#wings of fire theories

[ilikemicrowaves]

For arc 4, I think Tui should expand on the idea of the mysterious Beryl dragon Scarlet hated so much. Maybe it could be a villain or maybe they hold the answers to what the protags seeks.

Or maybe Beryl was Scarlets "I can fix her" ex, who tried to make her see the world differently and become a little bit better for her subjects. But failed and Scarlet chased her off.

Also, little theory about what tribe Beryl is, it's dumb and anybody can search it. And I'm gonna start talking like I'm writing an essay, so be warned.

By researching what Beryl, I'm gonna rule out tribes that can be named it, and if Scarlet would befriend a dragon from that tribe

The tribes that I will rule out completely are the Pantalan tribes, as nobody knew of them during Scarlets reign.

(Straight from google)

"Beryl is a transparent pale green, blue, or yellow mineral consisting of a silicate of beryllium and aluminum, and sometimes used as a gemstone."

The name is practically the only information on Beryl we have. Beryl, being a mineral, rules out Sandwing, Rainwing, and nightwings, as according to the wof wiki (the only place I know to look), all three tribes have not had a character named after minerals yet. So this leaves Skywings, Seawings, Mudwings, and Icewings.

We know that Skywings can be named minerals and gemstones, seawings can be named gemstones, mudwings can be named diamonds and minerals, and icewings can be named after white or blue gemstones.

However, these last 4 options can not be broken down farther by the characteristic of Beryl, as they all apply to it. But, Beryl, the dragon themself, we know that Vermillion never heard of this dragon, Scarlet hated them, and they are possibly still alive. Making the speculation that Scarlet knew Beryl during the war, we know that Scarlet would never befriend a Seawing or Icewing, as they are not allied with her. This leaves Skywing and Mudwing.

Knowing Scarlet, she most likely was uninterested by mudwings, as most of them are described as boring and not entertaining. So it is most likely that Beryl was/is a skywing. What a shock.

I probably didn't need to write this because everyone already assumes Beryl is a skywing lol. But I'm stuck at home for a few days because of medical problems 👍

[nightwingsaregoths]

The Totally Legit Wings of Fire Theory Rubric, basically cribbed from @visenyaism's Totally Legit ASOIAF Theory Rubric. Big thanks for the original creator for letting me modify it! Go wild with it, please.

[scrollwyrm]

Some Headcanons about Pantala because AAAASNMSKAKAMA

The mountain range of Pantala is said to be cursed because of the mysterious ruins there, which Wasp destroyed all evidence of. This is because they held the BeetleWing palace. It is generally avoided because of this and because of the extremely harsh conditions.

SilkWings can be (almost) cleanly separated into the more moth-like SilkWings (thicker build, floofier, slightly duller scales, larger wings, but smaller overall) and more butterfly-like SilkWings (slimmer, longer antennae, less flexible wings, curled claws, MUCH flashier colours).

HiveWings aren’t all descended from ClearSight: when ClearSight saved everyone, BeetleWings started trying to have dragonets with more black scales as a tribute to her. The only HiveWings really descended from ClearSight are the royal family: the idea that all HiveWings are her family is (VERY) old propaganda to make HiveWings seem superior.

LeafWings have a weaker version of RainWing photosynthesis.

[that110alto]

I have a personal headcanon that while underwater, SeaWings use mainly ASL to communicate ideas and thoughts and that the bioluminescent flashes are there to give tone, tense, etc.

(I'm new to learning ASL, please forgive any mistakes I made here in the signs)

[minkydinks]

Why HiveWings in canon do NOT have to be the result of tons of generations of detrimental incest (a hot take maybe)

@sarcasticrat @incorporeal-entity @daishitheprofessionalfool

It's a funny meme in the WoF community that HiveWings are incestuous abominations having all descended from a single dragon (Clearsight). But honestly I think a lot of the weirdness revolving around that idea is missing a fundamental piece of the way WoF genetics work.

