I always ask my editing clients if there are any stories that have inspired them. Several have mentioned wanting to craft a world like that found in Wings of Fire, Tui T. Sutherland’s middle-grade series about dragons. It’s got 15 primary novels, two supplementary novels, several short stories, and an ongoing graphic novel adaptation. You might say it’s a big deal.
Clearly, I needed to see what all the hubbub was about, so I cracked open the first quintology, The Dragonet Prophecy. These books tell the story of five young dragons (called dragonets) who’ve been raised far away from their people in an isolated cave. The plot is about stopping a devastating war, while the world is dragons, dragons, and more dragons.
The Good
The Dragonet Prophecy won’t ever be mistaken for the elaborate worldbuilding of The Broken Earth or Lord of the Rings, and that’s not a bad thing. Partly, that’s because it’s aimed at readers aged 8–12, who may not be interested in memorizing 12 different royal family trees. But adult readers also enjoy a light read, and Sutherland delivers with a world that’s refreshingly uncomplicated. There are seven dragon kingdoms, they all have queens,* and most of them are at war. That’s about all you need to know; everything else is extra.
Distinct Dragon Factions
If there’s one thing audiences everywhere love, it’s a story with multiple factions that we can sort ourselves into. The more distinct those factions, the better, particularly with powers and aesthetics. If the factions look different and do different things, we can invest in one and identify with it for the rest of the series. It’s all the fun of star signs and personality quizzes, but with a slightly lower chance of running into people who take it way too seriously.
Sutherland delivers the faction-identity experience through the different dragon kingdoms, and, yes, there are online quizzes to find out what kind of dragon you are. These dragons are distinct in three major categories: environment, powers, and appearance.* SandWings live in the desert, have a poisonous tail, and sport scales in yellow and gold, often with some snake patterning thrown in. IceWings live in the frozen north, have ice breath, and their scales are white and blue. You get the picture.
Each of the five protagonists is from a different kingdom, and while that leaves two types of dragons unrepresented, it’s still plenty to get the imagination going. While this strategy is especially prevalent in stories aimed at kids, I hope it’s clear by now that grownups also love identifying with in-universe factions. That’s why I’m a light-side waterbender who works in Starfleet’s science division.
A Vulnerable Inheritance System
In Wings of Fire, dragon queenship is passed through combat. The reigning queen’s sister, daughter, or niece issues a challenge, and the queen decides whether to fight or stand aside. Normally, I roll my eyes at this kind of system, as it just doesn’t seem tenable.
However, the system fits pretty well in this world. Dragons live a long time, and if they ever die of old age, I don’t think we hear about it. It’s also unlikely that a queen would die in an accident, and dragons don’t seem to get sick. Challenges might be the only reliable way to get someone new on the throne.
But what I really like about this system is that it has a serious weak spot: if the queen does die from something other than a challenge fight, who’s the next queen? If she only had one female relative, that’s fine, but what if there’s more than one claimant? This is rare enough that it’s believable for dragons to overlook it, but it’s still clearly something that could happen. In fact, such a scenario is exactly what started the big war our heroes are trying to stop.
Mini-Humans
While all the major characters in this quintology are dragons, the world also has humans in it! The dragons call them “scavengers” on account of how humans are always trying to steal dragon treasure, which is a fun play on classic D&D tropes. Naturally, there’s a big debate among dragon scholars on whether humans are intelligent or simply another kind of prey.
Even in the most imaginative spec fic, most protagonists are human, so it’s fun to switch up the perspective. To our draconic heroes, humans are strange things indeed: tiny, but much braver than any other animal. They’re also one of the only things that can threaten a dragon besides another dragon, though that requires a group of humans.
I also enjoy that despite interacting with several humans over the first five books, our heroes never learn the humans’ language or find a magical translator. This emphasizes how alien humans are to dragons, though it also leads to a couple of scenes where the characters communicate questionably complex ideas through miming and charades.
Unconventional Family Structure
Despite hatching from eggs and growing to adulthood in seven or eight years,* most dragons have conventional family structures, at least by North American human standards. Dragonets are raised by their two genetic parents, usually their mother and father.* However, two tribes notably buck this trend: the NightWings and the MudWings.
The NightWings practice communal child-rearing. Instead of individual families, dragonets are all raised together by the kingdom as a whole. Parents may have affection for their offspring, or they might be entirely indifferent. At first, I was worried that this method would be demonized because NightWings are the evil kingdom, but its presentation is actually quite neutral. It might even be positive, considering how 99% of parents are unreservedly terrible in this world.
Even more interesting is the MudWing practice. These dragons lay their clutch of eggs in a warm nest and then just leave the eggs to their own devices, other than keeping the occasional alligator away. Instead of being raised by their parents, a MudWing’s main family connection is with their siblings. Each clutch forms a tight-knit group that does everything together, from partying to fighting battles.
