#but spottedpaw confides in her what thistleclaw did to her

[an1malcannibal]

Bluestars prophecy has got to be one of the biggest missed opportunities in warrior cat’s history. I find bluestars story to be one of the saddest and most impactful of all the characters and I rlly think that book is a textbook example for warrior cats. Proposes a gazillion very interesting concepts and doesn’t explore ANY of them.

[ailuromachy]

i wrote an outline attempting to make thrushpelt a fully fleshed out character rather than just a narrative crutch for bluestar’s prophecy

-thrushpelt is born alongside thistle/rose/sweet so he's closer in age to bluestar and is tighter with thistleclaw

-he and bluepaw have been friends since apprenticehood, as have thistlepaw and snowpaw

-he becomes goosefeather's first apprentice. his dad wants him to be a warrior and is disappointed. thistlepaw doesn't get it either and thinks he's a puss

-whiles gathering herbs he comes across a group of loners and offers to give them a share of the herbs, which inadvertently leads to them raiding thunderclan camp

-ashamed, thrushpaw switches with featherpaw to begin training as a warrior

-things proceed mostly as they happened in canon. thrushpelt is seen as a good if not awkward and weak willed guy and kinda a pushover by the rest of his clan

-thrushpelt develops a crush on bluefur, she does not reciprocate

-thistleclaw is idolized by his clanmates but thrushpelt is afraid of him and pissed off by his dangerous political agenda. because thistleclaw holds so much prestige and is probably physically stronger than him thrushpelt is too weak willed to challenge him on his beliefs though. the two begin to drift apart (exemplified by the scene where thistleclaw attacks oakheart and assaults bluefur while thrushpelt does nothing to alleviate this situation)

-thrushpelt receives spottedpaw as an apprentice but she wants to be a medicine cat. having been in her position  before, he switches her out to featherwhisker

-thrushpelt finally grows a pair and poses as the father of bluefur's kits. he finally feels like he did something right this time, something good.

-bluefur never tells him but thrushpelt does eventually find out about what became of mistyfoot and stonefur

-when bluestar becomes leader she appoints him as her first deputy

-he finds out about the spottedpaw thing and is shocked and horrified before resolving that thistleclaw should not be allowed to live

-together with rosetail, they kill him and chalk his death up to a border skirmish. thrushpelt doesn't know if he did the right thing and is consumed by guilt

-he confides what he and rosetail did to no one but bluefur, who assures him he did right and will keep his promise as he once kept hers

-as a deputy, he does everything he can to sustain peace between riverclan and thunderclan, for reasons both pragmatic and personal

-tigerclaw has never particularly liked him, by osmosis from thistleclaw and because he thinks he is too soft hearted and weak

-in a particularly dramatic border conflict thrushpelt sees misty and stone present and retreats thunderclan, even though thunderclan seems to be winning

-tigerclaw gets pissed and offs him. maybe in the argument before the murder he has a dramatic epiphany about who killed thistleclaw

[webkinz-05]

Could I have a shufflemancy for my Ashfur timeline? Please and thank you!

Oh my gosh I’m so excited to finally do a Warrior Cats related ask! More of this PLEASE!! For this one I got:

No Surprises - Radiohead Okay so first of all its funny that I shuffled and got a Radiohead song! I can maybe think of another Radiohead song that fits a canon Ashfur...a pretty popular one...he’s a creep he’s a weirdo what the hell is he doing here? Anyways let’s delve into this for YOUR Ashfur though! This is a great song and I’ve been listening to it a lot lately! The entire thing has a very unsettlingly calm sound to it, its very pretty though! Its not as intense as many of the songs you usually think of when thinking of Ashfur, so right away either this could be interpreted as a more cold, calculating, less emotional Ashfur or it could just be his softer side! Since I have a lot to say about this, this is gonna be pretty long, so the rest of this will be posted under the cut! With all that out of the way, let’s finally get into the lyrics!

