#dovefeather

THUNDERCLAN holds its ceremonies under the sun. kits, entering their sixth moon, gather by highrock as the sunrises, hoping their leader’s voice will rouse the slumbering clan. warriors have until moonrise to celebrate with their friends, and warriors often go on one last dawn hunting patrol before they retire, wanting to provide one last thing for their clan.

queens name their kits on their first sunhigh, after they’ve shown their first glimpses of a personality. even thunderclan medicine cats, typically more comfortable at night, are particularly skilled at reading signs in the sunlit clouds.

tragedies are done at moonhigh. deputies are often appointed at the last moment, and vigils begin when the moon is at its peak. battle patrols prepare to strike at dawn, risen in the night, a reminder of the violence of what will come.

RIVERCLAN holds ceremonies at dawn and dusk. kits become apprentices at dawn, their mentors spending the first morning assessing their swimming, and in the afternoon, as the new apprentice moves their nest, their mentor finds them the first trinket that will be truly their own. they will act as a moonrise patrol, exploring the territory in the light of the stars, knowing their warrior ancestors are looking for them.

kits are named soon after they’re borne, shouted to the clan by a queen’s fretting mate or an awestruck medicine cat’s apprentice, witnessing their first birth. changes in deputy are named at dawn, but the official change will not happen until dusk. if a deputy dies, a new deputy will not be appointed until dusk.

apprentices become warriors become elders at dusk. there is no duty to be completed, only celebration. a new warrior will watch a celebration in their honor, showing they have learned restraint, and when their vigil breaks in the morning, they will be greeted by their friends in celebration.

SHADOWCLAN holds ceremonies at moonrise and moonhigh. kits names are announced at moonrise, the queen peaking out of the nursery to see her clan honor her. apprentices are made warriors, moving into their new den with warnings not to stay up too late, for they have the sunrise patrol the next day.

warriors are made at moonhigh, and their names aren’t shouted, and they sit in silence until sunhigh. they are exhausted when they are released, but nests have already been prepared for them, and they will sleep until their names are shouted out come moonrise.

deputies and elders are made at moonrise, their clan greeting them for a meal. to appoint a deputy late is to suggest a lack of faith in them, and has never been a good omen. and omens: medicine cats speak during tilt, when the clan is quiet.

WINDCLAN holds ceremonies when it is time for them. as the wind is every changing, so are they, not grounded in trees or rivers as the others. kits are made apprentices when their mentors have been notified, with nary a warning given to the poor queen, who will frantically try to groom them before they stand in front of the clan.

thus the vigil of a warrior can be of variable length, some lasting from sun tilt to dawn, and others from moonhigh to sunrise. but no warrior minds. they have exhausted themselves, racing through the territory, proving they know the moors or tunnels as fluidly as they know their own tails.

deputies are made when they are needed, and elders at their own request. but moonrise is reserved: a medicine cat needs a chance to speak what they see, and it would be a foolish leader who dared interrupt.

SKYCLAN once held ceremonies at tilt, when the birds were quiet, but now, they hold most ceremonies at low moon, when the spirits are strongest. kits get their names late, as the queen thinks of what she wants them to be or who she wants to honor, but they are announced with pride, hoping their warrior ancestors hear them chanting.

apprentices are made at low sun, born from a time when they were not always gathered. they will spend their time with their mentor, abandoning the nursery quickly. skyclan is resilient: kits have been raised on the stories of the hardships they’ve faced, and they know not to take moments for granted.

but everything else is done at low moon. deputies are never rushed and never delayed, but made with the same pragmaticism and gracefulness that has protected skyclan through all this time. warriors will get to eat a meal with their friends, happy in the knowledge they have passed their assessments, and warriors often ask to be put on the moonrise patrol before they become elders, aware of how lucky they are to have it.

