#thus making the experience worse and retroactively inviting people to be even more critical--

[tallstars-rewrite]

About (2.0)

After 3,000 years, we begin. Helloo my name is Yarrow, welcome to my side blog where I talk about my ideas and sometimes art for my personal rewrite of the Warrior Cats super edition “Tallstar’s Revenge”~

Click here for the (now complete!) story here on this blog!! (feel free to send an ask for any tags i may have missed) As well as a link to where it’s posted on Ao3

My Personal blog for warrior cats and other xenofiction posting: Yarrowleef

Search the “my art” tag for all the character art I did over the years (most of it is quite old now)

and now a somewhat lengthy preface:

in 2017 I read Tallstar’s Revenge and was very frustrated by it. So I decided to try out rewriting a warriors book to see if I could make something closer to what I wanted to see. I also did it because I really wanted to finish something, and it seemed like an easy starting point. Then I quickly realized I had no idea how to actually write a story because I usually never get past the “daydreaming and maybe sometimes writing disconnected scenes and concepts” phase, so that was quite a hurdle to overcome.

This fic has been a bit of a rickety lifeboat for me over the past 4 years. Sometimes it even became sort of a vent for my lingering high school angst. I began this project at the same time I graduated high school and was about to start college (a bad idea) and I hit several major periods of burn-out. Honestly, I think I was feeling burned out through at least 75-80% of it. But I needed to focus on something for the same reason I needed to drag myself out of bed every morning, even if I usually didn’t really want to. 

Now I think it’s as finished as it’s ever going to be. I’m not going to lie, my confidence in its quality has been. let’s say Shaky At Best. Taking so long means that some parts are already outdated before they’ve even been posted. Also, several bits (including prose and world building) were not even fully edited to completion. There’s at least one or two chapters that are more summary then full writing, but I don’t think it’s bad enough anywhere to be incomprehensible? soo we’re just gonna roll with it.

My mixed feelings about it aside, the only reason I can have those mixed feelings is because I wrote it in the first place, and thus got better (at least a little). I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t, so no matter what I am very glad that I managed to make myself finish it!! And there are at least some parts I still genuinely like. In the end, this was always intended to just be a practice story using someone else's outline, so I am simply going to dump this content on the floor as it is and it is up to you to sift through it. I’m ready to let go of this rickety clumsy life boat, so now I am pushing it out to sea.

In Conclusion: Ultimately, is this story truly an “”improvement”” over canon? Who knows! Seriously, I simply cannot tell. I’ve been staring at it too long. “Improvement” is a very heavy and presumptuous word for someone like me anyway. I slowly chipped away at 200,000 words on my own for 4 years with no beta readers to talk it over with (none of my friends rly know what warrior cats is and I'm too embarrassed to show them, so I'm alone in here with my box of angsty cats). My brain is mush and the lines have blurred together. I have no earthly idea what this is going to look like to fresh eyes. In addition to that, many little things were tweaked just because I felt like it and not necessarily because I thought they were “objectively” better. That being said, some characters have been given completely new traits unrelated to who they were in canon to suit the story I wanted to tell, and how a character is portrayed here does not necessarily reflect my opinion/head-canon of their canon counterpart.  

Although my faith in this rewrites execution is iffy and the creation process was a hot mess, I can certainly say I still put a lot of thought and effort (and sometimes tears) into it, and in the end I hope that will count for something. Thank you for reading!

#edit: how did i never mention my art tag asdfghg #TRabout #pinned #will add more links and directory when they are finished #definitely still super nervous about all this but im not even sure why #tbh just didnt expect this blog to get as many followers as it did #but even though the urge to list off all my *specific* gripes with it is so stronggg #i will physically hold myself back from defensively insulting my own writing #in a ‘if i say it first no one else can say it and no one can think im stupid if i KNOW about all the flaws’ kind of way #it is a very bad habit #mostly because it brings attention to the flaws that people ordinarily might not have even noticed if I hadn't pointed them out #thus making the experience worse and retroactively inviting people to be even more critical-- #--and not trust ANY of the choices I made to be intentional #but honestly it is a little funny that since ive been alone with this dang rewrite so long #and since i’ve been staring at and tweaking and rewriting this on and off for years i genuinely Can Not Tell how good it is #i dont know how to judge any of it objectivley anymore #for all i know maybe it is good! #or maybe its a mess that didn't change enough from the source material #or that just created NEW problems in an attempt to remove certain canon problems #or maybe its just fine--simply unremarkably middling which i think would be an ok outcome for a first fic? #i sincerely couldnt tell you so we get to find out together #but what I CAN say is that everything that happens I felt happened for a reason #to set something up or illustrate some point #there is no pointless filler from my perspective #there was intention in pretty much everything #heres hoping it will come across that way!