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Post by ᏞᎪᎠᎽ Ꮎf fᎪᏁᎠᎾms ミ☆ on Nov 25, 2021 18:16:58 GMT -5
note: please don't bring up spottedleaf's heart. this is about how thistleclaw was originally portrayed in bluestar's SE (plus his cameo in crookedstar's SE)
i'm just thinking about what thistleclaw's motivations even are...?
i know tigerclaw's was a self fuffilling prophecy, and about resentment toward his father. but what about thistleclaw? tigerclaw was heavily influenced by thistleclaw (in terms of aggression and violence philospphies and stuff), but what about thistleclaw himself?
why was thistleclaw a brat since childhood and transformed into an aggresive, power hungry jerk head once a warrior? why was he like this?
if i were to fix this, i'd make sweetpaw die in battle instead. thistlepaw would be angry about it and think "if sweetpaw wasn't so weak, she could have survived that battle!" this would start his aggression and violence way of thinking, and it'd build up.
like how fluttering bird was clear sky's reason for being a selfish jerk, sweetpaw would be thistleclaw's reason for being an aggressive, power hungry jerk head.
what do u think? is there something i'm missing about thistleclaw that lead him to be that way? from what he said about snowfur, he clearly values power over his own mate and family...i still think he never truly loved snowfur. he just liked that she liked him,and that she provided him kits to raise in his image (like what he does with tigerpaw when he mentored him to be heartless and aggressive just like him).
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#a3c5e6
Name Colour
𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓵
Warrior Fanatic
All hail me, the flower-flushing queen of Prague
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Post by 𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓵 on Nov 25, 2021 18:27:12 GMT -5
I think it's pretty clear that Thistleclaw was practically driven mad by grief and became worse after Snowfur died, but he was never really a good cat even before then. He's not even that interesting of a villain and I would've preferred it if he had basically been proto-Clear Sky, where he was a good cat initially and Snowfur's death was the breaking point.
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Post by vectoring34 on Nov 25, 2021 18:30:50 GMT -5
Thistleclaw had no grand motivations but that's part of the charm and what makes him feel realistic. He was just an angry, bitter man lashing out at the world in frustration that things didn't go his way, and it sets him up as a clear parallel to Bluestar who responds with melancholy rather than anger like Thistleclaw. Ultimately, Bluestar's Prophecy centers around this idea of how one can control the world around you when grief comes. Thistleclaw tries to remedy this by seeking control with power and strength, as it gives him the illusion of control. This is pretty common in people who suffer trauma, this strange "just world theory" type of beliefs where in they try to justify why it happened. This is a psychological defense mechanism because it is very difficult to admit the role random chance has in your life, it is a "cheaper" psychological solution to assume you can control it.
I do think he genuinely loved Snowfur and Whitestorm, but over time of being indoctrinated into the Dark Forest and letting himself stew in his own grief, he gradually began to forget the real them and only began thinking of them as the illusionary phantoms he felt inside his head. Again, not uncommon in people who suffer traumatic experiences. You will see them be irrationally judgmental and look for the worst spin in many things. He feels very grounded in that sense, just someone who was dealt a traumatic blow and then simply did not recover and found himself in darker coping methods rather than healthy ones.
While he was a jerk prior to his slide into the dark side, I think that's honestly fine characterization. Snowfur had it too, and it makes sense as a method to explain why he reacted the way he did. He saw the world in violent terms and so could only process his grief in violent terms.
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Nov 25, 2021 20:30:37 GMT -5
Some people just have naturally more aggressive personalities, and if those natural tendencies arent tempered productively toward a good purpose, they can sour and develop into hubris, superiority, and egoism. Seems to me like Thistleclaw always had potentially troublesome characteristics that weren’t sufficiently curbed in his youth.
If you want a headcanon, maybe he got away with it more after Sweetpaw’s death because nobody wanted to criticize a grieving brother. But idk.
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Post by Cheetahstar on Nov 25, 2021 20:37:24 GMT -5
reading the things here make me so frustrated
he could have been such an interesting character
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Asexual
#07B04C
star_black.png
Name Colour
Ṣanɗypaw™
The Shiny User
🎵Guess that's just the way it goes, easy come, easy go🎵
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Post by Ṣanɗypaw™ on Nov 25, 2021 21:26:23 GMT -5
I feel like his motivations were just trying to cope after Snowfur's death by becoming worse and worse and lashing out at everyone.
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Post by *Ottersplash* on Nov 25, 2021 22:30:25 GMT -5
It wasn't until after Snowfur died that he got more than mildly annoying and arrogant. So it's likely his grief and anger at Bluestar that made him that way
Snowfur was his life and her loss was traumatic to him. I genuinely believe he would have never gotten that bad had she not died
I also don't understand doubting that he loved her? Even from Bluestar's very skewed POV, it's obvious. He wants to impress her from when he's a kit/paw. He's doting and affectionate towards her. He only goes off the deep end after her death, of which he also feels possessive over Whitestorm who is his only remaining link to her. His comments in the DF were out of anger and grief as opposed to not loving her, especially since we now know that the DF heavily amplifies negative feelings
People deal with grief in many ways. Anger is a common one
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Post by *Ottersplash* on Nov 25, 2021 22:36:07 GMT -5
reading the things here make me so frustrated he could have been such an interesting character Shame Vicky had a vendetta against him over sticking to the dealing with grief through anger pov. It's much more interesting, much more realistic
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Post by Cheetahstar on Nov 26, 2021 12:35:35 GMT -5
reading the things here make me so frustrated he could have been such an interesting character Shame Vicky had a vendetta against him over sticking to the dealing with grief through anger pov. It's much more interesting, much more realistic Exactly! It shows an interesting reflection of Bluestar who also deals with untold grief and yet the way they handle it are vastly different.
Erins
please
why
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Post by ᏞᎪᎠᎽ Ꮎf fᎪᏁᎠᎾms ミ☆ on Nov 26, 2021 16:18:24 GMT -5
*Ottersplash*man really? i havent read Bluestar's SE in ages so my memories of it are skewed lol
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Post by Cheetahstar on Nov 26, 2021 19:06:54 GMT -5
okay thinking more on it like
was it accidental how similiar their arcs were?
both losing a sibling
and both lost Snowfur
like the story was clearly about grief and how there were wrong and right ways to handle it
did they just
forget they wrote that book
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Post by *Ottersplash* on Nov 26, 2021 22:18:21 GMT -5
*Ottersplash* man really? i havent read Bluestar's SE in ages so my memories of it are skewed lol Yeah. In the book, they make it pretty clear that Thistleclaw is kind of arrogant and obnoxious (especially to Bluestar, who is biased), but that he really starts getting bad after Snowfur is hit by the car. He lashes out at Bluestar and then just kind of loses himself to his anger/hatred, I think
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Post by *Ottersplash* on Nov 26, 2021 22:19:25 GMT -5
okay thinking more on it like was it accidental how similiar their arcs were? both losing a sibling and both lost Snowfur like the story was clearly about grief and how there were wrong and right ways to handle it did they just forget they wrote that book I think it was purposeful that it was a book on how to deal with grief. As I said, Vicky just genuinely didn't like Thistleclaw, and I think she had an issue with people not feeling like he didn't quite deserve the Dark Forest (cats have gone to Starclan for doing worse than he did in BP, after all)
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