Thistleface... [FIN]

[Sparta]

Character Name: No specified name, but after being called 'Thistleface' by a clan apprentice, the neighboring clans began calling him such.
.....Thistleface does not approve..... B-but it's okay...I guess...
Former names: Puddles (animal shelter), Kitty/Kitty Kitty (Beatrice). Other miscellaneous nicknames include Scarface, Bristleback, and Downright Ugly (as in, 'that thing is Downright Ugly!')

Character Age: 31 moons
Gender: Male
Desired Character Clan: Loner
Desired Position: Lonerrrr

Short Character Description: Pretty creepy-looking but he'd prefer to keep the civil conversations.
Character Description: Thistleface is a larger-built cat with black fur, spotted with small, bright yellow patches. His fur is always matted and dried with spit and blood, and looks like a child petted it in unruly, circular motions. There are tufts of fur on his body that seemed to stop somewhere along the shedding process, and are sticking out at odd ends, their colors pale and 'old'. Thistleface's tale is short and stubby, which isn't strange for his kind (part-Manx). However, it seems to be the butt of many jokes between the clans (haHAhahaha...ha....okay..).

Character [BEFORE] Personality: Thistleface is actually rather kind, and believes in civil conversations rather than an all-out war. But, it's just his opinion, and those he likes to keep to himself. I suppose you could call him the 'big baby' of the bunch; he is and has always been the subject of bullying, which explains most of his fur tone. Being different brings attention to himself, and there is no way he would have the guts to tell on anyone, and any cat who comes in contact with him has a good chance of beating him.

In short, he isn't/wasn't very motivated to think for himself.

Even without harsh intentions, Thistleface's intimidating (and battle-scarred) appearance gives him the look of some axe-murderer (is there such thing as a kitty axe-murderer?). When seen by any cat, he is easily assumed for a threat.

Because of the constant beatings, Thistleface has all but given up on polishing his appearance.

Sidenote: While in the shelters, Thistleface was left alone for the most part, though it depended on the shelter. Either way, he was verbally bashed by many cats, and isolated by others who were rather intimidated by him. (His quiet, shy presence was easily assumed for one of those dark, scheming, mysterious, evil types.)


How did you find COTN?: I hitchhiked on the back of a sparkly rainbow thing...
It was a Cullen...

Character History: Thistleface was a kittypet once -- or, shall I say, was supposed to be a kittypet. In reality, he was thrown around from shelter to shelter seeking a human, but even as a kit, he wasn't exactly appealing. Pound caretakers threw him about, seeking desperately for some way to get him off of their hands. (Sidenote: At this early stage in his life, he was called 'Puddles'. For several reasons.) Thistleface/Puddles was merely the ball in the middle, and he grew slowly accustomed to rejection.

The thing that pulled him out of this slum was her. A beautiful girl.

Or old woman, actually. A beautiful old lady named Beatrice.

This blind lady chose Thistleface, and introduced him to a life of love, cuddles, and lady, the line is facing this way.. He didn't care that she was blind; in fact, he later admitted to himself that that was a saving factor in his adoption. But she loved him, and he loved her, and that was all that mattered.
(Sidenote: name was 'Kitty'. Or 'Kitty Kitty', when she would call him to dinner.) Occassionally, Thistleface would see another cat outside, and the ones who could stand his appearance actually had pretty interesting stories, about warriors fighting over some Star deal.
But the only thing that really mattered was....
Was gone...

Because suddenly she was shaking, and hurting, and she wasn't moving, and the big people in white suits took her away on a table, and they wouldn't let me out of the house, and I was so scared and I went through a back window, one that she always leaves open for me, and I couldn't catch up, and I ran.
Why did you take her, 'Starclan'? Are you trying to make my life miserable? Why couldn't you have taken me, hurt me, instead? Anyone but her.


---
Warped. He couldn't go on like this. Thistleface locked himself in his head, paranoia, hate, frustration. Maybe this clan thing..Starclan...maybe they had some sort of grudge against him and his kittypet origins. Maybe Beatrice left the house with those men on purpose, because he was so ugly. Maybe, if those deities were out there..maybe they killed her.

Maybe those clan cats helped.

Lies, Thistleface knew. He told himself lies to keep going. But after a while, his convincing sounded as good as any truth.

----

That cat can't seem to get it into his head that this is our territory! If we've told him once, we've told him a million times, but there he is again the next day, rubbing by that tree or licking from our water!!

Thistleface may or may not be planning something against these clans. He may or may not want revenge on what they did to him. He may or may not be daydreaming the demise of hundreds of individual cats.


PRESENT Personality (Or at least, the shell of one.): Very much warped by his pain. When you are hurt, you tend to see things a little wobbly, and this cat is very hurt. So...
He mutters to himself, and sometimes to inanimate objects... He laughs at the wind... He is certain that the world is out to get him, like they always have been....
Hehe...Hehehe...HehAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!

Notes: I sort of muddled it, but you can see he has a 'complicated relationship' with Starclan.

