Did Brambleclaw actually disown the Three when the secret is revealed? I don't remember this happening (then again, it's been a while) but it does bug me how all three go "Poor brambleclaw :(( He was such a good dad to us and he has to learn we're not even his biokits :(((( poor guy" while simultaneously shitting on Leafpool and Squirrelflight despite them showing them more care and affection before AND after the reveal. If he does disown them, then.... WOW is the double standard real here.
In-canon? It's something you have to approximate. They don't seem to have a concept of ""disowning"" because blood relation is taken as such an insurmountable, FUNDAMENTAL fact of life. He doesn't write them out of his little kitty will and testament, but his actions ARE disowning.
It's as if the fact he is not their biological father is an automatic disowning. From the reveal onwards, he is immediately cold, distant, and the "betrayal" is mentioned often. The Three also explicitly don't blame him for his behavior, like it's just to be expected that he's Not Their Dad anymore.
Lionblaze in particular stares longingly at him several times, really missing him. And like... that's kinda what gets my goat so much
I do believe Brambleclaw is entitled to his feelings of betrayal. I believe Squilf was ultimately in the right to lie, actually, but he's still allowed to be upset and angry that she didn't trust him enough to tell him something so important. THAT SAID, YOU ARE NEVER ENTITLED TO TREAT OTHERS POORLY.
And that's what GETS me. He isn't upset that it was all revealed in such a painful and embarassing way when this could have been avoided, or that his lover struggled with this lie for so long without him, or that he feels he's lost his children. Squilf points it out in The Last Hope-- He's so ANGRY at Squilf that he will THROW HIS FAMILY AWAY
Lionblaze seems desperate to be his son again. Hollyleaf is gone for months, and Brambleclaw is still huffing about the secret when she comes back from the dead. Squilf is fawning in the hopes it makes him talk to her again. Doesn't matter. Brambleclaw Is Upsetti Spaghetti so the narrative will never examine his role in hurting this family he apparently loved so much.
(Narrative seems to understand full well that when Squilf lies for a good reason, that doesn't invalidate the hurt Brambleclaw felt... but when Brambleclaw is upset for a good reason, it actually DOES validate what he put her and his kids through)
In BB it is explicitly a disowning. He cuts them off as his children, and they reciprocate. BB!Lionblaze does so in a ball of fury, vowing that he has ONLY a mother.
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I keep on telling people you're the only one who knows how to plot. Can you teach all of us how to plot, please? I love you.
I AM SUMMONED? PLOT BRAIN SUMMONED?
I love plotting. It's my favorite part of the writing process. Plot is "things that happen" and the best part of writing is imagining things that happen. I'm going to assume that whoever may be reading this knows how to imagine The Happenings, so I'm gonna be talking more about structure, but in like, a kinda abstract sense.
A good plot is a little bit more than a string of events. Plot is like music: there's variation in rhythm and sound and melody, but ultimately there's cohesion, because it's all one song. You can have a bunch of wild things happening, but no matter how strange, there should be something that links them all together, because you're telling one story.
Plot structures are patterns in stories. I'm pretty sure most of them were developed as analysis tools (as in, story already exists > look! it follows this pattern) rather than as writing tools, but people use them as writing tools because it's a neat little way to organize the chaos that is "shit happens." Stories follow patterns for the same reasons music follows patterns: we enjoy the certainty of hitting certain beats. But we also like being surprised. A good pop song doesn't sound like a random collection of sounds, but it also doesn't sound like the middle slider of other songs.
There is this shared concept in both music and writing: the idea of tension and release. Basically, you're playing with reader expectation: there's an imbalance in the experience (tension), and we want to see that imbalance resolved (release). All the common plot structures deal with this basic pattern:
You set an expectation
There are complications to the expectation
You meet the expectation
And this rhythm is happening on multiple levels in writing. Scenes follow this structure (we're gonna get past that door, we're gonna find the murder weapon, we're gonna collaborate and come up with a plan) and all those scenes feed into the overarching expectation (we're gonna solve this murder!). I usually think of chapters as their own mini-story, part of the larger whole. And I think of scenes as their own mini-story, part of the larger chapter. I have engineer brain. I see the gears spinning in the clock. That's why all my chapters have at least One Important Thing happening, because that's that particular chapter's Step #3.
And One Last Important Thing:
In music, a delayed resolution is almost always more interesting than the standard resolution. In writing, that means you wanna drag out Step #2 for as long as you can. That's where the bulk of the story is happening, that's how you build tension, that's how you get people to turn the page.
So when you write a fake dating fic, those bitches better not get together until the very end. I came here for fake dating, not for real dating, damn it. If you resolve that expectation early on, you better replace it with a different expectation that's just as engaging.
But also don't drag it out for too long. Sorry. The hard part of writing is learning the difference between too short and too long. Writing is unfortunately a nuanced skill which is why my advice is like "do this but not too much teehee." But tension and resolution is just rhythm, you can build a sense for it if you engage with enough stories.
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Does CQM sect knows how long SQH has worked for MBJ? YQY let's SQH come back (presumably because he is that good at his job?) but do they ever interrogate him? Do they have any idea that SQH has been working for MBJ for years? I just find it funny that from their perspective SQH betrayed them but in a way you could argue that SQH was never loyal to the sect. Yes, he was already part of the sect, but he was an outer disciple and while they don't know, SQH already knew he would one day work for MBJ. While he feared for his life he probably had already in his head that he would be loyal to Mobei, so he entered the sect knowing he would spy for him. From the beginning he joined the sect with dishonest notions. But other than SQQ does any other Peak Lord has any idea about this? Because honestly, how fucking scary and impressive that SQH did this 😂
I don't think it's ever stated how long they knew about Shang Qinghua being a traitor (My memory is absolutely horrible, so I could be wrong) However im sure they can pinpoint the time a demon killed a lot of disciples with Shang Qinghua being the only survivor and was missing for some days then they mightve connected the dots to how long he's been a spy for Mobei Jun. I also don't think they interrogate him either, they just kinda let him back in after all the shit that went down
Looking back into the novel, Yue Qingyuan does let him back but there really was no interrogation from what I can find
So YEAH HE REALLY JUST MANAGED TO GET AWAY WITH IT
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