YMMV / Wings of Fire

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • There are quite a few debates on the true natures of characters. In particular, it's hotly contested whether antagonists like Morrowseer are actually as evil as they seem.
  • Was Crocodile a traitor who got what she deserved for betraying a group that only wanted peace and causing the horrifying death of so many dragons, most of them innocent civilians? Or was she a dragon, who, like her queen, wanted to end the war once and for all to avoid future casualties, especially given that the attack on the Summer Palace caused far less fatalities than Moorhen and Burn's invasion of the Ice Kingdom would have caused, and Moorhen is largely forgiven by fans for being Trapped in Villainy?
    • And speaking of, are the Talons themselves actually a remarkably incompetent Well-Intentioned Extremist group, or genuinely villainous? It's hard to see some of their actions as helping the cause they claim to follow such as trying to kill Webs on sight, which genuinely serves little to no purpose to them.
  • Is Darkstalker a sociopathic and manipulative Big Bad, or just a Well-Intentioned Extremist?
    • Does Darkstalker really care if he turns evil? His actions and thoughts suggest no, that he truly believes the end justifies the means, but his reaction over discovering he's become as evil as Vulture makes it seem like he does care.
    • Similarly, does Darkstalker worry more about turning evil, or people realizing he's turning evil?
  • Sunny is the only main character that does not have a crush or love interest, therefore she is sometimes interpreted as being asexual and aromantic by some fans.
  • Did Icicle actually kill Crane? While Moon sees her clearly doing the deed in Sora's mind, Sora isn't exactly the sanest. It's possible that she was so traumatized by the death that she associated the memory with the first IceWing she saw.
  • In "The Talons of Power", did Queen Coral come to care about her son Turtle because she was starting to see eye to eye with him, or did she only start to respect and notice him because he was an animus?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • The main characters are often pretty nonplussed about the dangers they have to get into, though sometimes when a character's point of view is shown in their own book it shows that this was just a facade. Of the original five dragonets, this applies to Sunny much more than the others, though Sunny's example is eventually deconstructed - she is this way because she thinks everything will end fine since they are The Chosen Many and finding out the prophecy was never real to begin with makes her have her moment of angst and doubt as well.
  • More like "what rage?" considering we never see any reactions about Morrowseer blinding Starflight, just the anger towards his faking the prophecy.
  • There's also Blue in The Hive Queen. After spending most of the last book desperately trying to find his sister and finally succeeding, he awakes from his metamorphosis to find that Luna is missing after a fight with some HiveWings and it's not even known whether she is alive. He seems to get over this revelation within seconds, assumes that she is fine, and goes on with their next mission.
• Anti-Climax Boss: This happens a lot, possibly because many of the protagonists are extremely formidable.
  • It does depend on whether or not you believe she's a true villain, but Kestrel is one of the series's first antagonists, attempting to snap Glory's neck and keeping the Dragonets trapped in a cave. She's abruptly killed by Blister, to foreshadow her status as the arc's Big Bad.
  • Crocodile, technically the tertiary and one of the final antagonists of book two gets killed by Glory seconds after revealing herself.
  • Queen Battlewinner, who is killed almost instantly by the ice in her body when she jumps out of her lava cauldron.
  • Burn, who is taken out by Blister moments after her first in-person appearance since the first book. Made even moreso by her killing of the innocent Dragonet in the series's first chapter, and generally being the non present Big Bad of the book she dies in.
  • Icicle is never seen again after being captured by Glory's bodyguards and her punishment is relayed to Winter some time after. One might think she'd be a bigger threat after trying to kill Starlight, Moon, Qibli, and Glory.
  • Foeslayer is... not actually a villain, as revealed in Winter Turning. This isn't surprising to anyone who's read Darkstalker.
  • Queen Scarlet is killed in book 8 (by a new character no less) after being one of the main antagonists in every single book prior. Made especially shocking by her being one of the only villains left by that point, foreshadowing Darkstalker's nonbenign nature...
  • Anemone has a 8 book-long arc foreshadowing her becoming one of the most powerful antagonists in the series, and is set up to be Darkstalker's devious #2 in book 9 after being manipulated by them, but pulls a Heel–Face Turn at the end of the same book.
  • Chameleon is set up to be the perfect foil to Peril, and manages to escape after causing major problems for the protagonists in books 7, 8, and 10. He's then abruptly taken out after resurfacing around the climax of book 10, by a brick to the head.
  • Queen Wasp is revealed to be Dead All Along (or at least mind-controlled to the point of Death of Personality) in book 13. Granted, she is a Decoy Antagonist, and the true Big Bad is far more sinister.
