#alternate dragonets of destiny

[ravewing]

i like this frame a lot . ochre is funny he should do stand up comedy

[scrollwyrm]

What if… Hvitur and the SkyWing dragonet had survived?

My new fic’s coming soon! So excited XD

[lobotomyyland]

Posting has been barren and depressing and dry for my account (on insta as well) but now I introduce my large project: In the Year 200 A.S. Designs of all Pyrrhia & Pantala Wings (tribes)🌋🏔️🗻

All dragon species devolved to a more feral looking creature than they have evolved to be 5000 years or so in the future.

Starting with the traditional western dragon and arguably one of the strongest designs of dragon in WoF.

Thank you for reading and I will post more and give more info within the future of my project and soon the story!

[flooffydergen]

Yes I'm a wings of fire fan as well get over it.

[flawseer]

On the False Dragonets of Destiny

Recycled art... Forgive me, I can't physically draw more than I currently am.

Just a little while ago I was looking at some replies to my recent work, and I noticed a nice comment from someone who expressed they enjoyed my comics featuring the false dragonets of destiny, but couldn't really get into them in the books. I am thankful for that comment, but even more thankful for the opportunity to ramble at length about something I kind of wanted to talk about, but couldn't find a plausible excuse for. Until now.

All of this is just my reading of the material, of course. You don't need to agree with me on this.

Content Warning: Some discussion of abuse, trauma, violence. I don't know if it's severe enough to warrant a warning, but better be safe.

General discussion

The false dragonets of destiny, the alternates, or whatever one wants to call them. They enter the story proper in book 4, after having made a few minor cameo appearances before, and serve as a kind of hybrid antagonistic force and pseudo-allies for Starflight during his stay on the Nightwing Isle. During that time, they are very abrasive, stand-offish, uncooperative, and a bit annoying, and I guess that doesn't make them come off very well. But like, in spite of that or maybe partially because of it, I am really fond of these guys, and I'd like to take some time talking them up to you.

One can examine how these guys act and conclude that they are a bunch of dysfunctional screw-ups. And they absolutely are that, don't get me wrong. But one should keep in mind: the majority of the time they are in the spotlight, they are in an extreme, tense, and frighteningly uncertain situation. It's easy to forget how stressful these situations are because the books as a whole really like to gloss over the more frightening kind of subjects on account of being written for young readers. You can't really go deep into themes of abuse, trauma, and depression in a story like that without tripping over some kind of censor on the way, but the implications are there, between the lines for you to find.

Understanding the group

Who are the false dragonets of destiny? They are posited as a mirror image of the true dragonets of destiny, who have all been extensively schooled in matters of education and martial prowess. The first thing we see THIS group do on page is brawl, so one may think they must be trained and capable fighters. Viper and Flame constantly throw around death threats and aggressive quips, so one may think they are hyper-violent and dangerous. They are neither. Nautilus admits the Talons haven't bothered training them at all, they haven't seen real combat, they've likely been deliberately kept away from the war as a whole. Flame doesn't even know how to use his fire breath correctly. Starflight, who is by far the least physically adept of the arc 1 protagonists, is able to outpace them even as four of them team up against him.

They are neither killers nor a crack team of badasses, rather they are a bunch of play-fighting, posing delinquents who talk a big game with little in terms of actual skill to back it up. Realizing this is key to understanding just how out of their depth and ill-equipped they are to handle anything that gets thrown at them on the Nightwing homeland, especially past the negotiations at the Skywing outpost.

Abduction and imprisonment

When Starflight first finds them, they have been on the Nightwing Isle for a good while, and they are suitably bristly because of it.

Look at this situation from their perspective. These guys have known nothing other than their semi-peaceful life in the Talon camp. Then the leader of that camp, Nautilus--a figure they all know and trust, essentially sells them to a frightening stranger, who looms over them and is so physically large he could crush each of them easily. This stranger pulls them away from their home without even giving them a chance to say goodbye to their relatives (I'm convinced Avalanche would not have let Morrowseer take her son if there was a chance to intervene, so Flame must have already been gone when she found out).

