warriors: the new prophecy #4: starlight
date started: 05/02/2023 | date finished: 26/02/2023
i love how mothwing is basically still an apprentice because she hadn’t finished her training before mudfur died, but also she’s riverclan’s only medicine cat. she’s stuck in-between being an apprentice and an experienced medicine cat. the other medicine cats can’t really argue with her decisions, like to swim across the lake to go to the gathering island. she seems so lively and fun and kinda childish but no one can question her. i like it a lot.
they have hinted at the idea that tallstar would appoint onewhisker to succeed him when he dies by having him tend to tallstar all the time and mudclaw be argumentative with thunderclan which is contradictory to the behaviour of the rest of windclan. i do like that tallstar values friendship over uhh “strong leadership”, although i am not sure if strong leadership is exactly what mudclaw has but whatever. i’m glad that tallstar appointed onewhisker, and i also like that onewhisker is close to tallstar.
i just bought tallstar’s revenge today (17/02/2023) and i know that onewhisker will be in that book so i’ll have to read that soon!
firestar is once again being told by a good friend of his, while dying, who he should appoint as deputy. and why are they always so wrong about the choices? tallstar and whitestorm are both smart kitties.
i didn’t like that tallstar commented on brambleclaw being a good potential deputy. i just think brackenfur makes more sense. graystripe already offloaded his responsibilities as deputy onto brackenfur earlier in this series (which is kinda sad because he also neglected his responsibilities as brackenfur’s mentor in the first arc). just because brambleclaw is the main character in this arc doesn’t mean he needs to be deputy! not that i remembered this, but i saw a post yesterday discussing how brambleclaw was appointed as firestar’s deputy right after he hesitated to stop hawkfrost from murdering firestar. like how does that make sense. firestar is like “well you almost let me be killed, but you didn’t. and for that, i will reward you by giving you responsibility for our clan!”. we will have to see how much that frustrates me in the next two books.
ugh and further along brambleclaw is literally saying to himself that he deserves to be deputy! i don’t think that’s ever been how it works. like you don’t become deputy after filling out your good boy points. i mean, he hasn’t even had an apprentice yet, which is one of the rules about becoming deputy. why is he so entitled! and i think that we are supposed to interpret firestar as being unreasonable. i mean, maybe he should appoint a new deputy. but it certainly shouldn’t be brambleclaw. ridiculous!!
and the next chapter, brambleclaw loses his temper at mousefur and brackenfur diffuses the situation and brambleclaw even says to himself that brackenfur deserves to be deputy over him, and other warriors too! but he blames it on his heritage rather than the fact that he’s inexperienced and entitled. firestar obviously trusts him if he gave him his warrior name, let him lead the way to their new territory, has him next to him and onewhisker while their mutual friend speaks his last words. grrr gimme back leafpaw and squirrelflight povs please!!
firestar asked brambleclaw to do an “apprentice task”, which was collecting moss for bedding. i don’t really like that tasks that help the clan have some sort of respectability tier list to them. like caring for the elders shouldn’t be a shameful task given to naughty apprentices. but brambleclaw is very upset that he’s given such a task, because he’s suuuuuch a respectable warrioooor. meanwhile we swap to leafpaw’s perspective and she mentally praises him for taking on that responsibility because she thinks he’s doing it to be helpful. if brambleclaw really cared about helping the clan, he wouldn’t care that he has to do tasks he doesn’t like. i don’t think brackenfur would be such a sourpuss about it, i think he would take on any responsibility. maybe that makes him boring with no personality, but i don’t mind a background character having no controversial thoughts. hating on brambleclaw can be fun!
i know brambleclaw has been hated on a lot from the fandom, but mostly after omen of the stars, and because he is a terrible partner to squirrelflight. i honestly think he was nice enough in the first three books of the new prophecy! i didn’t care too much for the development of his relationship with squirrelflight, but it was okay! i mean to be honest, so far, none of the romances i have read about have been interesting at all. maybe it’s because they’re cats? but i doubt it, i think that a lot of the characters just are underdeveloped. so the characters i care about are ones that i have nostalgia for and also ones that are discussed on tumblr and people have headcannons that make me think of the characters in a different way.
anyway i hate spottedleaf blah blah blah. i can’t wait for her to tell leafpool to be with crowfeather because starclan needs “the three” to be born and then shame leafpool for doing the very thing she told her to do!! i hate how much leafpool idolises spottedleaf, like i hate her for the whole firestar creeping thing, but u know, honestly that’s not as bad as how awful she’s going to be to leafpool. i wish yellowfang could have been her starclan “mentor” or “guide”. but then again, they did make yellowfang say the most foolish thing ever while she was in starclan (the thing about ashfur’s only fault being that he loved too much) so maybe it’s better that she isn’t in leafpool’s dreams too much. but yellowfang broke the same rule that leafpool did, so maybe (if someone who actually cares would write it) she would have been sympathetic to leafpool rather than shame her. spottedleaf just has no actual connection to leafpool apart from the fact that she creeps on firestar, which makes it so weird that she comes to leafpool in her dreams. if it was yellowfang, it would be because she saw firestar as a second son, and she cares about cinderpelt’s apprentice because she also took on a motherly role with cinderpelt. i just!!! wish that was the case.
