#wings of fire darkstalker legends

[mbat]

i keep thinking about book 14 and the crown thing at the end that can seem ridiculous if you take it at face value, but i dont think youre supposed to take it at face value

the icewing crown was enchanted by a past queen so that everyone who wore it afterwards would hate nightwings just as much as she did. at first that like, comes out of nowhere and sounds like. funny honestly. like okay, sure, okay. racism crown

but i personally believe its meant to be more symbolic than literal

this queen, queen diamond as we know, had lost her son to another tribe, she percieved it as him having been kidnapped, stolen from her and never returned, but because she couldnt accept the truth that her son had simply fallen in love with a dragon from that tribe and had run off with her. quite frankly, no matter the truth, losing your child and never seeing them again can be life changing, even traumatic.

im not excusing her actions of course, but rather trying to explain them and my own point

not to mention that they were primary royal line at this point, and on top of that were both the last animus dragons from a long, long line of animus dragons who the icewing tribe held near and dear for many generations. this decision her son made would change the whole world, but also would change her whole world.

she was definitely pissed about it, and would not dare let anyone forget. she ended up kidnapping and imprisoning the woman he ran off with for not only the rest of her own life, but for the 2000 years following long after her death. cementing how harshly she hated what happened, and hated a woman who simply fell in love with her son.

personally im not surprised she went a step further and enchanted the crown to drive the point into the ground.

with all that out of the way, the symbolism is clear to me. its the trauma and the hatred being passed down through the generations. she didnt want anyone to dare forget what happened, and they wouldnt for a long time. not until snowfall went on a journey that would change her own life, this time for the better, and she said a big ol fuck you to several icewing traditions all at once.

of course, she wasnt the first of her own generation of family to say fuck you to it all, her own sister and cousins all proved that, but especially in the way that winter released foeslayer and quite literally broke the way a tradition even functioned, and ended the long, long torture of the poor woman, and one of diamonds horrible ways of expressing her hatred for what happened.

but snowfall is a queen. a queen who wore that shitty little racism crown more often than literally anyone wanted aside from whatsername (tundra?) and her mind was racing with paranoia of not only her own tribespeople and other tribes, but especially of the nightwings.

it wasnt until she spent days not only with other dragons, but ending up as other dragons due to animus magic she foolishly decided to wear without knowing what it was (it was a good thing of course) that she was stripped of her debilitating paranoia for the most part, and saw how her own tribe traditions were only making it worse.

a cliff made to physically harm anyone who would try and enter the kingdom. a board that she literally had to change daily that insisted that certain dragons had to be better than eachother. and of course, a crown that was enchanted to make you hate certain dragons the way your ancestor did because she couldnt cope with her own circumstances a long, long time ago.

she looked around and saw a tribe that was long broken because of traditions people were terrified to touch, but she was sick of it all, and not only that, she wanted to be the best queen she could possibly be.

she broke the cliff wall, officially letting other dragons in. she broke the circles wall, refusing to trap anyone else in the hell of trying to be better than eachother (and of her having to stand in front of it every night miserably sorting people lol), and she broke the crown that was poisoned to make her and every other queen feel the hatred of someone long dead, literally or not.

she saw the best way to be queen as breaking traditions that her people held dear, but those traditions were only harming them in the long run. and on top of it, she broke a long held chain of generational hatred that she was never supposed to feel in the first place.

queen diamond couldnt cope with the loss of her son and she took it out on anyone she saw fit, and that meant even her own descendants* who had nothing to do with it that she would never even meet. thats like, the definition of generational trauma isnt it?

*(or rather her niece and who came after her)

so yeah, racism crown ha ha, but like... symbolic of generation trauma, and eventually the breaking of it and other things as breaking that chain and the traditions that upheld them.

[meroaw]

darkstalker

[javatello]

She should get to be angry. As a treat

[caninedragons-designs]

Albatross from Wings of Fire

[dead-end-draws]

Nothing quite like an old fixation on a certain dragon book series to bring my illustrative side back to life. Hopefully I can keep the pencil active through art block.