A contingent of Nightwing awaits them, blindfolds them so they don't know where the entrance to the Nightwing home is. They pass through a kind of eldritch tunnel that pulls at their souls. When they are finally allowed to see again, they find themselves trapped on an island where there is no sunlight and every breath hurts as the air is thick with ash.

The Nightwings won't let them leave, in fact they don't know if they will ever be able to leave again. Nobody tells them what's going on, what they are meant to do, or what the plan is. They are left confined in some room with nothing to do, and they (sans Fatespeaker) can't go outside without being arrested. Food is brought very infrequently, and usually inedible, so they haven't eaten since they were forced to leave home. They don't know where they are, nor where their parents are, nor if their parents know where THEY are. They are completely cut off from anywhere, isolated, trapped in this little slice of hell with no means to escape and little hope to acquire any soon.

I think if I was in a situation like that, I would be pretty cranky too. More than that, I would be scared out of my wits, and I believe that they are as well. If you look at their actions through a lens of them being frightened, their irritating quirks suddenly become very relatable. Viper is coping by throwing out threats and making herself seem bigger and scarier than the thing trapping her. Flame makes offensive jokes about killing Fatespeaker because making light of the situation helps him keep his wits together. Ochre is hard to read, but I think he's just tuning everything out. Squid is convinced that his father--who is the most important and smart dragon in all of Pyrrhia--has made the correct choice and knows what's best for all of them. And Fatespeaker is in complete denial, choosing to trust an inaccurate vision of the future while ignoring all the red flags that don't fit into it.

I think it's interesting that you can read this as all of them having a different strategy to cope with the uncertain and frightening situation they're trapped in. That's part of why I like them; they're very flawed and make interesting decisions.

Trauma and Empathy

You can look at someone like Squid and see his surface traits: He is annoying, he whines and complains constantly, he brags about who his father is, and he seems completely incapable of doing anything useful. If this guy was in any other story, I would probably dislike him. But Squid has the benefit of being a whiny dweeb in a situation where it is very appropriate to whine and be scared. He has a scene where he makes a somewhat goofy speech at Morrowseer where he calls him stupid and wants to go home, and is subsequently exiled. It's a bit silly in execution, but for me it did succeed in making me feel bad for Squid as he desperately and pathetically pleads for Morrowseer not to send him to his death.

But then you can read beyond the lines a little and view the scene in the full context that isn't really dwelt on. Here, you've got Squid, who is inept even among his peers, sheltered and doted on by his father, whom he has never been away from for any real amount of time until now. This guy, who probably can't even feed himself (otherwise he might have been able to catch fish in the waters around the island), keeps telling himself that his father has a plan, that all of this, even the questionable stuff, is happening for a reason. He hasn't eaten in weeks and he's been the punching bag for everyone else's frustrations (because Fatespeaker is not around enough, hanging out with Starflight). Now he has been chased halfway across the world, forced to cross the ocean while tired and starving, to be told he has to talk to a bunch of violent strangers who hate his kind and want to kill him. He tries to hide but is grabbed by the throat and held in the air by a soldier twice his size. This is likely the first time his life has ever been threatened that directly and with genuine intent.

The strange new Nightwing who was sent with them somehow manages to deescalate the situation enough to save him, but then, without warning, more dragons burst into the room. Suddenly everything is on fire, including the soldiers who just a moment ago threatened him. He is close enough to them to watch their forms twist and writhe in agony as they slowly burn to death.

As he is made to watch this horrifying spectacle, all the feelings he repressed by reminding himself of the faith he has in his father come flooding back in at once. It becomes too much for him to bear, and he breaks. He starts crying and verbally lashes out at their abuser for the horrid conditions they have been placed in and demands--half asserting and half pleading--to be allowed to go home. This isn't really whining anymore, this is a full-scale mental breakdown, rendered to be simple and digestible to a young audience. Imagine how harrowing this scene could have been if it wasn't filtered through a child-friendly narrative.