It's relatively well known that when two dragon tribes hybridize, their offspring will primarily take after their mothers. Every. Single. Time. At most, there may be somewhat-even mixes of both parents, but the mother's tribe is still largely apparent. We see this with Whiteout, Darkstalker, Typhoon, and Sunny. Whiteout and Darkstalker appear primarily NightWing, like their mother Foeslayer (although Whiteout has a little more IceWing than Darkstalker). Sunny is mostly SandWing in appearance like her mother Thorn; enough that most regard Sunny as a regular SandWing that may just have a rare genetic anomaly. Typhoon confirms his mother as a SeaWing in his dialogue, when he mentions that his father is ill by the animus IceWing plague that Darkstalker caused.

What does this mean for HiveWings?

While it does still sound exhausting to have so many relatives, it's very plausible for her to have caused a branching new tribe with her genetics, WITHOUT inbreeding being involved in that process.

Because Clearsight is female, the VAST majority of her dragonets with BeetleWings would appear.... mostly NightWing! Mostly black scales!

Somewhat like this, if you assume this is relatively canon:

And, any of her daughters who decided to have dragonets themselves, would have ALSO had dragonets with primarily black scales, no matter WHO they married to. The black scales would have easily passed along hundreds (if not thousands) of dragons, without a single instance of genetically problematic inbreeding, so long as the direct descendants of Clearsight were female and had black scales. Regardless, no matter how many children Clearsight had, her daughters, granddaughters, great granddaughters and so on, would pass down her black scales to future generations; all of their Night/Beetle offspring would have taken after the mothers that appeared more NightWing-like, until eventually the form of HiveWings became most familiar because of the consistent mixing of the NightWing & BeetleWing physical traits.

Clearsight may well have only needed to EVER have 6 of her own dragonets total, for there to be a tribe split based on her genetics; depending on whether or not all of her dragonets chose to have families of their own (which we assume they all did). But, it is canon that Clearsight remarried several times, so we can assume she had more than 6; albeit probably not as many as your mind wanders into thinking. No slutshaming!!!! /j

Assuming she had 4 daughters and 2 sons, and each of her children had 3 dragonets of their own (predominantly female from her daughters and predominantly male from her sons), that would be 12 NightWing-dominant hybrids and 6 BeetleWing-dominant hybrids to kickstart the tribe splitting. It's perfectly plausible with the way canon genetics work.

What about SilkWings?

BeetleWings were a spread-out tribe, not existing purely in one location for their kingdom. So, while it's fun to theorize about SilkWings also being descendants of Clearsight, it's improbable at best (and disprovable at worst) that they're related in any way. It's theorized (and probably accurate) that BeetleWings had already been in the process of diverging into SilkWings, and Clearsight's arrival sped up that process significantly by reducing the population of non-diverging BeetleWings.

Incest had to happen at some point, didn't it?

I'm going to tentatively say, yes. But not in the way you're thinking.

At some point, after the BeetleWings had been bred out of existence and replaced by HiveWings and SilkWings, there HAS to be interbreeding of HiveWings at some point. And if ALL HiveWings are descended from Clearsight, that would mean that modern HiveWings are technically inbreeding by continuing to have eggs with other HiveWings, instead of more BeetleWings.

However, this is not as problematic as you'd think. (Stay with me here, this isn't proship territory. I promise.)

If we're looking at animals as a prospect, you'll notice that millions of extant species in REAL life are actually the result of similar conditions. Direct descendants of ancestors that they inherited their primary abilities and traits from, that have ultimately somewhat inbred.

You may be shocked (and even grossed out) to hear that we're actually all somewhat related, especially to those in our own countries. However, the reason incest between close relatives is considered immoral to people (and is illegal in many places, thankfully) is because of genetic anomaly. There is always risk to pass down genetic anomalies, I happen to have one myself! (A congenital defect of the heart that gives me two aortic valve flaps instead of three. This is a standard defect though and I promise I'm not an incest baby.) But the issue with inbreeding is just that it drastically increases the chances of such anomalies happening, the more closely related to an individual you are.

To put it more science-y, inbreeding only increases the chances of consequential or fatal anomalies if the offspring of two individuals contain alleles at the gene site that are identical from descent. In other words, there's a single ancestor shared from both the maternal and paternal sides. This becomes negligible when it's no longer probable to pass identical alleles from both sides; i.e, hitting about 6th degree (roughly second cousins once removed).

