It makes me so upset how people miss so many things about Winter's character.
Winter is usually characterized as being like this angry, dumb jock type??? When he's not! He's so smart and he's very much NOT a jock.
Winter grew up failing so much in the circles because he's gentle when his parents and his society wants him to be strong and loyal, wants him to die "heroically" in a useless battle. Winter is gentle, he questions authority and he was conditioned to be mindlessly loyal to his family so he wouldn't get hurt.
His old conversations with Hailstorm show this:
"Not if you get high enough in the rankings," Hailstorm said with a grin. "Which you do by being brave and strong and bold."
"I thought it was by being smart and following orders." Winter said.
I love these flashbacks because THIS is who Winter is! The current Winter is a Winter who is just trying to be Smart and Follow orders, trying to survive in a society that hates who he is. I've read those two flashbacks at the start of the book over and over, and they say so much about how he's really like.
More below!
Winter is someone who hesitates before sinking his claws into something as small as prey, who feels compassion for creatures despite every dragon around him telling him that they're nothing. He is someone who was taught to care for no one, but he can't help but care for his siblings endlessly, and later, his friends.
Winter is clever, he isn't the best at fighting but he is crafty and he uses anything at his disposal to do Anything. Someone like Icicle would just yell at the winglet to move when the Scavenger's blazing fireball rushed their way, but Winter immediately threw himself toward it and used his ice breath to lessen the damage and warn his friends, which, by the way, him managing to hit a speeding projectile and having the reaction speed and aim to do so???? SO COOL.
He is just someone who is struggling to survive in a world where he needs to be strong, but being strong is impossible for him, and instead uses his smarts to try and survive, all with a dream of someday thriving in this world. (Notice how this sentence can be used for both Qibli and Winter?)
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People love characterizing Qibli as being completely different from Winter, when their whole thing is that they're VERY similar, but with rather opposite circumstances and backstories.
When they were in the scorpion den, Qibli didn't even have to tell Winter to do anything! Winter immediately began acting like a snooty, dumb, overconfident prince in order to get the attention off of him, he mostly stayed quiet while Qibli talked - Qibli literally notes this!!!
And the only example of him not doing that is him speaking up after Vulture talked about eating scavengers because again, he is someone who questions authority, he is someone who fights for what he thinks is right, he's just a survivor and his survival strategy is to Be Smart and Follow Orders!!!
Winter knew that Cobra was a threat despite the reader not even knowing, he didn't need to be told to restrain Cobra, he just knew! Because he's smart!!! Winter is observant just like Qibli, both of them are incredibly clever, just in different, but familiar, ways because they learned to survive in different, but familiar, ways!
And!!! For examples that he's gentle, when he hurt Qibli he literally sat outside in the Burning Sun, as an Icewing, waiting for Qibli to wake up. Alone! He was so worried and sad that he kept with Qibli and stayed by his side despite being a fish out of water, and not being built for this climate at all.
Him in the Diamond Trial is such a perfect example of how he questions authority. The moment he sees a way to break the rules without any consequences he jumps on it. He knows he isn't meant for the Ice Kingdom, it hurts, but staying will kill him. Literally. He then proceeds to manage to sneak him and Foeslayer out of the Heavily Fortified Ice Kingdom.
Unfortunately a lot of his character was kinda messed up with the whole failed redemption arc, but he's still such a wonderful character. I wish more people - and Tui herself! Portrayed him as being more gentle and smart, instead of mean and dumb, because he really isn't.
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I do believe that Wings of Fire definitely has a racism problem.
There is a long lasting message to accept people different from you, no matter how much they even look different from you, And this is a good message for kids!
But it rubs me the wrong way how culture and language is built in this. The tribes and their differences are so basic and surface level, they are all the same culture with some extra quirks, and someone's physical appearance isn't just the things you need to accept, it is their culture as well.
Sure, it's a kids book, but I think that kids need to be taught things that are not so surface level! Let them have hard topics to understand and let them think! Let them be subject to ideas that are new to them outside of their cultures, not just them growing up a bigot, traumatizing other children in these minorities they come across, and to maybe not be a bigot in the future.
Another thing I've seen is the writing of Black characters. Most, if not all, of the human characters in WOF are Black, namely the main characters in Dragonslayer, but it's horrifying to see how, over the years they've gotten whiter and whiter, to the point that with one of the most recent art of them, they are literally just white. Even the designs on the cover of Dragonslayer were weirdly white, despite them having Black-looking skin, even if it was the bare minimum. They even has curlier looking hair, and, in the recent art? Gone.
