hold on ok i belted out a brief laughingstock Scene for possible future use that i Had to write down bc if i didn't, i'd never remember it. and why not share?
~
“Barnaby? Barnaby, old chap, are you with me?”
Barnaby blinks, registering the green fingers snapping in front of his nose. He huffs a laugh and pushes Howdy’s hand away. “Yeah, yeah, I’m listenin’. You were saying?”
Howdy gives him an exasperated look, a fond look. “Thinking about running off to a farm again, were you?”
“Nah, just the clouds. They’re a lot less work.”
“Well I’d rather you didn’t. Who would I talk to during the long hours if you went and floated off?” Howdy winks before turning to his shelves, already yammering away about something or other.
Something or other that Barnaby is once again not listening to, because what was that? Barnaby quickly presses his cool paw-pads to his burning cheeks, feeling the bristling fur there.
Has Howdy ever winked at him? Now that he’s noticed it, Barnaby can’t recall. If it’s new, then why? Why a wink of all things? What did that mean? And that look Howdy gave him…
Barnaby adjusts his abruptly too-tight tie. It’s unusually warm in the store, isn’t it? Howdy must have forgotten to turn on the AC.
Gosh, what is Howdy even saying? He’s still talking, but Barnaby hasn’t absorbed a word. He can’t even tell if Howdy is still speaking english. It’s all garbled.
There’s something wrong with Barnaby. He must be coming down with something… or he’s just overthinking it. Overworking the ol’ noggin. A good long nap should set him right.
“Listen,” Barnaby interrupts, patting the counter, “I uh, I don’t know where my head’s at. I better go find it - I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Oh… alright, then,” Howdy says, a tinge of disappointment in his voice.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Barnaby slaps that thought out of the park. He doesn’t want Howdy to be disappointed, that’s absurd. That’s something a bad friend would think. Barnaby may be many things, but a bad friend isn’t one of them.
“I’ll whip up a joke that’ll knock your socks off next time I see ya,” Barnaby promises. He smiles around the discomfort and the entirely new feeling squirming around each other in his chest.
“Now you’ve gone and brought up my expectations,” Howdy says. He leans on the counter and grins. “Are you sure you can back up such a claim, Mr. Beagle?”
Another hot flush races under Barnaby’s fur, and to his growing mortification, his tail starts wagging at breakneck speed. He lets out an uncharacteristically nervous laugh and backs away from the counter. To both of their horror, his back hits a shelf, making it rattle and tip.
“Oh, sh-” Barnaby lunges to right it before it can topple. He whips around and laughs again. Howdy’s wide-eyed stare burns. “Sorry ‘bout that! Talk about a bulldog in a bugshop, geez.”
“When you find your head, make sure to screw it on nice and tight,” Howdy says, a strange look on his face to match his tone. “And check your temperature while you’re at it - it’s not like you to be off-balance.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m off-balance,” Barnaby says. He inches towards the door, willing his stupid tail to calm down. “I just have ears instead of rearview mirrors.”
“Uh-huh…” Howdy slides to the side, trying to peer around him.
Barnaby fumbles for the door. The scrape and bang of his search for the handle echoes in the quiet store. One of Howdy’s eyebrows creeps higher the longer Barnaby stands there, making a complete fool of himself.
Finally, the door clicks, and Barnaby nearly tumbles over backwards in his haste to get out. He stumbles down the steps and briskly walks away, adjusting his hat and tie. As soon as he’s out of sight, he slaps his paws to his face and sags against the bodega.
“Idiot,” he hisses to himself. He presses his back flat against the wall and slams the side of his fist against it. Normally, Barnaby would use a situation like this to his advantage. But Howdy wasn’t laughing, and Barnaby wasn’t being funny. “Bulldog in a - gah, idiot!”
Great. Now Howdy thinks he’s not only a clumsy oaf, but that he’s losing his touch too.
Barnaby growls in frustration, pushing off the wall and stomping away from the plaza on all fours. What does he care what Howdy thinks of him? Others’ opinions of Barnaby have never been anywhere near his list of top priorities - barring Wally’s, of course. If they were, he'd never tell another joke again.
Yes, Howdy is a good friend of Barnaby’s. A close friend, even. But since when has he had such a - such an effect? Barnaby shakes his head, growling again.
There was no effect. Barnaby is just going insane. Or he’s getting sick, like Howdy implied. That would explain the sudden hot flash, the loss of typically impeccable coordination, and, oh yeah! Barnaby’s brain leaking out of his ears.
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I'm glad you're keeping the part where Thunder puts himself between Clear Sky and Grey Wing, willingly showing that he would rather die before letting Clear Sky kill his dad.
