For Those Curious About My “Swifthawk’s Chance: Blood And Bone” Aka SC2 Rewrite. Here’s Some

For those curious about my “Swifthawk’s Chance: Blood and Bone” aka SC2 rewrite. Here’s some concept art. I don’t want to spoil too much since the rewrite has a completely different take on the plot and stakes in ways I personally feel don’t make the cast extremely OOC. I am open to asks etc about the rewrite, and even encourage them, because I’m sure I’m not the only one who was disappointed and frustrated about where the story went.

But one change is Tigerstar takes Swifthawk as prisoner after he had snuck away from ThunderClan to look for Tawnypaw, rather than welcoming him with open arms. Swifthawk is also a prisoner along with Featherpaw and Mistyfoot, who weren’t able to escape with Stormpaw when Fire and Co rescued them like in canon and Tigerstar causes a strain between Swift and Tawny due to pitting them against each other.

Explaining this change under the cut - I advise you do read:

SC2 has A LOT of narrative issues due to things like sanitizing and appeasing related to real life issues (read pinned post for context).

I’ve reread SC1 and RC many times, including having only just properly read SC2 this year, coming to grow as an author I recognised how OOC Swifthawk was written and that the beginning chapters of him being extremely aggressive and mean to his family due to his adamancy to do something about TigerClan felt off. So, when he impulsively leaves to join TigerClan, the aggression and frustrating tone from beforehand doesn’t really convey what Swifthawk is losing when he decides to go join his father. Him being this bitter also in my opinion what set up justifications for the constant bashing Swifthawk as a protagonist goes through. (Which. Swifthawk being one of the most disabled characters in the story? And most of the attempts at humour being at his expense? The emotional torture porn? Rubbed me the wrong way, like, if that is actually was its genre, who cares. But it wasn’t.)

And to be honest, the whole, mole plan, Swifthawk was supposedly meant to have, and being let into TigerClan just doesn’t make sense; Swift is already aware how dangerous his father is, you can still have him have conflictions without making his behaviour OOC into that of a appeasing people pleaser.

This is intertwined with another big key issue in SC2 is that Tigerstar and his abusive and overall malicious nature was toned down to the point he felt like a completely different character. (And honestly, gave uncomfortable implications due to Bird’s need to be flippant on portraying things “right” out of fear what their audience will say about them over the stories they want to tell.)

In SC1, Tigerstar only showed up for two scenes; which both conveyed enough that he was willing to cause Swifthawk deliberate distress and not change his mind about hurting cats Swifthawk cares about. Using his words against him, gaslighting him, and overall DARVO tactics to guilt trip his son.

Sure, there was some instilled regret and perhaps guilt, but not enough for Tigerstar to actually be willing to change or consider how Swift or any other cat is affected by his selfishness. Hell, Bird even explained to me Tiger very much uses his "you don't understand. I have no choice." as an excuse for his abusive actions.

He chose ambition and power over doing what is right. Which IMO was conveyed by these two panels alone:

Tigerstar also gaslights and beats up Swift and leaves him to die in SC1, using Swift's "broken cat" refer of himself against him, and not hearing him out whatsoever.

Tigerstar is also very much aware how much Swift values his ThunderClan family, and taunts Swifthawk about it just by that smile alone. Making it very clear that Tigerstar's care and love is conditional, he will hurt Swift just to maintain his goals and ambitions, if not, just for his own amusement.

And then we get to SC2...where exchanges like this just make all that tension and intimidation fall flat.

Like, this is the same cat who was willing to draw blood from his own child and deliberately injure his bad eye combined with the psychological distress and abuse:

Him suddenly making Swift an exception in SC2, being nice to him sometimes, and overall, being written more as a jerk rather than an abusive extremist is one of the many aspects that hurt the story. How the abuse was handled comes off extremely cartoonish, compared to SC1 which IMO wasn't afraid to NOT hold itself back.

This is why I pretty much use Bird's writing advice they have given me as an example; everything about their art and writing has become opposite of this advice:

I plan to go more into depth about the issues SC2 had in some form of critique post(s) to also explain changes in the rewrite I’ve made and why if people are interested or even felt similar frustrations with what has happened to the story themselves, but Tigerstar and Bird's decline and paranoia around dark themes has also played a part in their writing nose diving.

This isn't to say SC1 definitely didn't have its own issues (such as Cinderpelt not being her own character outside of …taking care of Swifthawk and Brightheart being shoved into the background, same case for Longtail.) but I still adore it and RC to this day. But I’m prioritizing the rewrite itself first as a story I want to tell.