Yeah This Is Just The WoF Rewrite Blog Now

Why did I enjoy this? Well, I think having Blue lack this (for this setting) very ubiquitous mobility option created some interesting challenges for the group to overcome. Challenges that aren't seen very often in this series and that I thought felt very fresh as a result.

See, there is a set of common issues you tend to run into when you give your protagonists access to free and convenient flight. It makes travelling almost trivial. It becomes much harder to challenge your heroes through putting some kind of treacherous landscape in between them and their goal, because unless said goal is inside that landscape, there is little stopping them from just soaring over it and laughing at you.

Maybe that is something you welcome. Perhaps the idea of Clay and friends having to rough it out in the wilderness for weeks, evading patrols and slowly making their way to their destinations doesn't appeal to you. You might prefer them to just fast-travel to the next big location because that's where the plot is. And that is a perfectly valid opinion to hold. Spending story time camping on a dusty trail might be a total pace killer.

But for me, a little bit of magic is lost if you can theoretically access any point on the continent with at most two days of flying. It makes the world feel kind of small. I yearn for that kind of trail filler, putting me into proximity to all the settlements on the way and exposing me to their little quirks and cultures.

Another aspect I liked about Blue's initial flightlessness was that it gave us another dragon body type to appreciate. The physiological diversity in Wings of Fire is... rather shallow. Barring injuries and some dragons having a harder time lighting a fire, everyone has roughly the same body shape and array of abilities to work with: Flight, something that kills, and in some cases one utility ability (like invisibility or darkvision). But very few have specific physiological shortcomings. I liked Blue's situation because it gave him a very glaring and obvious weakness that the others had to work around. That was interesting to me, having to conceive of ways to get him up cliffs or down to a deeper hive level.

I kind of wish there was more of that, dragons having to consider the weaknesses of their physiological makeup and planning around it. Like, if I really think about it, passing through the desert should be a huge problem for characters like Tsunami, Turtle, and Anemone, and being in the humid rainforest would be a struggle for Sunny and Qibli. The only instances I can think of where anything like that happens is with Clay's temperature-based breath weapon and Winter noting that proximity to a volcano makes his frostbreath less effective.

I’m maybe picturing a little side story on the way from the rainforest to Blaze’s fortress, where the group is crossing the desert and has to barter with some shady Sandwing water merchant because Tsunami is in danger of drying out. Maybe the merchant could say something like “If you don’t like my prices, you can go get your throat slit in the Scorpion Den instead,” setting up that place as bad news. Then when Sunny goes there in her book, people will recognize it and have appropriate expectations of it as a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

I don’t know, it could be fun.

So I guess if there are any aspiring authors of dragon xenofiction reading this, I leave you with this bit of unsolicited advice: Think about the physiology of your dragon characters and do not be afraid to give them appropriate gaps in their skillsets. Not every dragon needs to be able to fly, or do the same things every other dragon can. Sometimes it is fun watching your characters have to think of clever ways to cover for each other's shortcomings. That is how bonds are formed.

Those are my I'm-falling-asleep-and-am-rambling-nonsense thoughts of today. Let's hope they'll still make sense to me when I wake up again.

Once upon a time, there was a small RainWing who loved everyone. Kinkajou paused.

She dipped her claw in the ink and scribbled out the last word. Once upon a time, there was a small RainWing who loved almost everyone. Which is fair enough, right? I mean, who could love every dragon? Some of them were even hard to like.

For instance, she had this one venom training teacher who was very mean to her. Not to name names. It was Bromeliad.

So she definitely didn't have to love her. I mean, would you? Also, this one time, our hero was kidnapped by NightWings, and most of them were even meaner than Bromeliad. And they were like that on purpose, because they were trying to scare everyone.

And listen, I know they had hard lives, but kidnapping dragons and being awful to them is still not okay, right? So it's alright to still be mad at some of them even a while later, don't you think? Also, some of her RainWing friends even noticed she was kidnapped, which made her love them a little bit less than she wanted to, although she really did love them lots before, but how could they not even care that she was missing? Oh, and also, there was this one big old shape-shifting dragon who attacked her so hard- Kinkajou stopped and wrinkled her snout with a scroll. This story was turning out a lot grumpier than she had planned. She slipped over her shoulder at her best friend.

Across the cave, Moon was curled up with her own scrolls, studying intently. She had her very serious Moon look on, which meant she probably didn't want to give Kinkajou writing advice right that exact second. Which was fine, Kinkajou could do this herself.

She pushed the grumpy scroll off her writing rock and spread out a brand new one. Right, let's try this again. How else did stories about heroes start? Kinkajou tried to remember some of the ones she had studied in school this year.

