#thisisjustforiterum

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prediction for this week: rookstar gets to the carrefour, waits exactly five seconds, and then starts yelling out a scripted ad-read for an all you can hunt buffet at the Barn

God, I wish.

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massive shoutout to Suriin for her commitment to giving Firestar's soul-crushing traumatic experience the best lighting possible, 10/10 would desecrate a waking night again

She has a flair for the dramatic, I guess!

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Every time someone brings up Firestar's burning eyes I grin a little wider, such an amazing shorthand for such a core part of his character. It's so cool what you guys have done with him, how... "huge in stature" he is in every way except physical, and how no one except the people who interact with him in that specific way would ever know.

Like, no one expected his unrelenting kindness or tiny frame to survive first contact with ThunderClan until he wormed his way into everyone's hearts, and he's plain enough that unless you have connections to the spirit world you'd never notice how much his soul burns with compassion. He's Oops All Character Internality and I love him so much for it.

Now I really want to see how a -stone ShadowClan seer would react to his gaze.

This is a wonderful ask, thank you. It summarizes Firestar perfectly - much better than a response from me could. As for that last sentence.... that would be quite fun, wouldn't it?

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Remember kids, don't blame your old friend for mass population displacement until you've made certain it wasn't due to a highly traumatic event that scarred him for life! Common mistake.

And on the topic of skewed narratives (what with the cursing Firestar's name) I've got to admit, a bit more of my sympathy for Rosy withered away this chapter. I mean, she IS a cat, and it makes sense she has a different perspective on The Incident, but still. Girl cannot self-reflect to save her life.

At the very least, Smudge is able to admit when he's wrong and change his perspective accordingly. Rosy... Rosy's a little different.

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TODAY‼️

We're so close to this fucking book being done....

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My wifi got nuked so I only got to read the chapter today (good chapter!) but it's good to see Firestar is back enough to start terrifying all his Clanmates again. I can just see Dustpelt sitting in camp torn between relief and the urge to hyperventilate

It's a treat to imagine Dustpelt getting the news and plunging right into fretting and panicking internally while pretending it's fine to everyone else.

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Love that we get to see the exact moment Firestar's anger collapses into the underlying guilt and self-hatred, by the way.

Also: I don't think Fire really internalised what Whitecloud said about how he isn't a dinky little kittypet. He doesn't realise the amount of change he's already made. He doesn't realise that most or all of his Clan - and a good number of cats from other Clans - do actually take him seriously and don't think he's stupid and genuinely want to help him not just because he's leader.

And in fairness, he's gotten pushback all the way and it never stopped him, but I think he got hit with the "no one but me will want to help" vibes as an apprentice/younger warrior regardless - even from cats like Raven and Golden. Then by the time cats really started coming around to his view of things, the plot was running him over too much for him to actually clock that change. And now that he can't actually do what he wants to, it's all kind of falling apart.

I have things I want to say to this, but the weekend's coming soon, so I'll have to wait. Just know I love this ask.

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nooo Brick don't leave us :(

good for him though, finding a new purpose for himself!

although for his sake I hope Firestar was the only one who realised he was getting publicly rejected...

We can only venture to wonder what'll happen to him next!