Mostly this is just neat, but there’s a subtle bit of message reinforcement too. Since sibling groups don’t increase their numbers with children, any deaths are a permanent loss. This means that warfare inexorably degrades MudWing communities until they can’t function anymore. I don’t know if that was intentional, but it fits really well with the Dragonet Prophecy’s anti-war ideals.
The Bad
The main downside to Wings of Fire’s worldbuilding isn’t any specific mistake, but that it’s so bare-bones. This is the cost of keeping things light and simple; it feels like there just isn’t much world there to explore. Theoretically, there are ways to have a simple world without it also feeling empty, but few stories manage it. I’m not saying Sutherland was wrong to make this choice, as a lot of storytelling is about give and take, just that there are, in fact, downsides. However, there are still a few specific points that are bad enough on their own to be worth mentioning.
Uneven Dragon Factions
In terms of special powers, every dragon starts with flight and firebreath. They may also get the ability to heal faster in their native environment, or it could just be MudWings who do that; the book isn’t clear. Regardless, a dragon’s powers are then modified depending on which kingdom they belong to. See if you can spot the problem based on which dragons get what.
- SkyWings: Nothing.
- NightWings: Nothing. They claim to have mind reading and prophecy, but it’s a lie.
- MudWings: Their firebreath doesn’t work if they’re cold, and a small fraction of them are immune to fire. Or maybe their burns heal super fast? Again, it’s not clear.
- IceWings: Ice breath instead of fire breath, which may or may not be more powerful.
- SeaWings: They lose fire breath, but gain swimming, water breathing, darkvision, and light-up patches of scales.
- SandWings: A deadly stinger on their tail.
- RainWings: Instant death venom spray – the later books retcon how deadly it is, but it still incapacitates a dragon with one hit. They also get color-changing scales that can create near-perfect disguises or make the dragon invisible.
This power distribution reads like a tier list, with F-ranked SkyWings and NightWings not even worth playing and S-ranked RainWings posing a serious balance problem. MudWings are also pretty sad, while IceWings and SeaWings are a big question mark. It’s unclear whether freezing breath is just reskinned fire breath or if it’s more powerful in some way. The SeaWing grab bag should be very powerful, but none of the SeaWing characters ever use their powers to good effect. The SandWings are left as the only dragon that’s powerful enough to be cool without breaking the story.
Beyond the obvious problem with giving some of your characters an insta-kill ranged weapon, this imbalance cuts hard into the fun of splitting the dragons into different factions in the first place. Did you like any of the less powerful kingdoms? Too bad, you’re identifying with loser dragons now!
Dragon Racism
Don’t worry, Sutherland has a plan to make sure the RainWings don’t completely dominate the other kingdoms. You see, in books one and two, we hear a bunch of horrible stereotypes about RainWings, most prominently that they’re “lazy” and “stupid.” This feels a little random, like Sutherland just spun an oppression wheel and ran with the results, but I’ve seen worse.
Then in book three, we learn that all those stereotypes are true! The RainWings really are incredibly lazy, and they’re so lacking in smarts that they probably can’t find their tails with all four talons. They’re so passive that they don’t even notice when over a dozen of them disappear without a trace. When the heroes tell them about the disappearance, the RainWing response is to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
The main exception to this is protagonist Glory, who Isn’t Like Other RainWingsTM, presumably because she wasn’t raised with them. She was instead raised in a prison cave with a set of abusive guardians, so obviously she turned out way cooler than the rest of her loser kingdom. Oh, she’s also the long-lost heir to the throne, so maybe that’s why she isn’t a total loser. What is going on?
Over time, we meet a few other RainWings who aren’t passive caricatures, so the idea seems to be that it’s RainWing culture that’s bad rather than RainWing genetics. This isn’t better! The idea of inferior cultures is just as destructive as the ugliest eugenics.
Everyone’s an Asshole
While the five main characters have reasonably balanced personalities, nearly every other dragon they meet is either cruel, incompetent, or cruel and incompetent. At first, I thought this was just how Sutherland characterized adult dragons, something that’s fairly common in stories for younger readers. But then we meet other dragonets, and most of them are just as bad.
Normally, I would just call this bad characterization and move on, but there’s actually dialogue and narration about how dragons are inherently hostile to each other. This is never contradicted, so I think I’m supposed to accept it as truth? That’s certainly how most dragons act.
Not only does this make the world feel stilted and unpleasant, but it also makes the few cool dragons feel like mistakes. Why are our heroes free of the genetic imperative to be a dick? They were all abused growing up – is that it? No, it can’t be, as none of the other exceptions were abused, at least not that we know of.
Sutherland also tries to have it both ways, creating several moments where the protagonists find out that other dragons are just like them, full of hopes and dreams! Except we know that’s not true, because most other dragons are terrible.
