Moonshade - Tanner, Elder, Artist, Mate

Moonshade ... this was Moonshade's thread, opened by crescent1325, on the original Scroll of Colors. Follow old discussions and see fanart from earlier times.

Visit Moonshade's bio page on Elfquest.com.

'Character Bio':

Moonshade (f)  

Deceased – immortal (biological change)
*Eyrn*
Daughter of Brightwater
Recognized lifemate of Strongbow
Mother of Crescent, Dart and Freetouch
Grandmother of Bowki
Student of Savah
Mentor of Tyleet

Is there a discussion anywhere about Moonshade's death? I feel like I need a support group.

*HUG* Moonshade's death was discussed in the Final Quest # 22 discussion, Elftanner. As far as I know ther is no other "special" thread about it.
going with another dressmaker ... and eggmaster!

It occurs to me that Moonshade's personal thread would be a very appropriate place to talk about her life - and her death.

I looked there and didn't see it. Maybe I didn't see the other pages.

Support for you Elftanner!
I had a feeling Moonshade would die very early on in the FQ series, but still it sucks. They should have killed off someone annoying, like Timmain or Scouter.

She died how she lived; loyally, and filled with love.

Yes, that's certainly true.

Redhead Ember wrote:

She died how she lived; loyally, and filled with love.

Maybe that's why she looked more herself than she had for months. The square face, the muscle tone of her body, the emotion in her eyes. She looked like the Moonshade we'd known and cared about since the beginning.

Moonshade was my favorite original series character, I loved that she made functional art, and that she was fierce as well as beautiful. In Blue Mountain when she goes after Winnowill to protect Strongbow, even knowing the sort of pain she would be dealt she does it knowing the rest of the tribe was right behind her. Of the stories done by other artists I really liked the Lea Hernandez short about Moonshade and Anshen, that she was unabashedly a Wolfrider and when Anshen tried to dress her up like a blossom it was ridiculous.

Hernadez pg 28:

I couldn't help think of that page every time I saw Moonshade in her Palace silks, I wanted to ask her what happened to her pride and sense of self? How did Leetah removing her wolfblood also have the affect of removing her personality as well? That is what frustrates me so much about her death, it's that they had pretty much killed the character I loved already so thoroughly that her actual death was pretty much anticlimatic (as well as utterly pointless and contrived).

Well, 500+ years passed for Moonshade since that story, plenty of time for her to change her perspective on things, even if the final straw for her seems to have been Ruffel's death. (And Moonshade started wearing preserver silks at least 10 years before she had Leetah remove her wolfblood.)
Even more time passed for Ahnshen, giving him time to get a bit better at making dresses.

Still feels like brain washing. :/

... Ahnshen truely improved his skills - but his creativity seems to be stuck in an endless-look with just one design. XD

How is it brainwashing?

Moonshade decided on her own to go live* in the Palace, a decision spurred on by Ruffel's death but she showed signs of dissatisfaction as early as during Shukopek's birth, 20+ years early. Then, after possibly up to 30 years of wrangling with the decision she finally made the choice to do what would make her happy, rather than continuing to hope that maybe Strongbow would change his mind.

(Well, Moonshade seemed to for the longest time be stuck in the design of not letting her lifemate wear pants! Make of that what you will...)







*And even that seems to be a gradual thing, what with Strongbow's comment that she was hiding in the Palace "more and more".

^^

Been thinking a bit more about this, it seems like Moonshade's story arch in Final Quest was two-fold:

1: Coming to the realisation that there are indeed other options than the Way.
Of course that realisation required actually having other options; for the largest part of Moonshade's life the Way literally was the only way, so whatever dissatisfaction she might have felt with it she couldn't really do anything about.

2: Accepting that just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to always think and feel the same way they do, and they don't have to think and feel like you do. Sometimes you just need to follow your heart.

Still sad about her death... but like someone said earlier; she died as she lived: loyally.

Ten years is more than enough time to change one's character
And we certainly had hints of Moonshade's transformation.

However, the thing with background characters is, that they tend to stay the same person. Shenshen never evolved, Nightfall didn't, neither did Aroree*. And even though we saw Moonshade's transformation, it happened in the weird drag-rushed pace of Final Quest. Yes, it was established and given some time to develop, but it felt sudden still.

In 40 years of Elfquest, established dynamics never changed.




*yearning for Skywise is not a character trait !

I'm still not exactly sure why Ruffel's death hit Moonshade so hard? They weren't shown to be particularly close friends or anything. And I suppose it could be that it happened right in front of her, but she's seen death before, I guess I didn't get it. Maybe if it had been Chitter/Freetouch who was killed it would have made more sense, the cruelty of this world that would take both her daughters from her, but I just didn't see Moonshade and Ruffel hanging out a bunch.

@ Miss Gillespie - I dunno, both Shenshen and Aroree did 'evolve', i.e., have a character arc - ShenShen went on to go after what she really loved to do and made a very bold choice to be human shaped, while Aroree decided to join Venka and the Go-Backs... I do think letting go of Skywise was significant for her because she was putting all of her happiness into someone else, so yes, outgrowing that is a character trait.
Nightfall has no character arc though lol , but then she never really had a 'story' at all, except for that dream of hers (which incidentally I still have no idea what it meant, does anyone know?).