Closing thoughts

There is a scene some time after that I found kind of poignant. At one point, Starflight looks out and he sees Flame just standing out there, silently staring into the distance. There's maybe one line dedicated to it, and when you read the book normally, you don't really dwell on it since it's so nondescript. But this scene happens shortly after the visit to the remote outpost. The soldiers that burned to death in there were all Skywings. Skywings like himself, and like his mother, who also was a soldier before she joined the Talons. Whenever I picture him standing there, I imagine he is reliving that moment, hearing the dying screams of his kinsmen. I think he will be hearing them forever.

So in conclusion: The reason why I like the alternate dragonets so much is because of the enormous, untapped potential they possess as characters, and how deep some of them run if you take some time to look at them. I feel like all of them have a story to tell, and it's a bit of a shame that Sutherland likely won't come around to telling any of them. If I had infinite time, money, and energy, I would love to make many more comics about them, as they are an interesting lot.

Especially Flame's story I feel is such a heartbreaking tragedy, and thinking about the way it ended saddens me. He's one of my six all-time favorite characters in the series, I wish he could have gone out in a happier, healthier way.

[neeweekeewee]

HEALER FATESPEAKER AU

An alternate universe where Fatespeaker becomes a healer and a therapist at Jade Mountain Academy. Due to her having weak mind reading abilities, she is considered to be an empath. When she arrived at the Night Kingdom, she was overwhelmed with sadness over seeing the condition of her tribemates, feeling helpless that she couldn’t do anything to help alleviate them of their injuries, diseases, and emotional misery. After Flame gets injured by Viper’s venomous tail barb, she becomes extremely distraught and full of grief over his life threatening injury. She would check on him periodically when she wasn’t helping Starflight. She became interested in healing when she was watching the healers do their work. While in the rainforest, she was was overwhelmed with fear, grief, and helplessness over Starflight’s injuries. She promised herself that she would anything she could to save those around her, so that she never feels helpless again. Since a whole other tribe is now living in the rainforest, the RainWing healers needed extra help. She was brought on as an apprentice to help out the healers with the sudden influx of patients. Due to her weak mind reading ability, she can sense emotions of the patients around her. She is a natural at healing due to her sheer passion and interest to learn and her bubbly and extroverted personality. She feels as though she has found her calling. She was proud to forge her own path and not be just a “back up Dragonet of Destiny”. There were already Dragonets of Destiny. And they were good enough. She was glad to be helping dragons and saving lives in a different way.

Flame is the first to wake up from his injury, he is still very weak from the potency of the venom. Fatespeaker comes to care for him. He is hostile and skeptical at first, refusing to let her touch him and told her to get away from him. Due to how busy the healer hut was, no one was available to help dress his wounds. He watched Fatespeaker care for other patients. He sees how sweet, bubbly, and energetic she is with them. It’s almost as if she’s able to sense their pain and negative emotions without them even saying anything or showing it. She was running in every direction, attending to every patient as quickly as she could, which was much quicker than all of the other healers. Flame’s wound was becoming more and more painful until he was writhing in his bed in agony. Fatespeaker immediately responds, not able to handle feeling his misery anymore. He continues to act extremely rude to her which finally makes her snap at him, saying: “I have never once said anything nasty or bad about you. I have always treated you kindly even when you were rude or when you would call me names. For moon’s sake can you just be kind to me for one day?” “I can tell you’re in a lot of pain, there is no other healer available right now so you’re stuck with me. Even though you are a really rude dragon, I cannot stand to see you suffer like this, just clamp your jaws shut and let me do my job.”

Surprised by her firmness in her tone and the tears in her eyes, he listens to her. He started feeling guilty for treating her with disrespect for so long, realizing that she was never once rude to him or even muttered a negative comment about him.