    • Belladonna as well, though it remains to be seen whether she's truly succumbed yet.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Blaze is either loved for being the nicest of the rival queens, or hated for being a useless Brainless Beauty.
  • Glory. Depending on who you ask, she's either a great underdog who acts snarky to cover her inner pain, or she's just a callous jerk who takes out her frustrations on her friends for no reason. And then there are some who think she's an overpowered Canon Sue due to being queen of two tribes(at only six years old, no less), being one of the only RainWings to use her venom to its full advantage, and not seeming as disadvantaged by her flaws as other dragons.
  • Also Queen Coral. Is she a reasonable queen who has rightfully earned the loyalty of her subjects and genuinely wants to be a good mother as well, even though she had a pretty horrible life involving the death of much of her family? Or is she an insane Karma Houdini who is an utterly horrible parent and not that good of queen either? Unsurprising, given how many different sides to her The Lost Heir shows.
  • Darkstalker is either seen as an intriguing, interesting, and tragic character, or a cartoonishly evil, overpowered villain whose abilities completely derailed the story (there is a noticeable shift in plot once he shows up in person).
  • Qibli, depending on who you ask, he’s annoying or a funny, well developed character.
  • Kinkajou. Her Genki Girl personality was found to be endearing and funny, especially since she had a badass side to her. However, there were others who found her annoying. The way she was handled in Darkness of Dragons, where she near single-handedly defeated Darkstalker with an enchanted strawberry just made them hate her more.
  • Many fans enjoy Fatespeaker for her energetic personality, enthusiasm and find her ship with Starflight adorable. Others, however, find her Genki Girl personality grating and see her as a knock-off or replacement Sunny.
  • The Othermind. There are some people who think that it's an intriguing character and a change from the usual antagonists of the series. Others, however, found the fact that the Big Bad of the third arc was a plant to be too funny to take seriously.
• Broken Base:
  • Was the RainWings ruling over the NightWings in exchange for letting them live in the rainforest a good compromise that is the best way for the tribes to coexist? Or was it a horrible act that would realistically only cause problems in the long run?
    • Canonically, it seems to be working out fairly well.
  • Darkstalker's fate in book 10. Was what Kinkajou and Foeslayer did to him the only truly merciful alternative to killing him or imprisoning him again? Or, after several books of making it clear how awful, terrible, and monstrous it is to use animus powers to alter a dragon's mind, did they officially jump off the slippery slope by erasing his powers, memory, and very personality to rewrite him into being Peacemaker, a harmless strawberry loving baby dragonet? Opinions are sharply divided.
  • Moon choosing Qibli over Winter. While some fans are happy because they feel that Moon deserves someone like Qibli, who makes her happy, some fans are angry because they feel like Winter deserves some love.
  • The way that Anemone's crush for Tamarin was handled in Darkness of Dragons. Is it a good representation of an possible LGBT relationship? Or is Tui just pandering to the community? Did Anemone's crush of Tamarin come completely out of nowhere with no prior set-up, and does that make it bad? Given the series' large LGBT Fanbase, opinions are sharply divided.
  • Glory and Deathbringer's relationship, especially their considerable age gap (Glory is 7 and Deathbringer is 13, which was most likely an unintentional mistake by the author). Most of the problems arise from their actual ages: Glory is technically a teenager, while Deathbringer is a fully-grown adult. While some say that it's disgusting and that they shouldn't be in a relationship as Glory is so young, with some outright calling it pedophilia, others argue that dragons age differently than humans and it doesn't matter as long as it's completely consensual.
  • Shipping the Dragonets of Destiny with one another is discouraged by some, as it's considered to be uncomfortable on account that all of them were raised together and have a sibling-like bond. On the flip side, some would argue that this simply isn't the nature of their relationship, and they're closer to friends than anything. This issue is compounded by two of the Dragonets (Tsunami and Starflight) outright admitting to having had romantic feelings for others in their group, and two others (Clay and Sunny) more definitely seeing their relationship as a sibling bond. This all has made the Sunnyflight ship very divisive.
  • The announcement that Snowfall would be the point of view character for Book 14. Some people were happy and hoped that the book would give insight to Snowfall and develop an otherwise minor character. Others were disappointed that it went to Snowfall instead of Ensemble Darkhorses Lynx and Luna, and didn't see the point of giving an entire book to an unlikeable character like Snowfall as the point of view. This would die down when Lynx becomes part of the stealth team representing Pyrrhia at the end of the book and it was announced that Luna would be the protagonist of Book 15.