In other words, should someone interbreed with their second cousin-once removed, the chances of there being genetic anomalies or consequences are so low, that it's about as likely as if you had a child with any other person in the general population of your area. Your average shared DNA with that 2nd cousin-twice removed would be ~1.5%, which is actually lower than the default chance of any other average birth defect happening to the child of an unrelated couple (~3-4%). Genetic counsellors themselves state that they completely stop worrying about the potential for inbreeding-related fetal anomalies (AND moral code) once the relativity is 4th degree or further, because there is simply such a low chance of any defects, and it would be substantially different from marrying & reproducing with your siblings, parents, grandparents, and other direct relatives. Simply put, incestuous pairings are not black & white when it comes to more distant relation. Although direct relative pairings are inherently risky and therefore morally & ethically reprehensible by any means.

Dragons in Wings of Fire live to a maximum of about 130 years, and 2000 years had passed since Clearsight's arrival to Pantala. That's about 13 generations of dragons, give or take a few. We know based on the story told by Lady Scarab that a close relative of hers that she knew personally actually named the HiveWing tribe - implying that BeetleWings' extinction was actually relatively recent; within the last 200-400 years. Meaning that the genetic diversity of modern HiveWings is high enough that it would be incredibly unlikely for any random pair of HiveWings to pass down identical alleles to their child and cause significant issues.

So while, definition-wise, it is TECHNICALLY inbreeding, it is not a morally questionable issue because there are very few physically consequential results from their pairings; there have simply been FAR too many unrelated BeetleWings in their family trees for so long, that the VAST majority of HiveWings are as closely related to one another as the average city population in the United States.

Additionally, reptiles are not affected by incest the same way mammals are. The majority of unique pet trade reptile color morphs is a result of inbreeding for those colors; it's quite rare for them to have consequential anomalies as a result of such inbreeding as long as they aren't direct relatives only exclusively inbreeding with each other. Also these are magical fantasy dragons, so like. Shrug. I can't imagine incredibly distant relative consanguinity would affect them as badly as anything that's ever happened to British royalty.

(Also you didn't hear this from me, but MudWings are probably significantly more worrisome because of their monthly random breeding nights and no real semblance of family trees. I'd worry about them before worrying about tons of generations of hybrids with the genetic diversity of New York.)

[beefscrap]

SHEEP HATERS STAY WINNING IN YHR NEW CHAPTER WOO 🔥🔥🔥

Sheep haters enjoy your life before the next big story announcement!

[gumm1defloor]

Vox can understand Velvette just fine. They don't necessarily need to get along all the time, but they have a mutually beneficial contract that guarantees her support in the most efficient way possible, just how they both like it, short and strict and to the point. Vox does not understand Valentino. It drives him unimaginably, disgustingly insane. He knows how to handle him, make no mistake. Valentino is a never-ending powerhouse that wrangles out content from his employees like there's no tomorrow. He's proven himself to be Vox's most lucrative investment yet. He is resourceful, well-connected and most importantly predictable enough to rein in. Because he listens to you, because he needs you.

He is also, undeniably, out of his goddamn mind. Yet you've already invested too much in the corporate empire you've built together and there is no point turning back now that you have him so close to your side. It's OK however! He couldn't possibly be stupid enough to throw away the best partnership deal he's ever had just for the sake of something petty cause -oh, wait - he genuinely might just be that stupid and you never would've guessed because he's so cocksure of his bullshit that 80% of the time it ends up working in his favor anyway.

Fuck his life indeed. The kicker for this of course is that Valentino, genuinely does believe he has struck gold with Vox. Valentino is a clingy, possessive, immature, perverted, sadistic, egotistical man-child with severe rage issues and zero impulse control. No he is not aware of this at all. No he does not know why nobody is able to tolerate him and why every single person he gets close to hates his guts with every inch of their burning rotting souls. All he knows is that hell has now given him a flat faced prince in shining liquid crystal armour, riding on a cash filled horse with promises of power and luxury, who's practically handing him success on a silver platter. Doesn't mean that Val trusts him, doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy seeing him lose his shit. But at the end of the day vox has his back, and as long as Val keeps calling for him, he'll eventually turn up and make everything better. Cause hey if Vox hasn't left him yet for this long he must be doing something right. Right?

