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guys will see a location and think wow thats a great place for a clan of warrior cats

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yesss! like canon is "I killed him because I had to. You don't understand. I had to. It was going to fix everything. It has to. Everything was wrong and I needed to fix it." (delusional) and that's SO COMPELLING. She barely hunted him. She was mad at him, furious beyond Reasonable Thought. here's a conversation with Leafpool from Sunrise:

This is my absolute favorite Hollyleaf scene in all of warrior cats. never seen anyone else talk about it but I really like it - you can see her slipping into absolute furious delusion throughout Sunrise, it's so interesting as a POV and her hissing at her friend because she's just beyond reason is so unlike her, it's super fascinating to read.

Sorry for such a big reblog i have thoughts on this! I like canon hollyleaf way more than fanon because she's just so much more... fucked up girl. Like fanon is so cold and calculated and canon holly is honestly just a big mess, inconsistently characterized, and out of control all the time. She learns leafpool is her mom and is like I FUCKING HATE HER I WANT HER DIED SHE BROKE THE CODE SO I HATE HER despite loving her as an aunt all her life. like queen is not calculated at all... she does everything with her heart and not her head in sunrise

hollyleaf fanon is weird because while yes i think the more canon-adjacent take on her as messy, flawed, uncoordinated, and desperately struggling with her own belief system is infinitely more interesting, i do understand why portraying her as a calculating badass assassin works better for a lot of animation projects, specifically when it comes to ones from ashfur's point of view- but the prevalence of the latter leads to less of the former!! cool visuals but at what cost............

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I'm not obsessed with Clangen, YOU'RE obsessed with ClanGen! >:-(

Here is my attempt at the titular Pigeonleap in CatGen ! Maybe i will put her in one of my clans. but I actually just like playing this like a dress up game

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Forcing leafpool to learn physics

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so excited every time i get a paralyzed cat because the sprites are SO CUTE then she saves a whole patrol from a flood. No injuries. Queen. she was an apprentice when it happened so naturally a honor title

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Now that Leafpool has learned physics we’re moving onto AP bio

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clangen is magical... eepybreak welcome to dustclan...

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guys did shadowsight actually get hit by lightning 😭

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leafpool is here!!😎😋🥰😍

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hey uh rainfern... should we unpack this?

waspsight loved and trusted and depended on rainfern. not a negative bone in her body about her former mentor. Meanwhile rain wanted her fucking dead from the moment she saw her. was forced to punish her and RIPPED HER EYE OUT. what the hell

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YOUR FANCLANS ARE SO COOL!!!! i cant wait to see more of them omg! could you share some more on the clairvoyants/prophets and their pilgrimages up the mountain? :o also, did you have anywhere specific in colorado in mind when mapping? it looks gorgeous! and i love the landmark names omg, how'd you come up with those? sorry for all the questions im just very excited about these guys!

YAY thank you so much that means a ton! you're enabling my infodumping I'm about to write 1500 words (serious). Don't ever worry about asking too many ST questions it's all i think about.

Here's a MSPAINT doodle of the girls. hope nothing bad ever happens to them

easy questions first!

ST's set in the northern Colorado Rockies where they border the Great Plains. Somewhere unpopulated in the northern Front Range!

Landmark names are usually named after past leaders/healers/deputies of the Clans, who I just made up on the spot (except I have a Blizzard playthrough on Clangen so I used some of those leaders and important cats.) To come up with a lot of the names I researched local fauna. Colorado has a LOT of elk and a lot of large carnivores! Summer Thunder has a storm motif (did you know) so a lot of the place names have to do with that

I'm going to go ahead and put the Clairvoyant/Prophet stuff under a cut because I write headcanons as I go and it gets so lengthy lol.

SORRY IN ADVANCE. this is like 3/4 just for me so i can put it in my document

Clairvoyants are the cats who would have "a strong connection to StarClan" in canon text. StarClan (usually called the Stars in-universe) are not an explicit thing or confirmed. There is something spiritual going on, but it's a lot more like a Primal Force than it is "My Dead Aunt Says Hello To Me In My Dreams." The technical name for cats who are tuned in to this spirituality is "Clairvoyants", though it's an ambiguous label and not something that ever puts cats into a group. Most cats aren't clairvoyant or are to a very low degree (this works since level of clairvoyance in any universe doesn't affect how much you believe in a higher power).