WHEN TIGERSTAR MADE TIGERCLAN, this is where they failed. he was a thunderclan leader trying to act for shadowclan and riverclan. shadowclan apprentices were startled, and their mentors unsure of what to do without a full day to tour each part of the territory, and riverclan mentors struggled, wondering when they would find their apprentices a token.

shadowclan queens fretted, fearing they would be asked their kits’ names so soon after birth, without even a moment to think of what they were like. shadowclan warriors missed the celebration on completion of their vigil, and riverclan warriors did not feel comfortable participating in their own celebration.

leopardstar, too, did not know how to respond. she did not know how to insist sunhigh was too hot for them to gather, and how her warriors must rest. the urgency of hunting at dawn and dusk was lost on tigerstar, for in the forest, prey never truly sleeps.

ON THE GREAT JOURNEY, clans had to adapt. there were few ceremonies to hold, but those that were held were held when it was safe, and always as soon as they could. no one wanted to miss a chance they may not get back.

WHEN SHADOWCLAN DISSOLVED, they were disoriented with the ceremonies, or the way skyclan felt the need to seek approval from their ancestors so directly.

they thought she was holding them at tilt, denying her medicine cats a chance to speak, and they feared not just for their old clan but for this one, which headed the stars in name alone.

BUT LIKE THE FIRST SKYCLAN, they were willing to adapt for strength. as thunderclan held ceremonies when all could hear, and as riverclan held them in their most important moments, and as windclan held them as was practical, and as shadowclan held them as tradition told them to, skyclan held them to make their clan strong.

and then i went and wrote an essay about it where i was like “so queens feel this towards adopted litters and here are some queens who DIDN’T have the response” and then i thought about this for half a second and went “wait hold on i’ve caused a problem”

indeed i have.

uh. the solution is. so okay. squilf’s reaction towards her litter is requisite to being her litter, but it’s not enough to prove she gave birth to the litter. and functionally, as long as brambleclaw and squilf accept them, it doesn’t matter where they came from. at least, not in theory.

leafpool, on the hand, has rejected her litter. on the purely maternal instincts side, mind. she still loves them, she just doesn’t feel like they’re her kits. if squirrelflight wasn’t there when she was kitting, they may have died. but that didn’t happen so we don’t have to think about it.

but i digress. if leafpool were a normal queen, and she rejected her litter as such, the clan would have a few responses. they might give the litter to a different nursing queen, and strongly discourage leafpool from having any more litters. or, if leafpool didn’t react violently, and there wasn’t a suitable foster queen, she might keep them.

the instincts fade after about half a moon anyway, so it’s not critical to raising the kits. however, it’s very suspicious, and many will feel a queen who doesn’t feel the correct instincts will never fully love her kit.

i mentioned that bluefur doesn’t have the queen drive for her kits (i haven’t decided on a name so i’m just going to keep saying different things until something feels right), and were the truth to have come out about what happened, her lack of the drive would have been what was blamed.

it’s a little more complex than that, admittedly, but i’m smoothing over a very complicated situation where bluefur’s lack of instincts actually saved her kits.

ultimately, without any queen protective instincts, leafpool still could have been a good mother to her kits. we, the audience, know this, and a good deal of cats know this too. however, leafpool was a little bit beyond just having no instincts, because she just straight up rejected them.

basically there’s kind of a scale:

overprotective, smothering. may kill kits if in an unsafe environment. there’s not a canon example AFAIK. it doesn’t happen very often in a clan.

overprotective, smothering, but not dangerous. harm may happen inadvertently due to an inability to judge risks. this is squirrelflight in the “ashes” au, when she refuses to return to the clan because she’s more afraid of brambleclaw than the cold.

overprotective, smothering, but not dangerously blinded. speckletail and snowkit.

overprotective, smothering, but to a normal degree. canon nightcloud and breezekit.

protective, the normal amount after kitting. brightheart in cloudtail’s daughter and jaywing.

neutral, lacking instincts, but still recognizes as kin. bluefur in canon.

neutral, lacking instincts, no immediate connection, but no hostility. paleflower, kind of? this is for a different reason, but it is the right response.

neutral, lacking instincts, can’t form connection. leafpool.

hostile, but not entirely harmful. rejects kits, has no interest, unlikely to be kind, but will not cause harm. rainflower.

hostile, actively harmful. i have an example of this but it would be spoiling a project i’m working on so you’ll have to imagine.

