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[delecttric]

it's my old shame, but... i too once thought as you do

Christianity in Wings of fire?

A funny remark or some kind of riddle? Let's get a look. First of all, in the books, many characters said "Oh my God" (Lynx and Jewel 100% did this). Yes, this phrase now does not sound religious, it has become commonplace, but let’s not forget where “legs grow from.” BUT. Secondly... Darkstalker legends. In one of her visions, Clearsight saw that Fathom would be the godfather of her children. Godfathers or godmothers baptize children in churches. This is 100% related to Christianity. Yes, this is most likely a funny coincidence, but you know, I want to see religion among dragons. I would be interested in studying it.

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presented without comment

sometimes, i think like wof fans look too much into the books. and not in the way that it's just a silly kids series or whatever; in the way that people can jump to WILD conclusions with minimal evidence or stuff taken out of context. like, i feel like wof fans could find a way to say sunny is homophobic if they really tried 💀 y'all can be wacky.

Well I mean she never said she wasn't...

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🌍 everyplaces4free Follow

Diamantsholmen, near Where-No-Dragon-Goes-Hungry, Ice Kingdom

🟩 alchemical-sin Follow

greatest icewing architecture

🌫️ iceyspicey-deactivated49970701

this entire fucking site hates us so much. gå ad helvede til og spis lort din fanden intet liv ingen forældre PIKSUGENDE UVIDENDE SPILD AF LUFT

🟩 alchemical-sin Follow

whoa rødgrød med fløde cunt

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Who wants to see Jambu x Pineapple content?

So sorry for bad quality; I’ll probably post a better quality one soon.

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well you know i dislike them too but. they're not gonna stay babies. few would read an adventure book with a 4-year-old protagonist, because a 4-year-old protagonist can't do much adventuring. if arc 4 doesn't have a timeskip i will be amazed.

I think I’m one of the few people who think arc 4 shouldn’t really happen.

While I thought that the book 15’s and arc 3’s ending was kinda meh in my opinion, I liked the idea that we could just imagine what could happen next. I’m a long time wof fan who’s read and has all of the books, I still don’t really think a fourth arc is really necessary in my opinion. A new generation with a whole new drama isn’t really that interesting to me honestly, and I think there could be a few other people out there who feel the same way. Or I’m the only one which would be kinda funny tbh. Also I’m not trying to say that every one should feel the same way as I do, if you are excited about arc 4 then I’m happy for you. I’ll probably still get and read the books of the new arc even if I don’t think it should happen

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judas.

A random WoF post

You think of Darkstalker as a powerful, terrifying tyrant, and you would be right to think so. But can you name a more kind, loyal son, brother, and friend? I bet you can't.

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@some-pers0n

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 2 ANNOUNCED

THE ALBATROSS IS BACK………. AND HES FUCKING PISSED

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I wish Peacemaker's transformation had been explored as a way to show that the transformation wasn't really thought through, whether that is through Peacemaker being discovered or Peacemaker showing personality traits resembling Darkstalker while still being a "good guy." At the same time, I don't want it to actually happen in canon, as I know that Tui would certainly fuck it up, especially with her track record of displaying "bad" trauma survivors like Icicle as evil.

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Problems with Blue

Discussion of antiblackness, slavery, and colonialism.

WoF's third arc shills a ridiculously racist narrative with Blue as its very first spearhead. Tui crafts a character who belieaves that "Not all oppressors are bad" and the story that surrounds it validates this.

Disclaimer that right away, it is fine to have a character arc start at “If I’m just nice, oppression will just not affect me. My peers should just stay out of trouble. Perhaps that person who was clearly committing a microaggression was having a bad day.” but it must end with a realization of what will truly change oppression, and this character getting to experience anger. Especially as children, this is an unfortunately common internalization of racism people of color deal with. It offers the illusion of control and allows for room to think that everyone is good at heart. Behavioral self-blame is pretty common in the face of constant mistreatment - it’s an unhealthy coping mechanism that allows people to think “I can fix this actually.” This is a real issue that affects people of color and while I don’t think it’s Tui’s place to tell a story that starts here, in better hands that were not white this would be a fine story to tell. I specifically say nonwhite here because while I’m sure there are plenty of marginalized groups that struggle with this issue, Tui has very clearly set up arc three as a race and colonialism narrative. She draws clear, pointed parallels to struggles with colonialism. SilkWings are subjugated servants to HiveWings. They are displaced and have been robbed of their culture, homes and leaders, and are separated from their families to be put to work that is not their choice. I have avoided using the word “slave” and will continue to do so for my own comfort, but Tui is telling a very bastardized and abridged story about marginalization and liberation. As wildly inappropriate and specifically antiblack (a word I have not yet seen brought up in critiques of arc 3 even though it is wildly prevalent) that is even conceptually (this is not her story to tell), I kept turning the page to see if Tui would say something meaningful, and she sure did. Even when Blue admits to himself that he isn’t at fault for his oppression, he is hell-bent on still seeing the good in HiveWings, and seems to think that saving good HiveWings will ultimately dismantle the system. The problem with this in arc 3 is that ultimately, Blue is right and validated and presented as a morally just hero. 