A heart that's full up like a landfill A job that slowly kills you Bruises that won't heal

This I would interpret as Ashfur’s life in Thunderclan and his past before Squirrelflight. After the first arc, its kind of like these cats never have time to relax, rest, or recover from anything they go through. Ashfur’s life started out pretty traumatic, what with Tulipkit and Elderkit’s death, followed by Whitestorm and Brindleface dying soon after that. Ashfur suffered a lot of instability and tragedy in his early moons, this is the “landfill” in his heart. The repetitive, constant work as a warrior - hunting, pointless fighting, and patrolling until you physically can’t - this is the “job that slowly kills you”. “Bruises that won’t heal” could refer to a few different things, but I’m going to focus on a detail a lot of people don’t realize when talking about Ashfur, that being his family history. His grandfather was Thistleclaw, who we don’t need to talk about too much because everyone knows what was wrong with that guy. Thistleclaw was incredibly ambitious, would never take no for an answer. His treatment of Spottedpaw makes Ashfur’s treatment of Squirrelflight less of a surprise (ha.. no surprises...)

His father, Whitestorm, although a fan favorite and a respectable warrior, was not the most loyal mate. Sure, people choose to pretend that Whitestorm didn’t have two canon relationships in Willowpelt and Brindleface (which is fine, nobody is saying you have to be bound to your first lover for life...except for Ashfur, of course), but Whitestorm did in fact have two litters with two different she-cats, pretty close together in time, implying that Ashfur was old enough to see his father leave his mother and in all honesty neglect him and his sister. This laid the foundation for how Ashfur learned to treat the she-cats in his life. Both genetically and psychologically, Ashfur was destined to become the obsessive, jealous cat he is.

His siblings, Ferncloud and Cloudtail (Wow...never noticed they both have cloud in their name. Maybe this made Ashfur feel even more excluded and isolated than he already did?) both found mates and started a family almost immediately upon becoming warriors. Ashfur truly felt like he had nobody to confide in, nobody who understood him. His family all moved on without him, leaving him “bruised”.

You look so tired, unhappy

The truth is Squirrelflight was never happy being romantically involved with him. She wanted to be friends, and she loved him as a friend, but her heart was always set on Bramblestar (for what reason I cannot possibly fathom). She was unhappy with him, deep down.

Bring down the government They don't, they don't speak for us

Ashfur has a history of “challenging authority”, for lack of a better term. From helping Hawkfrost kill Firestar, to possessing Bramblestar, to defying Starclan and taking over the Dark Forest, Ashfur has always felt overlooked and underappreciated by those with more power than he had. He wanted that power, and he wanted to share it with Squirrelflight, the “us” in the second line refers to him and Squilf.

I'll take a quiet life A handshake of carbon monoxide

Carbon monoxide is the part that really jumps out at me here. Carbon monoxide is a flammable gas which can cause light headedness, nausea, difficulty breathing, loss of consciousness, and eventually death. The beginning of Ashfur’s downward spiral truly started when he made that deal with Hawkfrost, a “handshake” resulting in a warped perception of reality, choking and poisoning him until finally it all culminated in an explosion of fire. Yet again, a calmer version of Ashfur presents himself here. Maybe in your timeline, he wasn’t as intense as he was in canon. He would live a quiet, peaceful life on the surface, but underneath all that he was always planning his revenge. Interpreting this line a little differently, Ashfur did take many quiet lives. He was directly responsible for Firestar’s death, he took Squirrelflight’s peace away from her and her family, he ruined Shadowsight’s life and caused Bristlefrost’s death. 

And no alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises Silent, silent

Obligatory fire scene verse...I’m sure learning the truth about Squirrelflight’s kits was a surprise-

Such a pretty house And such a pretty garden

The white picket fence imagery of this line and the transition into the last verse show Ashfur’s desire for a normal life with Squirrelflight, something he was denied. He was always reaching beyond what he had, and always falling short, and just not accepting this. In other versions of the song, “garden” is replaced with “baby”, reinforcing the idea that Ashfur was not only jealous of Squirrelflight’s relationship with Brambleclaw but as her “perfect life” as a deputy and mother as well.

Overall, this song portrays a much calmer Ashfur more influenced by the events in his past than just the sudden shift in personality after Squirrelflight rejected him. I believe you had a pretty canon adjacent timeline other than that.