if i was a writer, maybe i would do a rewrite of the new prophecy and just kick stupid spottedleaf out of the story. it would probably seem that i have a bias for certain characters though. i would want bluestar and yellowfang to have more uhh “screen time”. although that would probably make it less exciting when they do finally appear. maybe just yellowfang then. although i would also like to hear from cats like whitestorm, lionheart, redtail, stonefur. if i recall, lionheart and redtail have only appeared for firestar’s leader ceremony. and stonefur, i don’t know if he ever has interactions in starclan with his mother and mosskit. i’d like to think that when mistystar finally died they had a family reunion with crookedstar, silverstream, feathertail.
back to leafpool, and the actual contents of the book. i’m happy she finally got her full name! it’s kinda weird when siblings don’t get their names at the same time. plus leafpool has been a great medicine cat even before the big journey to the lake territory. and i love how mothwing was so proud of her. actually i just quite like the medicine cat relationships. they’re all cool and i like seeing it from their perspectives, having interactions with cats from different clans without hostility is nice.
i am wondering how hawkfrost managed to get cats from shadowclan to help him, is it because he is tigerstar’s son and there is still cats in shadowclan that would follow tigerstar were he alive? but why do they care about helping mudclaw? like hawkfrost has some motivation if mudclaw told him he would make him deputy if onewhisker is overthrown. it all seems so silly, and kinda rushed too. like if we compare it to tigerstar trying to overthrow thunderclan and taking control of shadowclan and riverclan, that happened over the course of several books. perhaps hawkfrost and mudclaw overthrowing windclan could have been interesting if it wasn’t squeezed into a couple chapters.
our only hints that this could happen are that squirrelflight, leafpool, and mistyfoot are distrustful of hawkfrost. but only because he is too “ambitious”. and then the rest was mistyfoot straight up telling thunderclan what was happening. i think it could have been interesting for thunderclan and windclan to not be sort of in an alliance for once. i like that they are friendly with each other, but maybe it would have been cool to see the friendship between firestar and onewhisker tested a bit?
i was watching sunnyfall’s trip through time video about this particular book (as i have been doing after each warriors book i’ve been reading) and she brought up that this books main plot points revolve around windclan and the leader/deputy drama. i agree that we should have had some chapters written from his point of view. why does brambleclaw need to be there for tallstar’s death? we could have been seeing it from crowfeather’s point of view. there’s so many interactions with windclan that it really would have benefitted from seeing it in their perspective.
the scene with leafpool and crowfeather at the end of the book was … strange. like those two shadowclan cats, why were they running to thunderclan anyway? and they’re just mysterious unnamed cats, because the writers don’t feel like fleshing out the rest of the clans with real characters. oh and of course they brutally die by snapping their necks, which is supposed to make me feel like, oh my gosh that could have been leafpool if crowfeather didn’t help her! and the confessions of “love” like, all of the intentional romance in these books is so bad. you guys are infatuated with each other you are not in love come on now. it’s very silly.
and i guess squirrelflight and brambleclaw are officially broken up for now because he continues to trust hawkfrost. like even if mudclaw is lying about hawkfrost’s motivations to help him, how does that change the fact that he helped a cat from another clan try to overthrow their leader? what is going on inside brambleclaw’s mind here? squirrelflight is so right for giving up on him at this point. he’s being wilfully ignorant. i mean that’s not what the erins intended him to be, he apparently just trusts his brother after all this? and despite denouncing the actions of his father every chance he has had previously, he didn’t seem to have a problem chatting to him in a dream? i know he doesn’t seem awfully evil when he’s chatting away with his sons, but he also didn’t seem awfully evil, or at all to all of thunderclan when he had literally killed redtail, attempted to kill bluestar, etc. i still remember when fireheart was filling in for bluestar at a gathering and tigerstar was there as shadowclan’s leader, and fireheart decided not to warn the other clans about his actions because “maybe he has changed!”. it’s kinda annoying for characters to be uncharacteristically stupid for the sake of the plot. it takes you out of it and makes you question the authors rather than wonder the motives of the characters.
mudclaw dying to a falling tree made me wonder, how many cats have died to trees throughout the series? off the top of my head i thought of mudclaw, firestar, and longtail. luckily the wiki is extensive enough to have a complete list, which includes micah (i didn’t know of micah because i haven’t read moth flight’s vision yet), mudclaw, firestar, rainwhisker, and longtail. and briarlight was paralysed.
