soupy

This is a redraw of some concept doodles from 2021. The old art is at the bottom here under all my lazy rambling here

In the movie/book the movie is based on Uo serves as a father figure for Chirin; Tigerstar does not fill this role for Scourge literally (and in chirin i don’t think it’s meant to be taken completely literally either, although it is also literal ofc). Rather the memory of tigerpaw is the role of a sort of ‘older brother’/mentor in the sense that Tiny was taught a very important lesson from his point of view, that being we live in a dog-eat-dog world rigidly bound by the laws of nature where predators eat prey and prey can’t do a damn thing about it (ironically, the obstinate submission to this belief leads to him doing something about it). This is reductive and incredibly pessimistic but that is the point. Anyways, i mostly find this plausible bc as a kid i thought (like, an accidental headcanon sort of) that scourge chose to put dog teeth over his claws bc tigerCLAW is described as having claws so long that he can’t put them away and they’re always visible… so, tiny/scourge putting the dog teeth on his claws obviously they can’t be sheathed and he looks sort of like a little kid doing anything he can to copy his older brother without even thinking about it

I find the fact that Uo killed Chirin’s mother specifically and that Chirin forgave him for it to be much more compelling than if, for example, Uo beat Chirin up who then conceded to Uo’s view of the world and participated in the cyclical violence production machine; Chirin isn’t the only one hurt here, where he would decide to take his hurt and turn it into something. His mother was killed. She didn’t want to die—even if she didn’t have a son, she would not want to die. Her life is worth living for herself, too. Chirin really has no place to be forgiving Uo for that (although again it’s not that simple bc Uo also has to eat and it wasn’t personal. But if we forget that for a moment and pretend it was thoughtless violence, like when tigerpaw beat up tiny). 

So as an extension of that, I would really like if Quince left the house to look for Tiny (do you remember blazethefiredragon’s third episode of their adaptation of the rise of scourge? yeah). She would find Tiny in the middle of getting beat up and then go to protect him and in turn Tigerpaw would kill her. There IS something here that bugs me if this was actually done in warriors bc of the misogyny in the series and the tendency to throw away female characters like disposables but I’m doing this myself as someone cognizant of these issues and in my perfect world where all that idiocy would be patched up in the other areas (i mean. As much as is possible without knocking the entire series over like the fragile house of cards it is, which isn’t saying a lot), to allow for space to have things like this happen with actual purpose

The timing of Scourge killing Tigerstar would be changed as well. Since their rapport is actually built here as opposed to being false to begin with the battle would begin without any issues. To create a parallel to the farm raid in Chirin I imagine instead that Scourge would be about to attack some younger apprentice who would then be protected by their mother (which should be entirely possible, though I can’t think of any cats who would fit the bill). His hesitance would be challenged by Tigerstar like Chirin’s hesitance was challenged by Uo

Finally. “I’m a sheep!” would be replace with “I’m Tiny!” or “I’m a kittypet!”. “I’m Tiny!” fits The Rise of Scourge as a standalone story better, but “I’m a kittypet!” being said within The Darkest Hour with Firestar himself standing there (perhaps right before pity-killing him) would be just insane. The way that that would challenge the mostly unchallenged xenophobia in the series, unwaveringly and in front of the parallel milquetoast protag to boot, would be just nuts. To me

I also like chirin juxtaposed to breezepelt and brokenstar, but it doesn’t fit nearly as well and is moreso an extension of me dragging around the dead horse i beat as someone with a horrible ‘relationship’ with that parent. But breeze using brokenstar as a stand-in for his father, who has plot armor made of fully enchanted netherite, and then killing him. Is just so funny. Hey you’re my dad now. Wait a minute, I fucking hate my dad. DIE!