Are you going to keep Goosefeather's curse? If so are you going to change anything about it? From my memory the book was... depressing.
It will probably get rolled into Pinestar's Crusade, building it up into an SE rather than just a novella. There's actually a lot going on in that specific moment, and it makes sense to go over it all at once.
So to answer your question, yes, most of Goosefeather's Curse is staying. Most of the Crusade Generation have depressing stories to tell. If the Thistle Period is defined by the fact that Thistle Law metastasized and went terminal, and if the Campaign Era was when it was newly born, then the Crusade Era was when it was first conceived.
I've been thinking about Pinestar's Crusade idly and mentioned it a few times, but here's my fragments so far;
PINESTAR'S CRUSADE
(Fuses Pinestar's Choice and Goosefeather's Curse)
We start in the Crusade Era; there is now more focus on 3 major characters, though it's still built around Pinestar as the POV
Pinestar, Goosefeather, and eventually Pinepaw's apprentice Speckletail.
Pinepaw is born into the start of the Crusades, a bloody period where the Clans are invading Chelford and brutalizing cats in the hopes of appeasing StarClan. He only begins to learn the full story of what happened in Darkstar's Commandment once he begins going to Gatherings as a warrior
The truth being that Oakstar came up with this idea because he couldn't take an L
But even as an apprentice, it becomes quickly apparent to him that what they're doing is evil. They were brutalizing kittypets who aren't trained to fight back.
During his first raid as an apprentice, he allows a ginger-and-white mother and her kittens to escape
This came back years later, when that queen, Crystal, forms BloodClan in response to the Crusades.
Pineheart watches Oakstar die barely a year later to the queen he saved, using early claw extenders to cut right through him. Even if he hadn't been on his last life, it would have ended him.
But, Crystal lets Pineheart go, recognizing the Clan cat who had saved her life.
Watching his dad die along with several friends, and countless more innocent Chelford, plus being released by Crystal, is a Formative Moment.
Doestar continues the Crusades in the name of revenge for Oakstar, but now that BloodClan exists and is ARMED, the easy raids become bloodbaths.
They slowly peter out, not with a bang but with a whimper. She never announces an official end, eventually she just stops organizing them. No one gets closure, especially not Pineheart.
But the 'peace' doesn't last. Just before Heatherstar takes power from Smallstar and begins the Campaign to take the Mothermouth Moorland, ThunderClan deals with the Great Hunger
Pineheart and Goosefeather become very good friends, part of a little buddy group that also included Tawnyspots and Pheasantfeather (who will become One-eye later)
Pineheart was given his first apprentice, a rowdy little one and the niece of Doestar, Specklepaw. He's tasked with helping her fill the pawsteps of greatness she's destined to walk in.
Just like canon, Goose predicts the Great Hunger... though, he is an adult this time around because of some timeline changes.
And, like canon, it fails. They couldn't stockpile enough food to last an entire year of famine, a scorching summer and a frozen winter, they end up losing a huge stock of their food as if it was destiny.
Goosefeather was forced into a role he hates, given horrible visions of the future, and argues ferociously with Pineheart; if they hadn't tried to stockpile, they wouldn't have lost all that food to begin with.
It is in this moment, he comes to realize that every time he's fought back and used his visions like a warning, it's backfired.
So, perhaps, they are instruction.
But, meanwhile, Pineheart can't loose his apprentice or his friends. While others were hunting desperately, he was keeping cats alive through scouting for grubs, foraying into other territories, and...
Every bite of kittypet food he took for himself was a morsel in someone else's mouth. But this... this he kept quiet.
It started a "bad habit" he could never break.
Having lost the previous deputy to starvation and on her deathbed, Doestar nominates Pineheart to the position. He was shocked and upset by this, but he was the obvious choice.
Son of Oakstar, Hero of the Hunger, the cat who had kept Specklepaw alive when all the other kits and apprentices starved.
But, Pinestar took the helm to extreme controversy.
Everything Pinestar's ever done that worked was nonviolent. He's never seen battle do anything but bring harm, and the thought of leading people into war... it makes him feel sick.
But the rest of the Clan can't see what he sees. They yearn for the glory days (even though they were not glorious at all), itch to die for a cause, and leave this old, disgusting subsistence survival behind them. ThunderClan wants blood and Pinestar just wants peace.
Taking back Sunningrocks is an example of this. To avoid losing Clanmates, he proposed to Hailstar that they would have a Joust, instead.