There was that one scroll that Webs assigned for history class about a brave SeaWing from long ago. It was kind of weird how many scrolls were about amazing SeaWings, honestly. She remembered it started with a story from when a SeaWing was a dragonet.

That was tricky, though. Kinkajou didn't really like talking about her life before she met Queen Glory. Because back then, she was the noisy one, and the one who talked way too much, and, oh no, here comes Kinkajou, and the troublemaker.

She thought her friends still liked her and didn't really mind that she was a little different. But then, none of them had cared when she was kidnapped, so that would seem to indicate that maybe they didn't like her that much after all. It didn't matter, though.

Kinkajou had Glory and Moon now, and other friends at Jade Mountain Academy, who she was pretty sure liked her. Hopefully, most of the time. Also, she wasn't thinking about this.

Okay, perhaps she could start her story with the time she was kidnapped by NightWings. Whoa, that was such a gloomy beginning. It had been horrible on the NightWing Island until Glory showed up and rescued her.

Glory was shiny and brave and smart and cared a lot about all dragons, including dragons she'd never even met. And she was very different from every other NightWing, but it didn't bother her at all. Kinkajou hoped she would be like that one day, all cool and unbothered.

Maybe she should wait to write her story until she was a little more like Glory. No, no. Starflight said to start writing for the practice.

I can write something. Today. Yes.

Here I go. Kinkajou went over the new scroll. Once upon a time, there was a RainWing named Kinkajou.

Most dragons would think, oh, that dragon is small and harmless and frequently pink. And she smiles too much. So who needs to worry about her? Certainly not us, the bad guys who want to take over the world.

What are the chances a tiny RainWing can stop us? None, that's what. We turn up our arrogant bad guy noses to her. Well, guess what? All those bad guys were wrong.

Turns out even little smiley dragons can save the world. More than once, in fact.

“Oops.” Kinkajou said, accidentally out loud.

“Oops what?” Moon said absentmindedly. Kinkajou sighed.

“I think I just did the thing where I gave away the ending in the first couple of paragraphs again.”

Moon looked up and blinked at the drift of scrolls piled around Kinkajou's talons.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm writing the very exciting, long-awaited, extremely dramatic epic of Kinkajou that readers everywhere have been demanding. Well, I'm trying to. Moon, did you know that writing is actually very hard?”

Moon laughed, and Kinkajou repressed the urge to run across the cave and hug her.

“I just can't figure out where to start.” A wave of concerned laughter rippled across Kinkajou's wings. She paused, took a deep breath, and turned the back to sunflower yellow.

Yellow was for happiness. Yellow made other dragons happy, too. Yellow and pink, the colors Kinkajou wanted everyone to see, and the colors she wanted to be inside and out.

“That's normal, I think,” Moon said. She rubbed her forehead, frowning a little. “Maybe try writing down everything that flies through your brain, and then you can edit it later.”

“I have a lot of things that fly through my brain.”

“I know, but it's all wonderful,” Moon said, which made Kinkajou want to hug her again. And that's when Starflight-

“Oh. Ow.” She folded over, clutching her head. Her silver speckled black wings unfurled like billowing distress signals.

“Moon!” Kinkajou cried. The ink bottle spilled a long shadow across the blank scrolls as she leapt to her feet and flew across the cave. “Moon, are you alright? Moon?” She wrapped her wings around her friend and pressed her front talons over Moon's.

“No, no,” Moon whispered.

“What is it? You can't be doing another prophecy!” Kinkajou shook her gently. It hasn't been long enough since the last one.

“It's Glory,” Moon gasped, her eyes flying open.

“Glory?” Kinkajou's heart stopped. “Queen Glory? My Queen Glory?”

“She's in danger. They all are. Something is about to... I can't…” Moon closed her eyes again, clutching her talons like she wanted to drive her claws into her head and drag the visions out.

That was all Kinkajou needed to hear. Or rather, she would have been delighted to hear more, such as extremely specific details about danger and how to stop it. But she had witnessed Moon's visions before, and the thing was that it could take forever to spit them out.

And even once Moon shared everything she saw, the details part was always still kind of vague and unhelpful. So, Glory in danger and upset, Kinkajou was out the window before Moon could open her eyes again.

“Wait!” Moon shouted. “Kinkajou, come back! We need help, and if you... We have to…”

Whatever she said next was lost to the wind, rushing around the peaks of Jade Mountain. Kinkajou soared toward the rainforest as fast as her wings could beat. Moon could go tell someone in charge and ask for help and organize whatever official mission needed to happen.