The humans in WOF are so boring and so not liked because they are not real, their cultures are practically nonexistent rather then where they grew up, their language is all the same, they all dress in some shoddy medieval clothing that makes them look like ren faire cosplayers.
Language is diverse and unique, even if two people spoke the same words in a language, they'd both have a different language anyway. It is art and, since it is art, it is learned, not known.
It peeved me how Sky just Knew Pyrrhian despite being a literal baby and having not even learned a single word in the language yet. Just for convenience.
It peeved me how Sky could speak a language with such diverse phonetics, despite reptiles like dragons not having vocal cords. Just for convenience.
It peeved me how Wren could learn a language that's probably so different from her grammatical structure, being made up of sounds she's never heard in a language before ever. Just for convenience.
It peeved me how Aquatic is the only language that is tribe specific out of the entire huge continent, despite every tribe having evolved and developed completely separate civilizations. Just for convenience.
And it ESPECIALLY peeved me how, Clearslight stole the Pantalan's language away from them, forcing them to learn and speak Pyrrhian, and becoming worshiped for majority of the people there, and treated as if she is a good person and not a colonizer. Just. For. Convenience.
Culture is important for your stories, for any stories, because it is the typography that changes how you function, it is what you breathe and how you dress and how you walk and how you stand and how you talk. Culture is as important as personality, as the story, because of this. And culture is thrown to the sidelines by lazy adults who don't want to put the bare minimum of work like filling out an easy to access fictional culture check-list online. All because kids are "dumb."
Kids need to understand these topics, they can understand that people look differently from them sometimes, and they can even understand sexuality and gender pretty well, what is hard to understand to everyone no matter the age is culture, and the only way to learn that is exposure. But most English/American children fantasy authors are too scared and lazy to do it.
It's really hard for me to connect in larger fandoms because my visions are so overwhelmingly different from the Mass, obviously I know people will share my visions, but i am also so specific with said visions that it is impossible to find others with specific visions as well just Around
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Like! For example, in Wings of Fire:
Bumblebee and Peacemaker are characters that are super loved!!! People find them super cute...! However, it really rubs me the wrong way when children characters are written as Cute and Innocent, making them seem like an effigy rather then. A Being That Exists. And I don't really like it when people go "Dawww! >w< CUTEE!!!" (that energy atleast) That is a Real Being. why are you treating them like a Cat or other animal of some kind. If someone said to my 5 year old I would kill them
and, Darkstalker is another character people really really like!!! People like villains, especially when they have daddy issues, but like, I Hate Him. IDK!! He just seems like a racist fascist murderer that hates women and grooms little girls to me! I do not see the appeal!!! at all!!! The fact that Whirlpool gets hated more then Darkstalker is so weird to me, I understand why - Mysterious, Handsome, Major Villain Character with Daddy Issues, but like, in the grand scheme of things, why. I personally don't care for Whirlpool.
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I fall out of larger fandoms so much because of this, maybe I feel as though my own creativity is restricted by what the Mass thinks? Maybe I feel intimidated by being observed by so many people? But is that really better then, when in smaller fandoms, you Know the people who look at that work? And respect their opinions rather then some strangers you can block easily - because there's so many people? I always find myself enjoying characters from smaller fandoms more, maybe it's because I don't feel obligated to follow any Fandom Rules and that I am free to analyze the characters how I want without backlash?
Just trying to analyze my natural disdain to larger fandoms, and why I tend to find myself gravitating towards more niche, smaller medias - even if said form of media doesn't have any fandom I would interact with normally, like music artist/bands fandoms.
have i ever told anyone how much i really really like birds
I've been wanting to get into bird identification more, but the bird diversity is like, really bad here . And all I can do is go! Omg! I know that bird! <- Has identified it 100 times already
I find it literally so funny that one of the most discourse heavy stuff in the gregory fnaf fandom is the fact that some people like him as a robot and some people dont
ive seen quite a bit of posts where people put the same amount of energy of hatred to people who like gregbot to, like, hatred of transphobes, and avoiding gregbot headcanons as if theyre Evil and i think that's just so silly
People can dislike a headcanon, i personally dont really enjoy the gregory is cc hc! i just think its rather wonderous how people treat gregbot and avoid it like gregbot killed their grandma
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