Previous Clouded Moon anon. My 'And another thing' I spelt this soooo badly in my last ask. But like. Both Wildfur and Wolfthorn have the same backstory. It's so bad here. Same exact guy. At least Spottedshadow and Dawnfrost, despite also feeling too damn similar, have the potential to be better. (I think the weird choice to make so many POVs, characters and the story so rushed meant we got little to no character building moments. Which sucks.) All of Moss' backstory could've been Grey's, if he's the son of the driven out herbalist ruined by a smear campaign and alleged execution. Moss is desperate to prove herself despite her 'tainted' legacy, and it could make her the perfect target. Merging Grey and Moss, and Wolfthorn and Swiftmask (Wolfmask is such a badass name too) would enrich both their characters and give a more interesting dynamic. They both distrust each other possibly. Or Wolf is looking for a new ally or friend, someone who could understand his pain of losing a family member to Rainfall, and only getting someone spying on him for that monster....one who ruined both of their lives. Especially if instead of just being caught, Moss rats him out at the end of the book. And the next book deals with the fallout. This is some juicy character drama just slept on. And to make clearer a previous point. Sadly, as much as critiquing the book is fun, the writing of Clouded Moon isn't important. Because even if the book was perfect, it still shouldn't be supported due to the Star Cat team's actions. I just am an amateur writer who's miffed they spent money on a physical book and wanna get something fun out of it.
You saying that wildfur & wolfthorn have basically the same backstory (tragic death of a loved one leading to feeling rejected by the colony) made me realize something. for both of the main relationships in this book (spooty x wild & dawn x wolf) it's the female character who's the one constantly making sacrifices for the male character they're in love with. When wolfthorn left to find a new home, he wasn't really sacrificing anything cuz he wanted to leave river colony anyways (except but really apparently? his character goes back & forth a lot) meanwhile dawnfrost is the one who has to sacrifice her dreams of becoming leader & her standing within her colony if she wants to be with wolfthorn. wildfur doesn't care about marsh colony & always does the bare minimum so he's not sacrificing anything to be with spottedshadow, meanwhile spotty also has to sacrifice her standing within her colony, to the point where half her colony thinks she's a dangerous traitor who will cause trouble for all of them, in order to maintain a relationship with wildfur. isn't that interesting.
Dawnfrost & Spottedshadow actually do feel like the most fleshed out characters to me. I like how they're in similar leadership roles but the way they got those roles is completely different & so it affects the decisions they make. Spotty has a "the spirits choose me, so that must mean I'm making the right choice" attitude while dawn is moreso "I trained for this my whole life so I must make the right decision" which is very interesting to me! but unfortunately they're both held back by their respective boring romances & the fact that so much time is taken away from them in order to focus on more of the unnecessarily large cast. it's like every time either of them are going somewhere interesting the book decides to focus on wolfthorn or wildfur instead.
My issue with grey's backstory is that it's so tragic yet it doesn't seem to affect him in any way because the book doesn't let him react to it or talk about it because it needs to focus on moss instead, which is why they should've given that backstory to moss since she's the one that matters. I also don't really see why rockyshore not believing the allegations matters cuz it doesn't go anywhere. How about we have lakespeckle die when moss was still a young kitten, & since she needed milk whoever her parents were in the book (I forgot their names) adopted her after they lost their own kits. rockyshore tries to maintain a relationship, but the adopted parents don't trust him & decided to keep moss away from him, & rainfall decided that rockyshore made a mistake in loving lakespeckle & the colony can't afford to allow his mistakes to influence moss, so moss should go to the other parents. moss knows about lakespeckle & the rest of the colony always seems suspicious of her & her adopted parents are secretly afraid that moss might develop magic, so they raise her to follow rainfall unconditionally so that there's no chance she could ever betray the colony. They don't want to lose another kit, after all. Which leads to moss being assigned to wolfmask, who knows what happened to her birth parents but doesn't know how to bring it up, if he even should. He sees this young kit who's been lied to & manipulated her whole life, who doesn't trust him b/c she's been told that he's a danger to the colony, & he takes pity on her but also realizes that he could put both of them in danger of he steps out of line. meanwhile moss is desperate to prove herself. she doesn't know why she was assigned to the cat who everyone suspects is a traitor, but if he steps even a toe out of line she'll be the first to tell rainfall so she can prove her loyalty. it would be a much better dynamic than what the book gave us, & moss having that baggage of her mom being a traitor would give her reasonable motivation to spy on wolfmask. Much better than the "moss is easily manipulated cuz she's a naive child & rainfall is just so good at being evil" stuff that was in the book.
Moss ratting wolfmask out in the end would've been so neat. The book portrays her as "this poor innocent naive child is being manipulated by a monster how sad!" but what if moss was given a little bit of agency & decided to do a bad thing? maybe actually show rainfall's manipulation pay off instead of just using it to make her look evil without it actually going anywhere? wolfmask tried so hard to get moss to trust him, but in the end rainfall was the one who won her over, and now moss has to live with the consequences of what she did. I would've made it to where moss saw wolfmask using magic & due to her own fears of magic & wanting to prove that she herself won't be a dangerous mage like the one she believes her birth father was, she tells rainfall. it can happen after she started opening up to him, & maybe she actually started to question rainfall, but now she thinks it was all an act in order to get her to help him betray the colony. yet moss feels guilty about it & wonders if she made the right choice.
And yeah I agree with the last paragraph. tennelle & snap are horrible & nobody should be supporting their work anyways. I was a patreon of both star cat studio & tennelle & bought the book, so I gave them a lot of money, & even before everything happened with sally I was really disappointed in the book. like, wow this is really where I put my money? then they decided to support a groomer & mock grooming victims which made me feel even worse for ever financially supporting them so I'm just coping by scrutinizing their work. I refuse to be polite about the work of those who support groomers.