Extremely Arbitrary Magic
Each dragon has a specific set of abilities, and other than RainWings, none of them are overpowered. If anything, most of the kingdoms would benefit from a buff. But there is one power that is so story-breakingly strong that I’m still struggling to accept it: animus magic.
Animus magic can do anything. More specifically, an animus dragon can enchant items to do anything. Here’s a short list of the various magical objects our heroes encounter:
- A mirror that can listen to other dragons from afar.
- A stone that can visit the dreams of any dragon you’ve met.
- Wormhole tunnels.
- A jewel that picks the best queen and incinerates the other candidates.
- A statue that assassinates all dragonets of the SeaWing royal family.
- A spear that solves mysteries.
This list of powers isn’t comprehensive. If there are any limits on animus magic, Sutherland never establishes them. Instead, the only cost is that using the magic slowly turns a dragon evil. Well, more evil than the dragon default.
That’s a pretty random drawback, and more importantly, it isn’t enough to prevent a series of dragon-sized plot holes. When the NightWings’ island is damaged by a volcano, they create a wormhole tunnel to the mainland so they can conquer some new territory. Fair enough. Except, from what we see with other magic items, they could have just enchanted a helmet to repair the damage and stop the volcano from erupting.
This happens again and again. Remember that assassin statue? Its creator was killed in a duel when she could have just enchanted herself to be invincible. The NightWings supposedly have the listening mirror while making their evil plans, but they never use it to spy on their enemies. The whole concept is a mess.
What We Can Learn
Both the pros and the cons of Sutherland’s worldbuilding are fairly straightforward, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn. If anything, a minimalist world is sometimes the best place to learn, as we can focus on the most important facets without having to consider all the bells and whistles of a more complex world.
Audiences Want Cool Options
Were I to rate various stories that create cool factions for audiences to identify with, I’d probably put Wings of Fire somewhere in the upper middle. On the one talon, it’s nowhere near as good as the elemental martial arts and nations of Avatar. On the other talon, it’s miles above the wizard school with a cool house, a moderate loser house, a major loser house, and an evil house.
The distinctive scale colors and patterns are a major plus, and I’d bet dollars to donuts that Sutherland had fanart in mind when designing them. If not, then it was a lucky accident, because there is a lot of fanart for Wings of Fire. Likewise, the different environments help give each kingdom an identity, even if their powers are often out of step.
This is a great strategy and I strongly encourage other storytellers to give it a try, assuming you have a story that can support multiple factions. You might think this only works with kids, but I assure you that’s not the case. If it were, the Westerosi noble houses wouldn’t be nearly so popular.
Twist the Familiar to Create Novelty
It seems like most of the novelty in a book like this would come from the main characters being dragons, but that isn’t really the case. A story’s main characters usually need to be relatable, which limits how novel they can be, especially in a book for kids. That’s why the five dragonets act like archetypal American preteens* despite being in a fantasy world that’s 80% dragon by volume.
This is a reasonable choice on Sutherland’s part, but it means she needs to search for novelty elsewhere. Her two most successful attempts are the MudWings’ family structure and her portrayal of humans. In both cases, Sutherland takes something familiar and presents it in a different light. This is similar to the uncanny effect, except it’s not being used to creep anyone out.
Twisting the familiar is often easier than creating something entirely new. For one thing, there’s less to explain. Readers already know what humans and families are, so Sutherland only needs to show what’s different about them in her world. Another benefit is that these familiar elements usually create fewer implications than building something from scratch would.
For example, Sutherland could have written that whenever a dragonet comes of age, a shooting star burns across the sky, predicting some great deed they’ll perform as an adult. That’s pretty novel, but it would also require a lot of explanation, and Sutherland would have to deal with the existence of magic that can call down space rocks based on age. It’s easier to just use something readers already know about.
Fantasy Racism Is Still Racism
An unfortunately common refrain when we talk about bigotry in spec fic is that it doesn’t matter because it’s not “real.” The characters are elves, sorcerers, or Vulcans, none of which exist in real life, so why do we need to care about any of it? Wings of Fire is perhaps the best example you could ask for to demonstrate why that line of reasoning is flawed.
For Glory’s entire life, she’s been abused and cut down on account of being a RainWing. RainWings are all lazy and stupid, the stereotypes say, so Glory must be too. This mistreatment ranges from outright hatred to casual microaggressions, and the way Glory gets through it is by reminding herself that the stereotypes aren’t true, that she isn’t like that. It’s the belief in her people that keeps her going.
And then she finds out that all the stereotypes are true. RainWings are actually like that, except her by virtue of being a special protagonist. The people who mistreated her were right the whole time. The story doesn’t recognize the full implications of this reveal, but it’s an incredibly ugly thing to do.