After coming to this realization, he started being more kind to her; allowing her to dress his wound and check up on him. The healer hut was often boring, he started to miss his mother quite a ton. When Fatespeaker would sense his deep loneliness, she would often stop by to keep him company. Even when she was super busy, if she sensed that Flame was upset in any way, she would come to help cheer him up. This helped build a close bond between them both. They started making inside jokes, and having long conversations when Fatespeaker had a break. Flame started missing her badly when she wasn’t around, especially at night. He would even get jealous when other patients got more attention than he did, especially when it came to Starflight, who was still unconscious at the time. Fatespeaker wasn’t oblivious to this, since she could sense his jealousy. She felt giddy inside for some reason that someone wanted her attention so badly. No dragon has ever had feelings for her before. It also warmed her heart that she finally built a bond with one of the members of her group and that her care had been helping heal their wound.

The moment Flame knew he loved Fatespeaker was when his mother came to visit him during his stay at the healer’s hut. She thanked Fatespeaker relentlessly for nursing him back to health. The two hit it off very well, talking for hours it seemed.

The moment Fatespeaker knew she loved Flame was when he became interested in her field of work after she nursed him back to health. He became her assistant healer. He also tried his best to work on his temper because he knows she doesn’t like it.

When Starflight woke up, he was bewildered to find out that Flame was working beside Fatespeaker to help heal him.

After the end of the war, Flame and Fatespeaker were the healers and therapists for the students. Occasionally, they travel to other tribes to help out. Flame is also a part time student to learn better skills on tolerance of other tribes.

[wuzhere75]

I love WoF AUs that go “what if different eggs got taken for the dragonet prophecy” and we get a different set of dragonets for an alternate version of the 1st arc.

So yeah I decided to make my own (I’ve gone through a couple of different iterations, but this is the most current.

The quirk here is that I basically thought “wait what if the dragonets where everything Morrowseer had wanted”. Like they just ended up with with a perfectly normal set of a Mud, Sand, Sea, Night, and Skywing. No replacement-that-is-of-a-different-tribe-because-one-of-the-guardians-fucked-something-up. No obvious hybrids. They get left alone for another year, and emerge from the cave to the chaos of the events of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd arcs all at once.

(Also another quirk is that they are all related in some way to a canon character; Asha and Hviter are also still alive)

Bigshadow (She/They)

-She’s the big soft himbo-type character. Due to severe nearsightedness, they’ve always had difficulty reading/writing. The guardians just assume she’s dumb, but she really loves learning and art.

-I can’t remember if it’s canon that Secretkeeper and Morrowseer had tried to had dragonets before Moonwatcher and that they had “lost” them, but I decided for this AU, an attempt had produced a viable egg and Morrowseer decided “what would be a better dragonet to lead the dragonets of destiny than my own”, stealing the egg and flying through the night to the cave.

-Due to this, Bigshadow was partially exposed to the moonlight of the Brightest Night, giving her somewhat unreliable psychic powers. Most of the time she misinterprets them as being very weird dreams/intrusive thoughts.

-Shortly after Morrowseer did his year-prior check in, they start to feel a strange presence in their dreams and swear they hear someone calling to them from outside the cave when things are quiet (*cough* *cough* Darkstalker).

Mangrove (He/They) (yes I know there is already a canon character named Mangrove; it’s a sick name)

-Gumpy quiet sad man who’s in to medicine and nature

-In this universe, Gill gets a “funny feeling” during the Brightest Night and decides to take what would be Tsunami’s egg so he can “be with his new daughter during her hatching”. Webs, then, takes one of the male eggs instead when he breaks into the hatching room.

-The AU Sandwing minder; Jackal (more on her later), was a little too rough on him when was younger during fight practice (maybe I should have featured a scar somewhere in his design?). Due to this, he abhors violence.

Mole (She/Her)

-The softly spoken nerd who gets picked on for not being the big strong meatbag Mudwing the guardians had wanted. She has a secretly love for war history and is probably really good at strategically fighting (in a real world AU she would be an American Civil War or WWII nerd).

