catz537

At the beginning of April, I started a new job at the zoo that I was furloughed from last year due to COVID. I am now a seasonal zookeeper at this zoo, rather than a seasonal educator. So far it's going pretty good, aside from the sensory overload I've been experiencing and the fatigue and soreness from the physical labor. I ordered some expensive earplugs that dampen noise, designed for autistic people and other people with sensory issues. So I hope they're worth the money. Anyway, this is my first actually paid position as a keeper, so it's super exciting. I can finally put on my resume that I've worked as an official keeper. I hope it will help me find more long-term work in the future. Aside from the updates with my career, I've been dealing a lot more with my thanatophobia lately and it has been pretty bad. I mentioned it to my therapist again, and she suggested meditation; I tried it a few times, but it's going to take more than that for me to get over this fear. Over the past few days I was obsessively researching the paranormal and things that are studied in parapsychology, trying to find proof and more explanations for different theories. Sometimes this helps me feel better, at least for a short while.

I know Darkness Within came out months ago, but I want to talk about its events and some theories, and I also want to revisit some of the theories I had after reading Veil of Shadows.

I was unsurprisingly right about Ashfur being the impostor (I had no doubt). As I discussed in my previous journal, Ashfur seemed the least concerned with giving himself away after possessing Bramblestar; in fact, the further along we get in both Veil of Shadows and Darkness Within, the more it seems like Ashfur wanted someone to find out. He behaves recklessly and completely out of character for Bramblestar all throughout Veil of Shadows, and in both books, he instills fear in Shadowsight and constantly boasts about his powers to him. He is clearly having fun torturing and controlling others, and he wants Shadowsight to know it. He obviously doesn't see Shadowsight as a threat, but attempts to get him on his side anyway, perhaps so he can manipulate him more easily.

And even after Squirrelflight gets him to admit who he is in front of everyone, Ashfur continues with his delusions. He is not deterred by her confirmation that she doesn't love him, nor by the fact that everyone now knows that he is the one possessing Bramblestar. This is part of what makes Ashfur seem so scary in these books; he was previously a half-ass villain who couldn't get over a crush. Now, he is a long-dead cat who somehow gained all of these mysterious powers and is using them to harm living and dead cats, and nobody knows how he's doing it. Ashfur has powers that no other cat has ever had, or at least no other cat has attempted the things that he has. Things he has done that haven't been done before include: possessing a living cat's body with the ability to leave that body and walk around as a spirit any time he wants; sending fake visions to Shadowsight; blocking the Moonpool with branches and effectively cutting off their connection to the Clans; and somehow controlling and torturing the spirits of cats that are wandering the earth.

I am still under the impression that Ashfur is not acting alone. Darkness Within only further convinced me that he couldn't possibly be doing all of this himself. For one thing, we learned in Veil of Shadows that the Moonpool isn't the only thing that has been blocked to stop the dead from communicating with the living. When Shadowsight eats the deathberries, he jumps into the Moonpool in the spirit world and ends up in the Dark Forest. He then finds two prisons in the Dark Forest, one of which contains another pool with stars shining in it - a hint that StarClan is in there - while the other contains Bramblestar. So it seems the pool in the Dark Forest and the Moonpool are somehow connected, and both of them are portals leading to each other and to the living world. What I don't understand is how cats could have travelled between the world of the living and the dead in the old territories when they had the Moonstone...but that's another issue, and perhaps the simple answer is that they couldn't, at least not through a rock.

Anyway, back to what I was saying about Ashfur not working alone. In the prologue of Darkness Within, it is revealed that the brambles appeared in the Moonpool after Ashfur was sent down to the living world. And it is heavily implied that the reason StarClan sent a cat down there was to keep an eye on the codebreakers. Notably, Firestar asks if Talllstar really thinks it's just a coincidence that the Moonpool was blocked after they sent Ashfur down there. The argument between the few StarClan cats we see in the prologue lends to my theory about StarClan being divided on whether or not codebreakers need to be punished. However, it looks like I was wrong about StarClan having a battle and the winning side trapping the rest of StarClan in the Dark Forest. That theory was a stretch anyway. It's looking more like Ashfur took advantage of StarClan's decision to send a cat to the living world by persuading them to let him be the one to go there, and then recruited the help of other cats - likely the Dark Forest cats, and maybe some others - to block off the portals. This is my theory about how the Dark Forest cats have something to do with all of this. Also since Ashfur is somehow controlling the ghost cats, he may have forced them to help him block the portals too. (And apparently Ashfur is holding Spiresight and Bramblestar hostage inside Bramblestar's body somehow, and I have no idea how).

There is another issue, however. The last scene in the book - when Ashfur drags Squirrelflight down into the Moonpool with him - suggests that Ashfur has the ability to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead, despite the portals being blocked. This must mean that he either knows about another route through the Moonpool, or he has some power that allows him through the blockage, perhaps something that makes the brambles part for him. It seems more likely that there are multiple portals; we already know there are at least two - the one in the Dark Forest, and the one known to StarClan in their hunting grounds that is normally used as a route to the Moonpool in the living world. If there are more, StarClan obviously doesn't know where they are, which is why they can't reach the Clans. When Harestar loses a life, he sees cats fading, and in Darkness Within, Tree and Rootspring hear from a ghost cat named Cheddar that she has seen other ghost cats fading in and out, and she describes Sandynose to them. I originally theorized that those cats could be the StarClan cats who won the battle over the codebreakers, but after reading that scene with Cheddar, I've realized they are the cats who've died since the portals were blocked off. And now they can't find their way into StarClan. But if there are more portals to StarClan, why can't the ghosts find them? I don't have an answer to that.

