#but this one did not it was such a struggle kjdfs

[littlebluejaydraws]

-I love you. -I know.

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[mallowstep]

DUDE I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A TUMBLR OMG!! I've read basically all of your fics and let me tell you, they are exquisite!! Question: do you think you'll ever write an AU fic where Swiftpaw or Snowkit or Gorsepaw lived? I've always felt extremely bitter over their deaths. I also want to know how you feel about their deaths, too!

kjdf welcome to my Brainrot

<3 thank you so much!! <3 i'm glad you're enjoying them!

okay i've answered swiftpaw and snowkit before but not gorsepaw, so i'll just answer 'em all again and add this to the faq.if you want to read my swiftpaw and snowkit au thoughts, i expand more on it in this ask.

but in general, i think all three deaths are painful for a reason, and while i appreciate the fix-it fics where they live, my motto for stories is "different, not better." the shrewpaw lives au is the biggest exception, but that was mostly because i love squirrelflight.

i'm not really interested in a swiftpaw lives au, because if swiftpaw lives and brightpaw lives, then like. the tension/threat of the dogs is cut a lot. and i don't want to kill brightpaw. i love cloudtail/brightheart too much for that.

anyway, even if i was okay with letting the tension from the dogs fade a little, since you know we all know how serious the threat is, i still don't think there's a story i would be interested in telling there. i love minor tweaks to canon (heck, in saccharine tithes of love and glory, i basically went ahead and said, "canon continues in the background unless i Explicitly Say otherwise"), but i need some interesting hook.

if i want to write a trauma and recovery fic, i could just write about brightpaw. i don't think keeping swiftpaw alive adds very much to the story. or, like, yeah! you could do a lot with it, you could play with bramblekit and tawnykit, but it's just not the type of thing i'm interested in doing. the closest i'll probably get is relativistic, from the night circus au, where like. swift rescues bright from a burning house. so they both live and they both date cloud.

as for snowkit, while i don't have any plans to write a snowkit lives au, if i did, it would be about brackenfur, not snowkit.

why? well, i don't particularly have a ton of interest in snowkit's pov. it's not that there's nothing interesting in it (there is), but a combo of a) being an extremely auditory person who struggles with visual processing and b) not being interested in writing extended kit pov.

not saying i'll never do it from his pov, but my plan (if i ever write it) would be to write from brackenfur's pov, because brackenfur has a lot of potential to be a really nuanced character, and i want to mess with that. plus, his sister is disabled, so i think that would be an interesting thread to pull.

either that or do something similar to "i'll believe the wind is calling me" where we get a variety of povs, but the story is still focused around deadfoot and cinderpaw. i think this is less likely, but again, this is all speculative. any snowkit lives au i'll write hasn't even made it to my things to write list yet.

as for gorsepaw, while i've never thought about a gorsepaw lives au, i do have a couple of aus where it might be a background feature?

it's probably the hardest au to write because his death is a deliberate and specific action. unlike swiftpaw and snowkit, which are some amount of chance, gorsepaw is murdered to make a point.

and i love that.

obviously i hate it, but tigerclaw is such a fantastic villain, and we don't see one who's so...dark on a personal scale until darktail. like, po3 and oots are both very big picture, but darktail is the one who doesn't let mistystar bury the bodies. very dark. i like it.

anyway.

much like swiftpaw, gorsepaw's death serves an important narrative function, but unlike swiftpaw, there's no amount of chance that can realistically save him.

don't get me wrong, i want him to live, i just. don't know what to do about it.

so a gorsepaw lives au, for me, has to be set in the new prophecy, because then i can handwave the fact that he survives and not think about why and how he survives.

with that in mind, i've got another shrewsquirrel au where i think. gorsepaw is just going to live. in the background. it's not going to be explained, it's just going to be there. maybe i'll write something from his pov.

it's frustrating for me because! while gorsepaw's death is really hard to avoid from a storytelling perspective, allowing him to live does create new and interesting stories. he's onewhisker's apprentice and.

well morningflower and ashfoot are sisters and we haven't talked about kinship in a while here, but recall that makes them brothers.

anyway. my point is. there's a lot of interesting stuff that can be done with this. windclan ends up being a victim for thunderclan to save repeatedly in tpb, and it's something i love thinking about and writing about and exploring, so like. a lot of potential.

maybe i'll have crowkit&co. be born earlier so tigerclaw can kill crowkit instead. no crowfeather. only mothpool.

also as a bonus i assume you came here from the mothwing fic in stolag ("in a faith-forgotten land") so let me say. it was Very Hard to resist the urge to make mothwing's name mothpool. if it wasn't literally leafpool and mothwing's ship name, i would've done it.

(leafpool's name would probably be leafshine. i like -shine, as a suffix. it's pretty. or leafbreeze. not 100% sure.)

<3