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mallowstep · 3 years

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What about any Swiftpaw or Snowkit au ideas? Do you have any of those like with Shrewpaw?

i've answered this before, i believe, but i don't know where the post went lmao.

uh, so. i will probably never write a swiftpaw au because! while i like the idea of it, part of why the dogs are so terrifying is because of what happens with them: they kill swiftpaw and mutilate brightpaw.

so, i'd have to kill brightpaw to keep it meaningful, and i don't want to live in a world where cloudtail can't love his wife.

i'm sorry, i just have some lines i refuse to cross /jk

the closest i'll get is the night circus au? uh, in that one, they're all loners. so swift pulls bright from a burning building, and then they meet cloud a few months later, and they live w/ him and princess in a stable in a travelling circus.

swift is significantly less injured, bright is more or less injured to the level she is in canon. it's not really described in their fic ("relativistic") because no one involved cares about it, but it's there.

in a proper swiftpaw au, i'm not sure what i'd do. legitimately, i don't know. probably more swift/bright/cloud hours, because i refuse to live in a world where cloudtail can't love his wife.

i do want to do a loststar au at some point! where she keeps the name lostface bc it's a mark of what she survives (n also she's thinking about swiftpaw and how she lost him) and yeah?

swiftpaw's ghost might get to be a character in that.

i think, if i kept just swiftpaw alive, i wouldn't have an interesting story, because it would be basically the same but cloudtail couldn't love his wife. (it would also have a lot of down the road implications because no brightheart means no whitewing means no dovewing. you've discovered my secret the reason cloudtail and brightheart need to be alive is for dovewing.

no actually i refuse to accept them dying in any other way than within a week of one another.)

anyway.

so in a swift + bright survive au, i think! for interest's sake, i'd probably just have fun focusing on cinderpelt treating her sister and swiftpaw, who's...not really her maara because cinderpelt's litter got broken up, but still close to family.

goldenflower would be involved too i love her. i love her so much.

maybe i'd have swift like? be a therapist. not literally just. someone needs to learn how to get cats to talk about their problems.

so yeah that's that.

as for snowkit!

i've considered it, and at this point in time, i don't feel inspired, but that doesn't mean i won't.

i really like the idea of cats learning to cope with a deaf cat. like, as i've said several times, my world is not a better one, it is a different one.

so we'd probably deal with the effects of language deprivation, how home sign turns into a language, etc. maybe for interest's sake, we'd have cloudkit be deaf later on? just a thought, not sure.

anyway, brackenfur (brackenfur) would mentor him, and he'd take longer than usual to become a warrior, because he has just fundamentally more to learn. i could make him a medicine cat, and honestly, i think the clans would have a bigger problem with a deaf cat than a blind one, but i just don't like forcing cats to become medicine cats.

right so brackenfur would mentor him, and he'd never be the Best warrior, but that's okay! we don't need every cat to be the best warrior. it's okay to just be average.

not really sure where i'd go with it.

the reason i chose to do a shrewpaw au was because shrewpaw's death closed off a story option. when shrewpaw died, squirrelpaw's romantic interests were realigned. so by letting him live, i had an avenue to continue the story down.

however, swiftpaw and snowkit don't provide the same avenue for a story. letting them live doesn't open a previously closed door or change how a plot would play out wait.

wait.

i take it back: this is what i'd do for a snowkit au.

we open on bracken...paw? probably brackenpaw. his mentor sucks. fireheart mentors him, his sister gets hurt, etc., etc.

then! then. speckletail's kit. snowkit. and brackenfur is just like that, he's just a good guy! like that, so he starts hanging out and he wants to mentor him.

and he does! and that means that he gets to be deputy instead of...maybe greystripe? but more likely brambleclaw.

yes. that is what i would do in a snowkit au.

see what i mean about opening new avenues? swiftpaw in particular feels like a dead end to me, i just can't find a way to get his story to open up a new idea, which is a shame, because i do think there's a lot of potential.

but right now, i'd get the same drama by just writing some canon compliant brightpaw one-shots, y'know?

#ask #anon #talk #au talk #mine #essay #long #snowkit #shrewpaw #swiftpaw

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