ddd!Thrushpelt

I love Thrushpelt too! I’ll say he died the first time before into the wild, and his spirit death was in the last hope battle against the dark forest.

I see him get compared to Mapleshade in terms of the best vs worst ways to react to unrequited (or in Mapleshade’s case, retracted) love. so they’ll be good narrative foils to each other.

Thrushpelt was also a little bit older than Crookedjaw when he was alive, so whenever he finds out about how Mapleshade manipulated him that would affect him a bit.

also, a lot of the cats who were villains to his family specifically are there in the duplex with him. tigerstar, who led the purge of half-clan cats and terrorized bluestar; darkstripe, who killed thrushpelt’s adoptive son stonefur; and pretty much everyone who gave thunderclan trouble in the first arc.

I imagine he’d be protective over firestar from starclan since bluestar took him in, watching over him as well as mistystar. he hated whenever thunderclan and riverclan were in conflict. he takes care of mosskit in starclan, and though he’s sad when stonefur joins their ranks he’s glad to make up for lost time with the adoptive son what earliest, vaguest memories are of being coddled in the nursery by him and bluefur.

he starts off in the duplex on his own — ever the bachelor. there are also a LOT of new residents from both sides of the dark forest battle. he reconnects with Spottedleaf, who was briefly his apprentice way back when. when she needs to complain about Ashfur or gush about Frecklewish, she goes to Thrushpelt.

Thrushpelt is good at coaxing the shyer/more reclusive duplex cats out of their shells. he connects with Redwillow (before he joins Snowtuft and Antpelt), surprising them both.

one night, Thrushpelt finds Darktail wandering the halls. he’s the first cat who manages to speak more than just a few words before the reclusive rogue takes off again. Thrushpelt doesn’t know much about Darktail at first, but he asks, and eventually Darktail tells him about Onestar, about how he should be here too, why isn’t he here?

Thrushpelt doesn’t let on at first that he actually knew Darktail’s father a bit in starclan. Darktail mostly likes to talk about himself, to wallow. to defend his actions. and Thrushpelt is appalled, but he keeps coming back to listen. to be there for him, less of a shoulder to cry on at first and more of an observer, the way you can’t get an awful headline or news clip out of your mind once you see it and you keep going back to learn more.

ddd!Scourge

early on, I said scourge is the landlord of the duplex. I don’t think that quite fits anymore. I’m not sure when he would’ve died his second death — maybe he stayed vengeful as a spirit and came after clan ghosts and starclan cats.

you know what would really hurt? if Jake took down Scourge’s spirit to protect Firestar and the clans — killing one son to protect the other.

Scourge hates to feel inferior, less than, the last choice.

learning that this protective ghost of firestar’s father is his own father too undoes him. his last, fading thought, the realization that the wretched firestar was his brother all along and their father chose him, sets him spiraling into a vengeful rage.

needless to say, he isn’t fun to be around in the duplex.

I didn’t actually intend this, but ddd!Scourge and ddd!Darktail have a lot in common!

who is (my version of) mapleshade?

a lot of my understandings of the characters’ psyched are mostly inferred from text and/or headcanon that I’m using to build mapleshade and others out as au characters.

while I don't have a concrete timeline for the au, mapleshade arrives at the duplex when things are seemingly peaceful and shakes everything up. especially for frecklewish — mapleshade’s arrival threatens to upturn the quiet happiness she’s found with spottedleaf.

mapleshade died when she was at her worst. then, she spent years and years in the dark forest, a place that actively actively makes you worse the longer you spend there. I imagine she was a little self-important even before the events of her novella, and I see her as having to ground herself in her belief that she’s always in the right or else her world will start to crumble.

in a different way, frecklewish died at her lowest point as well. she was torn up by grief over the loss of her brother, and then a different, new grief as she lost the comfort of believing her brother lived on in the kits, then the kits themselves and her kinship with mapleshade, and finally the loss of her vision.

if it weren’t for their history, mapleshade and frecklewish could be the only ones to truly relate to each other’s experience. too bad they’re also each the last cat the other wants to talk to.

what’s she up to in the duplex?

the power struggles in the duplex are weird at first since no one knows quite what there is to fight over or what would happen if someone were to be killed a third time here. (quick note: I have an idea for this now! but the cats don’t know until it happens)

there are some cats who are trapped in their power-hungry ways even here, but it’s hard to be power hungry when territory and life are both so fluid here. there are turf wars in the halls, but what do those mean when the passageways morph and remake themselves, never quite the same each time you walk them?

so mapleshade starts out trying to carve out her own part of the duplex and recruit others to her side, but she doesn’t really have power or sway over the other cats here. quite a few of them are disillusioned former dark forest cats who fell under her leadership.

still, she does eventually convince a small band of cats to follow her. I think it’d be fun if she had an all she-cat group, and emberdawn aligns with her temporarily. but emberdawn has been there longer than anyone, and she doesn’t tell mapleshade everything she knows so that she always quietly has the upper hand over the cat who thinks she knows everything.

rise and fall

mapleshade plots to take over the apartment that bristlefrost, spottedleaf, and ashfur share when word of bristlefrost’s power to connect with the living world spreads through the duplex like wildfire. (I’m imagining it’s probably hawkfrost who accidentally lets it slip to tigerstar when he’s torn between helping bristle and his loyalty to his father.)

mapleshade and emberdawn bond over how they were betrayed by their mates. it starts off as a terse, business-only bond, but eventually they let their walls fall down. they have wine together on thursdays.

this isn’t so bad, mapleshade thinks. this is the company I deserve. soon, emberdawn and I will walk the earth again and rule it as we should.

that’s why when emberdawn backstabs mapleshade, it cuts deeper than any other betrayal (or perceived betrayal) before it. this is worse than losing appledusk, than losing her chance to seize the forest as a spirit, maybe even worse than that day the usually calm river swept her kits away.