[sidyashchiy-na-plakhe]

A strange theory about two Rubies.

I am a very persistent and stubborn person. I will not give up my theory that the dragoness in the Winter turning prologue is NOT Ruby. I will never believe this, they are too different in behavior. Therefore, the theory:

Scarlet once had two daughters: Ruby and Tourmaline. Ruby first challenged her but lost. However, she was not killed and Scarlet banished her to the very north, to the border with Ice Kingdom. That’s why we see her in the prologue of Winter turning, because what would quiet Ruby, a princess, do on the battlefield in the tundra? Then who is the new Ruby? As we already know, Scarlet turned Tourmaline into an almost exact copy of Ruby, only calmer. That’s why their behavior is so different, and even their appearance is a little different (the scales on the face are different).

[dutifullycolddeer]

WoF Headcannon :]]

This is totally unrelated to art, but I wanna talk about scavengers in Wings of Fire for a minute. Here are my thoughts:

Pre-scorching, humans may have had animus magic, and my guess is that that’s where dragons originated. They may have been scavenger creations. Possibly created with the sole purpose of advancing agriculture, or maybe as a sort of replacement for horses. Maybe they started off smaller as messengers, pets, or food. No matter, as at some point, they advanced. They grew larger and smarter. Some dragons developed animus magic as an uncommon side effect to being created by it. Eventually, dragons were out of the hands of humans and living as independent creatures. Because they most commonly lived a solitary life, they were easier targets for humans, and likely slightly less intelligent. Post-scorching, all humans with animus magic had disappeared, and only a few hidden societies survived. From observation of the humans physical appearance, my assumption is that they’re based off Neanderthals, though are not the same. Dragons advanced further into what we know today and human population grew large enough for them to come into the light, after likely living underground. However, a few cities still remain below the surface.

That’s the end of my ramble, it probably made no sense, but oh well.

[raptorladylover6969]

Here she isssss The Handler but in WOF.

I had an idea of her being a Icewing Nightwing hybrid WITH A DASH of Rainwing (which explains the large fangs, claws, and prehensile tail)

Also RAM HORNS to make up for the bob. The bob is too iconic to not include, but a bob would look so stupid on a dragon, so I gave her ram horns to make up for it

the freckles are a NEED obv. I had a silly idea where her rainwing dna taps in where when she’s feeling intense emotions, instead of her actual scales changing colour, her freckles change colour. So if she’s extremely happy all her freckles would turn pink. PINK FRECKLES!!!

Also she wouldnt breath fire, or ice, she just has magical death spit. /ref (for anyone who hasn’t read WOF, essentially she spits venom. Like a JP Dilophosaurus.) She’d use this as a means of stunning her victims while her atrociraptors clean up the mess.

While she technically wouldnt neeeed the Atrociraptors since she’s so big and so so strong, she just uses them to clear her tracks, and clean up the mess.

I actually have a whole lore/timeline thing made up for her existing in the WOF universe incase anyone is interested in hearing abt that 💀

[macawthestarwing]

…So I found this and honestly it’s actually a pretty good theory (might be biased bc body swaps are one of my favorite plot devices) and it inspired me to do this

Also some doodles:

[ilikemicrowaves]

What dragon is the wingless one in Burns Weirdling Tower?

Lately I've seen a few theories on the unidentified dragon in Burns weirdling Tower and I wanted to make my own.

Part one, Tribe connections

Note: the tribes I could connect it too where only sandwing and icewing. Though if there is a tribe you think it's connect too, please let me know in tags! I love hearing you guy's thoughts!

Icewing Connection: The dragon is a pale white with Glistening black eyes and sharp, spiky scales with ocean blue specks. In the Graphic novels, the dragon's lip is pulled back with an angry expression revealing its gums to be blue, just like icewing blood. It's spikes stick up and have a sharp touch. from a distance, any dragon would mistake this unidentified dragon as an icewing.