Moonshade's 'choice' to live in the palace always sounded hollow to me. I never really bought it - yes, we know a lot of time had passed but we didn't see how she processed any of it. Looking unhappy one second, and then being like screw it I'm not a wolfrider anymore, that's never really translated in a believable way to me in the story. When she was in Ember's tribe and separated from Strongbow during the shards war is when she seemed to really be even more interesting. She was moody and bitchy and highly critical at first of Ember, plus was missing Strongbow - but then it seemed she kind of settled into appreciating the idea of change. I think she grew a lot more in that stint with Ember's tribe / being away from Strongbow than anywhere else in the story. But then by the time they were reunited and they had their 3rd recognition, she seemed like she was back in the same role again, happily. For a long time. I don't mind her decision to change or anything but you get a background character making such a monumental change and move that to the forefront and then drag it waaaaaaay out (the drama with her and Strongbow), then back it up with something besides looking pretty and tall with longer hair... the problem is the stupid palace, no one ever looked like they were doing anything but standing around in there, it leeched the life out of the story and the characters.

@BlueCoyote - I loved Lea Hernandez's issue too! It's so weird, it's almost like Wendy sometimes go out of her way to destroy whatever other stories aren't hers even though she's permitted them. she just goes and determines what's canon and what's not and it's like oh ok whatever , I give up. I think it would've at least been interesting to see Ahnshen in the palace. It's like he was deliberately kept out of the story (except for a momentary mention) when it would've been neat to see. Imagine if they'd really go on to be love mates or something! I wouldn't have minded something like that, it would've been very strange but I would've welcomed some other twists and turns.

BlueCoyote: I don't think it was because Ruffel died, I think it was because someone went outside the Palace in order to just have a good time, and then was killed so suddenly.

Zadzi: I pretty much interpreted this exactly the opposite way; by having Moonshade appear in a dress in a similar style to the one she wore in the New Blood story, and mentioning Ahnshen by name, Wendy basically took a story that might not have been considered completely canon before and elevated it to 100% definitely canon. With the aforementioned time passage to explain Moonshade's change of perspective.
And honestly; I find the idea of Moonshade and Ahnshen palling it out in the Palace while designing clothes to be pretty sweet.

I wanted to see them hang out

PS - that's interesting take, Redhead Ember! About Ruffel, someone who had chosen the palace, going out and being zapped to death ...I guess in a way that means Moonshade really kind of was hiding away in the palace in a way. Moonshade really seemed to not like taking chances, so maybe all her life living the way she thought she was playing it safe but then realized if she was in the palace she would be even safer ..... which makes Moonshade's choice.... again about even more safety!!! OMG! She really did stay the same the whole time, technically then. I guess it's fitting that she had such a violent end... like she sacrificed all that safety to try and save someone else. Maybe Wendy wouldn't describe it that way but I really feel this is how it is for this character.

Zadzi wrote:

I wanted to see them hang out

That what's fan-art is for!

@Zadzi: for me, character development means changes in the character. Cutter was a young, eager hot-head and he became a mature grown up chief. Leetah started out as a self-centred, bitchy healer and matured with Cutter. Rayek has a character arc.

Shenshen started out as a bubbly fun-loving character and she still is. Her jealousy of Leetah is mentioned once, did she overcome it? Does it still nag on her? Leetah became the mother of memory, after all.
Nightfall is an assortment of roles (protector, Cutter-follower, huntress).
Aroree was, for a short time at the beginning of OQ curious, adventurous and became moody, shy, anxious, depressed. Never really changed.

Zadzi- Did you read Lea's Rumble Girls series? I really dug those and her Mangaka style worked well for it. I would have liked to see some sort of something with Ahnshen too. Maybe a callback to the Hernandez story with a moment where Ahnshen was showing Moonshade how he removed the sticky goo from Preserver silks to make silky clothes out of them, maybe cracking a joke about her coming around eventually. But I think having Ahnshen there would have clouded the issue of why Moonshade was choosing the Palace in Wendy's mind and that's why she didn't have him in there. But I felt like so much of FQ was things she wasn't quite brave enough to do. I weirdly kind of thought that Chitter/Freetouch was supposed to be the one to die not Ruffel in that scene. It felt a bit like they were trying to force-grow her character (she got a name change for no apparent reason when the elves seem to stick with the same name unless some sort of major event or lifechange warrants it) so that we would feel it more when she died. And it would have been more tragironic with her being so full of life and fiesty and everything. It would have made more sense to me storywise if losing two daughters was the motivating force behind Moonshade wanting to leave such a cold and callus world.
I also loved original Wavedancers much much more than the current (ha!) version. I liked them better as air-breathers who had to figure ways of getting air into underwater caves and that they had soul-names like the Wolfriders. In my headcannon the elves that have soul-names are the ones who actually have unique souls, the rest have sort of hivemind group-souls. I wanted so much to read the other three stories that were supposed to be planned, I bet they would have gone into all the interesting story hooks they laid out in the first series. Also I liked the characters much better. Sleia would have been a much better lifemate for Suntop/Sunstream than Brill, Brill was such a limp useless character without a shred of development. And Suntop was always a bit soft, he needed a mate who would challenge him, or have a bit of spine or something.

I wish Moonshade didn't die as well. Yes she chose to live in the palace, but her characters grew and it would have been nice to see her continued growth. We might have seen Strongbow changed as well.