Blue’s turn from “All HiveWings are good at heart and probably don’t mean to be awful towards my people or maybe we’ve earned it; They’re ultimately keeping us safe.” to “Something needs to change.” is perhaps the most impressive illusory, performative parlor trick I have ever seen from a white author in my entire god damn life. Nothing short of gold medal gymnastics to throw you off the scent that the heart of Blue’s problem has ultimately not changed. While he’s willing to reluctantly acknowledge HiveWing evil now, it is always with a “Well, not all HiveWings!” and still doesn’t recognize that simply getting rid of mustache-twirling villains like Wasp and Othermind would not, in any world, fix that his people are being kept as pets and work grunts, where HiveWings read better books in better schools lit by flamesilk that is harvested from eternally imprisoned SilkWings. Tui does a lot of sleights of hand like this throughout arc 3: Wasp isn’t even really competently evil, she’s being mind-controlled, even if still awful. Sundew gets to be angry but doesn’t get to fight, and doesn’t get to be right beyond “Your feelings are so valid”. Some HiveWings wish for the return of Wasps reign and in turn, the subjugation of SilkWings, but this is presented in the epilogue of the last book as an odd side note, not a legitimate problem that is countered. I could go on, but this is a post about Blue himself.

Blue never gets to be angry. There is not one scene in the span of all five books in arc 3 where he roughs up a deserving HiveWing, or snaps angrily at someone (he passionately tries to convince his father that you can’t work within the rules to fix them, but this does not count for obvious reasons). Blue isn’t a character so much as he is Tui’s idea of how a minority should behave, because while there are POV characters who are very angry about their mistreatment (Sundew, Luna), point B for their arcs is “maybe HiveWings aren’t so bad.” and “LeafWings have done bad things too I guess.” Blue’s turn from “All HiveWings are good at heart and probably don’t mean to be awful towards my people or maybe we’ve earned it; They’re ultimately keeping us safe.” Blue’s final version of himself, that has overcome his flaws is…. A diet version of what we originally got, a compromise. 

And ultimately, Blue is right. There never is an epic battle against willing HiveWings. The problem isn’t that the Hive systemically benefits HiveWings at the expense of SilkWings and that HiveWings are complacent beneficiaries of this system, it’s that mind control is bad. Because once the mind control is gone, we cut to the peaceful LeafSilk kingdom. I want you to think long and hard about what this character alone would mean to a child of color trying to find solace and comfort in fun dragon books, trying to navigate the same internal conflict Blue does, and just how harmful it would be for their states of mind. I’m 18, and I was excited to pick up the new WOF books I’d seen lying around my local bookstore and hop right into flying around Pyrrhia, and I imagine lots of kids were and are too. I closed each book feeling a little more furious, waiting for the turnaround and will be able to walk away saying that Blue and Tui are wrong. I don’t know if these books’ target audiences and yes, even older fans, will be able to say the same.

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JAMBU X PINEAPPLE FOR NATIONAL BOYFRIEND DAY!!!!

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I rlly should start working on the tumblr resolution thingy

Drew a couple of dragons from book 3, mostly because i wanted to explore the many ways rainwings could look, considering the fact that they often change colours ‘n stuff, so they gotta recognise each other somehow

Colours are from the graphic novels, except for Orchid, because i couldn’t find a reference where she wasn’t gray😀

Last normal post that wont be halloweenified🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️

[delecttric]

About the Ending of Darkness of Dragons

Everyone has a take about this, right? Well, here's mine. I'm kind of late to the party since I was forcibly inducted into the Wings of Fire fandom just last Thursday, but that's fine. This will probably be kind of long and rambling and maybe not even that interesting to anyone but me. Sorry about that, but I'm really writing it more to work through my thoughts than anything else.

