For Roads Untraveled

This fic is completed!!! Art/Writing blog centered around my personal rewrite of Tallstar's Revenge titled "For Roads Untraveled". The author of this blog goes by Yarrow. (See pinned post for links to the story.)

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About (2.0)

After 3,000 years, we begin. Helloo my name is Yarrow, welcome to my side blog where I talk about my ideas and sometimes art for my personal rewrite of the Warrior Cats super edition “Tallstar’s Revenge”~

Click here for the (now complete!) story here on this blog!! (feel free to send an ask for any tags i may have missed) As well as a link to where it’s posted on Ao3

My Personal blog for warrior cats and other xenofiction posting: Yarrowleef

Search the “my art” tag for all the character art I did over the years (most of it is quite old now)

and now a somewhat lengthy preface:

in 2017 I read Tallstar’s Revenge and was very frustrated by it. So I decided to try out rewriting a warriors book to see if I could make something closer to what I wanted to see. I also did it because I really wanted to finish something, and it seemed like an easy starting point. Then I quickly realized I had no idea how to actually write a story because I usually never get past the “daydreaming and maybe sometimes writing disconnected scenes and concepts” phase, so that was quite a hurdle to overcome.

This fic has been a bit of a rickety lifeboat for me over the past 4 years. Sometimes it even became sort of a vent for my lingering high school angst. I began this project at the same time I graduated high school and was about to start college (a bad idea) and I hit several major periods of burn-out. Honestly, I think I was feeling burned out through at least 75-80% of it. But I needed to focus on something for the same reason I needed to drag myself out of bed every morning, even if I usually didn’t really want to. 

Now I think it’s as finished as it’s ever going to be. I’m not going to lie, my confidence in its quality has been. let’s say Shaky At Best. Taking so long means that some parts are already outdated before they’ve even been posted. Also, several bits (including prose and world building) were not even fully edited to completion. There’s at least one or two chapters that are more summary then full writing, but I don’t think it’s bad enough anywhere to be incomprehensible? soo we’re just gonna roll with it.

My mixed feelings about it aside, the only reason I can have those mixed feelings is because I wrote it in the first place, and thus got better (at least a little). I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t, so no matter what I am very glad that I managed to make myself finish it!! And there are at least some parts I still genuinely like. In the end, this was always intended to just be a practice story using someone else's outline, so I am simply going to dump this content on the floor as it is and it is up to you to sift through it. I’m ready to let go of this rickety clumsy life boat, so now I am pushing it out to sea.

In Conclusion: Ultimately, is this story truly an “”improvement”” over canon? Who knows! Seriously, I simply cannot tell. I’ve been staring at it too long. “Improvement” is a very heavy and presumptuous word for someone like me anyway. I slowly chipped away at 200,000 words on my own for 4 years with no beta readers to talk it over with (none of my friends rly know what warrior cats is and I'm too embarrassed to show them, so I'm alone in here with my box of angsty cats). My brain is mush and the lines have blurred together. I have no earthly idea what this is going to look like to fresh eyes. In addition to that, many little things were tweaked just because I felt like it and not necessarily because I thought they were “objectively” better. That being said, some characters have been given completely new traits unrelated to who they were in canon to suit the story I wanted to tell, and how a character is portrayed here does not necessarily reflect my opinion/head-canon of their canon counterpart.  

Although my faith in this rewrites execution is iffy and the creation process was a hot mess, I can certainly say I still put a lot of thought and effort (and sometimes tears) into it, and in the end I hope that will count for something. Thank you for reading!

[yarrowleef]

Hey, so I am (believe it or not) still trying to write Duskpaw/Dawnpaw’s OC fic, and I’ve been re-reading "For Roads Untraveled" for the first time since posting it almost 3 years ago, since I was way to close to it at the time to see any part of it clearly.

But I’m trying to actually absorb now what was good about it as well as what was wrong with it. Some things I think turned out well by accident and I was surprised by the reception to some of it. I don’t want to discredit the things that resonated with people just because I’m a bit jaded about it as a whole, cause, y’know, if I did something right by accident I’d like to see if I can intentionally do it again later. Also vice versa…..