[Leopardstorm]

Oh goodness, poor kitty. But why would he know anything about Starclan if he was a kittypet at first?

[Aurora Eclipse]

Maybe he learned. What I don't get is hwo he could be organising these attacks if he's so innocent and sweet?

[Sparta]

My bad! I forgot to put WIP in the title.

Finished! (I think.)

[Lilystream]

Lolololololol Twilight humor. I like him.

[Leopardstorm]

Okay, so Sparta has requested an official critique from me in exchange for me getting one when I post Rose. And since I'm too lazy to consult separate tabs while doing this, I'll just post it here. So, here is my specialty: Labra's Rip Everything Wrong That She Notices Apart Critique!

Actually, I'm probably going to miss a bunch of stuff on the first go around since I'm kind of rushing this, so I might edit this later. Wait, never mind, since I took so long to do this I think I got everything.

First of all, the name! Ah, poor Thistleface. Don't worry, I don't approve either. I'd have stuff to say about this name, but I suppose Thistleface could be used as an insult. The people at the animal shelter were just plain old jerks, though.

Age, gender, clan, position, lol at the short description... And we have the long character description!

By his description he sounds like a tortoiseshell or calico of some kind. If not, I'm pretty sure his pelt is impossible and so you'll want to rethink that. If so, you'll still probably want to rethink that, because now we enter into cats with all sorts of nasty problems! I'll explain because I enjoy talking about stuff. Skip to THE POINT IS if you don't.

Everyone has chromosomes that pass down genes from the parents, blah blah, genetics. Male cats(and humans) have XY chromosomes, while females have XX chromosomes. The mother passes her X chromosome down to her sons, while both the mother and the father give an X chromosome to their daughters. Due to genetics, each cell only expresses one of the X chromosomes. So if the mother had black fur while the father had ginger fur, it is possible for the daughter to have either fur color. However, it is also possible that the cells will all express different colors, leading to the daughter being born with a black and ginger tortoiseshell pattern. (Unless I'm mistaken, calico cats are the same way, so assume that when I say tortoiseshell I mean both tortoiseshell and calico patterns.) Since male cats only inherit an X chromosome from their mother(and the Y doesn't play a role in this), they generally inherit their appearance from only their mother, so they can't be tortoiseshells. However, on rare occurrences they can have something called Klinefelter's Syndrome, which means they inherit an extra set of chromosomes, giving them XXY instead of XY and allowing them to be tortoiseshells. I believe chimerism allows a tom to be a tortoiseshell(but not a calico) and still remain fertile, as is an issue that will soon be discussed, but I'm not sure that it doesn't make him immune to the other problems and I'd suggest researching if you want to go with it. THE POINT IS since he would probably have to have Klinefelter's Syndrome to be a tortoiseshell/calico, he is going to have a LOT of problems. First of all, this cat is going to be sterile with very few exceptions. Like I said earlier, cats with chimerism are more likely to be fertile, but then I would have to demand you study into it enough to know how it would effect him. There is also what is probably a one in a million chance(or at least very very low) that the cat won't be sterile, but the chances are so low as to be unrealistic. (As a side note, my family actually used to feed a feral calico tom that was still fertile when we neutered him. You don't even know how excited I was when I learned about tortie toms a couple years later.) Besides that, the cat will suffer from a bunch of physical problems that I'm not well-versed in, but include getting sick easier, so he probably won't survive very long in the wild. Not only that, but he will be gender confused. Obviously the chances of any cat that comes in contact with him ever encountering a tortie tom before will be low, so most will probably assume he's a girl at first, especially since he also could quite possibly be much more feminine in both appearance and scent. So, it's probably not a good idea to use a tortie tom in most circumstances. Of course, I could be wrong in any of this. If so, please correct me.

And that is why I suggest changing his fur color. Moving on.

Okay, so you mention that he's stopped bothering to try and take care of himself because it's pointless, but wasn't his lack of grooming the reason he was intimidating in the first place? He doesn't actually sound that bad-looking aside from his lack of personal grooming, so it sounds like that would solve most of his problems. Unless he has some sort of fur problem, in which case, poor kitty. You also mention being battle-scarred in his personality, but then not in his description? Even so, it doesn't make sense for the shelter to allow him to get into such a state, and it doesn't seem like he got into many fights after he went wild, so I'm not sure when he got them. As for the tail, I got the sudden image of him joining a clan only for the leader trying to give him a name change for the tail and him taking it as an insult and flipping out.

Before personality, not much to see. Was this in the shelter? If so, the workers there should probably notice if other cats are picking on him and do something. Like I mentioned in the above paragraph, it sounds like he's in a vicious circle, but how did he get into it in the first place?

For his history, I don't think he would be thrown around THAT much. I take it he was only in no-kill shelters? I'm not entirely sure why he wasn't getting adopted, since if the shelter people want to get rid of him, they should groom him. He just doesn't sound naturally ugly, to be honest. Maybe not handsome, but certainly he isn't doomed to hideousness forever.