That's actually a Bones Addition. You just think it's canon because it literally should have been there from the very beginning. Thunder doesn't get between them at any point during the battle, he runs towards them only to get interrupted by 2 people trying to kill him.
First was Falling Feather, who Jackdaw's Cry then jumps on and dies fighting with, sister killing brother.
Second was Leaf, who's a diehard Clear Sky supporter and general bully.
In canon, Clear Sky stops the battle after Gray Wing says the line, non-fucking-sensically imo. Killing his BROTHER is too far, but killing someone who wasn't even attacking him? A noncombatant who said something mildly insulting? That wasn't. Rainswept Flower did the SAME thing Gray Wing did and still got bumped off for it;
“Is this worth it?” he heard Clear Sky hiss at Rainswept Flower.
Scrambling to her paws, she faced him. “What do you mean?”
Clear Sky flattened his ears menacingly. “Are you ready to die just to stop me from making borders?”
Rainswept Flower curled her lip. “You’ll keep stealing land as long as we let you.”
“Stealing land?” Clear Sky’s mew trembled with rage, “I’m just making sure my cats never starve.”
Rainswept Flower’s gaze flitted around the lush slopes of the hollow. “How could any cat starve here? There’s so much. Wanting more is just greedy!”
“How dare you!” With a snarl, Clear Sky leaped for her, grabbing her throat between his jaws. Her paws flailed desperately, lashing out at thin air as he shook her like prey. Then she hung still.
Clear Sky dropped her, gazing coldly at her lifeless body. “You never understood. I’m not greedy. I’m just strong.”
-The First Battle, Chapter 20
Then in Clear Sky's pathetic wet beast scene, he stares down at Rainswept's corpse, and thinks "I was so angry I don't remember killing her :("
So how, exactly, does this same character keep his cool when Gray Wing says the same shit but worse?? Is he really so controlled by emotion that his logical processes flip off, or fucking not? Gray Wing was refusing to submit, lunging at him, calling him power hungry and taunting him that he would kill his own littermate for it, and THAT manages to get through Clear Sky's blood-poisoned head?
"ouuugh it's his brotherr that's why his personality completely changes for him" the fucking guy tried to have this same brother murdered in Sun Trail by Fox. The first book. He EXILED HIS OTHER BROTHER for having a broken leg because he, "didn't want to look biased"
Again; is he controlled by his fear and anger or not? Is this a man who would snap the neck of someone he cares about because he feels insulted, or not?
The answer is that the Erins are breaking their spines bending over backwards to try and keep him "redeemable" when he shouldn't be. He's whatever the plot needs him to be, but the most consistent character traits point towards Clear Sky being the kind of person who would never have wanted to change his ways.
So, they write Clear Sky ridiculously backing down for Gray Wing, calling off the battle and "coming to his senses" instead of having Thunder do WHAT HE SHOULD HAVE DONE and jump to his REAL dad's defense.
This is what I mean when I mention how firmly I feel that Clear Sky's Redemption Arc was a mistake. He works best as a villain, a fearful, proud, controlling monster, understood by his impacts on other characters rather than as a person the story should concern itself with sympathy for.
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one of the most infuriating things that happens in discussions about trans people is like, when a transphobe talks about how its just SOOOO easy to access gender affirming care, it's so easy to get on hrt or get referred for surgery etc... some of you dense motherfuckers respond to this by saying "no!!! it's not easy!!!! its so hard!!!" & listen. i KNOW that it IS HARD for many of us. and in many places it's getting harder. but tell me this: isn't the goal, eventually, to make it easy? not just easier than right now, but genuinely easy for a transgender person to access the care they need on whatever timeline they want, no matter how fast or slow? so if you spend all your time right now combating transphobia by insisting that transition is difficult and taxing and traumatizing, what are you going to do if and when it's none of those things? if there is no endless suffering and million hoops?
when someone says "it's too easy to transition" in order to justify their own transphobia, and you say "no it's not", you're also saying "if it were, your feelings would be justified". which is already kind of a terrible implication without taking into consideration that what most of these people mean by "too easy" is "possible". they mean that you can transition and they don't want you to. point blank. when you say it's difficult, they think "good. it should be harder". it will never be difficult enough to not be easy to them.
i am literally so sick & tired of all of us throwing each other under the bus in order to advocate for a future that is fucking miserable and awful. when someone tells you their nightmare scenario is transgender people being happy, you should not be responding to that by reassuring them that actually, transgender people are miserable and always have been and always will. when someone complains about how easy transition is you should say "good". we are never getting out of this fucking crab bucket if we're not only pulling each other down but also telling other people that pushing us back in would be fine if we were a little closer to the top.
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