I find Darkstalker to be a very compelling character. I'm not going to bother trying to explain why I find him interesting, because it's irrelevant and would also be longer than this entire post. I feel like I have to clarify, though, that it's not because I think he's a good guy. He's obviously a pretty awful guy. I mean, I thought it was obvious, but I guess there's actually a significant contingent of people who say Darkstalker did nothing wrong. Apparently many people see him as some kind of misunderstood heroic figure, or at least a morally gray one. I find that to be a fully silly and indefensible position. You can talk all day about how abusive Arctic was, but you can't pile a tower of mitigating circumstances high enough to explain away genocide.

Anyway, he's my favorite character in Wings of Fire. He's one of my favorite characters period. And I really would have liked it if my favorite character had had a satisfying narrative arc, with a climax that appropriately, uh... that is to say, a climax that was appropriate in any way. For example, it would have been pretty good if Kinkajou had killed him.

But in fact she did not kill him; she forcibly polymorphed him into a baby. As noted by everyone who has ever read the books, this is a stunningly odd thing to have your hero do at the end of a quintet of novels whose most consistent theme is that it's wrong to force someone to be something they aren't. I'm sure this is well-trodden ground at this point, but I just-- I can't figure it out. The narrative is very clear up until this point that this is a very bad thing to do. In fact, I think mind controlling someone is all-but-explicitly presented by the books as a worse thing to do than killing them. That's probably a questionable position in and of itself, but I swear it is the position taken by the text.

In Moon Rising, Moonwatcher finds out that Darkstalker killed Arctic, and she's still willing to hear him out about how that might have been justified and maybe it would be fine to let him out of the ground. But in Escaping Peril she finds out he also mind controlled Arctic, and her reaction is much more severe. She's in tears, she declares it "the cruelest thing I’ve ever read", and she decides she can never let him out. Nothing else has changed about Moon's knowledge of Darkstalker and Arctic's relationship; the only new information she has is that Darkstalker used mind control. The narrative never seems to treat this like a contradiction or a weird quirk of Moon's personality, so I think it's a belief the author also holds coming through in her writing. Mind control is worse than killing. And then suddenly it isn't, and erasing Darkstalker's mind and turning him into an entirely different dragon is presented as a happy ending for everyone, including Darkstalker.

The only explanation I can come up with for this is that she wrote herself into a corner by making her villain omnipotent and invincible, and therefore impossible to stop without comprehensively incapacitating him. I surmise that the only way she could come up with to do that was to turn him into someone else, and so that's what she had to have happen, even though it clashed violently with the theme. But I have a better idea: just kill him. He's terrible! He deserves it!! It would have been satisfying to see him die after everything he did, and it wouldn't have dropped this bizarre dissonant note at the end of five books of consistent messaging.

It turns out the difficult part there is actually the "he deserves it" bit. Because, astonishingly, it seems the author of Wings of Fire is also in the category of people who think Darkstalker wasn't so bad after all. Apparently, Tui T Sutherland said at a release event for The Lost Continent, "I didn’t want to kill Darkstalker, because he didn’t deserve it [...]". This is a very interesting way to put it. She didn't say that nobody deserves to be killed. Apparently there's some bar he could have cleared to deserve death, and he didn't. But what can one actually do to merit death if genocide isn't enough? Well... I just don't know. I wasn't hatched in the light of a full moon, so I can't read her mind and tell you the answer. I'm just going to have to move on. Here's the full quote I excerpted above, along with the question that prompted it:

There is a theme across Arc 2 of Wings of Fire that seems to suggest forcing dragons to become something else via magic is wrong (Peril, Hailstorm/Pyrite, Anemone forcing Kinkajou to love Turtle, etc). However, the second arc ended with Kinkajou forcing Darkstalker to become Peacemaker against his will. How did you feel about writing that, since it seems to clash with your theme? I didn’t want to kill Darkstalker, because he didn’t deserve it and that felt like a cop out (plus, it was supposed to be impossible). I wanted a surprising and authentic end for these characters. One of the main themes I wanted to emphasize was that most dragons, like Peril, deserve a second chance at becoming a better dragon. Darkstalker needed to have everything erased in order to get that second chance. I did think a lot about how the theme was subverted by this ending though, and it’s very valid to be concerned about that. But, there was no other way to ‘save’ him.

