#I really love girl villains so in any case I solemnly swear I will not let her get forgotten

[bonefall]

having read a lot of your ideas in one sitting (lol) I'm so excited for your redux of avos. it's not one of my favorite arcs per se, but needletail is one of my favorite characters and I'm confident you can do her justice, especially in making her a POV character!!! With that in mind I was wondering, do you have anything in mind for sleekwhisker? does she stick by the kin to the bitter end like in canon, or does she just become an unwilling participant? does she die early? do you think of her with the possibility of becoming a multifaceted antagonist along breezepelt lines or just a rogue nuisance after the fact? anyway, love your work! keep fighting the good fight!

Thank you so much!! AVoS is going to be the hardest arc to rewrite. I feel like the original arc has such a heinous takeaway that I've actually done things in previous arcs specifically to soften the blow of AVoS; The Sisters, the Tribe, and BloodClan all got a ton of sociological attention to detail so that the Kin would be an outlier.

I mentioned Sleekwhisker once before! I updated this overview post with a link to it, plus the Breezepelt ideas. But I'll talk more specifically about Sleek here

To answer your questions

The Apprentices

There's a specific scene at the start of AVoS that bugs me, where Sleekwhisker basically says, "It doesn't matter where a person is born" and it's kinda framed like it's... bad? Especially in the context of saying this to Alderheart, both Tigerkin and kittypet-blooded (through Jessie in this rewrite), who is anxious at his first Gathering.

It SHOULD be a radical statement, but one born out of goodness. In general, the ShadowClan apprentices don't actually believe in any principles and that bothers me.

So I want to approach them, and Sleekpaw at their head, as being CORRECT about some of their initial ideas.

They're sick of not being helped by other Clans. They're tired of the way they're subjected to bad leaders. They hate being told they can't have outsider friends. They're right. They don't know how to word their discontent but they DO HAVE LEGITIMATE REASONS FOR FEELING HOW THEY DO

But the problem was Darktail. They trusted the wrong person, someone who exploited them for his own gains. He creates a coalition of ex-DF trainees, discontented young cats, half-clanners, and exploits them like a cult.

Sleekwhisker

So, with her, I want to thread a needle (heh). The person at the beginning of AVoS would HATE the person she eventually becomes. At the start of AVoS, Sleekpaw is the leader of the ShadowClan apprentices, the brightest, a rising prodigy. She speaks about how the Clans aren't so different, how it shouldn't matter where you're born, and how "something has to be done".

If it wasn't for Darktail, if someone had been able to save her, Sleekwhisker might have even been a new Firestar.

But that's not what happens. Over time, Darktail changes her into his right-hand man, slowly turning her against her friends and her ideals. This culminates in her drowning Needletail.

See though, I'm not sure what the steps are for that yet though. Hollyleaf over in Bonefall Po3 has a pretty decent 'roadmap' for how she gets from the prodigal apprentice she was at the beginning to the murderous, revenge-seeking warrior she will become. But Sleekwhisker? I don't have that yet.

Just a knowledge of the character arc I want her to have, in the end.

And I know that Breezepelt will see Sleekwhisker specifically, and recognize himself in her. I think that should really twist his gut, to know that he was complicit in the destruction of this young warrior. Just like the adults in his life were to him, just one arc before.

Other Stuff

I would like to make it official that Sleekwhisker and Raven are an item, but I've been making sure there's lots of other gay rep before I do that.

I have three solid MLM couples (Smokefoot x Talonclaw, Runningwind x Redtail, Stonepelt x Weedwhisker)

One solid WLW couple (Sunstrike x Furzepelt)

And a lot of other queer dynamics (Bluestar @ Oakheart & Lizardstripe, Hollyleaf's Secret Tunnel Friends, Ivypool and Blossomfall, Aroace Firestar, whatever the hell is going on between Brokenstar and Runningnose, Sparkpelt and Hollylark, Mothwing)

But I want more solid, healthy WLW couples before adding Sleekwhisker x Raven officially. Maybe my standards are just too high? In any case I intend for them to be a couple.

And to answer some more of your questions more directly;

-How long does she stick with the Kin?

To the bitter end, like canon. She's too far gone and can't be saved; and in any future appearances will continue to be a problem in some capacity.

We're going to have to see what the future arcs do with her, too. As you know, I stick close to canon and rework the major events, and Sleekwhisker is still out there in the world. There's a chance, in any given new book, that she could pop up again; so I can't work her into the TBC arc, or even ASC when it's complete if she doesn't pop up.

