#not quite strelles canon

[strelles-universe]

Ah, I was about to start asking if WindClan had some sort of superior fur-care routine. XD

Fr though, Magpiestar is old, I'm surprised that Barkface managed to outlive him by like, two years. I think he was actually one of the oldest cats in the series, next to Mistystar of course. Then again, the differences in the allegiances of Yellowfang and Tallstar's SE is wack.

Also, the fact that Barkface made it through the journey to the lake just fine while Tallstar was leaning against Onewhisker for support is kind of funny to me, since Tallstar was the moor runner between the two of them. He was getting more exercise, running more than Barkface ever did in his entire life and you're telling me that Tallstar's the one that's struggling? 🤨

Either it's own of those times where you just outlive someone younger than you, or Barkface has some anti-aging herbs he forgot to tell Tallstar about. (Or Tallstar's just weak from starving. That's probably the most reasonable explanation.)

Lmao yeah - Magpiestar of Strelles probably won't ever really look old from a distance due to his fortunate fur patterning. Plus, he uses more than just Raging Wind techniques lmao - he also uses skills and abilities he picked up from his time as a Seeker from the Kingdoms.

Yeah Yellowfang's Secret is in such a weird limbo place in the timeline - anyone trying to figure things out via where everything happened in canon will always get tripped up on that book. You can kinda line up Tallstar's Revenge and Bluestar's Prophecy via the camp invasion which I did and do think is stupid Fourtrees is in between Wind and Thunder what? but Yellowfang's Secret is just left enough of those two books and Crookedstar's Promise to be confusing

Lmao yeah - Tallstar was probably suffering the effects of not just starving but of everything that happened to WindClan up until that part. Cause I imagine he put his clanmates first through all the tragedies but pre-lake windclan went through A Lot towards the end there. Being driven out, the deaths that resulted from that and when they came back they had to fight Shadow and River out of their territory, they lost more warriors during their camp battle and then ShadowClan invaded again on Tigerstar's orders

[strelles-universe]

I will die in defense of Bluestar - that breakdown and the war against StarClan was a long time coming. Her mom sucks, her mentor sucked, her dad sucked, her clanmates sucked - my poor baby

mapleshade manipulating crookedkit vs bluestar interacting with her trusted clanmates on a daily basis

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sunfall/star (her mentor) after her mother dies:

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stormtail (her father) after her sister dies:

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tawnyspots (the deputy) after her sister dies:

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goosefeather (her uncle and medicine cat) after she had her kits

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goosefeather after she gives up her kits

yellowfang’s secret is rightfully hated by many for the way it treats her but we have another common enemy we need to band against

[savrenim]

wait what is gay murder elf bachelorette?

gay murder elf bachelorette is my nickname for In Their Footsteps We Shall Follow, which is eleven books disguised as a solo DnD campaign that my genius writer-and-worldbuilder-and-just-general-genius friend wrote and I’ve been starring in and hence internally screaming about for the last two and a half years, oh the glories and frustrations of being most invested in a fandom that includes just one person, and hence I’ve been writing up the most exciting bits in quasi-novella form and posting them here so it can become a fandom of, like. three people.

it’s... not professional/ my best writing, but some pretty cool and pretty fun storytelling as I have learned what actually makes an epistolary novel in my not-quite-fanfic-because-they-literally-exist-in-canon retellings of all these books. I certainly think I much prefer the writing to any of my fanfic writing, because it’s less.... flashy setting details or clever reframing of telling a story that’s already been told and is just. directly telling the actual story that I care about. as well as the subtle shifts and character growth that are visible if you look for them are really fun to me, but eh, I’m biased. so if you are in the mood for very gay murderous blood-sacrifice teenagers trying to care about fighting for their Empire while also balancing being very very gay, there exists:

Book 2: Of Wolves And Ravens: As Told By Three Letters Sent From Cloudfall Fort Book 3: Tests of Faith (And A Continuation Of The Strell-Callo Correspondence) Book 4: To Stare Into Darkness: The Infestation Incident Of Black Lotus Labs (As Told By Four Letters Unsent, Three Letters Sent, And The Official Report Drafted By Acolyte Consecrate Iria Strell)

They’re all pretty short -- 10-20k -- and are mostly in the form of letters that Iria sends various people (or doesn’t). Book 1 became mostly backstory so was never written up, Book 2 and Book 4 can be read in any order and both make sense as stand-alones (and I think Book 4 is a little bit better than Book 2, just because I’d kind of figured out how to just tell the important bits then; although Book 2 is a really fascinating character study about dealing with heavy trauma and m u r d e r, by Book 4 Iria’s numb to all the trauma bits and mostly living her best gayest life doing mad science and also murder), Book 3 is actually maybe the gayest but also is a straight telling, not any sort of in-universe thing, and it only makes sense after Book 2. There are some other in-universe letters that I also posted for the fun of it because why not,

A Continuation Of The Strell-Dominus Correspondence  A Continuation Of The Strell-Varricon Correspondence

We’re halfway through Book 5 rn and I’ve been coping by making memes, I’ve been transcribing it for myself, and I guess we’ll see if it gets written up into a proper postable thing? I think it’s my favorite book so far. We are twenty-five hours in and there hasn’t been a single actual fight, but also, I’m probably going to fistfight a god. So fun times all around.