    • Speaking of Book 14, the fact that it's a breather and filler episode for half of the book with the plot-relevant things regarding Pantala only really kicking into gear mid-way through part 2. Some wish that it focused more on the plot rather than Snowfall's character development while others think that it's perfectly fine the way it is.
    • The way that Snowfall was handled in her book. Does the Ring of Vision cheapen her character development thanks to outside sources affecting her? Is it natural and organic? Is it forced? Like before, opinions are divided.
• Catharsis Factor: In "The Lost Heir", Whirlpool meets his timely demise at the hands of Anenome. For build up, Whirlpool is a creepy, social-climbing slimeball whose supposed to be the royal tutor, been has been trying to schmooze his way into marrying into royalty. When he figures that marrying Tsunami would be unfavorable, he tries to kill her. Later, when he sees first-hand that Anenome has powerful Animus magic, he plots exposing her to get into Queen Coral's good graces, even at the expense of Anenome having to use her magic to the point of losing her soul. So when Anenome uses her magically enchanted spear to knock Whirlpool into a pool of electrically-charged eels, it's no loss. If anything, he doesn't even deserve Anenome's guilt over having killed him.
• Complete Monster:
  • Queen Scarlet is the demented ruler of the SkyWing tribe. After she gained power, Scarlet ensured she remained queen by killing off various members of her family who could acquire the throne, using animus magic to turn her daughter, Tourmaline, into the submissive Ruby, and killing or threatening her loyal minions just to keep them under her control. As queen, she opened a gladiator arena where dragons fought to the death—sometimes on a daily basis—under the false promise of being freed. After adopting Peril, she forces her to kill seven dragonets while they were still in their eggs, before raising her to become a remorseless killer who murdered anyone Scarlet wanted. When Scarlet is wounded by Glory and is dethroned by Ruby, she uses her remaining resources to exact revenge on the Dragonets of Destiny by manipulating Icicle and Winter to kill them or else she'll murder their brother Hailstorm. When her plans for revenge fail and Scarlet reunites with Peril and her father, the three of them attack the SkyWing Palace and take Ruby's son, Cliff, hostage in order to make Ruby surrender, with Scarlet intending to turn Cliff into a weapon like Peril after she kills Ruby.
  • The Dragonet Prophecy arc: Princess Blister is an ambitious, sociopathic dragon who is largely responsible for starting the War of SandWing Succession. When Blister's mother, Queen Oasis, goes to hunt the scavengers who stole some of her treasure, Blister refused to send her backup, thus leading to her death. She later hid all of Oasis's treasure, pinning the blame on scavengers, and started arguing with her sisters, Burn and Blaze, over who would be the next SandWing queen. After Blister began to amass an army in secret, Burn and Blaze gathered their own forces and fought each other, resulting in a war that led to the deaths of thousands. During the war, Blister frequently manipulated other dragons into fighting her battles or assassinating her foes, wasting no time betraying or even killing her allies the moment she deemed them useless. She even tried to have the five Dragonets of Destiny murdered simply because they hindered her plans and refused to select her to be the next queen. When the Dragonets try to force Burn, Blister, and Blaze to have a peaceful meeting with each other to end the war, Blister kills Burn, and attempts to kill Blaze minutes later.
  • The Lost Continent Prophecy arc:
    • Cottonmouth is a human being who's secretly the brains of the Othermind. Thousands of years before dragons ruled the world, Cottonmouth desired to eliminate opposing empires by stealing dragon eggs and raising dragonets to be weapons. After too many eggs were stolen, the dragons retaliated by destroying various human settlements and cities, with Cottonmouth sneaking away with an egg as thousands perished. When Cottonmouth discovered the Breath of Evil could control animals' minds, he tested it on various subjects—including some of his followers—before attempting to use it on the dragonet "Lizard". When his plans failed and he and Lizard became part of the Othermind, Cottonmouth spent the next few millennia plotting revenge and using his new powers to kill any dragons he saw. Once Queen Wasp unknowingly was exposed to the Breath of Evil and gained the same powers, Cottonmouth let Wasp take control of most of Pantala, all while he manipulated various dragons into spreading the Breath of Evil around Pantala. When finally confronted by the protagonists, Cottonmouth uses his powers to possess various dragons, opting to infect the entire planet until every living creature is either dead or under his control.