for clan cats, 3 to 7 is fine for raising. 2 and 8 might be okay, depending, but 1 and 9-10 are definitely harmful. 1 is a complicated situation to handle, in 10, the kits safety is prioritized. queens at 2 are usually going to be talked down by an older queen, and their whims are going to be honored to the best of the clan’s abilities and the kit’s safety.

in a 1, the clan is going to respond to protect the kits, but that can be really hard. they’ll save the kits over the mother if it comes to that, but this is a temporary condition, and no one wants that.

so with leafpool at an 8 with her kits, she could have raised them, but she never felt like their mother.

:) *pulls out book of shadowstar's info*

I am the genie and you are the fool who dared make a vague wish tumblr user @spookyghoulz

In 2016 I created shadowclaw, a bright orange cat with an eyepatch, a weird shadowy claw thing (her namesake) and a clan name, phantomclan

Pre-hawkfrost (2016-2017):

I don't remember much about the pre-hawkfrost era other than the fact that I changed her name to shadowstar, got rid of the eyepatch and shadowy claw and gave her a purple star on the tip of her tail

Her backstory was that she was a kit from a group of rouges who called themselves scarclan (ow the edge) and her father was the leader of that rouge group. But one day he killed her mother and her two brothers but she and her sister escaped, shadowpaw with a blinded eye and her sister with a fucked up leg

Her sister ran away to the mountains while shadowpaw escaped to phantomclan

Hawkfrost (2017-2019)

Her backstory in the hawkfrost era was diffirent. Instead of being an outsider, she was born in phantomclan along with her two sisters (redkit and eaglekit). She also had some friends as an apprentice, maggotpaw (he's probably my second most developed warriors oc), foxpaw (important later), dovepaw, crowpaw, flamepaw, beepaw and spottedpaw

Beepaw fucking died and spottedpaw broke her leg so that sucked

Also flamepaw ran away to lightningclan (another clan in this mess of a story) and dovepaw and crowpaw ran away to the mountains

I'm not sure how she lost sight in one of her eyes but I know it was an injury. Anyway she started training in the dark forest (for some reason) and that's where she met hawkfrost :)

They fell in love because reasons, also shadowstar (shadowstorm at the time) murdered her mentor who was also the deputy, owlheart

And foxtail also liked shadowstorm there was a love triangle and shadowstar chose hawkfrost so foxtail did an ashfur except he didn't die and got a redemption

She and hawkfrost also had kits because I'm like that, their kits names were. Eaglekit, blackkit, moonkit and lionkit(RIP)

I'm skipping over a lot of details (like maggotpelt going from a generic villan with a tragic backstory to a very sad boi who the universe loves to use as a punching bag) because that would take hours to explain

Post-hawkfrost (2019-present)

After I realized that maybe having a living person's love interest be a dead guy wasn't a good idea I made foxtail her love interest instead because he's honestly just a chill dude

Beepaw still fucking dies, spottedpaw becomes a medicine cat willingly, flamepaw, dovepaw and crowpaw don't run away anymore, I got rid of her purple tail star in favor of the black and orange that is her current design, I actually have a reason for her eye injury (dawnstar)

and also maggotpelt gets to have nice things (a family that dosen't die)

Her backstory is basically the same (minus the dark forest and hawkfrost) but she doesn't murder her mentor (he gets murdered by dawnstar)

Also when dawnstar becomes a problem she actually helps the cats trying to murder dawnstar because that's the only way to make sure dawnstar won't murder anyone else

Irrelevant but still something

I gave her an evil edgy alter ego that lasted all of seven minutes

I broke off shadowclaw into an entirely different character in a non-warriors story

There was a time when she was a normal orange tabby (with the purple star marking)

When hawkfrost was his father eagle kit just looked like hawkfrost with green eyes but now that his father is foxtail, he's a torbie

part of my world building series for warrior cats. bracketed numbers represent notes that i felt disrupted the piece. see them under the cut.