I will say though if we go through enough arcs that it does look like they've just utterly dropped her as a character, the Bonefall Rewrite WILL give her an actual conclusion to her arc.

-Rogue Nuisance or Multifaceted Antagonist?

Well, to begin with, the Kin has a LOT less non-Clan rogues. I'm capping them to 6, not including Darktail himself. Most of them are going to be warrior-named and Clanborn; I am not going to tolerate the idea that every villain can just conjure up a bunch of random rogue bodies to use for Nefarious Deeds.

(Kin starter pack: Flame, Nettle, Rain, Raven, Roach, Dragonfly. Consider all others cut; IF Zelda, Loki, and Max don't get chopped they will be combined with Jacques and Susan.)

So if Sleekwhisker is ever a 'rogue nuisance' it'll always be with the backing of the Kin remnants, and she's the leader of this faction.

Sooo... thinking about it now, hey, maybe she can eventually change over time as she actually learns to lead this group. We'll see how the modern arcs go, and if there's a random new character somewhere who could become an older, wisened Sleekwhisker... or, an aged, even crueler Sleekwhisker. We'll see.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 4x10 Die All, Die Merrily

I solemnly swear to myself that I’ll start writing short rewatch posts starting with the next episode, because I would like to finish this rewatch before the end of season 6. This will have to be the last long one...

This entire episode is basically JRoth and The 100 trying to do a Hunger Games episode, only without the essence of The Hunger Games series – where this violent death match between (usually) 12 participants was portrayed as a terrible thing, an example of the cruelty, privilege and voyeurism of the ruling classes and the oppressiveness of the system, while here, in The 100, it’s just a Grounder tradition that the show doesn’t seem to pass any judgment on and that’s just a way to have some cool sword fighting action on screen.

But a lot of people really love this episode. It’s probably the most overrated episode of the show. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is a very good episode. What is does – the fights are well staged, unlike the one in 3x04, and the action, the drama, even some the emotional moments, it all works very well. That’s why I gave it a pretty high rating. It would be in my top 30. Maybe not my top 25? But I’ve seen so many people, including media articles, call it one of the best episodes of the show, put it in top 10 or even top 5 best episodes…and that’s just odd. Come on, it’s not top 10 material. It’s not in my top 5 episodes of season 4 (let alone the entire show). But I guess people really love sword fighting?

In retrospect, the main purpose of this episode was to set up Octavia as the Osleya – Red Queen/Blodreina, making her the winner of this version of Grounder Conclave, and the ruler of the bunker. Now, pretty much every viewer could have guessed she would win, because she’s one of the main characters and has a massive Plot Armor, but in-universe, Octavia was the dark horse, the least likely to win out of the 13 participants. She’s been training in Grounder fighting for some 6 months, but that’s nothing compared to all the others, who had been training and fighting all their lives. The show hasn’t often been too realistic about her fighting skills, but this time, to be fair, her victory is made to look a little bit more realistic because her tactic is to do what she is uniquely qualified to do – hide, let the others kill each other, and wait for the moment when she can kill the last living opponent.

This is Octavia’s most triumphant moment, when she wins, and then when she decides to not keep the bunker just for Sky people (who would have filled just 400 out of 1200 places) but to share the bunker between all the clans. * And with that, Octavia becomes the Queen and Savior in the eyes of the Grounders and unite all the clans, living the dream that Lexa tried but failed to make happen.

* …Oh wait, wasn’t that the exact same thing Clarke suggested to Indra, Roan and the other Grounder leaders in the previous episode, and they all ignored her, because they preferred war over the bunker, and then to fight the Conclave, and flat out told her that they wouldn’t listen to her because she’s not a Commander? If you want Grounders to listen to you, you must either kill a dozen other people in the Hunger Games-like sworf fight, and/or have “special blood” from birth and then have a chip with dead people’s voices put in your head. You may have good ideas, Clarke, but it means nothing if you can’t fight with a sword.

From the point of view of the characters in-universe, they gained absolutely nothing with this Conclave that they wouldn’t have had if they had accepted Clarke’s suggestion – except 12 of them would be still alive. Roan, who suggested the Conclave, only managed to get himself killed. But in terms of the narrative purpose, this is the show raising Octavia high, making her the hero/savior/queen, just to make her a tyrant and a villain in season 5. It’s also why some other characters needed to die so Octavia’s dark story could happen – Roan, because having a strong and sly Grounder leader in the bunker would prevent the same power dynamic; Ilian, because his relationship with Octavia was starting to become (gasp!) healthy and healing, and we can’t have that. And then there’s Luna, who goes full grimdark, wiyh the worst “DEAATH TO EVERYONE! Humanity doesn’t deserve to survive!” nihilism, so she could be the main antagonist, and also push Clarke into her own desperate actions.