Mainly all WIPs, will I ever finish them? Who knows, but I’ll leave them here for now.

[wingsofmud]

The Thrice-Born Twins

I'm starting my WoF rewrite project with the Darkstalker Legend. The book is honestly fine, but I want to see if I can turn it into more of a tragedy where Darkstalker is known to be an animus from the start, Fathom flees the Seawing Queendom after the massacre, Arctic isn't a complete abusive asshole, and Clearsight and Darkstalker were never meant to cross paths.

Here are my Darkstalker and Whiteout designs/redesigns

Design info + minor ancient nightwing fashion hcs + designs without accessories below:

Darkstalker:

I find it incredibly boring that Darkstalker looks exactly like a Nightwing and that Prince Arctic likes Whiteout more because she looks more like him.

The only Nightwing aspect of Darkstalker is his dark scales. Everything else from his body structure, to his wings, to his face says Icewing nobility. In fact, he bears a striking resemblance to his grandmother, Queen Diamond, even inheriting her signature twisted horns. He has a teardrop scale behind each eye and a round scale on his forehead that denote his mind reading and prophetic abilities.

As is expected of any noble Nightwing, Darkstalker is very intelligent and very charismatic. He was always going to be a key pawn in the Nightwing court by virtue of his birth, but when he was born on the brightest night, plans started to shift. Then, to Arctic's dismay, he presented as an animus when he was a dragonet.

Darkstalker is betrothed to Queen Vigilance's daughter and spends his time learning to become the perfect prince. He and all those around him see nothing but glory in his future, at least until he bumps into a strange Nightwing one night.

Darkstalker is always in fashion. Like many noble Nightwings, he wears a cool colored cloth around his body (the more translucent the better). He wears a matching set of bracelets and a tail band as well as silver bands on his horns and spines. The earring he has on is part of a pair gifted to him from his betrothed. He unfortunately doesn't have a nose horn or he would wear a ring on it, he wears one on his wing thumb instead.

.

Whiteout:

Though her egg turned silver, Whiteout hatched the morning after the brightest night, which is unheard of. Unlike her brother, if you painted her fully black she'd heavily resemble a Nightwing, sans some spikiness. She has Foeslayer's eyes and horns. She's shorter than her brother, but a lot more stocky. Whiteout is regarded as strange, quiet, and a pain in the tail to make wear anything.

Whiteout doesn't speak much and the words that she says are either very blunt or don't make much sense...at first. She's sensitive to a lot of stimuli and rarely changes her expression. She was very difficult to teach, regardless of how many private tutors she had, and continues to be unable to assimilate into Nightwing nobility. As a result, she's generally dismissed and escapes Queen Vigilance's eye. She very talented in painting.

Whiteout wears a triple piercing earring with a blue, star-shaped gem on the end as well as a onyx bracelet matched with a nose-horn ring studded with lapis lazuli. She does not wear any clothing outside of formal events. All of her usual accessories have been enchanted by Darkstalker to not bother her.

.

Designs w/o accessories:

[emper1on]

whiteout never got to see her mother again

[korbywo]

Whiteout's painting from Darkstalker: Legends (finished at last !!)

[3zethe3zr]

Past, Present, and Future

[wuzhere75]

day 2/1 Darkstalker and whiteout, if you even care

[bluebrrytea]

The soulmates and their foreseen meeting…

[meroaw]

king of moons

[falling-skyzz]

arctic’s death in a nutshell

[caninedragons-designs]

Fathom

[crowcrash]

“If I were a tardigrade I'd move out from home

Why live in the shrubbery when you could have a throne?

Pressure wouldn't squash me and fire couldn't burn

These are the things that I never will learn…”

-Tardigrade song, Cosmo Sheldrake

[marinusart]

Whiteout was strong as hell. She deserves so much more

Closeups

What can be worse than making a photo of a traditional painting? The same thing but there are metallic details