Sandwing connection: Sandwings and icewing have similar body structures and one coyld argue that it is an icewing feature, so I'll try my best to point it out as best I can. The nose is small and faces outwards like a sandwings. It also has a small nose horn, whereas this feature doesn't belong to icewings. Another remarkable feature is the spikes are both spiky for both dragon tribes, but are placed differently. The dragon in the towers spikes are displaced and tightly packed together. Sandwings scales and thick, and run directly down their backs, while an icewings are smoth and don't take up most of the body. This dragons scales are mushed together and unorganized, how a potential Sandwing icewing hybrid would looked in canon.

Part two, What We Know

In The Brightest Night, Smolder explains that a dragon came to them with it claiming it was a Sandwing, Icewing hybrid. We have no idea who this dragon was, or if they are dead or alive. The owners name was never stated or how they found the dragon, and was never mentioned again until the letter from Sunny in, A Guide to a Dragon World, mention their appearance. In this letter, Sunny thinks the wings look like wingbuds, but they can't be a silkwing since there's only two. She doesn't believe it's a hybrid since th hybrids she's met are perfectly healthy. But there is no Canon record of an Icewing, Sandwing hybrid. Sandwing, Icewing hybrids for all we know could have been very messed up hybrids.

Part three, Sandwing, Icewing Hybrid problems

The problem with these type of hybrids is that they can be very complicated. Even though there is no canon information we can base this off, we can still use common sense.

The scales on both these tribes, like I mention in part one, are very different but similar to each other. Mixing them together could make them very unorganized and cross each other making the scales go different many ways, just like the dragon we see in the books.

I feel like any hybrid with an icewing can have large effects from how Icewings are so different being in an isolated arctic wasteland. Especially since your mixing dragons from the hottest place on the continent with dragons from the coldest place. This could cause many genetic defects.

Conclusion

Most of this is from speculation as we don't have much information on this dragon or icewing, sandwing hybrids. But I can infere that with the evidence we have that it is an icewing sandwing hybrid.

[wof-headshots-daily]

Day 82- Albatross

[scrollwyrm]

A little headcanon about MudWings!

So MudWings in WoF are great. Gotta be one of my favourite tribes. However I (and many others) have noticed something: HOW DO THEY KNOW THEY AREN’T RELATED TO THE DRAGONS THEY GET WITH!? EUGH.

So here’s an idea: all MudWing families and lineages have their own designated hatching grounds. When two MudWings are planning on getting together, they first tell each other their hatching ground. I think hatching grounds would also maybe have specific tattoos that their dragonets traditionally get on the bottom of their paw or something when they reach maturity.

Just a little marking so as to avoid inbreeding. Thank you for your time :)

[aphractal2]

my dumb ass forgot to take my iPad charger to college! ft. 100 adopts sneakpeek and potoo dragon

[is-the-fire-real]

Hello! I've recently realized (through blogs like yours) that I've been casually absorbing a lot of antisemitism, and I've been trying to learn more so as to counteract it, at least in my own head. I've seen the horseshoe theory mentioned a few times, but never explained what it actually is. Would you be able to link me to some reading on the subject? Regardless of whether you answer, I'd like to say thank you for your time, and I'm glad you exist!

Hello there! Thank you for stopping by and for asking important questions like this. It's very difficult to admit to, and confront, the bad messages we've absorbed from society. The cool thing is that you'll have some difficult work at first, but it gets way easier with time. You are going to be fine so long as you persevere.

I will let you know that I'm not an expert in anything--I only ever graduated high school in the US! So I can tell you what horseshoe theory is thanks to a lot of auto-didactic reading on the subject, but I don't have sources in front of me. I invite anybody in Jumblr to tweak or correct anything I'm about to say.

"Horseshoe theory" isn't just about antisemitism, but about extremism--but we'll come back to antisemitism. It is summarized by the image of the horseshoe: the two ends of the horseshoe should, by all rights, be far away from each other--they're the opposite ends! But when you look at a horseshoe, the two end points are very close to each other. Closer to each other than either one, on its own, is to the middle.

When one maps out political or social beliefs, it is common to place them on an X/Y axis, or a straight line. One extremist position takes up the X, the opposite takes up the Y, and the moderate position marks the center. This gives the impression that both forms of extremism are naturally opposed to each other, and are farther from each other than they are the middle.

Horseshoe theory suggests that this X/Y axis is inadequate. What we see in actual human behavior is that extremists have more in common with other extremists than they do with moderates, even if their beliefs appear to contradict.