ThunderClan's strongest against RiverClan's strongest. Adderfang vs Mudfur.
It didn't go well.
The problem with those sorts of situations is you have to abide by the deal. RiverClan took Sunningrocks for 6 months. It was humiliating for ThunderClan.
Even the cats he'd saved from the famine were furious with him
The only things that DID seem to please the Clan was when he would throw them fully into battle. Such as Goosefeather's prophecy that WindClan's herbs needed to be destroyed...
Every time a situation like that happened, where Goosefeather would phrase things as a Holy Struggle, Pinestar was thrown right back to the Crusades
Terrified eyes, screeching, cats begging for mercy, his father dead at his paws and feeling horror and relief swirling
Sitting vigil for old friends killed in these horrible fights, like Moonflower, it made him feel like how he felt the day he buried Oakstar.
And the bile rose in his throat, remembering that Oakstar was not there at his Leadership Ceremony, damned to the Dark Forest.
A thought was born, here. What does StarClan truly want? What do they expect of him? If they will send the architect of the Crusades there...
What of a cat who stayed fed on human food and fed grubs to his Clanmates? Or a leader who never knows the right thing to do?
When Mumblefoot retired and Sunfall became deputy, the Clan seemed to love him more than Pinestar. He found himself just... sitting back, and allowing Sunfall to call the shots.
It was towards the end, when Leopardfoot proposed an Honor Siring. He was from a glorious legacy, she wanted kits... and on his end, he wanted the peace that raising kittens could bring.
The warmth of human dens was calling him, but perhaps the warmth of love for children could keep him home.
UNLIKE CANON; Nothing about Tigerkit was born evil.
There was no StarClan vision of Tigerstar; Goosefeather knew full well that Thistlestar was the Leader of Prophecy.
But Pinestar would never give Thistleclaw an apprentice in time. Nor would he ever give his own little son to a cat as vicious as him.
Goosefeather never hurt anyone... but Pinestar just needed a push.
Pinestar was already anxious, unhappy, clinging to the goodness that was his little kits. Even as two of them were lost to minor illnesses, shortly after receiving their names.
It wasn't a lie. It was just half of the truth.
"Pinestar... you have a choice to make. StarClan has given me a vision of blood and war, and Tigerkit will have a role to play in it."
He DID have a vision... of Thistlestar. Not Tigerkit. But that was enough for Pinestar, his fear and trauma took the helm from there.
He'd seen his friends, his apprentice, the kits who had been born and died in his rule, all of them turn into the monsters Clan Culture demanded
Nothing he did ever seemed to work, why would THIS moment be different?
How could he prevent Tigerkit from becoming like that too?! Was StarClan telling him to KILL his son??
Pinestar's never had a vision from StarClan. He doesn't have the aptitude like a Cleric... what he has is a nightmare, of Tigerkit growing so large he crushes the whole camp under his claws
After a week of agony, Pinestar unknowingly creates a prophecy of his own,
"Can only the death of a child break fate?"
Sensing he was close to victory, Goosefeather dipped his head, not denying his question.
And it's the last straw.
And that is the climax of Pinestar's Crusade. Broken from his experiences, every turn taken for peace causing him more pain, the idea that he might have to hurt his own son plaguing his mind, he makes the choice to leave.
It wasn't hard, he'd still had that old bad habit of taking bites of kittypet food, a couple friends on the other side. But what he doesn't know is that by leaving with his life... he prevents Sunstar from acquiring his own.
Sunstar had ONE single life, StarClan was not able to give him more with the previous leader still alive. For leaving his Clan, for unknowingly preventing the transfer of power, and for dismissing the Warrior Code, Pinestar is sent to the Dark Forest after his death.
He can choose to walk there, or spend time in the mortal plane as just a spirit, but StarClan offers him no place in the cosmos.
148 notes
·
View notes
(Tw: kinda transphobia? Use of it/its for a character who hasn’t declared what their pronouns are yet. Arguments over whether a character is a person or not; that ties into the pronoun thing here. Bonus points for descriptions of canon-typical gore yipeeee)
An update from after writing this: oh this. Got. This one got away from me?? I think I started this at 4 minutes past the hour. It is now 43 minutes past the hour. shitt.
