#wof riptide

The way I see it, Peril is fighting a bit of an uphill battle by courting Clay. Clay is a Mudwing, who tend to not really form lasting monogamic relationships naturally. There are some exceptions— Mudwings who apparently have formed strong romantic bonds, usually in inter-tribal couples where the other half might bring those ideas in. But by default, the concept of getting strongly attached to a romantic partner seems foreign to them. They just temporarily couple up to propagate their species and then quickly separate again.

We see this exemplified when Clay attempts to ask his mother Cattail about who his father is, and her response is essentially “Huh? Are you stupid? Why would I keep track of that??”

Now, Clay is a very loving person. He feels affection strongly and openly, and he is clearly very fond of Peril and wants her to be happy. At the same time I don’t see him as one of those exceptional Mudwings with “the spark”, who really gets the concept of romantic attraction. So I can imagine him being a bit puzzled by the idea, but also seeing that this is important to Peril.

So he goes “Okay, I will do my best to have this kind of relationship with you, even if I don’t fully understand it. Please bear with me as I work this out.” As Clay seemingly has no desire to extend this arrangement to anyone else, and he does genuinely enjoy spending time with Peril, this works out to at least resemble a regular monogamic relationship.

Whether this is fulfilling enough for Peril, to have a partner who doesn’t really get it but is trying what he can nevertheless, is really up to her.

I’ve personally never seen Peril and Turtle’s relationship as romantic. They seem more like buddies to me. I imagine they would talk about their separate romance troubles and trying to help the other out with them. Turtle would say “Kinkajou and I are really struggling; she just can’t seem to separate her real feelings from the ones the love curse forced on her.” Then Peril offers “Have you tried setting her mind at ease by burning her enemies into a crisp?” and Turtle goes pale and responds “Uh... I believe that is called sororicide...”

Extrapolation is the name of the game when you’re dealing with WoF side characters. That said, I think Riptide is consistent enough to be easily extrapolated from.

Riptide is the son of Webs, progeny of a publicly reviled figure who thus inherited a lot of the scorn directed at his father. He was also orphaned when Coral murdered Webs’ wife, so, you know, his childhood sucked a lot. He gives the impression of an outcast who receives unfavorable treatment from everyone and had to struggle for everything he has. There was little affection or kindness in his life, as anyone who started to bond with him would drop him like a hot potato the moment they found out who his father is.

You can see the depths of his loneliness in his first interaction with Tsunami. He goes from being on high alert due to coming from a secret meeting with the Talons of Peace to dropping his guard completely at the first hint of being flirted with. Like, Tsunami is over here babbling nonsense and coming off as insane (due to not speaking Aquatic) and Riptide’s first thought at this vaguely affirming string of gibberish seems to be “This is my only chance at happiness, I’m taking it.”

At first they seem kind of boring as a couple; indeed that was my first impression of them. But on the basis of knowing about what Riptide’s life was like, I can get behind it. He displays a lot of vulnerability if you look for it. Tsunami dislikes how he keeps lying about his life, but it makes sense he would do that if you look at his past. He’s desperate to keep secrets because he is afraid this new friend he made is going to abandon him as soon as the name “Webs” comes up. He’s been through that exact scenario countless times before and he’s terrified of being left alone again.

And then when the truth comes out and she doesn’t leave him, he shows more vulnerability by asking “Can you tell me what my father was like?” Because the last time he saw his father was when he was one or two years old. So there is some tenderness between them, even if it’s kind of buried.

Riptide is a very under-explored character in general, to be honest. You could write a whole story about the son of Webs and his struggle for self-actualization.

I’ve already talked a bit about my opinion on this age retcon here. What I’ve found there was that the only reason Deathbringer needs to be as old as he was made is so he can have a conversation with Six-Claws—a conversation where they don’t form any meaningful rapport whatsoever and Deathbringer just plotsplains at him for a bit before vanishing.

That one limp scene is not worth the litany of grief it has caused. It is completely superfluous and we lose nothing by excising it from canon. In the same post I’m proposing a revised timeline in which Assassin can still happen without Assassin assassinating Deathbringer’s integrity as a character. That’s my contribution to Deathbringer fans who don’t want the character they liked in book 3 get retroactively turned into something they have to be ashamed of.

Yeah, that is tragically correct. The way it is written, Fatespeaker ends up as Starflight’s (pardon the term) “rebound chick”. The consolation trophy that, just prior to them coupling up, is identified by Glory as “Sunny’s soul twin”, so the story implicitly frames her as “Sunny Lite: I can’t believe it’s not Sunny”.

This is really unfortunate because I like Fatespeaker a lot, and she had so much potential which she didn’t get to realize.

I’ve said this once before (might have been in my post about Starflight), but when I think about this part in the story, I like to extend the time skip between Arc 1 and Arc 2 from half a year to three years. It gives the DoD a bit more time to grow up and also to physically build the school they’re going to run.

In that same motion I like to place the start of Starflight and Fatespeaker’s relationship inside those 3 years. Fatespeaker is with Starflight during that time and helps him come to terms with the loss of his vision, and throughout that they realize they have feelings for each other. NOT immediately after the Sunny rejection.

That would give Starflight enough time to move on and for both of them to create a much more healthy and lasting relationship.

I get what you mean. I think it would be nice to keep Sunny as someone who isn’t really interested in that kind of thing and have her be a representative of an aromantic/asexual orientation.

If we had to make a guess who this “perfect dragon” is though, I believe we are surprisingly well-equipped to do so.

Let’s operate from the assumption that this is a character who was named and has appeared in person, who is currently single and around Sunny’s age, and who has never been in the same location as her for more than a couple minutes (otherwise you wouldn’t need to get them in the same location).

Fortunately for us, Arc 2 generously physically consolidates the vast majority of eligible characters into the Jade Mountain Academy—which Sunny is present at—and thus eliminates all of them in one fell swoop!

This, to my count, leaves us with seven candidates left: Lynx, Snowfall, Sirocco, Rattlesnake, Ochre, Squid, and Hailstorm.

I’m going to eliminate Sirocco and Rattlesnake right away, because they’re only technically eligible on account of their unknown age (we only know they are older than Qibli). Also, they are bit characters with poor personalities that don’t compliment Sunny at all.

Ochre is eliminated because he was with Sunny in the rainforest, after being extracted from the Nightwing island.

Lynx and Snowfall... My familiarity with both is a bit shaky... but I get the impression these two may be being set up kind of for each other, maybe? I’m going to tentatively eliminate them on that basis.

Leaving us with Hailstorm... and Squid. While I personally would find it hilarious if it was Squid... I don’t think it’s Squid. I believe the mystery dragon is Hailstorm.

I’m not sure at first glance what Sunny and Hailstorm could have in common. I suppose they both were the voice of kindness in a harsh family. Also, they were both yellow for at least some portion of their lives.