Glory’s experience is hardly different from what a real marginalized human might go through, especially if they were raised isolated from their people. Wings of Fire is saying that that kind of mistreatment could be justified. That’s a horrible message for any book, let alone a children’s book.
Tortured Worldbuilding Doesn’t Fix Contrived Plots
On a lighter note, let’s talk about how authors prop up their weak plots. Usually, they just have the characters make contrived choices. For example, the Game of Thrones writers wanted Daenerys to burn down King’s Landing, but she had no reason to do that, so they just had her do it anyway.
But Sutherland doesn’t usually go that route. Instead, she adds worldbuilding elements whenever a plot isn’t working, similar to what Martha Wells does in The Cloud Roads. The RainWing racism is actually part of that. You see, the NightWings have a plan to take over the rainforest, but that obviously won’t work since the RainWings are all ninja venom sprayers. To compensate, Sutherland has the RainWings all be lazy to the point of lacking self-preservation.
This is also why almost every dragon the heroes meet is an asshole. It’s really hard to justify why five preteen dragons would be the ones to stop a war, but it’s easy if the other dragons are all bloodthirsty and love killing. Never mind that this undercuts the story’s anti-war message – the plot demands it!
That’s all a drop in the bucket compared to how Sutherland uses animus magic. I lost track of how many plots were resolved by a random enchanted object, including the big finale. How do they stop the war, you might ask? They randomly dig up a magical MacGuffin that picks the dragon they like to be in charge and incinerates the dragon they don’t like. Yay?
This method can technically make the story do what you want it to, but it’s supremely unsatisfying, and it does long-term damage that’s very difficult to fix. Every time you introduce a random magic effect or weird cultural practice to justify a sticky plot point, you’re stuck with that new element. Worldbuilding is forever, and readers have long memories. It’s almost always easier to fix the plot instead.
While Sutherland’s worldbuilding isn’t especially bad when compared to the other books I’ve looked at, some of it is oddly contradictory to her stated goals. In particular, the idea that dragons are inherently mean and violent is just weird in an anti-war story. Usually, those focus on the ugliness of war and the lives it destroys, but that kind of sympathy is extremely difficult with Sutherland’s dragons. That’s probably the most important lesson we can take from these books: build for the story you want to tell. If that means you need a more robust justification for your heroes to save the day than “everyone else is an asshole,” so be it.
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Ooh boy, I’ve been waiting for this one, given I’m one of those people being inspired by the series (although I was less “directly inspired by” and more “noticed the similarities with an idea I already had in mind and decided to run with it”). Although I enjoyed the series (being a sucker for anything and everything dragon related), I also noticed many of the same flaws, and seeing them laid out here will definitely help with my own world.
Of particular note is the absolutely broken magic. While some of the stated issues do get better later on, the magic only gets worse. You think it’s bad here, trying getting through the second arc, where the primary villain, one of the primary heroes, and a fairly important side character are all mages – and the plot is just as busted as it sounds. I think it’s pretty telling that the third arc includes a fairly sizable subplot about animus magic “mysteriously vanishing” from the world.
Oh no, the next set of characters can actually use animus magic themselves? That was the only thing keeping it under control!
I don’t agree with some of the commentary, but that’s mostly taste and quibbles. I will, however, say that animus magic is a fantastic system for the story being told: precisely because it’s so broken.
Without spoiling the later books, which explore this much more (including the it going away part, the how of which makes a lot of sense in universe as well as being elaborated on in one of the darkest parts of the whole series), the only real limit on animus magic is the characters not fully understanding what it’s capable of, in-character lack of imagination, wanting to not seem evil, or just having various misconceptions about it’s limitations or usage.
Suffice to say, the power to, as far as we can tell, simply snap all of existence out of existence is a terrifying idea, and part of the story is the characters realizing and grappling with that.
Hello mythcreants crew, it’s always nice to see what you have been up to! The “Building X” series is one of my all time favorites.
And now that you bring the topic of “inferior cultures”… Would you classify the Nazis and the Aztec as mere “factions” of their respective cultures for a similar reveal than in these books?
I mean, the Aztecs had better hygiene than the Europeans, but every religious ceremony ended in at least a government mandated death and were so detested by their neighbors that they ganged up on them as soon as the Spaniards gave them the chance. And the nazis… They need no introduction.
How do you depict a character discovering that their heritage is something like that? (And more importantly, should I post this on the ask blog?)
I don’t know enough about the Aztec Empire or the Mexica culture to comment on those specifically. The one thing I do know is that the western view of both is often exaggerated to fit preconceived notions, so I’d take any claims about them with a grain of salt.
The Nazis are much easier: They were a political movement and institution which was unquestionably evil, but they do not represent the whole of German culture. This isn’t some kind of excuse for Germany in the 30s and 40s, it simply means that their culture was not inherently inferior for having given rise to an evil political movement. It’s the same with American or British culture and the institutions of imperialism. Imperialism is part of those cultures, but it is only one facet.