Luna’s character turn used to be one of my two main problems with this episode. I used to really like her, and this seemed like a completely OOC twist. But she is the character I’ve changed my mind the most on during my rewatch, and now I think this turn was foreshadowed and in character for her.

But my other big problem with this episode still stands. It de-protagonizes Clarke, and pushes her into a pseudo-antagonist role, by framing the episode as a battle where the audience roots for Octavia (and Bellamy) and spends all the time with them and other people involved in the Conclave, directly or indirectly, while not letting us see Clarke’s perspective and her decision-making for more than a few short moments early on, which are easy to forget when you’re watching the episode for the first time. Obviously, the goal was to make the twist ending more surprising. And because of that, I was really confused the first time I watched this, and didn’t understand how Clarke went from asking for everyone to share the bunker (and refusing to let Roan be assassinated, so only Arkers people and Trikru would share the bunker – which, apparently, even saintly Kane agreed to!), to stealing the bunker for the Arkers with Jaha. But on rewatch, Clarke’s motives and state of mind are so much clearer and more relatable to me throughout season 4 – and, to be fair, this episode does set up her reasons early on. It just distracts the viewers too much with the Conclave itself, which the viewers know Octavia is likely to win. But looking at the situation as the characters themselves see it, Clarke’s decision to steal the bunker makes sense – certainly a lot more sense than the Conclave itself, which is an incredibly stupid way to make decisions on the survival of the human race.

 I used to be one of the people who really liked Luna and thought she was this wonderful voice of morality and non-violence, and when she appeared with the whole “I fight for death!” thing, it seemed out of nowhere. But she’s the character I’ve changed my mind the most on rewatch. What was I thinking? I guess I was just tired at the time of all the people celebrating violence and ruthlessness. Rewatching seasons 3 and 4, I realized that 1) this turn was, actually, in-character, and that 2) even before that, her pacifism was of the wrong kind and her moralizing was always hollow. She was running away because she was scared of humanity’s, or rather, her own capacity for violence, but she was OK with letting the rest of the world fall apart, as long as she could stay in her little bubble and not get her hands dirty. Maybe that’s a bit harsh. I’m aware that she’s been through terrible things – Grounder traditions are awful, she had to kill her own brother, and then everyone she loved died and she remained the last of her people. But even before the latter happened, she was flat out refusing to take the Flame and save the world from ALIE. Which, fine, her choice, and having voices of dead people in your head is pretty messed up – but she didn’t care if the rest of the world was enslaved by ALIE, as long as she thought her people would stay safe on their oil rig. Then, in season 4, after all of them had died of radiation, she didn’t want to help save the entire human race from Praimfaya, and had to be convinced to do it. Instead, she was moralizing about how humans may not deserve to survive. If you don’t want to save people because they aren’t morally perfect enough for you, there’s something wrong with you and your own morality. Having that in mind, it’s not OOC that she ended up making the step from letting the human race die, to actively trying to kill everyone.

(BTW, does Nightblood give people superpowers – and I don’t mean the ability to survive radiation and have the Flame or mind drives in their heads, but things like superior strength, agility, speed…? In season 4, I was definitely under the impression that it does, since Roan made that remark in 4x08 about Nightbloods like Lexa and Luna being superior fighters. And that would explain why Luna is supposed to be the most dangerous warrior of them all, which otherwise wouldn’t make a lot of sense, since she hasn’t done almost any real fighting for about a decade (I don’t know if she trained, I guess she should have just done it for sports), but she’s better than all of those other people, many of whom are physically much stronger than her if Nightblood doesn’t give you superstrength and who have been training and fighting all the time. You can’t even headcanon something like “she has the skills of all the previous Commanders in her head” as you can with Lexa.  But nothing we’ve seen with Clarke, Madi or the Primes suggests that about Nightblood, so I’m very confused now. To be fair, The 100 was never very realistic about fighting skills, especially not when it comes to the Girl with a Sword characters.)