One last thing I want to address is the fact that some cats have been acting way out of character recently. The only reasons I can think of for this are: 1) they're being possessed, or 2) the Erins threw out their entire personalities to cause more drama. I really hope it's the former, but the Erins aren't exactly known for keeping cats in character all the time. Mothwing and Mistystar are the most recent examples of this; they have been absolute jerks for no discernable reason. Puddleshine was also acting a bit out of character when he agreed with Mothwing about Shadowsight. Although I think Tigerstar's agreement was slightly more in character, because he is overprotective of his children, so it's not hard to convince him to do something if it is presented as a way to protect them. Part of me is hoping that Mistystar was being possessed when she exiled Mothwing and the others, because that was so insanely unlike her; not to mention Mistystar is the result of a half-Clan relationship herself. Talk about hypocrisy. It seems less likely to me that Mothwing was being possessed though, because in Darkness Within she was still talking about StarClan as if they didn't exist, asking why the Clans even need StarClan. It annoys me that so many characters are turned into someone they're not just for the plot, and honestly, it's lazy writing. There are other reasons the Erins could've given for Shadowsight to be around Ashfur more.

Okaaay...it has been a long time since I posted an update on here. Not sure that anyone reads them anyway. So...back in April, I was furloughed from my seasonal educator position at the zoo because of COVID. Then this year sucked for a long time because of....well, everything. Especially in the U.S., where I live. I sat around at home and drank with my family like every week. And then my boyfriend and I went on a small vacation for our anniversary (with masks). And then I got sick (but tested negative for the rona). And then I found out I'm autistic. At 25 years old. So it's been a year. Also, GOOD news - I started an apprenticeship at a zoo just over a week ago! And they have cheetahs (they aren't in my section, but I'll get to work with them since the keepers try to let apprentices do what we're interested in). So...yes.

I know I'm late to the party on opinions about this, but I recently started trying to navigate dA in eclipse. And like many people, I have some problems with it - but there are also things I like about it, and some things that will simply take some getting used to. Note: I do not have core. So I'll be giving my opinion on how it looks for someone without core.

Things I don't like:

1. The layout of the watch section. I hate that you have to click through more things to get to the deviations in the groups you watch. I hate that you have to click the "back" button constantly to get out of one group and get back to viewing all the groups, even if you delete all the deviations in that group. Instead of taking you back to "show all" after you delete all the watch items in one group, it shows a message that says "watch this space" and you have to manually click "< back (insert group name here)" at the top of the page. It's inconvenient and annoying. I'd rather be able to view all at the same time like with the old dA. The other thing I hate is how you can no longer "remove from notifications" when you are viewing the deviation. You have to delete them from the watch folder AFTER you're done viewing them, as opposed to just clicking through and deleting as you go. This isn't that bad, since there is a "remove all" option. But what's more annoying is that now, the deviations in the watch folders are all different sizes. So when you click the x to remove one of them, the x for the one next to it might not show up in the same spot as your cursor like it used to. So now you have to move your cursor every time to delete a deviation from the watch folder. The reason this bothers me is because I personally like to look at the deviations in my watch folders and delete the ones I know I don't want to look at before I click through them in the gallery view. It's more irritating to try to do that now because of the different sizes. This is probably my number one complaint so far about eclipse, because I know it's not something I can just get used to and be okay with; it's something that will always be irritating and I'll always have a chance of miss-clicking.

2. Favoriting. I hate that if you want to fave something that you want in a specific folder, you have to put it in your featured faves folder first, then delete it from the featured folder and add it to the folder you want it in. It's an extra step that's unnecessary. They should just have a drop-down like they did on the old dA.

3. You can't preview a journal before submission. This is self-explanatory. When I click "save as a draft," I can't go back and preview the journal before submitting it. I don't see any option to do that while I'm editing the journal, either.

4. Blocking. You can no longer view the profiles of people you blocked or of people who have blocked you. I don't like this not because I think people should be interacting with blocked users (we already couldn't do that on the old dA anyway), but because there is no way to defend yourself now if someone is defacing, insulting, or spreading misinformation about you. Since you can't see their activity anymore, you have no way of knowing what they might be saying about you.

Things I like:

1. The options for the layout of my profile.

There seem to be more customization options for my profile layout now. I like that you can move things around to wherever you want, and you can change what you display on your profile. I also like that they added a cover photo option (though I do wish you could resize it to fit the whole image in). And the menu at the top that allows you to view your about, home, etc. is similar to the old layout, which is nice.

2. Status updates. On the old dA, my status updates automatically got deleted after a certain amount of time. But with eclipse, I can go back and look at them (and I assume other people can too?) So it's kind of nice to be able to do that.

3. The new text formatting. Highlighting the text and simply selecting the format you want is a thousand times more convenient than having to type the <> </> on the ends of every word or sentence. I definitely prefer being able to highlight and select bold/italic etc. Embedding a link in a word or sentence and tagging people are both easier now too. Just like Facebook, you type @ and then start typing the name of the deviant or group for tagging.

4. Polls. It's nice that non-core members can now create polls. We couldn't do that before.

This is not an exhaustive list. There may be more things I discover about eclipse in the future that I like or don't like. This is based on what I've seen so far.