And why is a blind old lady going to an animal shelter by herself? It doesn't seem like it would work that well...

But yay! He's adopted!

Oh, wait, there's Starclan. Not sure why he's believing in or at least talking to Starclan if he doesn't appear to care about it too much here. Made up religions are fun! These cats don't all have to believe in the same thing! Why are all kittypets atheists?

Poor Beatrice and Thistleface, though. I'll admit that just makes me sad. D:

I'm not sure if any humans actually live very close to the clan territories? Sky? But I guess he could find his way over there on his own anyway. Nothing to say for the reset of his history.

For his new personality, I'm not sure if that's entirely realistic? But I guess I could still see it happening, especially if he doesn't really have anyone to talk to. My biggest problem is that this cat has a very flat personality. His only trait in the present personality is that he is hurt and crazy. Maybe add in his old personality, show how despite the pain he went through changing him,

Oh, and you have two misplaced 's! One at the second to last line in his history section, and one in the first line of his present personality!

As for your notes, I got that he had a complicated relation with Starclan well enough, so no worries there, but WHY does he believe in Starclan? If the cats at the shelter didn't have religion, why is he so eager to blame gods that he thinks are nonexistent? Is he just eager to blame anyone he can?

And that is it!

[Aurora Eclipse]

Once I have the history done you will learn about the twolegs, as I will open the board up once I'm finished.

[Sparta]

Thanks for that, Labra!

Thistleface is a mutt cat, part calico and part Manx. Manx explains the stubby tail and most of the weird coloring, since they can have bizarre color schemes.
And sheesh, Labra, you should have been my biology teacher.

His lack of grooming accounts for his tendency to get beat up no matter what. Yes, he has a fur problem, so he has excessive shedding issues, and his large body adds to intimidation. This, along with scars he already has, is enough to scare any cat into defense mode, forget how well groomed he is. It's like a cycle: shed, look scary, get beat up, shed, now has more scars and looks even /more/ scary, get beat up. The grooming hardly differs this equation, and he doesn't see the point in cleaning if he's in for another blood bath from the next cat.

And for the most part in the shelters, he was left alone. But also isolated. (I'll add that in.)

No-kill shelters. Another version of the story was where he ran away when they were planning to put him down, but the Beatrice one rounds him out more.

Blind ladies can visit shelters! And I actually wrote a little more on that: there was a caretaker who looked after Beatrice, and went to the shelter with her. Beatrice pointed out at a cage at random, also due to a lot of meowing in the next cage over, by a bunch of cute kittens. But by fate she pointed a few degrees over at Thistleface. I sort of scrapped that info since it didn't seem necessary and my post was already too long and anyway, Caretaker Lady didn't play a huge role in Thistle's life, especially since he had eyes only for Beatrice.

About Starclan, he had heard similar tales from different cats; at first, it was just another story, but as he met the second cat and the third, so all brought takes of this mighty Starclan, it made sense. He also began to believe that Starclan had a major part in choosing him for Beatrice.
Huh, maybe kittypets have similar religions, but use different terms? That would be interesting.

Humans can most definitely live near clan territories! Human dwellings pop up around forests all the time, after a clan territory may have been established. As it is, Beatrice didn't live that close, but remember that Thistleface ran a ways chasing after that ambulance, and spent a while walking in that direction as well. I pictured the main road next to a foresty area, and Thistleface eventually wandered in there, namely for food.

His personality is really the same (shouldn't be so easily changed), but this 'new personality' is a shell of his former self. I could picture a cat -- maybe a henchcat, or a prisoner? -- befriending Thistleface, and slowly breaking the cat's shell. Also, he drove himself to this form of madness, talking to himself and imagining what evil things people were doing to Beatrice -- I think he will be trying to convince himself that Bea is evil, and that his whole life has been a lie...
The things the devil can do with imagination.

My bad! I went a little italicize-crazy. ^^;

Thanksh you guysh. And thank you, Labra, for my critique! :3

[Leopardstorm]

You are very welcome, of course. :3

However, while you have satisfied me for the most part, there are still a few concerns that need addressing.

You are aware that calico is a fur pattern, not a breed, right? There are several breeds(such as the Manx ;p) that allow calico coloration, so saying a cat is part calico is essentially the same as saying the cat is part ginger or part patched, except generally the mother doesn't pass all her fur colors down to her sons when she's calico. I think she only passes one, but I haven't really bothered to check, so take that with a grain of salt. Calico cats still have the same problems that tortoiseshells do when it comes to males having the pattern. So, no dice.

And thank you. ;p

Also, I'm not saying that blind people can't visit shelters, I was just wondering why an old lady who had the added impairment of being blind was visiting a shelter, especially when she just picked a cat at random.

Neither was I saying that humans can't live near territories. I was wondering if it was viable for these clans.

I believe that's everything. :3

[Sparta]

Crud, I got that mixed up. Let me find the other breed I was using.

She was a strange woman, I'll give you that. :3