(source)

There's something else that's weird to me about this quote, which is... do we really think that what happened to Darkstalker was not death? His mind was completely and permanently wiped by magic. He had "everything erased", word of god. Peacemaker apparently doesn't share any of Darkstalker's memories, personality, feelings or opinions. In what sense is Darkstalker not dead, then? Is it his soul? Whenever the word soul comes up in Wings of Fire it seems to be metaphorical. It's not clear that Darkstalker had a soul in a literal sense, let alone that Kinkajou didn't erase that too. Animus magic is apparently of infinite power, there's no reason to think it can't rewrite someone's soul. I guess his body still exists, sort of, but if that's enough to say that Darkstalker is still around, I think you could make a pretty strong argument that anyone who has ever eaten a steak is in fact a cow.

I think this gets at the heart of what bothers me so much about the ending. Darkstalker... actually did die, just like I wanted him to. Which is fine, actually. Contrary to what the author thinks, he completely deserved it. But what makes it ridiculous and unsatisfying is that it happens via this weird magical get out of jail free card where they kill him without "killing" him. Aren't there moral complexities to killing someone, no matter how much they deserve it or how much better it makes everything? Shouldn't we... talk about that? Well, apparently we don't need to talk about it, or think about it. We can just use magic to change the name of what we're doing away from "killing", without substantially changing its nature.

And it drives me even crazier that the more I think about it, even this nonsensical juke of an ending feels so ripe with interesting questions of its own, which are just glossed over. Isn't it interesting that Moon killed her first friend, that Hope killed her own son, and that neither of them ever have to face the fact that that's what they did? Do they even know? Do they suspect it? Isn't it interesting that Peacemaker came into the world as some kind of magical quasi-dragon whose only reason to exist is to make sure someone else can't? Did anyone stop to think what it would be like for him to grow up like that? How will he deal with the fact that he's surrounded by dragons who half think that one day he might pull off his face and let Darkstalker out again? Does Darkstalker still have loyalists who want that to happen? Wouldn't it be interesting to hear Hailstorm's thoughts on this? What about Ruby's? Fierceteeth's? Isn't it interesting that Darkstalker sat under the mountain trying to convince Qibli that it was better to use magic to change a dragon against their will than to kill them, and Qibli said "no, no, no" and then turned around and did just that? How would Winter feel about the fact that after he bared his heart to Qibli and Moon about how awful it was to ever do something like that, they did it without a second thought? How can they call themselves Winter's friends while they're keeping something like that from him??

Maybe I'm the only one who thinks those are interesting questions. Tui T Sutherland certainly doesn't seem to. It would seem that she wants us to believe that Darkstalker is now going to have a wonderful life in the rainforest as Peacemaker, magically shorn of everything that makes him himself. And that's good, because Darkstalker can be forgiven for committing genocide, and so he didn't actually deserve to die. He just deserved to have his entire self obliterated by infinite magic, which is different from dying. Different in a way that was all-but-explicitly stated to be worse, until it was better. And this will never cause any problems for anyone.

I don't know what else to say. It almost makes me dizzy to think about it. I wish I knew how to write this story.

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About Hybrid Dragons

Whiteout is visibly a Nightwing-Icewing hybrid, whereas her brother is almost indistinguishable from a full-blooded Nightwing. Sunny is somewhere in the middle: dragons readily identify her as an unusual-looking Sandwing, but they can't put their claw on the reason. What they all have in common is that they resemble their mother's tribe more than their father's. Why? The wiki says:

Hybrids get their dominant genes (the genes which make a hybrid look more like a specific tribe) from their mother.[35]

This is cited to page 115 of Darkstalker. I only have an ebook copy of Darkstalker, which doesn't have page numbers, so I'm unable to figure out exactly what line this refers to. What I can do is a full text search, and the words "dominant" and "gene" don't actually appear anywhere in that book. So I don't know what that's about.

Regardless of whether this is something that was actually in the books, or something that was said at a fan event, or just something someone inserted into the wiki for their own reasons, it doesn't really make sense. Let's assume that "dominant genes" are something that really exists in the setting and are roughly the same thing as dominant genes in real life. I feel like it often goes unspoken, but this is really an assumption! It's a fantasy setting, so genes don't have to behave like real life genes. Actually I would say genes don't have to exist at all, except that the word "genetic" does appear in Moon Rising (in reference to inheritance of animus). But the wiki appears to assert that the setting does have dominant genes, so let's run with that assumption.