In any case, for the purpose of the show, Luna is the clear favorite, and Octavia is the least likely to win. Clarke is well aware of it, though she pretends otherwise in order to give Octavia encouragement. Bellamy is also aware of it, but he has to put all the hopes in his sister, because he loves her so much and can’t accept the idea of her dying. He also gives Octavia the best advice - use her experience of hiding as “Girl under the floor”, hide and let the others mostly kill each other.

While Kane also decides to hope for the best, Jaha really isn’t happy about having the Conclave as a way to decide who survives, and thinks it’s stupid (of course, he’s right), but, unlike the others, also doesn’t believe the Grounders would honor the deal if Octavia won. However, Kane assures him they take the tradition as sacred. We can see Clarke listening carefully – and, no doubt, thinking that Luna is most likely to win, and if they really honor the outcome, that would mean everyone would die (except Luna, that is – who really would be the last person on Earth). Clarke then goes to find Roan and tell him they have to stop Luna (while Echo is listening), but Roan blames her for disrespecting their traditions etc. Clarke tells him that she wants the humanity to survive, even if it’s not her people. (Which shines more light on her motivation. As she points out in 4x11, excluding any of the Arkers from the bunker means that the Grounders wouldn’t have anyone to run hydro generators and produce artificial food etc. But she made her decision to steal the bunker only after Luna entered the picture, and the possibility of the human race all dying became very likely.) Roan doesn’t listen and tells her to leave before she “dishonors her people even more”. Huh. Interesting views on honor. This is a guy who has no problem ordering assassinations and wasn’t upset when his army was burning villages and killing people just for the sake of it, but he takes Grounder traditions very seriously, as seen later when he banished Echo for cheating at the Conclave. However, Clarke’s words seem to have gotten more than he was ready to admit, because, in the end, he came to his senses and offered Octavia an alliance against Luna, deciding that, after all, the most important thing is for the human race to survive.

There are hints of what would happen that I didn’t notice the first time: Close-up of Clarke in thoughts. Close-up of Echo, also deep in thoughts, and deciding to cheat at the Conclave. IMO, Echo’s actions in this episode are more defensible and understandable than anything else she’s done up to this point. Everything else she did was for Azgeda to get more power, or she used the “I was following orders” excuse, but this time, it really is a matter of survival, so I can’t even blame her for deciding to kill a bunch of people to ensure that Azgeda gets the bunker, in the sneaky way, rather than by the rules, as Roan is trying.

One of the strengths of this episode are all the emotional moments. There is a big one between Indra and Octavia, as Indra genuinely gives her advice to help her, which Octavia finds strange, since, if she won, it would mean her people wouldn’t get the bunker, but Indra tells her she’s her people, too. The meaning of the phrase “my people” means is something the characters are constantly defining for themselves. (Interesting that same phrase “You are my people” was said in season 2 by Clarke to Lincoln, at the time when he still wasn’t living in Arkadia.) Indra is Octavia’s surrogate mother in a way, and considers her family. Besides, I don’t think it’s that odd to wish her luck, since the odds of her directly facing the Trikru warrior aren’t high anyway.

Gaia and Indra get a rare mother/daughter moment, when Gaia cries in her mother’s arms after the Trikru warrior is one of the first to fall. As far as they know at that point, this means death for them and all other Trikru.

Octavia and Ilian later do their best to pretend they are Katniss and Peeta in the first Hunger Games, since he is saving her and offering her alliance against the others, while she is rejecting it because she’d then have to kill him. He claims he didn’t volunteer to be there because of her, but it could have been a combination of motives. His entire family is dead, he will also die, but in a much worse way, of radiation, in a few days, unless one of this people wins the Conclave, but I’m sure he also wants to give Octavia more chance to possibly win, and the odds of the two of them being the last are very slim.

Of course, this episode also has big emotional moments for the Blake sibling relationship, and brings them together after almost two seasons of conflict – or rather, of Octavia being angry at Bellamy. Which leaves me halfway between feeling its’s heartwarming. and feeling bitter that it’s still all about Octavia forgiving Bellamy, after beating him bloody at one point. It’s a two-episode storyline - at the beginning, Bellamy regrets he wasn’t able to tell his sister that he loves her, even at the end of the world. (He gets the chance to do that in the next episode.) When Bellamy realizes that Echo is cheating, he decides to go in there to stop her. (I like how the show made it look for a moment like Kane will be against it, but then it turns out he just tells Bellamy to wait till it’s dark, so he wouldn’t be discovered.)