THUNDERCLAN funerals are simple. the bodies are dressed, and vigil is sat in silence. at sunrise, elders will bury the bodies. sometimes younger cats, those who haven’t experienced a close death, will want to follow the elders, to know where their loved one is buried, but they are always held back. it’s bad luck to confuse a cat, to call their name. they could get lost on their way to starclan.

the cats in mourning try not to linger on it. there is always the fear they will call too strongly, and summon their ghost, keeping them from starclan. stories will not be told of them for at least a season, when the pain is no longer sharp and more of an ache, and the spirit has made it safely to starclan.

fireheart learned these traditions, and felt fear he kept spottedleaf to him, prevented her from finding peace. it was too late for her when he learned this. she assured him he kept her from nowhere, that she was only visiting.

and thunderclan believes in the visitation of individuals. they pray to those who have succeeded before them, or to those that have failed. one day an apprentice will pray to swiftpaw that they are made an apprentice soon, and before receiving their nine lives, a new leader will pray to bluestar that they never lose faith.

SHADOWCLAN rites are private. loved ones clean the coat and whisper their name, trying to breathe their memories into the spirit before it leaves for starclan. the elder will bury the bodies, but mates and queens and mentors will chose the place, that they know where to visit.

no one expects anything from a mourning cat. they may not speak for as much as a moon, hunting only enough to sustain themselves, going on patrols only as required. a grieving mentor may have their apprentice reassigned, a grieving apprentice might find they become a warrior a moon later than their littermates. this is done in kindness, not punishment.

a cat who mourns too quickly is troublesome. dawnpelt’s anger over flametail was to be expected. how could tigerheart not stand by his littermate? anything less would be cold. to mourn for a cat too quickly is to imply they aren’t worth committing to memory, that their name does not deserve honoring.

shadowclan prays together, at dawn and dusk. the leader begins morning prayer, before they eat, and the medicine cat leads evening prayer. as soon as kits are old enough to stand, they know to be quiet at these times, and it is often the first thing they leave the nursery for. a queen asks a medicine cat to pray for a kit who is weaker than the rest, and a mentor asks a leader to pray their apprentice does well on their assessment. the whole clan listens, knowing their ancestors will guide them to fulfill the prayer.

RIVERCLAN funerals are celebrations of life. bodies are decorated in flowers and sent down the river. stories are told, and the name of the lost cat is shouted many times. other clans find this disrespectful, that they should feel contrite. but riverclan will sleep soundly on the days of a death, secure that the river will bring their loved one to starclan.

cats who linger in mourning are concerning. it is one thing to hold on to a trinket swiped from the nest before it was sent down the river, but it is another to be saddened by loss for too long. life moves on like the river, and so must cats.

when he was in riverclan, graystripe took comfort in this. he had his own reasons, of course, but no one blamed him for focusing on his kits. when his first rainstorm came, he was nervous to share, so soon to her death, but it was a familiar act that soothed a grieving heart. [1]

riverclan doesn’t pray the same as other clans, but they do pray. they make shrines and memorials to those who have lost, gather trinkets in one place. when the rain comes, and they are well-fed and happy, they share stories. a queen may present her kits to the shrine of her lost mate, and feel his approval. riverclan believes in the divine and in their own connection to it.

WINDCLAN funerals are short. the body is dressed, a final goodbye is said, and elders and the medicine cat carry it, leaving it on the moor. the location is whispered to the deputy, in a somewhat illicit act, so that patrols can avoid the location for at least a half moon, when the body has likely vanished.

this is when the cat has run to starclan, they say, when the spirit has parted and sprinted home. it is a bad omen to find a body, and a worse omen to bury one, trapping them under the earth with no chance at finding home.

this is why talltail was so upset over his father. a tunneler’s biggest fear was that death, the inescapable. even tunnelers ran to starclan. they didn’t dig their way there. so not only did talltail lose his father, his father was not guarunteed to starclan. [2]

windclan cats pray as individuals. only the medicine cat, only a named medicine cat, carries the power to bless, and what a power that is. a queen can pray over her kits, but she seeks the blessing of the medicine cat that they will grow safe and healthy. [3]

