Clan Culture: Familial Terms and the Mi/Ba System

[ID: A brown tabby and a ginger tabby laying together]

A Clan is a large, extended family of cats, knit together by blood and mentorship. In Clanmew, a Clan directly translates to "Whole Family"-- Ulnyams, further divided into an individual cat's Gan (birth-kinships) and Nyams (created-kinships).

Because of the ancient cultural practice of Kitten Stealing and its modern-day replacement, the Queen's Rights, Clan cats have developed a surprisingly progressive view of adoption. There are many ways that couples incapable of producing their own biokits can find children to raise, leading to the Mi and Ba System.

Glossary:

The Queen's Rights

[ID: A sketch of a white cat and her kitten]

A short guide to an important social concept in the Bonefall Rewrite, so I can have a guide to link folks to when these questions pop up.

The Queen's Rights, also known as Darkstar's Commandment, is an addendum to Law 14 of the Warrior Code. The Law states that kittens are to be protected regardless of origin, and the addition is to protect children from paying for the 'sins' of their parent.

After all, a kitten would not be safe if its parent was forced to face punishment for its birth.

Thus, Queen's Rights can be claimed by any parent whose kittens have an uncertain origin. Single parents, infertile and same-sex couples, even just adopted ones.

Law 14 was created in response to Mapleshade's kittens drowning in the river, and so the addendum is named for what should have been her right to not reveal the father. Darkstar's Commandment made it clear that if the queen has been disloyal, StarClan will judge them. Not flawed, mortal Clanmates.

The introduction of Law 14 replaced and outlawed an older tradition which kept Clan genetic diversity stable; Kitten Stealing.

More detail on in-universe feelings towards the law below the cut.

Clan Culture: Kitten Stealing

Content warning for reasons I hope are obvious! Girl they are taking the babies!

[Image ID: A cat is carrying a kitten by the scruff]

An ancient Clan tradition from before the Queen's Rights were established, abolished by Darkstar's Commandment that kittens were never to be put in danger ever again.

Before it became law to not ask a queen where her kittens came from, "Kitten Claiming" was how the clans maintained genetic diversity. Just like how a Clan incapable of defending its borders is not worthy of having them, the same used to apply to their kittens.

In spite of the Law of Honor which forbade the killing of combatant warriors, camp invasions were quite bloody. Parents willing to defend their kittens to the death were killed, citing the code's 'self-defense' exception... and yet, the practice continued.

Kittens were not announced at Gatherings for the simple reason that it would make the Clan an open target, instead, they would only be announced as apprentices when loyalty to their birth Clan was expected to have set in.

Clan culture's shockingly progressive view of adoption, in spite of their talk of "Forest Blood" and "Clanborn Cats," is rooted from this practice; the parents that raise kittens into apprenticeship are considered that cat's parents socially, even if they had been literally stolen.

Kittypet kittens were occasionally snatched as well; but would be subject to discrimination unlike Clan kittens "rightfully claimed."

In the modern era, this is called "Kit Stealing" and it's considered an outdated, barbaric practice.

A personal favorite dynamic of mine is ‘I would die for you’ and ‘Die? Who said you could die!? No! I will drag you back from the afterlife my self!’. Like yes the ‘I’d die for you’ energy is great, but when the other person responds with basically a ‘like hell you will!’ It’s probably one of my favorite things.

funniest thing in the world is that one of the first insults against bubblegum that marceline can think of is "dictador"

So I read Iron Widow

some clowns really read all of Iron Widow and cheered on the girlbossery without picking up on how the demonization of racialized men was part of the callout

Yeah it's kind of ridiculous that so many critics read Xiuying as a demonization of femininity when it was obvious that she was a critique of how women who align closer to white-patriarchal (or Han-patriarchal in this case) standards of femininity endorse those broken systems because of how they benefit from those systems and aren't willing to check their prejudices as a result. Her comments about Shimin and Qieluo were clearly racially-motivated and her defending Yuanzhang's racism clearly indicated that she was not a good person. Just because she is soft spoken and gives generic platitudes on compassion and empathy does not negate that. Qieluo's hostility is a clear defense mechanism against exploitation after having been screwed over by systemic racism, xenophobia, and misogyny her entire life and that the rumors around her being a catty bitch is a clear reflection of how racialized women's anger is used as a cudgel to justify violence against them. It is wild that people took that complexity and boiled it down to Zetian doesn't like women.

THANK YOU, those were my exact intentions behind these characterizations and I'm glad they're clear to people who understand intersectionality. I mean Xiuying was clutches-her-purse-the-moment-a-racialized-man-walks-into-the-elevator levels of racist and this flew over people's heads just because she SAID nice-sounding stuff looool

Maybe it's because none of the characters are white. But systemic racism isn't exclusive to white people. It depends on who has power over the systems. The Han majority held the power in the general region of China for much (though not all) of Chinese history and the dynamic between them and the non-Han was very much We Are the Civilized People While the Rest of You are Dirty Barbarians, which obviously leads to systemic discrimination. This is still the case today, just that white people barged in with even MORE power.

(including my tags on the original post so people know what the reply above is responding to:

)

“no matter how badly you think you’re doing it, someone else has done it a lot worse and been fine” is applicable to a wide, wide range of things and i say it to myself all the time

"bigger idiots than me have done it" is a phrase I live by

Caveat About (Creative) Burnout

One of these days I need to record or write something out about what (my personal experience is about) getting out of creative burnout is like. A lot of advice I've seen isn't bad, but it often inevitably goes back to "you need to take a break."

I couldn't do that.

Like, emotionally speaking. Mentally speaking.

Again, the advice isn't bad, but I wish there was more advice out there that spoke up about how being in creative burnout is going to challenge your internal value as a human being. Like I wasn't even a valuable use of mass. Burnout at all is horrible, but going through burnout that specifically affecting your creative side when that often defines so much of us who are creatives is a seventh kind of hell.

It wasn't just a matter of getting my creative juices flowing or taking a break or making sure I was eating enough (these are all good and helpful, of course). Like... I had to get to therapy. Had to really unpack like 25+ years of emotional crap and it took almost 2 years post-college (where my burnout started) to really feel like I was nearing that light at the end of the tunnel.

thinking abt that time in one of my art classes when the prof put up a silhouette of L from death note and said “this is not an effective design bc you can’t tell who this character is from this shape” 

and everyone in the class went like “yes we can that’s L from death note”

and everyone in

the class went like “yes we can

that’s L from death note”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

#probably not what op is referring to but i keep thinking about those thinkpieces that are like #'straight cis men HATE astrology because they are all obsessed with facts and logic and reason and rationality >:( #meanwhile women are intuitive and spiritual and emotional and have a better grasp on astrology <3' THIS IS TRAD SHIT. THIS IS MISOGYNISTIC #YOU'RE SAYING THE SAME SHIT CONSERVATIVE MISOGYNISTS HAVE SAID ABOUT MEN AND WOMEN FOR CENTURIES AND JUST TACKING ON 'AND WOMEN ARE GOOD'

“I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?” - Ursula K. Le Guin

“It is ten o'clock in the morning, on October the 24th, if you want to know.“ 

–Gandalf the Grey