Update; it is now 17 minutes after the NEXT hour. 26 minutes after th last update. I have seen god in the past hour and she shook in fear of both my power and audacity. I have lunch with my family scheduled in like 6 hours and I have not yet slept. This wasn’t meant to be as long as it is but I was possessed and this is the result. I may edit it and make it smoother later but I’ll make that a separate post, I want this sleep-deprived chunk of words to be here as like a monument to the fact that I could have been playing stardew valley during this time but I chose to do this instead
TLDR: long ass story ahead written by a sleep-deprived and hyperfixation-driven author. Who is now going the fuck to BED
“We can’t just keep it! What if it has a tracking device? It won’t let us fucking touch it so there’s no way of knowing it has one unless it leads them right to us!”
“Ok, I hear you but think. That hasn’t happened yet. It’s been about what, three days? and that hasn’t happened, and they haven’t been violent towards any of us at all. They haven’t tried to go back either, so there’s no risk of them telling or leading Showfall where we are.”
“Why do you keep calling it ‘they’?”
“Well they can’t be an “it” now can it? …wait.”
“Ok can we figure out the gender of the thing in the other room after we figure out if it’s a threat to us or not. It’s not even a fucking person, you remember what those things did to you back there, don’t you?”
“Those people were not themselves, they were just doing what he wanted them to do—“
“They’re not fucking people! Those things are all part of Showfall, just like Hetch was! It’s just waiting for the right time to turn us in, or pull some shit on one of us like they did before.”
“They weren’t… they weren’t in control.”
“Yeah like fuck they weren’t, I saw it fucking happen!”
“You can’t just… Ok. Sneeg. Stop. You don’t speak for me, the one who, oh I don’t know, was the one that shit happened to? They were being controlled just like us—“
“No, no, not like us. We were wandering around and not knowing what the fuck was happening. None of us knew what was happening. We just went along blindly. Those things—on purpose—dragged you to that stupid wall and sewed wires into your hands—“
“Shut up, Sneeg—“
“No you shut up! You didn’t see it fucking happen! I saw them and Bitchface literally hold you down until you passed out! They were fucking choking you, they fucking—they nearly fucking killed you with just their hands, that’s not a little suggestion in the back of your brain, that’s on purpose! That is fucking deliberate, that is a thing those machines chose to do! You don’t remember, you weren’t conscious when they fucking stapled you to the wall and strapped your head in—“
Sneeg glanced at Ranboo for a moment in-between pacing as he ranted, and the far away look in their sibling’s eyes shut them up immediately. Ranboo was still present, thank fuck, but they were looking at their brother like he was holding up a knife to their throat.
“Fuck, Ran, okay, okay—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… shit. Do you need Charlie?”
“You don’t know when to shut the fuck up.”
“…okay. Okay. I’m sorry. Do you need me to get Charlie?”
“No, I’m fucking fine.” It did not sound like he meant that at all. His voice was less steady than before. “I don’t want him to worry about our… hitchhiker. He’s worrying enough about… well, everything.”
“The fact that it’s here, so close to us is the reason I’m trying to get you to see, Ran. What if it turns on him? What if it does that shit to him when we aren’t there?”
“We will be there.”
“And when it tries anything, we can kill it?”
“Sneeg!”
“You wouldn’t kill it, even if it hurt our fucking brother?”
“Of course we wouldn’t keep them around if they did that, could we at least just… just leave it behind? …wait, no, they couldn’t take care of themselves. If we had to leave it behind, maybe we should…”
Silence lingered for a bit too long.
“We should what, Ran?”
“…Sneeg, I was about to say that killing it would be a mercy.” The Hero laughed. “Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
The Taken didn’t reply.
“We have to help them. I don’t… I don’t want to be on the other end of a mercy killing. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”
“Okay. I’m—are you okay?”
“…m fine. It’s fine. Just. Can you stop acting like they’re any different from us? Please.”
“What do you want me to think then?” His voice was softer than it had been a few minutes before.
“Just assume that they… that they were someone. Just like we were before. And they didn’t… they didn’t do anything on their own, it was all Showfall.”
“Okay. Fine. Let’s assume they were controlled, they didn’t mean to, so on and so forth. Why haven’t they talked yet.”
“I don’t think any of the drones even could talk. Wait, should we really be calling them a drone—“
“Shut the fuck up, Ranboo, we have got to figure out what to do with it. It probably doesn’t even know what is happening, what the fuck does it matter what we call it.”