Anyway, I don’t think I have ever received negative critique on that fic---which was very nice of everyone as I wasn’t asking for it back then, and I’m sure i came across as super insecure and nervous about the whole thing (which I was lol). But now I am more distant from it and trying to view it more objectively to like, learn from the experience as much as I can or w/e?

I know all the many things that I think are wrong with it, and when I posted it I never asked for critique because I was thinking “I already know all that, I don’t need other people to also tell me!” but really, I don’t actually know for sure if the things I know are the same things that others notice.

 I know it’s been a couple years, but for those who remember, if there was any kind of critique (or less-than-enthusiastically-positive feedback) you wanted to make at the time, and if you feel like taking the time to type it out, I would be happy to hear it!! 

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( reblogging here, but plz direct responses to the yarrowleef blog rather than this one c: )

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a dawnstripe portrait that I missed <3 from 2019

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In the epilogue comic, are those kits Reena's and Jakes? Does Quince y have its? If so, who is their sire?

Yeah, they are Jake and Reena's! I don't know if I decided whether or not they truly become romantic partners or if they just both wanted kits and figured they'd have them together because they got along and were already traveling partners. In my mind this is a pretty common arrangement for cats. It's possible they could have been more romantic though, I do think they have compatible personalities.

Jake and Quince had kits together same as canon before Jake left (there is a couple year time skip between the start of the epilogue and the end of the fic). Based on my foggy recollection of Scourge's manga, in canon Jake had kits with Quince and then they were separated, as Quince talks about him in past tense? unknown if he moved away or if she moved away or what, but in my version of course it's because Jake leaves the houses after his elderly owner passes away. Jake probably didn't even know that Quince was pregnant when he left. I don't think Jake and Quince were ever strongly romantically involved, despite being generally fond of each other. Possible Quince as a bit of a romantic had more feelings then Jake did, but I doubt he ever knew that.

Ruby and Socks are there in a cameo (along with that little rogue cat Roach that appears briefly in the fic--not that I expect anyone to recognize him, he is just a rando I invented not based on any canon cat). I wrote this a little over a year ago but I believe I meant to imply the end of the epilogue was sometime after Scourge sends his starving siblings away. Jake found them and learned about who they were and the other visitors took them along out of the town when they fled

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and some miscellaneous Visitors! from 2019

this is younger Hen and her first two sons Gull and Albatross. I once had notes for a bonus story about her. They were accidentally born on a boat at sea, but she lost them both when a bad storm hit the ship and they were swept away. The stories she made up with her group often involved a mother cat at sea who was able to trick the ocean into letting her save her babies. She used to tell Sparrow about them all the time

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more miscellaneous windclanners from 2017-2019!

Brackenwing, Crowfur and his son Hazelnose, a friend group that crumbled years ago (Plumclaw, Mistmouse, Lilywhisker, and Leafshine), siblings (Fallowspring, Ryewhisker, and Fawnleap), and final references for the HareMouse family

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some brothers (and their dad) from 2018/2019

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pales from 2018

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from 2018-2019, sooo many Tall’s + some Tall family

bonus, a little sister in the stars

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various WindClan guys from around 2018/2019 ~

In order: Hazelnose, Meadowmist, Reedfeather, Hawkheart, two Fennelpelt's, Woollycloud, Hazelnose again with a slightly different design

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from 2019, soft lads in watercolor that I never got around to editing

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I was going through an old hard-drive and found a bunch of old FRU character art that I never posted for whatever reason, so I might queue up some art dumps!

[pdqsketch]

I read this fic done by @tallstars-rewrite and was overcome by emotion and blacked out. When I came to a week later, this was in my files.

The link to the fic is HERE. Please read it it’s so good.

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Epilogue: Part One (here) || Part Two

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Epilogue: Part One || Part Two (here)

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wait uh i posted that out of order. if u saw it no you didn’t <3

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oh right on that note, let it be known I AM still chipping away at that short little epilogue comic slowly but surely

 its just that, frankly, I should be sprayed with water any time I say anything along the lines of “oh im gonna do this thing!!! it will be done around this upcoming date!!” that was me on an productive upswing that wrote that, and they only pop in sporadically for like 2 days every month. I don’t know her, and she isn’t returning my calls.

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i conquered drawing the buildings (sort of) so might spontaneously post this tonight