    • Queen Wasp is the tyrannical ruler of the HiveWing tribe. Believing other tribes will eventually try to usurp her, despite none showing any hostility towards HiveWings, Wasp manipulated the HiveWings into going to war with the LeafWings, which nearly drove the tribe into extinction. Having been exposed to the Breath of Evil, Wasp used her newfound Mind Control powers to possess thousands of HiveWings in her tribe to act as her warriors and peasants, even going as far as poisoning dragonets while they're in their eggs so they can serve her the minute they hatch. She also drove the SilkWings tribe into submission, using them all as slave labor and punishing anyone who went against her with imprisonment, death, or being paralyzed for days while still fully conscious. When various dragons expose Wasp's misdeeds and try to dethrone her, she possess every dragon possible to use as soldiers so they can slaughter the heroes and their companions. Even after discovering Cottonmouth is secretly controlling her, she uses her resources to try and finish off the remaining LeafWing tribes and their allies just to maintain her power.
• Crack Pairing: Claytermelon, a pairing with Clay and a watermelon has become popular, especially with fans who don’t like Clay/Peril.
• Dancing Bear: Much like a certain other dragon-centric video game series several years ago, one of the biggest draws of the book series is that the setting has the dragons be actual protagonists with their own unique culture and society instead of being second fiddle to the pesky humans on their backs who would never have gone far without them or generic beasts to be slain for trophies. Ironic when you consider what happened in Dragonslayer.
• Designated Evil: In the third arc, a major theme is the characters questioning when it's acceptable to use violence to fight the oppressive HiveWings, and generally concluding that it's a tricky question for ordinary HiveWings who may or may not support Queen Wasp's regime but Wasp herself is clearly fair game to target. We then find out that, decades ago, Hawthorn did just that, poisoning Wasp with a plant that would allow him to control her mind, in order to stop the imminent genocide of his tribe. This backfired badly due to the plant giving Wasp herself powers instead, but the cast largely thinks Hawthorn's actions would be wrong and no different from the HiveWings even if they had worked out the way he intended. It's never explained what he should have done instead to save his tribe that would be even less destructive.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Debates between Sunnyflight and Starspeaker shippers can become very intense, and often lead to this. Some Sunnyflight shippers either want Fatespeaker dead for interfering or Sunny dead for deciding that Starflight is Like Brother and Sister to her, while some Starspeaker shippers want Sunny dead.
  • The whole Moonbli vs. Winterwatcher debate, especially after Darkness of Dragons. A lot of angry Winterwatcher fans want Qibli dead and vice versa. The debate became incredibly heated and intense after the love triangle was canonically sorted out in Darkness of Dragons, though the arguments have thankfully died down a lot since the book's release.
    • Averted with most Qinter shippers. Usually, they keep Moon single, or ship her with Kinkajou.
  • Even before The Lost Continent was released, Clearstalker shippers went after Sunstreak, who was merely hinted to be Clearsight's future husband (the very next book confirmed that they did marry). Keep in mind that Sunstreak only appeared in the prologue and barely had any lines.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Morrowseer is loved by fans, so he gets a lot of this treatment. This is despite him being a manipulative, arrogant, and heartless dragon who only cares about his tribe and reputation, not to mention fabricating the prophecy to begin with.
  • Unsurprisingly, Darkstalker gets this treatment a lot. While he's definitely friendly and congenial and has a very understandable reason to hate the IceWings and especially Queen Diamond, that doesn't change the fact that he quickly jumps off the deep end after Foeslayer gets kidnapped. He brainwashed Clearsight and Fathom in ways that he thinks is best for them, turned Indigo into a wooden carving after she saved Fathom from his animus-touched goblet, forced his own father to disembowel himself in brutal fashion, and he intended to wipe out the entire IceWing tribe and take over the world even 2000 years later, and he used his animus magic after he wakes up to brainwash everybody he meets into liking and trusting him. He even admits near the end of Darkness of Dragons that it's just as much as revenge than protecting his tribe and Qibli outright says that it's ultimately Darkstalker's choice to do evil things, not because animus magic got rid of his soul. Oh, and after Turtle is forced to reveal himself in Talons of Power, Darkstalker immediately tries to kill him, thinking that he's Fathom.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Where did Umber and Sora run off to? That's a popular fan question with many theories. The most common ones are that they're either in Possibility, somewhere in Pantala, or on a random island.
  • Even before Dragonslayer was released, a popular theory was that Sky, the SkyWing dragonet that Wren befriends, is actually Peril's twin brother Ember. Sky and Ember both look alike, and a red dragon with a fresh burn scar was seen, presumably Ember's mother Kestrel. Sky also has no fire, as does Ember due to being one of the twin SkyWing dragonets. This was confirmed by Word of God.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Carnelian had a lot of fans who were all outraged when she was killed in an explosion.