Demonstrating this in fiction requires portraying some of the complexities that come with culture, especially if you are dealing with a marginalized or marginalized-coded culture like the RainWings. There’s less risk when portraying, say, Nazi Germany, because basically no one today thinks all Germans are inherently Nazis.
Thank you, this has been very helpful!
So broadly, the keys to these developments are:
– Making sure that it’s just an institution (Like the Nazis) or a privileged group (Like the Spartiates in Sparta and Greece, and possibly the Aztec in Mexico) that in no way represents the whole culture.
– Not doing it to a marginalized coded culture unless you and your story can spare the extra effort and complexity
This is one of the reasons I love this blog, no other one I know seems so knowledgeable about things like these, and if they are, they don’t have the same level of clarity. Looking forward to the next post!
(I think there was an error in the post and my answer was posted twice. My bad)
Yep that’s a good guideline to follow, glad I could help!
> because basically no one today thinks all Germans are inherently Nazis.
Uh… being German-speaking, one *does* run into these people. Also into people who maybe don’t think that, but still think it’s funny to joke about (… it is not.) And depicting Nazis of any stripe as German, for instance by giving fictional modern US American Neo-Nazis almost exclusively Really Recognisably German surnames (when those should be a much smaller percentage of the group) and have those be the *only* German surnames, is… uh… it’s a thing, as are similar tropes tying into this. But also… not a marginalised group, so it ties into way less real-world harm than the depiction of the RainWings.
CW: Austrian politics, Nazis, Jewish erasure, mentions of genocide, abuse, the murder of disabled children and mentally ill people, I am not sure I didn’t forget anything
I… also kind of have to disagree with the statement that there’s less risk, in depicting Nazi Germany.
That said, any reason to take care with how one depicts Nazi Germany or a fictional equivalent is very much not about harm one’d do to Nazi Germany or even German-speaking people, unlike with the reasons on why and how one should take care of how one depicts marginalised groups or stand-ins; instead, it’s about denial of harm done, perpetuating harmful myths, and harm to vulnerable groups that are in some way interconnected to what happened, like being the targets of genocide.
Some things one can still screw up that tie into real-world harm, in no particular order:
– What I personally would call “It could never be (one of) us” thinking: when Nazis are depicted as just so cartoonishly evil or as somehow other (… most often as mentally ill which ties into harmful stereotypes about mentally ill people and also, the Nazis murdered mentally ill people for being mentally ill so this is just… kind of disgusting?) in a way that convinces people that it never could be their neighbours, it never could be their family, it never could be them. Causes people to miss warning signs of similar things developing if that’s all they ever see.
– Furthering the “Opfermythos”, the victim myth, of “how Austria was a victim of the Nazis and not complicit at all”. A great example of this is Sound of Music. … I am Austrian. Yes, Austrians were fucking complicit. The majority cheered on the Nazis. Some of the worst examples of them (Amon Göth, mostly known from Schindler’s Liste where they toned him down; Eichmann had been raised in Austria, and, y’know, Hitler) had been Austrian. The myth is often used to deny any harm done by Austrians and, in Austrian politics, to deny continuities and need for reparations. Due to popular stereotypes about Austria, people… kind of forget this is a thing.
– Erasing Jewish people (or any harmed minority groups) from your depictions of Nazi Germany. … a good example, actually, is Sound of Music once again, where they deliberately made sure to cut out anything that’d show Jewish people lived there ever even though they had to go out of their way to do so during filming bc sth was Right There. … I don’t think I have to explain why this is harmful, right?
– Making the only people who did harm the Convinced Nazi Believers and Nazi Party Members, and all of them do harm to minority groups. The latter’s less of an issue, bc… while I can think of examples of people who were utterly convinced by the Nazi party line, the single biggest reason for them not doing direct harm to minority groups were things like “was stationed on a ship the entire time”, so lack of opportunity, and then there’s… the incredibly small number of people who are both former NSDAP members and Righteous Among the Nations that you probably don’t have to represent in your story because have I mentioned how few there are? That said… let’s look at Hans Asperger, well-known doctor who at the time worked in Vienna, famous for writing one of the first two papers to describe autism (… under the charming /s title “The Autistic Psychopath in Childhood”). He sent disabled children to Spiegelgrund to get murdered (… we’ve got his own signed reports), and was at one point part of a commission to decide how deserving of life specific disabled children were. He never joined the Nazi party. I’d say he still did quite a bit of harm, and depicting everyone who wasn’t a Nazi party member as having done no harm means forgetting about people like him.
