#authors notes

Oh my god this authors note is insane

And if you'd like, drop in the tags/comments why you tend to skip them!

Srry for not udating you guys. The ao3 curse got me and there was a thing with my mother, i died and was comwtose for a while. But now i'm traveling and learning, so my fight and medical scenes will be more accurate!

But this is my heads up to you and to other people who are incessantly asking for me to make Revali a girl;

-I won't be gender bending Revali into a girl because on this blog he is a transgender man and that dysphoria is not something I want to explore.

-Rito look the same whether they're male or Female anyway??? The only difference is how they wear their braids. He wouldn't really look any different and I'm not sure what you're even expecting me to draw if I'm totally honest. I draw him wearing dresses or femme outfits from time to time already.

Also if you send me the same ask more than three times I tend to be less likely to answer them because the repetitiveness makes my ADHD brain stop seeing it. If you've sent an ask and it hasn't been answered yet; it's because there's 400+ asks in my inbox and I am only one person. I just answer whatever catches my eye on any given day. I'm not ignoring you on purpose, it might just be that your ask requires a more complicated drawing that I need to be in the headspace for, or that it's been answered before, or I don't have a clever response in mind yet.

First I just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed reading the comments on the latest chapter (74). It’s been such a good reminder that my reader base is media literate and gets that the narrative isn’t putting Moon or Hunter in the right or wrong for their confrontation. I worried that some of y’all might come at me for Hunter’s reaction, but that hasn’t been the case at all. So thank you. Thank you for Getting It.

I never wanted MoonShadow to be a story where characters’ choices always had to be Correct or Moral, or have the narrative punish them if they weren’t. I’ve always been interested in playing with how characters would act within the universe I created for them. It’s more important to me for their actions and choices to make sense for them as a character than for them to be morally flawless.

So for this reason, it’s been fun to have the protagonists like Eda make choices and take risks in the name of empathy and love that could potentially have dire consequences for those around them, and for the reasoning and actions of some of the more obnoxious characters like Adrian be sound, given their circumstances.

It’s a messy story but I have found that life is oftentimes that way, so I wrote what resonated.

I know if I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a hundred times, but when I first started writing MoonShadow, it was not yet an AU. ‘King’s Tide’ had just aired and irreparably altered my brain chemistry and I was driven to write a self-indulgent continuation during the hiatus, exploring The Collector as a character since they had taken over my entire brain and I was FASCINATED by their inclusion and role in ‘The Owl House.’

MoonShadow was me playing around with what the first two seasons gave me to work with and putting it all together into what felt like a cohesive narrative. And spending the better part of a week roadtripping with @howtotrainyournana who was instrumental in giving me feedback and joining in on brainstorming sessions and reading the early drafts of the first chapters. It was an absolutely unhinged time (we came up with the name Moon for The Collector, and like three minutes later realized there was ABSOLUTELY going to be a Moon Moon joke).

MoonShadow has never been what I thought *should* happen in ‘The Owl House.’ I had an interesting conversation the other day with a friend who is just getting into The Owl House (ie, I am making her watch the show) and she was a little perplexed when I explained that MoonShadow wasn’t even necessarily what I *wanted* to happen in canon.

Like I said, it was very self-indulgent. I sometimes also have people ask me what I would have done differently in season three had it been up to me and…honestly, by the time season three aired, I was already so deep in the guts of my own story that it really doesn’t matter. I enjoyed season three. My own fic means the world to me. They’re…two different things. Two outcomes diverged in a red-leafed wood.

I…never imagined it would turn into a fic this massive. And I do worry a little that this current arc has gotten a little into the weeds, as I’ve followed a LOT of small side quest plot threads that might have been better cut from the story. But it’s fleshed out the day-to-day life of the Owl Family with Moon included, and people are still reading, so…*shrug*

But, getting back to the initial point, MoonShadow came from post-‘King’s Tide’ brainstorming and it quickly became apparent that Hunter would likely have the most difficult time dealing with Moon’s presence. His reaction to watching The Collector splat Belos against a wall was the inspiration for a lot of that conflict.

MoonShadow’s Hunter exists in a universe where ‘Thanks To Them’ never happened. He hasn’t processed or reconciled a lot of his emotions surrounding Belos. Hunter knows objectively that Belos was planning to annihilate the entire population of the Boiling Isles, and had been cloning and murdering Caleb for years. However he lived in Belos’ lies for so long, that Belos still feels like family to Hunter - something he can’t quite articulate to his friends. So, as far as Hunter is concerned, Belos is dead. He watched Moon kill his uncle in front of him and show zero remorse. (Also, as far as Hunter’s knowledge extends at this point, he thinks Caleb was just as bad if not worse than Belos).

Hunter would rather just sweep all this under the rug and not deal with it, but Moon’s presence is a constant triggery reminder.

Plus, it’s not like Moon has shown Hunter much in the way or respect. They’ve made it pretty clear how they feel about Grimwalkers.

So while Hunter and Moon’s words and behavior towards each other might not be excusable, their behavior does make sense for their characters. I’ve tried really hard to make them both sympathetic and thank you thank you readers for recognizing that.

And thank you thank you for sticking with this fic for three and a half years. That’s kind of wild. There’s some really great stuff to come, and I hope you’ll stick around.

(I'm not drawing all of that so I wrote down how the head specifically regenerates to get the imagery across and understandable)