-Asha couldn’t get Cattail to give up Clay’s egg, so Crocodile (remember that lady?) gives Asha “her” blood red egg (she actually stole it from her sister, Toad) at the last minute.

-I originally had her as being from a non-blood red egg Crocodile just painting red but the Sandwing minder probably just would have incinerated her.

Coyote (Any Pronouns) (I’m not sure about the name; I wanted something related to new world deserts but not named after a cactus and I don’t feel like Gila or Mesa fit).

-Apathetic bastard who hates everyone except her adoptive siblings (basically as far as you could get from Sunny without being an outright evil asshole).

-In this AU, Dune never left the Outclaws (the dragonet that would have been Sunny is raised among them). Due to this, a different Sandwing minder was chosen from the TOP; Jackal.

-Jackal was…umm…very devout to the prophecy and willing to “weed out anything that wasn’t promised in the prophecy” (she probably would have killed both Glory and Sunny immediately, Starflight not having psychic powers probably would have set her off as well).

-Jackal stole the egg of her brother, Corsac, a general in Blaze’s army. Corsac and his wife, Bison, caught her in the middle of the act, but she got away (they would later have a son, Pronghorn, like the one from JMA).

Shrike (They/Them)

-The artsy goth kid who loves supernatural stuff (they go wild every time Hviter or Webs starts talking about amunism).

-Kestrel in this AU either doesn’t have Peril/Sky in the first place or chooses to fuck off into the mountains with her kids (perhaps with the help of Soar/Chameleon?). Maroon (name also pending), a different Skywing, is instead chosen. Due to Maroon being less “high profile” than Kestrel, he is chosen to steal the Skywing egg, being more familiar with what hatcheries are more or less highly guarded than others (unlike, say, Hviter).

-This version of the dragonets have made a giant cave mural with the help of Asha and the Maroon. Shrike is the primary contributor to this mural even though the other dragonets have “grown out of it”. Mostly, they paint Bigshadow’s “dreams”.

-They are intrigued by Bigshadow’s dreams and is the only one who thinks they are more than just dreams.

-They make jewelry out of bones from the prey animals the guardians bring them (originally I was going to include a necklace with some skulls and stuff, but that shit’s hard to draw).

-I had no smooth way of tying to fit this in but he is either the half-sibling or cousin (I haven’t decided) to the Skywing False Dragonet, Flame.

[princedragonoverlord]

Drew the Arc 1 Dragonets of Destiny for my swapped continent au!

(Click for better quality - Please don't repost or claim as your own thanks!)

Here we have Clay - Leafwing Tsunami - Silkwing Glory - Leafwing (With leafspeak) Starflight - Hivewing Sunny - Silkwing/Hivewing hybrid

I also had a hard time thinking of alternate name ideas in case anyone was interested in them, the only two I thought of was Morning Glory for Glory and Beetle for Sunny, if anyone's got better alternate names feel free to tell me about them :3

[acaciapines]

thought about it more instead of going to bed. here’s my current lineup

dragonets of destiny:

rainwing: vera

seawing: evelyn (obviously lol)

mudwing: reyna (i just feel like out of all the part two kids she could make a good bigwings)

sandwing: piper (i have no reasoning behind this i just really like piper)

nightwing: hugo (not sure if I’d keep his powers hmmmmm)

and then i have my set of alt dragonets, which here would be a lot closer than they are in canon. i thought it would be fun cause of the part one vs part two kids, yknow? not that all of these ARE part one kids okay i understand the vision.