– This is… probably a bit of a personal button, but: please just… don’t depict Nazis as “maybe they were awful but they were really good to their families” to give them moral complexity. Please just… don’t. My experience with (kind of ex-)Nazis in the family range from, at best, “the relationships were complex, and he was a decent grandpa to my dad, but he was still something of a tyrant, a cheater, managed to always get one of his granddaughter’s names wrong – that’s how little he cared, and pressured his daughters to get married bc it was proper with disastrous results” (the kind-of-ex Nazi) to “physically and verbally abusive asshole who nearly at several points drove his wife to suicide and whose kids still have emotional scarring in their 70s” (… stayed a Nazi.). As you might imagine, the “oh but he was a caring father” feels. It feels like mockery, to me. There *is* (emotional, often not moral) complexity in how to deal with a legacy of genocide. But don’t forget that the people who perpetuated it, cheered on it, also had some very warped views on parenthood and obedience in children, and that does Not make for great parenting. For the most part, you get at best really complicated parent-child relationships.
So… TL; DR: I don’t think there’s *less* risk, in depicting Nazi Germany. Just… a very different type of risk.
Mexican here to comment on the Aztecs / Mexicas.
The Mexicas were indeed a faction within the Aztec Empire. The Empire itself was founded with the alliance between 3 cities in the area. Mexicas were centered around Technotitlan and you got other factions based in Tlacopan and Texcoco / Tetzcoco. With time, Technotitlan dominated the other 2 cities, becoming the de-facto capital of the empire.
The practice of sacrifices was imposed under a rather military interpretation of the Nahua religion in Technotitlan. According to legend, the sun god of way (Huitzilopochtli) demanded constant blood sacrifices to maintain sunlight. This created a military doctrine where the Empire would be in continuous fights with its neighbors and there would be a preference to capture enemy soldiers rather than kill them in battle. This would secure a steady supply of enemies to be offered in sacrifice.
So in short, there is a basis to attribute to a faction these rituals around sacrifices. The practice existed prior to the Aztec Empire, but it was taken to the next level by the military and religious Mexica elite of Technotitlan.
Having said the above, as any other empire of the time, the Aztec Empire had its complexities and we cannot judge it based solely on this. The Empire had some other more advanced policies like mandatory education for all (one of the first empires to do so), good hygienic practices, codified laws (including courts and judges), and a successful trade market.
Thanks for the info, that’s super cool to know!
I never got into Wings of Fire as a kid. More a Warrior Cats fan, which also has some weird and interesting stuff in it.
-It is an extremely low tech setting. The cats are CATS, with out opposable thumbs or fire, and the series never forgets that. Also, the cats act like cats, so even though this is (nominally) a kids series, there is a LOT of weirdly brutal and intense violence with realistic consequences. Cats also perceive time differently, so weather and seasons are long-term worries with major consequences. This is a world where major characters get crippled or killed in minor skirmishes, where kittens get carried off by hawks and eaten, and where every winter is a looming existential threat that the clans just barely survive, with at least a few minor or mid-range characters starving or getting pneumonia and dying, potentially derailing the plot in bizarre and interesting ways.
-It is also one of the more interesting ‘low fantasy’ scenarios I have seen. Leaders, blessed by the Powers that Be, get nine lives, while leaders and medicine-cats both get prophetic visions and dreams, but that is about it, magic-wise in the first dozen books. But in a world without any technology, even that is a lot, so these powers also grant their wielders a great deal of SOCIAL power, which becomes almost a magic of it’s own.
-The factions are distinct, and their differences actually make a certain amount of sense. Each clan lives in a different environment; surviving in these requires different strategies, which in turn cultivate a certain mindset in the clan’s cats. Thunder-clan lives in dense old-growth forests, where prey is plentiful but foxes and badgers are constant threats, so Thunder-clan cats are physically imposing and their personalities skew towards the aggressive. They hunt and fight constantly, so everything is framed in terms of struggle and combat. Wind-clan live on the open moors, where prey is scarce and there is nothing to protect them from weather or birds of prey, so Wind-clan cats are small, fast, and paranoid. Shadow-clan live in in marshes or overgrown pine-forrests depending on the era, and mostly hunt by night, so they are sly and sneaky. But it never engages in blatant essential-ism or demonization of The Other they way the Rainwings are treated; different, but not ‘inferior’. Even Shadow-clan, the stock villains (because of course) are kept broadly sympathetic; in the first set-of-six they are forced into a war they don’t want because of an obviously unstable leader that they have no choice but to follow. Individually, they are pretty chill once you get to know them, and the clan as a whole shifts back and forth between friendly and enemy as the series goes on and generations pass.
-The plot spans multiple generations, and the series author, ‘Erin Hunter’, is actually an ever-shifting team of writers sharing a pen name. So the setting details, the plot types, the overall mood and vibe, shift over time. Each book is kind of similar to the ones before and after it, but in aggregate the series shifts between wildly disparate genres and tones, from adventure to political intrigue to soap-opera-style family melodrama to light supernatural horror, from lighthearted to serios to comedy to borderline cosmic horror and back again, while still more feeling like ‘one thing’, if that makes sense. A delicate needle to thread, but the series does it well.