Prophets, a role found only in StormClan, are kind of like canon Medicine Cats except I separated the role into its composite Prophet and Healer. Some cats are both, in which case they'll call themselves whichever one makes more sense - usually Prophet because it's rarer and so it can feel closer to your identity. A Prophet is sort of like how Ancient Greek Oracles were. They are rare and usually have a medium to extremely high level of Clairvoyance. (ex. Leafpool, Goosefeather.) Their role, like medcats, is to speak as the Stars' voice and share wisdom with the Clan. The Stars do not "give prophecies" in the literal sense that they do in canon - cats interpret things how they will, like we would in real life. It's easy to think of an omen or prophecy if you want to hear one.

Storm cats just take it really seriously because they REALLY love the Stars. They have a higher genetic predisposition of Clairvoyants, so they have become really connected to spirituality and piety. They believe in fate and destiny and will use the Stars to justify any achievement. Naming ceremonies often go like "You are so lucky to be blessed by the Stars with such amazing jumping skills - your new name will be Pigeonleap." (Maybe Pigeonleap just got really good at jumping because he trained for his entire apprenticeship. It doesn't matter. It's the Stars.)

Pilgrimages, which I may start calling something cool (like the Prophet's Ascent maybe?) are taken by aspiring Prophets when they want to prove their connection to the Stars. Prophets are usually apprenticed to someone who is also Clairvoyant/a Prophet or a Healer if there isn't one. When they reach the end of their apprenticeship they are sent to hike Cloud's Tooth via Thunder Ridge/Lightning Point. Usually their mentor will follow them as far as the path from the Ridge up to Lightning Point (I'm thinking this is like a day's hike), but the mentor in most cases has already done the hike and is not interested in doing it again.

Cloud's Tooth is tall (probably around 9-11,000ft???) and not too forgiving. Cats are sent when the weather is predicted to be good, but anyone who's been to the Rockies knows that can change in about five minutes. The Clans are crepuscular in my universe like regular cats, so, in the interest of safety, cats usually just try to hike the mountain during the day. It can be 7-9 hours to the summit. They spend the night at the top and the Stars speak to them (whatever that means for the particular cat.) No one else except Prophets hikes this mountain, not even people - it's rocky, without water in most places, and very windy. And slick when wet. And worse when snowy. And you'll notice all the surrounding landmarks have something to do with storms.

That being said - a cat who makes it up and down again is pretty much guaranteed the Prophet role. Otherwise, they probably just fell to Stardom down a scree slope.

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WE NEED TO SEE GEORGE LMAO

bad news georgestar died of old age. he never took a mate although i tried to force some old man yaoi on him with this other random guy. They ended up disliking each other instead. He also never stopped being nervous which was a trait I hoped he would grow out of. Oh well..

now you are going to get more SparkClan info.

This is his successor Avalanchestar. George picked her all by himself. Avalanche started dating this guy Hailfur when she was like 40 moons and he was honest to god freshly made a warrior. and they got pregnant The Next Day. so that was kind of weird.

I appointed Weedpeak as deputy because she's the most awesome ever. She broke her back like The last time i was working on this save so I don't remember how. but she survived and is doing great! she keeps asking Avalanchestar out despite Avalanche's obvious committed relationship to Hailfur, the father of her nine children. You go weedpeak. keep trying queen

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UMMM.........

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reread leafpools wish shes so lucky no one finds out. Like my girl is 2 weeks from giving birth in the thunderclan camp showing every sign. then Mysteriously leaves and Mysteriously comes back with kits. And literally everyone already knows she had a thing with crowfeather. Like the pieces are all there……..

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Would love to know if any warrior cats artists besides me struggle with Making cats look like cats. like we've all been in different art communities that influenced our styles - personally i was on like "WE'RE NOT FURRIES" musically where we all had dog ocs and stuff. That specifically, while cute, it's such a distinct cartoony style it's been hard for me to develop a style that reads as "little kitty" which is what i strive for. I feel like a lot of wc fanart falls more into a specific set of style requirements which isn't bad, cool even, convergent evolution-esque? but you sometimes forget they are cats. at least i do. IDK weigh in if you have thoughts on that i would love to know

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babe would you still love me if i was left open for death by infection