alternate dragonets:

skywing: jason

seawing: percy

mudwing: annabeth

sandwing: drew

nightwing: hazel

this leaves Many People unaccounted for. frank is probably taking riptides place as a guy they befriend in the sea kingdom and he joins the dragonets. leo is peril but we went over that. also he probably joins them too <3. i have no idea wtf nico and bianca would be up to. hylla would still be reynas sister and the actual bigwings of that clutch. castor is yet another huge question mark. im sure im forgetting people. but ive put too much thought into this already lol

you know you need to go to sleep when your brain says “wait but i could make a son of seafoam wings of fire au”

to be fair it’s less au and more a thought experiment and it would end up wildly canon divergent but. consider. vera as the rainwing, never meant to be a part of this prophecy and she KNOWS IT, but she’s here, goddamnit, and she’s making that everyone else’s problem. leo as peril, with too much fire he can’t control, fire that’s killed his mother, and he doesn’t WANT to be a weapon but that’s all he good for. i guess four other characters are there to be the rest of the dod too.

[bumblebuzzler]

Flame’s hatred towards nightwings is 100% justified and I’ll die on that hill

[ravewing]

nah if i was one of the alternate dragonets id be soo pissed because imagine thinking that you and the other four kids youve been forced to grow up with in below-ideal conditions are destined to save the world and then you find out that you jus the backup plan💀

[scrollwyrm]

New chapter of my SkyWing Dragonet AU! Out on Quotev! Please read it!

I won’t spoil it but we’re just getting started!

[rainstorm48]

Ooh this looks so good! I love Tsunami, Sunny, Clay, Ochre, and Fatespeaker’s designs the most

Prophecy children and their Great Value knockoffs

[wofredone]

I don’t agree with Blaze, Blister, and Burn being bland, as you said before. I think they are fine as they are and don’t need fleshing out to still be threatening figures in the story. I feel like you are making Burn too nice. She’s meant to be this threatening, cruel, and malicious dragon with a fascination in strange things so creepy and unsettling, it really establishes her as a big threat. What made her a good villain was how sadistic and cruel she was willing to be to become queen. I get you are trying to flesh her out, but I am worried changing her personality will have major consequences on the rest of the arc. For example: if Burn isn’t interested in peculiar things, then how does Sunny end up in a cage for the entire second part of The Dragonets of Destiny in your version?

Part of the reason I think they're bland is because there's really nothing beyond what's said about them in the very first book. Blaze likes looking pretty and isn't very smart, Burn is sadistic and violent, and Blister is evil and (supposedly) intelligent.

They're made out to be these absolutely horrible options and we never get any actual positives. If they're really so bad, and it's obvious to a bunch of children, why is anyone following them? Why have these dragons continued fighting for twelve years? Just because they're supposed to be threatening villains doesn't mean they shouldn't have personalities. That makes them boring, and while it was interesting to try to pick the best one of the three, that entire plotline was ruined by the Eye of Onyx and Thorn.

I'm trying to make Burn nicer because she's the first one people would dismiss. She was also the only one who didn't really get to talk to the dragonets, at least not until the very end. They just saw her and made assumptions.

As for Sunny being in a cage, I could just make it that Scarlet put her there for her own entertainment (she's clearly not beyond things like that given how she used Glory as decoration).

I am aware of the things that would change as a result of altering the Sand Sisters and other characters (Sunny being sent to Burn's stronghold as a gift, Glory not becoming queen, etc.) I'm doing my best to think through things so it makes sense. Maybe in the future I'll make a list of the alternative events that happen in this version.

[kingdarkstalker]

Thoughts of the alternate dragonets of destiny? So Ochre, Squid, Flame, Fatespeaker, and Viper.

oh mt god im too tired rn but i could go ON AND ON they were treated so fucking horribly and thrown away by tui very cruelly they were also abused children and deserve to recover. viper shouldnt have died for shock points. theyre alp just another example of how tui views child abuse victims who "arent as pleasant" as the DOD lmfao

[flawseer]

The Anthro Alternative

No, don't worry, I'm not going to post only anthro-themed artwork for the rest of this blog's lifespan. I just had to complete the circle by drawing the false dragonets of destiny in this style as well, because as I have hopefully established, I really like those guys.

They're also really getting into the festive spirit apparently. Viper has already booped Squid. What a go-getter.