“It matters to me! Do you want me to call you by your title? Do you want to call me by mine? …No? Then why are we treating them like all they are is what Showfall made them? We had lives before, we were someone, so they must have been too. They might not realize it, or… or act like it, but they used to be someone. They are a whole person, Sneeg. We have to help them, we can’t just leave them behind because that would mean we are giving up on someone just like us, and we cannot give up on each other. They… they would have hurt us by now if they were going to. And Showfall hasn’t found us since… you know, which means there aren’t any more trackers.
…okay, Sneeg?”
“…okay. If it,” he sighed at the look Ran gave them, “if they try anything, we have to leave them behind. I’m not letting a dumbass puppet be the reason we get taken back.”
“If they—ok, whatever, you’re not understanding. You can’t say one of us somehow wanted to be controlled, and they’re a ‘puppet’ but those rules don’t apply to the rest of us—“
“There is not an ‘us,’ Ran! That thing isn’t like us!”
“Guys?”
A sleepy voice shut the two of them up instantly. They had a split-second conversation with their eyes before looking to their brother. ‘We aren’t done talking about this’ ‘You’e absolutely right, so later?’ ‘Later.’ ‘We’re telling Charlie nothing happened?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Ok good plan.’
“Why are you two fighting? I’m tired, can we please go back to sleep?”
“We weren’t fighting, we were…”
“…talking about plans for tomorrow. And you can go back to sleep.”
“I don’t want to be by myself.” Charlie looked at Sneeg pointedly, who sighed to Ranboo with a playfully annoyed expression.
“Well I guess I gotta go be a teddy bear again.”
“Have fun”
“Absolutely not.”
Charlie punched Sneeg in the shoulder lightly for that, who just giggled in response and led his little brother back to their room.
Which left Ran by themselves.
Some nights, he would join them, but some nights Charlie couldn’t stand to be anywhere near Ran, and the three of them had made a silent mutual agreement that Charlie trusted Sneeg more than he did Ranboo.
…Ranboo was okay with this. He wasn’t hurt by it. He didn’t cry on the nights he slept by himself.
He didn’t wish he could be the one Sneeg comforted sometimes. They were just fine.
They were fine, which is why they went to the living room where their… well. Their hitchhiker? They weren’t exactly a brother, or a sibling, more like a fourth wheel on a tricycle. Or a flyaway hair. Okay, maybe Ranboo needed to get tbr fuck to sleep, alone or not.
But he found himself in the living room, where their hitchhiker slept. Or, didn’t sleep, as they seemed to not need to. They would sit on the couch and stare idly at the tv. That was what had started the whole conversation with Sneeg in the first place; Ran wanted to leave some kind of entertainment for the fourth person so they wouldn’t be made to sit in the dark for hours. Sneeg took this remark as a perfect opportunity to explain all the reasons why the former drone should be abandoned, but Ranboo would have fucking none of it. Maybe the couch potato (shit, he really needed to come up with a name for them—) didn’t seem to sleep, barely ate, and stayed still unless actually verbally told to move, but they were still a person. Ranboo was sure of it.
Their hand wandered up to the fresh scabs where their mask had been. The fourth person had a mask, one that hadn’t been touched. Despite usually staying still, the person—(Ranboo thinks they might just call this person Couch for now. Maybe it’s not accurate, and they’re tired, but it’s something. C, for short.)
C would back away any time the others would try to get near them. And they did in fact try, but despite how creative or sneaky they got, C always ducked away. It reminded Ranboo of the drone who had followed them with a camera, always one step away and never letting the Hero get too close.
The mask turned to Ranboo, who stared back quietly. C hadn’t talked at all, so Ranboo didn’t expect them to suddenly start now. He wasn’t even sure if they understood what was said to them, but Ranboo wanted to try anyways. Better to be polite.
“Do you like the show that’s on? I think it’s called Lucy, or something. I don’t know, Sneeg said it was funny. And it didn’t seem, uh- scary or anything.”
The mask didn’t speak.
“If you want to change it, the remote’s right there, um, I showed you how to use it before. And there’s like, instructions drawn on there. You can thank Charlie for that one.”
…
“I think I’m going to head to bed.”
…
“Fuck it, can I stay here?”
The mask still didn’t speak, but the head hidden behind it tilted a bit at the sudden change in tone. Ranboo took this as an absolute win.