SKYCLAN funerals are public. the whole clan gathers to mourn. each life lost is a precious thing, a small and kindling flame lost to the clan. the whole clan buries the fallen, the clan lacking sufficient elders to task them with it. elders do get to dress the bodies, and they are responsible for choosing the burial place.

a tree growing on the grave is said to be good luck. skyclan has not had the luxury of mourning for very long: they have been fraught with grief for their modern existence. so mourning is supposed to be a productive act, a way to preserve the life they have.

skyclan fears sickness. firefern. rileysong. they treasure their medicine cats, hope they are never without them, because they have seen the danger of it. that is why leafstar took her clan away: she feared sickness and poison, enemies that can only be weathered, never defeated. [4]

like shadowclan, skyclan prays together. in the gorge, they prayed on full moon nights, when they could only gather among themselves. the full moon is still a holy time, when the spirits of their ancestors are closest. they pray in small groups, too: mates praying for their kits, all of the mentors praying for an injured apprentice.  [5]

a collection of fics/series/w/e i've used for inspiration. ordered by how much i used them

Flightless Dove, Poison Ivy acaciapines

read it, it’s good. it's 100% my main fic inspiration, i love it, it's very good.

the light that shines on you solacefruit

huge inspiration for my riverclan. just. massively where i get a lot of ideas. probably a larger source of material than flightless dove, if i'm being honest.

RIVERCLAN leaders have a litany of names. weather caller, storm seer, spirit walker. a new leader being made is a chance to find another for the list. these names are to honor leaders for the role they play in their lives.

(names. leaders. meaning.)

so you can see where i got that from.

Warriors Redux Deconstruction Dullard on ao3 (not linked)

i've split this into two parts, because there's a lot. i'm a fan of this in terms of world building, but i've been select in what i've used from it. deconstruction is linked highly because it had a lot of key details that shaped my opinions on what wouldn't be. a lot of this i would've changed anyway, but i wanted to list WR because it'd be dishonest to act like this wasn't shaping my thoughts.

anyway, a short list of things that were mentioned in WR:D that i'd already decided on or am now using

behaviors. i mean, i've said "flicked her tail" or "flattened his ears" so much it's getting old, but by god if i am not being true to cats movements. i think WR:D is somewhat conservative on use of purring, but i've also been writing about kits, and a lot of purring is involved with kits, so special case, i suppose. but i'm very cautious with my descriptions. i've tried really hard not to use smile, because cats don't smile. that's the one that gets me the most.

water. this is kind of a specific thing. but. in ctd's fading echoes. the lake is a concern not because the cats need water, but because the prey needs water.

queens and toms. now. i have always been irritated by this. and the lack of female leadership. because toms should know they're kept on the graces of the queens. the sisters got it right. but i can't just kick out half the cast, so i'm forced to keep them. i have, however, kept toms out of the nursery. queens are protective around their kits. it's the best i can do to appease my strong desire to literally just kick every male cat out of the clan. in all of my stories, though, i keep track of who's in the nursery with what kits, because those kits are going to bond to every damn mother. it's super annoying that this isn't kept more clear anywhere. i have to do so much math and check so many allegiances every time.

kits. it's basically impossible to convince me to write this the way the hunters do, so even in ctd, we see kits not walking, not opening their eyes, until real kittens would. does this make the early chapters of growing shadows a pain because dovekit does basically nothing but sit and listen? yes. do i care? yes, it is important to me that dovekit does nothing but sit and listen because she's a baby. bb. need protect.

genetics. usually i correct coat colors for POV cats. because it bothers me. see: tortie dovekit/ivykit in CTD, and the fact that i think in jaywing, jayfeather is going to end up amber like brightheart. i need to do some research to double check, but...i think that's what will happen. (please don't ask about hollykit, ivykit, and lionkit. i don't even know who their parents are. how is crowfeather "dark grey, almost black"? what does that mean. how is leafpool even leafpool. i don't understand anything.)

religion. i'm not fundamentally changing how starclan works, because i'm writing the books where magic is confirmed real, but...i've tried to distance the connections with it. and god, so help me, i'm going to make things a proper religion for w&f. there will be religious things like prayer. god.

cultures, folklore, names. this is getting long so i'm lumping this together. basically, i've got some name stuff sorted out. it's not "traditional" naming, because i'm not going WR on this and renaming really important cats (altho the reason WR has my respect for traditional naming is because they're not afraid to rename cats to fit the scheme), but i have some pretty defined rules. and there will be folklore and stories. this is especially important for dovefeather, when she goes to riverclan.