-The cast list is, pardon my lanugage, FUCKING GIGANTIC, exceeding even Wheel of Time, and even a lot of the bit characters are interesting, memorable, and occasionally plot critical.
Thanks for the description, I’ve been curious about these books. Interestingly, Tui T. Sutherland is one of the authors that make up the collective Erin Hunter!
Maybe RainWings are so lazy not because of culture or biology, but because they’ve grown complacent with the world’s meta.
With both invisibility and one-hit-kill venom, they don’t feel like they need to work to improve themselves, or worry about their friends going missing, because with their inborn abilities they’ll surely be safe.
That left them woefully vulnerable when the venom spit was nerfed.
It’s not a bad lesson for kids who play multiplayer games.
/s
> A statue that assassinates all dragonets of the SeaWing royal family.
For some reason, I can imagine so much comedic potential in the premise of a magical Terminator golem that persistently tries to assassinate a royal family for generations.
I can’t help but wonder: if all the dragons are just terrible (but especially RainWings), then what exactly are those personality quizzes for what kind of dragon you are checking? :P
And am I the only one miffed when fantasy authors write their faction names like “RainWing” or “TreeClan” or whatever? It just seems pointlessly ugly. Should Avatar have been The Last AirBender?
Lol, it was the meta-game this whole time! And I also do not love putting the two words together but also capitalizing them.
About the RainWings: Yeah, that’s what I thought too. That, sure, they have instakill venom, but they’ve probably used the venom to kill off anything that could possibly be dangerous (crocodiles, jaguars, snakes, etc.) and thus the only creatures left in the RainWing jungle are harmless creatures like sloths. If you live in a place with only harmless animals, it makes sense that they’d become lazy and passive, just sitting around.
(P.S. After reading about bonobos and their… er… habits, it makes me think: that could be another reason why the RainWings are lazy. They’re too busy, er, doing what gave bonobos their reputation. I get why WoF canon didn’t mention this, it is a kids’ book after all, but it makes sense to me.)
Hey La Guera, you’ve been a great commenter in the past, so I want to unpack a couple things here and hopefully show you why this interpretation would still be a problem, since I know you have no ill intent.
It makes sense that the RainWings would feel very safe because of their powerful venom, and even not believe that other dragons could be a threat to them. This may even have been Sutherland’s intent. But the portrayal is so exaggerated that it’s both difficult to believe and reinforces racist ideas.
From an in-universe perspective, feeling safe from attack wouldn’t translate into the “lazy and stupid” portrayal of RainWings. Once they weren’t worried about defense, they’d spend their time and energy doing other things like art, games, literature, etc. We know dragons have all those things, and the RainWings would have more time to practice them since they don’t need to spend any effort on defense.
From an out-of-universe perspective, the RainWing stereotypes are presented in the same way racial stereotypes are presented in real life. They are used to cut Glory down based on her birth, dehumanizing (de-dragonizing?) her with hate. Even if Sutherland had a perfect explanation for why the RainWings worked that way, it would still be a bad idea to justify racist thinking.
Oh man that would work so much better, I think, to have RainWings be a peaceful group of dragons who spend most of their time with art, games, literature, philosophy and such, because they don’t worry about defense. And even if they fight between each other, they try to not get too violent because they have instadeath poison.
With all other dragons being mean and violent, this kind of behaviour would breed such stereotypes as being lazy and dumb. They’re not building defensive lairs, they’re lazy! They don’t think about war and destruction, they’re dumb! Even with the dragons not bothering with the disappearances, you could think something up why they didn’t act as fast as they should have (if it’s important to the plot). Like, bureaucracy.
I didn’t read the books, and don’t know how much Glory has suffered. But at least the stereotypes like that shouldn’t be proven right, methinks
Yes, I think that that would’ve worked well.
Random Dragon: The RainWings are lazy and stupid!
LATER
RainWing: Oh, this is our giant elaborate treehouse art museum.
Glory: Why does everyone think RainWings are lazy and stupid?
RainWing: Because we spend our time painting and don’t like to kill and fight. We prefer building giant treehouses and filling them with paintings and poetry.
Glory: But why does everyone think you’re stupid? That painting of me is beautiful!
RainWing: Thanks! Well, because we don’t like to kill our fellow dragons, they think we are dumb. We’re just as intelligent as they are, we just use it for different things. Like this painting.
See, if the story said “the RainWings are just as smart and hardworking as the other dragons, they just prefer to work on different things” that would be fine. But since it says “the RainWings sit around sleeping all day,” yeah, that’s racist.