[strelles-universe]

Potential Scenes: Goldenflower's Reckoning

"...you're a coward."

"Excuse me?" Goldenflower narrowed her eyes.

Hound drew herself up, flattening her ears and looked her square in the eyes.

"You're a coward," she repeated.

"How dare you," hissed Goldenflower, unsheathing her claws.

Fireheart's tail lashed anxiously, not knowing if he should step in or obey his instincts and turn tail. His position as deputy clashed with his nerves which were telling him that stepping between the two mollies could easily be the last thing he ever did.

"You're a coward and you won't even admit it," Hound scoffed turning to Bramblekit and Tawnykit. "Your father was a murderer and liar. He plotted and planned to take over his own clan and was exiled for it. He murdered Redtail- the old deputy, plotted with Brokentail's rogues, tried to murder Bluestar and when that didn't work he was kicked out."

The two kits stared up at her, wide eyed as their mouths fell open.

"That's why cats avoid you," Hound concluded, turning back to the bristled and defensive form of Goldenflower. "There. It was that easy."

"I told Fireheart-" Goldenflower began with a growl.

"So your kits' father was a jackass!" Hound interrupted. "So what? That gives you the right to hide why everyone flinches when they look at Bramblepaw? Why they tense when Tawnypaw locks eyes with them? You were just going to let them think they're hated for nothing?"

"Tigerclaw being their father isn't their fault!" Goldenflower snarled.

"No it's not but it's the truth!" Hound snapped. "Newssnap burrass- not telling them isn't gonna make cats less mean! It's gonna make them more frustrated because they don't understand!"

"What do you-" Goldenflower started but shrunk back as she remembered.

Fireheart winced.

"In case you forgot boar brain, my daughter's sire is Brokentail," Hound seethed. "And she's known from the moment she asked. Because I wanted her to know. So that she better protect herself."

Hound turned back to Tawnykit and Bramblekit, "Lean into your mentors little ones. Because your father is a killer and your mother is a coward."

[strelles-universe]

Silly, Probably not Canon Snippet

"Look, I'm not trying to be mean or anything," Fireheart protested, speaking over Longtail's grumbling. "But you just... there's no chance she likes you like that."

"Can't you at least give her the chance to tell me to my face?" the tabby protested. "I know you don't like me-"

"This isn't about me not liking you," Fireheart interrupted.  "I'm telling you because she's well... silver-drawn."

Longtail blinked, "What is the Souls does-"

"Hey."

Both toms turned in time to see Sandtail taking a slightly startled paw-step away from Ahasra who was lounging on the ground before them.

"I- hey," Sandtail responded. "Did you need something?"

Ahasra allowed herself to drop into a stretch, casually arcing her back with a light twinkle in her gaze. She rose languidly to her paws, a slight smile on her face.

"Not a need," she drawled. "But I wanted to know if you'd be willing to go hunting with me."

"Who's all in the party."

"Me and you."

Sandtail blinked, a curious glint entered her eyes.

"Sure," she agreed. "Hope you can keep up."

Ahasra giggled and fell into step beside the distinguished warrior, a mischievous grin on her face.

"I'll keep close enough to see, but don't be too upset if you realize I'm falling back," she said with a wink.

Sandtail smacked her and they disappeared through the gorse tunnel.

Fireheart turned his attention back to Longtail who's jaw was hanging wide-open with disbelief. The cream furred tom slowly turned to meet Fireheart's gaze.

"Yeah," said Fireheart apologetically. "Silver-drawn."

"Souls be damned!"

[strelles-universe]

The Erins did such a bad job at hiding the colonist themes lmao. Real talk, I hear a lot about immigrant families that move from one country to another and basically ditching all of their culture as they try to integrate into their new home and seem as normal as possible.

Something, something "I worked hard to be here and rocking the boat would have me lumped in with those who didn't try"

So regarding my latest Single Dad Bramble ficlet, I'm already picturing the next one in my head and I want it to be about the first meeting of the kids with their aunt and uncle from ShadowClan. I have it very clear, even got a canon scene I want to base it off of. The trouble is I already established my titling formula as: "In which [X] does [Y]" and like. I can't think of a nicer way to describe it aside from "In which Rowanclaw is racist towards his niece and nephews." but like. I don't want to title it that. Gotta work on the title before I get around to it.