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witch hat atelier #2
date started: 21/02/2023 | date started: 22/01/2023
once again, the art absolutely blew me away! like the illustrations remind me of the ink illustrations in children’s novels with the shading done with ink. it obviously has style influence from manga and western comics, but i wonder if kamome shirahama also is trying to evoke a feeling of nostalgia for old ink illustrations in books like “the worst witch”? i would be surprised if it wasn’t her intention, given the setting and story of the book. it definitely, so far at least, doesn’t lean into any anime tropes at all. the characters feel more western, like the characters you expect in this setting.
i love it! that’s not to say i don’t like characters that are written to fit into a more manga/anime type story. but everything about this feels so different from most manga. the art style, characters, story.
i was thinking about how this could possibly be adapted into an anime. i seriously don’t think it could be done by the average anime studio. i would be keen to see it done. but i would only really trust studio ghibli to do it. or it would be cool to see studio ponoc do it. maybe stories about witches could be their “thing”. although i’m not sure what the difference between producing an animated movie vs show is. but i don’t think the digital look of most japanese animation studios would suit this. studio ghibli apparently works digitally, but i think they still have a great look to it, because their colour palettes still look traditional. the think that looks the most digital is the super thin lines, and the shiny hair and eyes. it’s a bit too smooth looking i think and just isn’t to my taste.
i was totally thrown off at the end, with coco being arrested for using forbidden magic. i am actually looking forward to the next volume! actually today, i bought volume 6 and 7 at dymocks! so i have 5 volumes to read in my collection.
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i like think of the other aspects of having powers/side effects like spidey (specifically a metabolism as fast as theirs) because it’s just so fun. you can go the spider-first route, where you consider what an irl spider does before you try to apply it to a human and work it into the metabolism, or you can go the power-first route, where you consider what such an enhanced metabolism implies about the rest of spidey’s body and then work it into a spider’s irl behaviors to try and tie that together. you can end up with “irl spiders can last for weeks without food so spidey will still experience all the side effects of not eating for a long time but delayed a week or two later than a normal human” or you can end up with “spidey needs to eat almost constantly but their diet is partially blended foods because the constant eating would make them sick, also irl spiders don’t eat food whole” stuff like that is my bread and butter.
sometimes i try to think of how the smaller stuff is changed too like how fast does spidey’s hair grow now? i know accelerated aging isn’t a power but if a height change is a side effect of the bite, then if one didn’t have their wisdom teeth growing in before the bite, does that mean the teeth will grow in quicker (more pain) and need to be removed way earlier than expected? what about fingernail growth? the heart’s obviously stronger, but does that mean it’s also got to have more of an electrical output, and would also need way more of an input from a defibrillator if it stops??? what if it stops while out as a civilian, and the paramedics don’t know if they should go higher and risk killing an (what they think is) average human???
There’s just so many ways to explore side effects, like maybe spidey needs to drink a lot of coffee to feel any side effect bc of a fast metabolism, but is that the only change, or is the side effect (once there’s enough caffeine) always going to be them being extremely disorientated and sometimes shooting webs in awkward/useless spots???? just so much to consider ^3^
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You know what's not a hot take and actually really dumb? Saying that people who are invested in the love story in The Hunger Games are just as bad at the Capitol. A lot has already been said about this to show just how dumb of a statement that is, but I want to add something I haven't seen talked about. And that's how the people of the districts were just as taken by the love story as the Capitol. They just understood the gravity of the Games and saw Katniss and Peeta's love as a successful rebellion against the Capitol, which inspired them as well. Katniss acting like a girl driven to madness with love doesn't dissuade the rebellion at all, and in fact she figures Snow put her up to it during the Victory Tour to distract her rather than as a tactic that would actually dissuade the rebellion.
We get little direct contact with the people of the rebellion, but one of the times we get it, during the visit to the hospital in D8, this is what Katniss narrates:
Despite his controversial interview with Caesar, many ask about Peeta, assure me that they know he was speaking under duress. I do my best to sound positive about our future, but people are truly devastated when they learn I've lost the baby. I want to come clean and tell one weeping woman that it was all a hoax, a move in the game, but to present Peeta as a liar now would not help his image.
For the people in the districts, their romance is real, the hope of these two rebels bringing new life to Panem is real, and its loss is a devastation. Are you going to tell me that these people who are literally dying for the rebellion are just as bad as the people from the Capitol?
So the people who compare those who are interested in the romance in THG to the people in the Capitol, get better critical judgement. The fans I've seen who are invested in the romance are far more akin to how the people of the districts feel about Katniss and Peeta. We love their love because it is a rebellion against the Capitol. It is what sparks the rebellion and inspires people to start fighting back against their oppression. And we the readers know everything from Katniss's perspective (which neither the Capitol nor the districts had access to) and there is still every reason in the world to ship these two characters because they looked at what the Capitol was trying to make them do and at every turn and said "I'm choosing my humanity over submission to you." And they did that together every single time.
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