just. The way I can read these character's thoughts and FULLY understand why they think in the ways they do and how those ways of thinking make sense to them... It's like I am quite literally transported into their mind in full and that is NOT an easy thing to do in writing at all. Most of the time you're just kind of a spectator, looking into a character's thoughts just to know why they do certain actions. But to understand the thoughts themselves, to see the full picture and possibly even a bit beyond it, to know the characters inside and out and see their worldviews and be like "Oh yeah, I see exactly how they came to those conclusions!" AND have those views be riddled with flaws in a way that makes everything feel SO realistic and tangible... That's like. Not just anyone can do that. Your hard work in developing these silly complex kitties has paid off in full, Rowan. Be proud of yourself, I simply demand it. lmao
AAA Thank you! this ask makes me so happy, I really appreciate you taking the time to say this all, it means a lot to me. 50 RisingBucks to you haha
