gak_illustrates

It should be no shock to my followers that this relationship dynamic from DaisyClan bewitches me so. Ohhh how much I love a messy, messy marriage with a messy, messy The Other Woman. I live for the drama.

Loved the new page with these two characters' conversation. As leader and as healer, these two are both forced to be more 'icons' and 'ideals', rather than complex and flawed people. Everyone is constantly telling them the 'correct' way to feel, and act, and obey... But not Raggedveil... 🤨

I was especially moved by Sunstar's "I could never hate you" speech, you could feel the "however" without her saying it. And Cottonwish, "I would have done anything for you", past tense. From both of them, it's like... I could never hate you, but how am I supposed to love you now? How am I supposed to love him? I'M SICK

Candy meets Duskpaw when they're both very young, he sneaks out of CliffClan camp to visit her and her Twoleg. They are friends first, but develop mutual crushes on each other over time.

When Candy gets hit by the car, Duskpaw is the one who finds her, and brings her to CliffClan for treatment - saving her life. She decides to stay there, and she and Duskpaw are inseparable. They start to date in secret after this point (probably mid-late apprentice age).

It's secret, because Duskpaw is (rightly) worried that Dawnstar will disapprove and forbid their relationship, for a variety of reasons (controlling her son's life, potential reputational repercussions, etc)... Candy thinks this fear is reasonable and agrees. Still, the two sneak out often, and get a little careless.

Dawnstar catches them, and breaks them up. Duskpaw is still in love with Candy, but obeys his mother and breaks up with her. Dawnstar has always wanted Duskhaze to romantically pursue someone like Fawnstep, and pushes him to do so after the breakup. He is hesitant, but obliges. Fawnstep has been in love with him since they were children, and is thrilled that he is 'finally reciprocating her affections', or so she thinks. He is not in love with Fawnstep then, he is not in love with Fawnstep many moons later. He is not in love with Fawnstep when he agrees to marry her. He loves Fawnstep, but is not IN LOVE with her. He is still in love with Candy, but they just can't be together...

...

That's about all that happens during BLACK. Some time later, Fawnstep and Duskhaze have a child together - Lionkit/paw/song - and their marriage deteriorates as he grows up, for a variety of reasons. They divorce finally following Dawnstar's death. After the divorce, Duskhaze does try to inquire to see if he and Candy could ever be romantically together again, and she shoots him down. (this hasn't been portrayed in my PMVs yet, but that is the plan... spoilers 😅)

Candy and Duskhaze had remained friends through all of this, but Candy had lost her romantic affection for him over the years. This surprises and upsets Duskhaze, who never stopped loving her.

Forgive my rambling, but this ask has made me reminisce about the origin of this whole story!!

I absolutely love the album "Montgomery Ricky" (2016) - I first heard it in the autumn of 2016, and it was my coming-of-age ANTHEM for years. I would listen to it all the time, everywhere I went. It's a very emotionally significant album to me!

During the summer of 2023 is when I made the LINE WITHOUT A HOOK PMV, as animation practice gearing up for my next semester of university. I didn't have a YouTube channel yet. But I was really inspired by the cover I'd heard of the song by buttercre4m on TikTok, who I believe goes by LJ Mercer now (tiktok, insta, spotify, youtube), and I had (clumsily LOL) edited the two versions together for my animation.

While working on the animation, I didn't know what to call the characters for my own reference (in storyboarding/etc.) - so, I just quickly labeled them “Line” (Lionsong), “Hook” (Hooktail), and “Lady” (Dancingwish).

(The hearts next to their names were their storyboard colors LOL, why did I make them so similar?! Didn't that get confusing?! 🤣)

Making the "Trouble Is” PMV (June 2024) is what kicked off the actual story development for these guys. I knew they had to have actual Warrior Cat names if I was going to make multiple projects with them. So Line → Lion, phonetically similar, and added “song” at the end, since, well, this all comes from a song! It also helps soften his name, to match his more demure personality. (And it was later pointed out to me by friends that this is the name of a Björk song about divorce, how fitting! 😅)

Then “Hook” stayed the same, it’s a fun prefix (like the action of hooking something, or having a ‘good right hook’, but also the object) but I struggled with a suffix. I ended up going with “tail” - I don’t remember why. Maybe I liked the sound. It’s also one of the easier suffixes to visualize - her tail curls like a hook, that’s a fun character detail.

And finally “Lady”, which has no real Warrior Cats translation. So I instead focused on “Dancer” in the song lyrics, and thus Dancingwish. Although originally she was Dancingmist, for her grey fur color and the visualize-able name - and I just kept misspelling / misremembering it as “Dancingwish” until it stuck. I’m not really sure why! It has a much more mystical sense to it like this, what even is a dancing wish? 🤣 A wish to dance?! I'll have to think more about her character lore to justify the naming choices I've made, haha...