[strelles-universe]

Just experimenting

Sivaŕai - a common greeting

Siyuŕova - a common farewell

Aifra - 1st born

Yufra - 2nd born

Tefra - 3rd born

Kafra - 4th born

Vifra - 5th born

Safra - 6th born

Mifra Vishan - Blessed Child

Ovishan - One who is blessed

Ovisha - Crown Heir, Ovishana (heiress), Ovishano (heir)

Mivishanfra -> Mivishafra -> Mishafra -> Mishfra (noble??)

Iliovisha - Little Crown Heir, next in line, the eldest crown of the crown heir's litter

Iliovishana (little crown heiress) -> Ilovishana

Iliovishano (little crown heir) -> Ilovishano

[strelles-universe]

Potential Scene - Family Matters

"I was never trying to compete with Snowblossom! I just don't know why she'd choose a mediocre looking bag of violent urges to sire her son!" - Bluedawn

[strelles-universe]

I took a break from The Farlands to write another page in the latest chapter for Strelles - desperately trying to get to the end of feeding RiverClan and my dumbass drinks caffeine forgetting yet again that caffiene makes me tired not more alert and now I'm trying to work on Strelles and The Farlands while yawning with achy knuckles a full 2 hours before my naptime

[strelles-universe]

In general, AUs for warriors make the clans much more organized and sophisticated than they are in canon. So while the Erins do screw up often - like, embarrassingly often and frankly they should've quite while they were ahead - sometimes the things we see as normal to exist are a result of us humanizing them much more than they were in canon.

I can't stress this enough - canon warriors are just feral cats with a semi-complex social structure. The drama they go through is extremely accurate though lmao - as someone who has a small colony of feral cats near my old house were entertaining to watch

[strelles-universe]

The Clans need way more noncombat positions I mean they can’t just be warring and fighting all the time what about the cats who don’t want to fight at all or can’t. Do they just shove them into the elders den or the medicine cats done because they’re not useful anymore? What about cats who want to become therapists or just enjoy cleaning the camp or decorating or something?

I mean in canon the clans are tiny. They do genuinely need everyone to able to fight to be capable and willing to fight. They're also just normal cats with only bare-bones capacity to weaving.

But in AUs like mine where they're significantly more advanced and more than 10 cats exist in a clan at a time, it makes sense for non-combatant roles to steadily develop

[strelles-universe]

It's a good thing the Strelles (or any Warriors AU I know of) wouldn't give the cats major technology of any kind because Cloudtail would've been an iPad kid who never clean his screen and blasted Cocomelon from the nursery

He really would XD Cloudkit was a menace and Fireheart had 10x the patience that I could ever have with him XD

I can see him now, Cocomelon on infinite loop then screaming when someone turns it off even though he's in the main clearing and not watching it anymore

[strelles-universe]

Always felt bad for canon Fireheart because he had literally no support system. Everyone was being cold to him, he was still being harassed and with Ravenpaw gone, Graystripe was his only friend.

In my mind, he forgave canon Graystripe for his behavior because otherwise he had nobody. So alone in a clan full of cats- my poor boy :/

(That's actually why my Fireheart was so much more openly irritated with his behavior. He had siblings who agreed that Graystripe was being an ass. Also Graystripe sometimes ranted to Strelles!Silverstream who called him an idiot and forced him to think about his behavior a lot lmao)

More questions starlight and outcast

Thank you for the questions, sincerely 😭🙏💕

Starlight - Best leader hands down? Honestly?? Crookedstar. I’m tempted to say Tallstar because his book is the only legitimate Warriors book I’ll touch after all these years, but Crookedstar just. Dude went through so much, the world turned cruel around him, but he didn’t let it make him cruel, and he led his Clan through so much. And I respect that so much. Worst leader? I only have context because I haven’t picked up a Warriors book since DotC, but Bramblestar. For many reasons

Outcast - Graystripe??? I understand for like. Nostalgia reasons, but his character was just so weird for me. Even as a kid I hated him and didn’t understand why everyone was so willing to forgive all the crap he pulled. I will never understand those who legitimately like the canon version of Graystripe ://

[strelles-universe]

Oh no, you had the correct AU. I forgot the no humans thing for just a second when I typed that, so replace the car with falling rocks, and they were good. And Bluefur is not having a good time at first.

And yeah, Cherry does feel guilty. She can’t even go near or look at Firepaw for a little while, deeply afraid she’d be mad at her, until Firepaw is the one to approach her and basically tells her it’s not her fault. And the two become friends making up ways to help Cherrypaw ground herself in reality if she’s by herself or she doesn’t know if what she is seeing is real or not. But if the hallucinations scare her too much and she knows she won’t be able to get out of it, Cherrypaw will run to the closest cat she sees as safe to be with that she can find, because they have the best experience with guiding her through it. Or if her friends and family can’t help if she’s so far out of it she can’t trust what they’re telling her is true. One of them will go grab her dog friend Milah, who can help distract her with a story or a silly song they made up together by coaxing Cherry to join in. And not focus on what the voices are saying until she’s back in reality. Milah being a dog who a part of a pack of dogs who Farm and raise livestock also tells her new friend about what her life is like as a distraction too.