So, why doesn't it make sense? Some genetics background: animals, along with plants, fungi, and some less familiar organisms, are what's called "diploid". This means that, for most genes, most individuals have two copies. One copy comes from one parent, and the other comes from the other parent. Sometimes these two copies of the gene are completely identical, or at least they encode identical traits. But sometimes they aren't, and an individual will have two copies of a gene that each encode conflicting traits. What happens then? There are several possibilities, but one pattern is that one of the two forms of the gene simply overrides the other. The organism will develop as if it had two identical copies of the gene. In that case, we call the form of the gene that overrides the other "dominant", and the form that gets overridden "recessive".

The issue is, a gene being dominant or recessive is an intrinsic property of the gene, not something that depends on which parent it comes from. So while it's true that a dragon's appearance would be more influenced by dominant genes than recessive genes, this doesn't explain at all why hybrids look more like their mothers than their fathers. But I do think there's a real-world biological phenomenon that could explain what's going on here.

The way genes actually influence an organism is by encoding proteins, which are basically molecular-scale machines that each carry out a specific task. Slightly different versions of a gene produce slightly different proteins, and those slightly different proteins function slightly differently, and that results in organisms with different traits. But aside from changing the form of a protein, another way to affect this process is by changing the amount of a protein. And it's possible to change the amount of a protein the body makes without changing the genes at all: additional molecules attached to the DNA can cause a particular gene's protein to be built more or less frequently, which we call upregulation and downregulation.

So here's what I think: when a dragon egg is fertilised, genes from the mother are upregulated, and genes from the father are downregulated. Therefore, when the form of a gene inherited from the mother and the form inherited from the father are different, the maternal form of the protein predominates, and the dragonet tends to resemble the mother more than the father.

If this is correct, it has a weird upshot: Whiteout's dragonets probably looked more like Icewings than Whiteout herself did. Whiteout's genes are 50% Nightwing and 50% Icewing, but the Icewing part comes from her father, and so it's downregulated and she mostly looks like a Nightwing. Her dragonets would be genetically 75% Nightwing and 25% Icewing*, but the Icewing part comes from their mother, so it would be upregulated and therefore more expressed in them than in her.

This would generalise: if Sunny ever has dragonets, they'll probably look more like Nightwings than she does (even if the father is a Sandwing). But the same doesn't apply to male hybrids: Darkstalker's hypothetical dragonets would have been a quarter Icewing just like Whiteout's, but the Icewing genes would have been downregulated and so they would have just looked like Nightwings.

I think this phenomenon is surprising, and therefore cool, and so I've decided the whole thing is true. It's probably not great for Whiteout's dragonets though, since it would mean they had to live in a tribe that hated Icewings while looking more like Icewings than anyone else. That might be an interesting premise for a fanfic though.

*I'm assuming Thoughtful is the father.

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So I noticed Burn doesn’t have her scars in the graphic novel so I made this okay-I-guess edit of burn with scars for funsies

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the fact that JMA is just caves is so funny to me. no rooms. dragonets of destiny makin sure tha youth suffer like they did.

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well, the only solution to that would be to kill whiteout. to be honest, i'm not sure how she survived. vigilance wasn't exactly the most moral monarch, but i suppose the bustle of moving to the island might have had her put off killing whiteout, and then she died before she could actually give the order.

I may have not read Darkstalker Legends, but if what i interpitated from maps and the wiki...

Did nobody, not even a single nightwing forsaw or realized how much of a bad idea moving into a VOLCANIC island that is DEPRIVED of MOONLIGHT was?

Surely a single nightwing, just ONE single nightwing other than Clearsight could have foreseen something, right?

Same goes for Clearsight, she can see moons know how long into the future and infinite possibilities has she NOT seen a single hint of nightwings losing their powers at least once?!

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that was the point! they didn't want the powers to crop up again after how badly darkstalker misused them. clearsight could have foreseen that the island would become inhospitable, but at the end of darkstalker she wants fucking nothing to do with her entire continent of origin anymore; the single courtesy she does her tribe is briefly warn them to get as far away from darkstalker's tomb as possible.

I may have not read Darkstalker Legends, but if what i interpitated from maps and the wiki...

Did nobody, not even a single nightwing forsaw or realized how much of a bad idea moving into a VOLCANIC island that is DEPRIVED of MOONLIGHT was?

Surely a single nightwing, just ONE single nightwing other than Clearsight could have foreseen something, right?

Same goes for Clearsight, she can see moons know how long into the future and infinite possibilities has she NOT seen a single hint of nightwings losing their powers at least once?!