So, take an X/Y axis about leftism. One end is marked "anarchism", one end is marked "authoritarian communism", and the middle is marked "liberalism". One would think that anarchists would be the polar opposite of authoritarian communists, and that anarchists and ACs would fight to get liberals on their respective sides--since liberals are closer to them than they are to each other. But we don't see that. We see anarchists and ACs spatting online about who is the Real Leftist, but in real life, regarding real-world action, both groups agree that their real enemies are not each other, but liberals.

This is because, while both groups have very different ideas about how leftism should be implemented, they agree on the most immediate "problem" of overthrowing liberal democracy.

The meme on the left is that liberals will invariably ally with fascists, so don't trust liberals. The reality, over and over again, is that leftists ally with fascists and try to undermine liberals. They do this because they all agree that modern democracy, the greatest achievement of liberalism, must be destroyed in order for their preferred replacement utopia to arise.

I saw this, among many, many other examples, when leftists voted for Trump, or voted for Stein or Sanders knowing it would lead to Trump's election. Leftists joined right-wingers in going to liberal blogs and laughing at them on election night 2016; both groups openly salivating at the suffering they saw, both groups opining on the future collapse of democracy, both agreeing with each other. I saw it also during the 2004 election, when I ran a couple of LiveJournals that talked about politics--I had both leftists and right-wingers mocking my pain at that electoral loss, both blaming me for being gay and asking for rights at The Wrong Time, both agreeing with each other.

This is obvious in a variety of extremist belief systems, which is why I didn't even restrain it to politics. Flat Earthers largely do not agree with one another on a flat-earth map or model; they don't agree on whether or not they are Christians; they don't agree on what it would take to prove or disprove their ideas. They constantly infight over these details. But these are all window-dressing. It's tiny details they battle it out over, because the point of Flat Earth is to create a massive conspiracy among politicians, scientists, militaries, and religions to Suppress The Truth and Dupe The Masses. In that, all the extremists are closer to each other than they are to those who accept the globe earth as fact.

The phrase folks throw around on Jumblr, which I agree with, is that "the forge that bends the horseshoe is antisemitism". In less illustrative language, the thing on which all extremists agree is that the Jews are responsible for their pet conspiracy.

Leftists often misattribute a saying to Marx: "antisemitism is the socialism of fools". In this view, socialism teaches the exact structure of most baseline antisemitic beliefs. A semi-secret group of bloodsuckers hoarding all the wealth, puppeting and manipulating world events from behind the scenes, sneaking and sliming their way into Real Power--the power no one ever sees? Yeah, those are all antisemitic canards. But leftists thought they could avoid falling for antisemitism by simply putting words like "the wealthy" or "landlords" and "the bourgeois" in place of "the Jews", and that they'd be fine.

I would argue the last year (and many other years, but that's beside the point) has proven that they are not fine. It turns out that when you have an entire belief system based on Jew Hating Without Jews, it's extremely easy to start hating Jews! All you have to do is redefine your terms so that "the wealthy", "landlords", or "the bourgeois" are the Jews.

A specific example, and one I've discussed recently: the term "Zionist". Not what it means, but how it is used and what it is understood to mean.

Far-right extremist antisemites have used "Zionist" to mean "Jew" for decades. And they have tried, for decades, to make alliances. They have done this by saying things that sound good to leftists, but which give the right-wingers plausible deniability regarding their antisemitism (what we call "dogwhistling"). This bait did not work on liberals. It did work on leftists. And now, we see that liberals generally use "Jewish" to mean "Jewish" and "Zionist" to mean "Zionist", but that leftists use "Jewish" to mean "Jew I like" and "Zionist" to mean "Jew I want to kill".

Once again, leftists agree with Nazis and the extreme right. Once again, leftists make it clear by word and deed that they care more about the socialism of fools than they do about socialism. Once again, they validate that Hating Jews Without Jews only lasts until there's any reason whatsoever to plug Jews back into the system of hate, and then...

This is the hypothesis of horseshoe theory as I understand it. Again, if anyone has corrections or scholarly sources they'd like to share, please do so! I like to learn and I am often inside my own head, so I admit that I could be wrong in some details or missing nuance.