Forum:Alternates vs. Description

Ok, so I hope I'm doing this forum right. This has been bothering me for a while, and we did discuss it a little, but it seems it always falls by the wayside. I'll just get to my point: In a book, let's say it's a new book called Cruel Season, and we have the cat Ivystripe, who had been a supporting character in the books for the most part, so we know her general description (brown tabby with a wide, black back, and cream underparts). Let's just say that in Cruel Season, the authors said something like this: "Her fluffy, dappled paw darted through the water and she caught the fish." Would this be a mistake since she was never described with dappled paws before? What if they mentioned her as a shade lighter or darker? I've noticed that Spottedleaf's description is basically two pages long (eggageration), how do we know that the Erins may simply have made a mistake when they said Spottedleaf had a brown and orange coat? (it was revealed in The Sight). I think we need to put this to an end as to what gets an alternate and what simply would constitute their normal image to become tweaked. Who knows, the Erins could have been saving on space by giving us these extra details, or they could be mistaken, but why would it be fair that Spottedleaf would get that added to her description (by the way, I'm using this real example as a pure example only) versus the cats who get an alternate. That way, there would be little discrepencies in the future as to what gets an alternate and what doesn't. Some are easy (example: it's easy for all of us to know he has a fire-colored pelt, and being called golden would warrant an alt.) Anyway, I hope I haven't confused anybody. Your thoughts? 00:43, December 5, 2011 (UTC)