“So I just. I don’t want to be by myself. And I don’t think you sleep, I mean if you just sleep when everyone else is asleep that’s cool, but also if so how do you even? function? on that much sleep? It really isn’t that much but to be fair you don’t do much so maybe you don’t need it. …do you sleep sitting up? And just somehow wake up when we get close? I know, um. Sorry about that, again, we were just worried your mask had a tracker like mine used to.”
Ran laughed nervously. “I think I did convince them that it doesn’t, so that should stop now. If um. If we make you uncomfortable you still don’t have to be touched, it’s, it’s fine.”
Other than the head tilt before, there wasn’t a reply.
“Okay, since. You can’t talk, I’m just gonna… I’ll sit down beside you. On the couch. And if you don’t want me to be that close you can uh- you can leave. Or like, get up, and then I’ll leave. This is the only room with a tv, so I’ll let you stay here, but I can’t tell if you want me to be here or not, so. Okay, sorry, I’m rambling. Just… move if you want me to leave, okay?”
Ranboo waited for a response that didn’t come, then sighed. “Okay.” He kept his hands up and open while sitting down, waiting for a few moments before tucking his feet under himself to get more comfortable. “I’m just gonna stay here, okay? Like I said, just move if you want me to leave.”
The mask had tracked them to where they sat now, but the person—C—didn’t make a move to leave. Ranboo turned their attention to the tv, keeping an eye on their couch partner in their peripheral vision. During a moment of audience laughter in the show—I Love Lucy, they remembered—C turned their head back to the television as they had been before Ranboo walked in.
Seeing as how C (they needed a better name than that—) didn’t speak, this was the closest Ranboo could get to being told “you can stay here.” So they did. A few episodes later, his head was on the arm of the couch and his eyes were closed.
Five turned its attention to the Hero, who was now asleep. He had said it was a person, which was almost hilarious. And the Taken and the Hero seemed to think it couldn’t talk? They had to know it needed to be given permission first: any handler of a Drone or Prop knew that basic rule. It would wait until permission was given: it knew how to obey. It wasn’t meant to speak to a superior unless it was told it was allowed. It would wait.
…in the meantime, it studied its handler, the Hero. The other Actors, their two other handlers, called him ‘Ranboo’ but Five knew that wasn’t his actual label. The Hero was his character in the last show, and so that is who he was. Five didn’t know if Actors had a number, but he had been called the Hero in the script, and so the Hero he will be until the script changes.
It hoped to get new instructions, a new script for itself, something, soon. It was tired of simply watching the Actors go about their incredibly off-script show. It was sometimes told to participate, and since no other superiors were nearby, it had to obey its current handlers. But it was told to participate, to stir eggs, to help clean the kitchen, to attack small webs in corners with a stick with soft spikes on the end. Those sorts of things weren’t it’s usual directive, and so it found itself…
It didn’t resent its handlers. They were doing their best, and they at least knew that they were meant to give it orders. It simply wished they were familiar orders. It wished the Hero had told it to play dead, or play chase, or play camera, or caught, or prop. It would even listen if it was told to power down until needed. At least then it wouldn’t have to be conscious in this boring and unfamiliar set.
.
Y EA I know they probably don’t like tvs. Shhhhhh. I didn’t think about that until like. I had already written the tv part. At this moment it is 55 minutes past th hour and I want these characters to go the fuck to sleep so I can go thr fuck to sleep /lh
And yeah Five only uses “he” for glran. That is intentional. It’ll be talked about and shit later. Something about being put into a role, something about showfall being transphobic, something something I want to go to bed
Powering down = “sleeping” for a drone. Different but similar. I’ll explain how it works later?, anyway The others hav e told Five to “sleep” but it doesn’t understand because it is only ever told to “power down” so it’s like error.sleep_not_found and it stares at them like “bitch you said the wrong. Thing. You’re supposed to know how to control me so you don’t want me to power down I fucking guess” and it’s gonna be really funny after that miscommunication is taken care of.
If you remember the Five Gets A Cold And Wants To Throw Hands With Everyone post, this is wayyy before that. These motherfuckers are fresh out of showfall. Don’t ask how they got a house. I’ll figure it out
I am! Tired! I’m not proofreading this!! Goodnight please give me your thoughts if you have them. I need to know I didn’t sacrifice tbis much sleep in vain /nf /lh (I appreciate words but you are Not required to give them. Love you have a good nigt/p)
9 notes
·
View notes