Lol fair - I've totally done that before while writing strelles hence a lot of open retconning over here.

What kind of placement do the clans have here? Is it like canon warriors in Britain? More like @spottyistired where they're like, on an America/Canada border? Or more like Strelles where I have an original continent but the fauna/flora is more like north america smashing into europe? I'm asking bc what kind of predators are there?

Good on Firepaw for helping her out - mistake or not, quite a few people would hold at least a temporary minor grudge before letting it go. I'm glad Cherrypaw is getting the help she needs - sounds Firepaw could end up as a medicine cat - the very first cat therapist.

And yay! Farming dogs!! Check in with @nightly-ruse bc they've found some really cool stuff about natural candle making and the like.

[savrenim]

so while I am torn about whether or not Imma bother to actually finish writing up Book 5 of gay murder elf bachelorette and posting it here for a lot of reasons, the largest of which is that I am writing these things mostly for myself? and already have the transcription so I don’t need anything else for myself for reference so it would be for the people here following the story or who might get into the story in the future, but also because, like, to correctly follow this Book, you need to be able to correctly track 30+ characters, about 10+ of them Very important, and also a bunch different families with alliances and agendas whether or not any particular character in that family is Important and that’s just. a lot. esp when, like, one person here cares. maybe two if I’m lucky. and these things take me a shit-ton of time to write, like, it’s a ridiculous amount of effort and my time is so limited that it’s always a question of is it worth it but anyways we were joking about “where did the mountain go” inconsistencies and I pointed a legit one out that I’d been not pointing out from the kindness of my heart was I met with the person who’d been spying on me constantly and (it’s chill we’re friends and stuff they’re helping me murder heretics nothing like a little murder bonding to get over a month’s worth of gross violation of privacy) but aLSO I had just discovered that my Sketchy Mentor who has way more power than he should did not give me his real name and I actually have no idea who he is and he is quite possibly impersonating an Exarch which is....real sketch and I have no idea how he’s getting away with it???, and Spymaster who very specifically only has clairvoyance, not clairaudience dramatically ended our conversation with “I saw too, he wasn’t in the registry, if I can give you a piece of unsolicited advice? Find out who you’re working for.”

which, like, was beautifully dramatic but also implied that Spymaster had seen the name Galen Torus enough to recognize that the name wasn’t on a list because there is no way I would have said it out loud to them earlier in the convo and GT really doesn’t actually use their name that much/ I have no idea if I’m the only person who they lied to and everyone else actually knows who they are/ there was only one instance in the entire Book that I actually mentioned their name in private to a friend and Spymaster’s lipreading skills are ???. and GT’s name is not on his door, he doesn’t have it on his desk, there’s nowhere that it’s been written down that’s come up in play during the story. which meant our options were to go “uuuuh yes on the lipreading I guess” or stating that I’d been OOC so the comment was explained

but then I figured out the genius solution. because if I wrote Book 5: The Knives Behind Their Teeth: As Told By Consecrated Priest Iria Strell’s Personal Notes On The Civilized Corpse Investigation, as a part of those personal notes Iria 10000% would have written about “wHAT THE FUCK IS GALEN TORUS UP TO???” for a number of things GT did because come on, gotta give all the juicy bits to the tumblr audience of one lone reader, which means canonically retrospectively Galen Torus’s name would have been in writing in a place where I was being visually spied on, hence Spymaster knowing the name enough to namedrop that makes total sense. and, like, considering that every single other retelling of a Book here for tumblr has had genuine in-world consequences (Book 2 literally got me arrested because I accidentally included a heretical symbol in a letter but Iria keeps going off I guess she has not yet learned her lesson to never write anything down) it was just. so perfect. so now whether or not Book 5 gets written in this world and posted here, it does get written in-universe and have consequences there, and I just really think that’s beautiful 

[strelles-universe]

Will you be renaming Cloudpaw? I never minded his name but I get why the other anon disliked his canon name. I'm just wondering because you've renamed a lot of other cats

Possibly - I haven't thought of a new name for him quite yet and his warrior ceremony is so far off I never really thought about it. Strelles Cloudpaw isn't quite an amazing hunter but rather, a physical learner who picks up on things quickly, so hunter names likely wouldn't fit as well.

I suppose I'll just see when it happens - almost no one has a prepared name XD I think Bluestar was the only one I really thought hard about and the others were named on the spot.