#there may be

[misty-missdee]

Digitally yours 🫰😘

[the-exiled-comic]

Just wondering but what are the ages of most major characters and Cloverfall at this point in the story?

i can give a rough estimate for ages but i havent really narrowed most of them down to a specific number :D

I'll do the oldest cats first, Emberpelt is around 12 years, Autumnstar died at 9.3 years (meaning he'd be 12 too if he were still alive), and Haven is... a mystery to me but she was alive probably when Autumnstar was an apprentice. Crowstar is close to 9 years old, so cats in her peer group would be similarly aged. Rosemask, Whisperleaf and Fallensnow would be slightly older, while Firespots, Wavecrash, Deepwater, Springflower, and Pebblerun would be slightly younger.

Sandywing and Coralclaw are somewhere between 4-5 years old. They were raised during war times. I would also put Silverstone (Sandywing's mate) and his brother Smokehawk (Treeclan deputy) here too. Annnnddd Dapplestar could be in this age group but maybe a year or so older, maybe 6.5~ years.

Cloverfall and her sisters, Smallstripe and Softbriar, were born a few months before the war ended/Crowstar become leader. This puts them at about 3 and a half years. Sunheart and Winterwing would be in this group as well.

Doveheart, Halfshadow, and Fallenscar were all born after the war ended, so theyre about 3~ years.

And then the last generation which includes the youngest cats. Talondusk and Echodawn are close to 2 years Fishpaw and Rockfall are like.. 20 months Petalsong is 18 months Honeykit and Newtkit are a little over 3 moons

[chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky]

Why You All Will Hate Me This Weekend: A Poem In Three Parts

[thisisevenharderthannamingablog]

What do you mean when you say they "ran out of meat" for Emma's story? That they don't have material? I personally disagree. I think the Savior storyline of s6 could have been great but was greatly underused in favor of the split-queen arc. Sometimes I think the writers are more interested in creating sympathy for their villains than in their heroes.

I just mean that *they* ran out of ideas for things to do with her. This doesn't mean that there were no ideas to be had, just that they didn't have them or didn't want to do them for whatever reason. :)

I think that they write each season, to a large degree, back to front. I think the Savior storyline is another example of just-in-time worldbuilding; it's not something they had always been planning to explore or address, but something they came up with *after* they had decided where they wanted S6 to go.

With the end of S5, Emma finished the major steps of the Hero's Journey but one.  At the same time, Killian finished his redemption arc. The final phase is the integration. This is an important one, but it is also the one Hollywood types are most likely to consider too boring to do on screen, leaving it to a quick denouement that shows the hero living in their now-balanced and happy world.

So we start by defining one end-point of S6 as "Emma has her happy ending with Hook". They’re 95% of the way there when the season starts, so something has to intervene all season to keep them from having it in 6.01. (Not actually has to, mind, just that the writers appear to have used this logic) The go-to has always been that Emma's duties as the Savior keep her from feeling like she can commit to her own life, so they go back to that again, and give themselves a route to bring in some other Disney properties by adding previous saviors to the story. The entire point of this story is to *not* give her something while the other two major characters sort our their own situations.

Hence, plastic angst. So about those other characters.

Define Rumple's end-point. Since he already dealt with his father issues, they give him a nearly identical set of problems on the other side of his heritage that will (right now it looks like) lead him to the same point the Pan storyline did: sacrificing himself for his kid.  Since they've mentioned the Black Fairy previously, they can even claim "I meant to do that".

Finally, define Regina's endpoint as, well, whatever it's going to be, it apparently involves at least half of her getting a happy ending. Thus we had the split queen plot -- which I honestly now think was the sole reason for the LoUS and the Jekyll/Hyde tie-in, since that whole conceit was ditched almost as soon as it was established (sigh).

And so we have these three different stories which are sort of bungee-corded together, but don't have any organic cohesion. Making Gideon part of the Savior story is a barely-functional kludge, and Regina's story has nothing at all to do with the other two. (Contrast S1, where all three characters' storylines were tightly bonded.)

This back to front thinking is (I think) behind most of their signal failures as writers. Mind you, anybody writing a serial work has to do at least a little bit of this. Ideally, it's a tool you can use to manage the pace of your story across X time increments in sort of fractal/snowflake pattern. However, if you're not paying careful attention, it's really easy to end up skipping steps or to misjudge the pace. And if you think of the ending first and then figure out how to get the characters there -- and you're under time pressure, and you can’t go back and edit episodes already in the can -- sometimes you end up using a crowbar.  

It can really limit your thinking, too. If the genesis of Emma's S6 plot is not "let's explore what being the Savior really means and has meant to others in history," but "what can stop her from being happy for 20 episodes while everybody else catches up", one is likely to approach the whole subject differently.

I mean, I could be totally wrong. But this is a way in which the way things have unfolded makes sense to me.

[multifandomtoon]

I wonder if there’s a critter that’s like a tamed sea lion that I keep seeing on TikTok

[incognito-princess]

There's a character... I love that character... I adore that character... I would stand between that character and a charging grizzly bear... I would protect that character with my last breath... but also... what if that character was a drug addict?!?!?!?

That character @ me: Why are you like this?!?!?!

[feelgigglethink]

There may be