I apologize. That was not my intent at all, to play into racist stereotypes. I wish the RainWings had gotten more detail about what they actually do. As a very, very lazy person myself, nobody can be as lazy as they are without getting bored eventually. Maybe they paint beautiful paintings or something like that, but the books just don’t show RainWings that aren’t Glory doing stuff well. But I agree. No matter how well it’s justified, showing it as racial stereotypes are in real life is wrong. If Sutherland wanted to show it right, I think the ideal course of action would’ve been for people to tell Glory “The RainWing country is full of great artists/dancers/poets/whatever but not enough warriors,” concrete stuff that doesn’t overgeneralize, and not “The RainWings are all lazy and stupid.”
I also disliked all of the waffling on whether the prophecy is real. You can’t have your prophecy-subversion cake and eat it too.
I read Wings of Fire 3 years ago because I liked Warriors and because I found Sutherland on a “Latinx Middle Grade Authors” list. I don’t remember a lot about the racist stuff, but thanks for refreshing my memory!
(Oh, and apologies for the thing about Alicebot on another article. I freaked out seeing you condemn me, in the middle of the night, and made up some elaborate garbage in hopes of switching to another account. I thought you’d delete what I said about bonobos for being possibly beyond this site’s mandate and potentially racist, comparing the black-coded RainWings to apes.)
Really interesting breakdown! I wanted to get way into this series because the covers are gorgeous, and the novelty of dragon protagonists was so fascinating. But those flaws just really made it hard for me to stick with it as an adult, especially the “adults are so evil they’re incompetent” thing.
Also, I couldn’t believe the Rainwing stereotypes were just true!!! When the team got to their kingdom and that’s how things looked, I was so sure it was a setup for a subversion, that the Rainwings must have been influenced by a magical disease or cursed plant or something that made them sluggish, but no. Total disappointment and terrible message!
I also thought maybe they were all being poisoned or something but NOPE
I reminds me of multiple stories I’ve read (mainly those which were required reading in school) which attempt to send a message against racism against Black people, only to depict Black people primarily (if not completely) in ways matching the stereotypes brought up in the work. No wonder I half-assed every project involving those stories – I wasn’t reading any more of them than I had to. I’m amazed that writers struggle to realize how much it sucks for anyone who can relate with the marginalized character.
Yeah. There’s a difference between depicting bigotry and writing something bigoted.
The problem may lie in doing things out of shame alone. For the most part, the white culture is not blind to its bigoted history. They know they have done wrong, and as shame dictates, feel obligated to do things right. However, they don’t know what is the right way to apologize, so their attempts come out clumsy, often to the point of being bigoted in their own right.
When you do things out of shame, you feel the need to show you feel guilty, so you end up making a grand performance of how you’ve learned your lesson and want to make things right.
The problem is that said performance is yours, not of those you wish to present. Not the truth, but your reflection of it.
To depict social justice, you don’t need guilt and shame (if anything, they can end up just helping bigotry). You need curiosity to educate yourself, anger over being deceived, grief, horror, despair even, to remind yourself that you are allowed to feel them, not hide and suppress them.
And there’s no need for grand performances, where you are the hero. There’s much you can do by being a pragmatic sidekick. You don’t need to be a voice against bigotry. Instead you can allow the voice of the bigoted to be heard.
Then again, I might be completely wrong.
As much as I wish to learn of social justice, I am still part of the white culture, influenced to the same conformity, shame and systemic bigotry as others in the center. I don’t know myself, if what I suggested is any better option for how or how not to do things right. How could I, when I myself am in the Center?
Or, well, relatively close to the Center, at any rate. I am autistic, so that’s a point to the outside(that and scoliosis), but otherwise I’m pretty close to the ideal average. Male, white, young, middle-class, you get the idea.
I agree with this critique, though I also love the series. Also, on a positive note since you mentioned queer dragons, one of the main protagonists of the third arc is a lesbian dragon and she has a girlfriend!
Glad to hear that!
I love how you always point out the things the author got right in these critiques! While reading about how bad someone who is not me is can be super fun, it’s the good parts that are most inspirational.
I’m always happy to point out positive examples when I find them!
Well, at the end you asked why it was exactly those dragonets. That’s cause, this might be a spoiler, but, at the end of book 4 the brightest night Morrowseer told the “Dragonets of Destiny” that the prophecy isn’t real. The nightwings just made a fake prophecy to find a new home, cause that volcano was gonna erupt soon. That’s what the “darkness will rise to bring the light” meant. However, not everybody knew that, so they still got to choose the next sandwing queen. And why was it exactly those dragonets? Well, are all dragons born on the brightest night? Are all mudwings born from a red egg? Are all the skywing eggs the same size? Is every sandwing egg “hidden alone from the rival queens”? No. So they had to choose these exact dragonets, as they were the only ones that fit the prophecy.