Sharing Tongues Icej

a series. i don't think i've used much of this directly, but it has shaped a lot of my opinions on clans. it's why thunderclan is militaristic and why windclan is so strict.

it's also shaped my thoughts on a lot of parts of clan life. i'm writing this all out of order, so i'll say, a lot of the inspiration that warriors redux had, is shared in this series. i'm not sure if there's overlap in the interst, but it's got simularities.

especially in terms of relationships. i have a bit of a fascination with story telling as a form of culture, if only because in my personal life, story telling, especially verbal story telling, has always been really important. so i think a lot about it.

anyway, these are a good set of fics, and they're ranked so highly because they're kind of a paradigm i've crafted my thoughts around.

Tell me about your Ancestors Drowsy_Salamander

so this was what got me started, even over flightless dove. it got me thinking about the differences clans would have.

i haven't written "funerals. mourning. prayer." yet, although as you might guess from the fact that i have a title, it is on my mind. i think i'll draw heavily on this for that.

one other very specific line in this that i draw on is

When SkyClan was reformed by Firestar at the gorge, it was reformed in ThunderClan’s image.

now i say that specifically because i didn't want that. i wanted leafstar to find her own tradition. a lot of skyclan's destiny deals with her struggling to adapt the warrior code to her clan. so Ancestors continues by talking about tree's influence, and this is what i got from it:

SKYCLAN once held ceremonies at tilt, when the birds were quiet, but now, they hold most ceremonies at low moon, when the spirits are strongest. ...

apprentices are made at low sun, born from a time when they were not always gathered.

(ceremonies)

and i'm happy with that

Warriors Redux: Ammendment Dullard on ao3, not linked

this is ranked significantly lower than deconstruction because (a) i'm borrowing superificial things at best and (b) i had already come to a lot of these conclusions. still, i'm writing a full list because there are little things i don't think to write whole essays about sometimes. that said, whereas in deconstruction, i could basically say "yes, everything that's said here, i agree with, i'm only tweaking things for personal taste or because of differences in perspective" here it's more like "here are the things i'm using" and the other stuff is just there, but not really anything i want to use

time and date. in one of my generic CTD posts i had a few paragraphs about this. basically, i like the system of time. except for half, because that confuses me. so it's dawn, sunrise, low sun, (sun) tilt, sunhigh, dusk, moonrise, low moon, (moon) tilt, moonhigh, repeat. and kits are aged to apprentices at the beginning or rough midpoint of seasons.

numbers. math. drawing things in the dirt with claws. in short, yes, no, what the...no. just no. cats in my stories can basically count, but they don't really, like, count the way we do? they might say five leaf bares ago, because i am not saying, "the leaf bare before the one with X which was before the one with Y" and that's what a cat is thinking and maybe they have words for this, i don't know, i'm not writing that. four and nine are holy numbers, or the closest cats get. (apprentices are apprenticed at nine moons in the holy sense, because a queen pregnent for a three --- two, but who's counting --- and in the nursery for six. this will never come up in a story unless it's a background note, because it's confusing and hard to explain off the cuff.) i don't have to explain my last point.

names. i have my own rules. i don't intend on changing character names with the exception of the symbolism in jaywing and dovefeather, but i may at some point make some comments on what, based on my rules, i would do. i don't want to change names because it confuses me, but i don't want to say for sure that i won't. definitely not based on WR rules, i have my own form of "traditional naming" for the w&f world.

clan specific notes. you can find it in my writing. there's a lot of influence in it. i don't want to list everything.

come back to you one by one solacefruit

i haven't really used this for anything, i just generally like it. it's definitely given me inspiration for how i use stories, but not any particular thing.

it really is beautiful, though.