After killing a few people including mortally wounding Ilian, Echo tries to kill Octavia, again, and Bellamy stops her, and in their fight, almost chokes her to death. Bellamy chokes or strangles people quite often. Four episodes later, these two will be an item. Sure, it’s 6 years in-universe, but for the viewers, very short time, and Bellamy and Echo will have just one one-to-one scene together before they become a couple. I guess trying to kill each other counts as setup for romance on The 100, it’s like an equivalent of at least six months of dating.

Roan stops him and then banishes Echo, and Octavia overhears Bellamy talk about his love for her – telling Roan that he was the “lucky one” to have her as a sister. Is feeling unconditional love lucky, even if that person treats you like crap most of the time? Anyway, Octavia is very moved. I guess she really did not realize before how much Bellamy loved her, which is almost unbelievable - if anything was always super-obvious, it was how much Bellamy loves his sister and how much he was willing to do for her.

There are a lot of mentions of Lincoln. Octavia’s final decision to share the bunker is obviously supposed to be something inspired by what Lincoln believed in - and Octavia and Luna even argue over who Lincoln would be ashamed of. Which is silly, because Luna must be aware she’s talking nonsense and that he wouldn’t approve of what she’s doing. But most of what she says in this episode is BS, as when she goes on about how Skaikru taught her that people are selfish and awful. (Really? The Mountain Men didn’t, the Grounders fighting each other all the time didn’t, making her kill her own brother and fight other children in the Conclave, nothing? But when Skaikru tried to find a way for everyone to survive Praimfaya, which ended with Clarke injecting herself with Nightblood and volunteering to risk her life and be tested? That convinced her that people are awful and selfish? OK then.) She only starts making sense when she finally admits it is all about herself – she clearly has been traumatized and afraid of her own capacity from violence and darkness since she killed her brother in the Conclave.

Twist! Bellamy is kidnapped. And then we get the twist ending OMG! Shock! They stole the bunker! “They used the gas to knock everyone out, as in Mount Weather". Dum dum dum – another comparison to Mountain Men OMG, they are as bad as the Mountain Men, because they can use gas and… they knocked those people out that stood in their way, instead of killing them all (as Azgeda and Trikru had a habit of doing this season)? Uuum...

Timeline: There are 3 days left until the death wave comes, and the conclave lasts  one day and one night.

Body count: All the people who die in this episode die in the Conclave: 12 Grounder warriors, chronologically:

Two warriors, including the Fio of Trikru (recurring character – he’s the guy who used to beat up Octavia in 2x11), killed by Roan;

two are killed by Echo’s arrows;

one warrior killed by Ilian, who was helping Octavia, another by some other warrior, one by Octavia (this was during one four-way fight);

two by Luna;

Ilian, mortally wounded by Echo and then Octavia mercy-killed him at his request (dramatic irony – she threatened earlier that she’ll kill him the next time she sees him);

Roan, killed by Luna, in a pretty horrifying manner, slicing his stomach and drowning him in a fountain of radioactive rain;

Luna, stabbed from behind by Octavia, after falling for a pretty cheap trick.

Rating: 8.5/10

Bonus:

Episodes 4x09-4x10 in a nutshell:

Grounders * fight a war for the bunker *

Clarke: The end of the world is coming! Instead of fighting, we could all share the bunker instead! There is place for more than just one clan!

Grounders: Meh. We don't care, we prefer war, and we would only listen to you if you were a Commander!

Clarke * is exasperated by everyone's stubborn and stupid behaviorand the probability of everyone dying * OK then, I'll make myself a Commander *

Roan: She became a Nightblood through science! Blasphemy!

Grounders: What an insult to our sacred traditions that were started 90 years ago by a bunch of nutty cultists and a scientist who made Nightblood through science so people could get computer chips in their heads! So, let's have war.

Roan: Let's have Hunger Games instead. The one tradition we love more than hereditary special blood that lets you get a computer chip in your head. A dozen people killing each other with swords is the best way to decide the fate of the human race!

* everyone agrees*

Luna: Hi. I'm the strongest fighter by far, and I want to fight so I can destroy the entire human race. DIE DIE DIE! DEATH TO EVERYONE!

Everyone: Well, that's fair. She will probably win and everyone will die. Reasonable. Let's hope that it doesn't happen.

Clarke * is really exasperated * Oh, hell no. I better make sure at least some people survive. * steals the bunker *

Octavia: * wins against all odds * We should all share the bunker!

Everyone: This is such a great idea, because someone who can fight with a sword said it! Hey, wait, what happened?

Clarke: .........