  • Peregrine and Pronghorn, two students at Jade Mountain Academy, have their fair share of fans for their positive, helpful personalities.
  • Fin, one of the 32 SeaWing princes, for his salty sense of humor and the fact that he might be a cartographer.
  • Tamarin, Kinkajou's best friend and a blind RainWing. She's well-liked, not just for being blind, but also for being a Nice Girl. Lots of fans expressed their sympathy when she was injured in an explosion.
  • Ostrich for being an Adorably Precocious Child.
  • Queen Glacier, who is one of the most popular queens despite having very few appearances in the books.
  • Lynx is extremely popular, considering she only appears for a few pages in Winter Turning, for being one of the few First Circle IceWings who are actually nice, and as a possible Love Interest for Winter. Suffice to say, people were pleased when she played a role in the third arc.
  • Queen Anaconda, the RainWing queen during Darkstalker’s time, has a fair share of fans, despite not having an appearance or even a mention in any books.
  • Willow. After getting a mere mention in The Lost Continent, many fans became excited and speculated that she was female and Sundew's girlfriend/crush. Her brief cameo in the epilogue of the Hive Queen, which confirmed her gender, got fans even more excited. Her appearance in The Poison Jungle proved that she and Sundew were dating as Star-Crossed Lovers, and their relationship being surprisingly adorable despite their drastic differences and personalities made Willow a fan favorite.
  • Firefly received a lot of interest due to fan speculation that she was the possible dragonet of Glory and Deathbringer. She only got more popular after that was confirmed.
  • Whiteout’s another hugely popular character as well, thanks to her unique personality and the fact that she’s unusual and very nice.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • A lot of fans liked to pretend that the NightWings' psychic powers were more than just propaganda designed them make them seem superior. Turns out though, that they were actually correct.
  • More than a few people aren't thrilled about animus magic being permanently erased for the current generation.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Many people prefer certain pairings to the canon ones.
  • Sunny/Starflight was a fairly major one to Fatespeaker/Starflight, though shipping the Dragonets with one another comes with a hefty Broken Base as mentioned above.
  • Winter/Moon and Qibli/Winter are fairly popular among people that don't like Qibli/Moon. Kinkajou/Moon likewise has a following as well.
  • Peril/Turtle has some fans for some that like their relationship in book 8 and don't feel that Clay/Peril has much development.
• Fanon:
  • Hybrids. While there are certainly canonical hybrid characters, the fandom loves to come up with different hybrid combinations and characters and it's a lot more prominent there. There are also hybrids with the ancestry of multiple tribes, not just two.
• Fanfic Fuel: Sailor Earth dragons. Just choose a tribe and follow the naming convention of said tribe and you're good to go. As of this writing there are ten tribes to choose from and fans have also made their own tribes.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Disney Animated Canon, particularly because of the idea of redrawing Disney characters as dragons. Maleficent herself is an easy fit as she has her own dragon transformation as it is.
  • A little surprisingly, there’s an increasing one with the Godzilla fandom, of all things. Ask around and you’ll find plenty of FanWings who either grew up on Godzilla, or migrated over once the Modern Era of Kaiju kicked up. Art of the Godzilla kaiju reimagined as Wings of Fire dragons exists, and at least a few content creators make content for both. Helps that both are fiction series with not-humans at the center.
  • The fandom also gets along with the How to Train Your Dragon fandom, due to both of them being fantasy series featuring dragons. Similarly, there are a lot of Flight Rising players that are also WoF fans and vice-versa.
  • Though it's died down, there's surprising overlap between fans of Wings of Fire and Murder Drones or Rain World, at least if you look at the community on the unofficial wiki.
  • A lot of WoF fans are also fans of Warrior Cats, due to them both being written by members of the Erin Hunter team.
  • Many older FanWings are also readers of Temeraire and Dragonriders of Pern.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The French community is respectably large. Their general Wings of Fire Wiki has slightly more articles than the English Wiki (785 vs. 731).^note The French Wiki makes separate pages for unnamed characters while the English Wiki lists all unnamed characters on one page. Because of that, the two Wikis are pretty much the the same size. The French community also has its own fanon Wiki and a "stupid" Wiki made for humor.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Tsunami getting at Starflight’s attempts to lead the group become this once you learn why. Especially in one scene where Starflight tries to assure Blister that they’ll work with her, and gets shot down.
  • Also, in book 1, Tsunami killing Gil out of simple impulse is surprisingly dark when the next book reveals he was her father all along.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • In The Dark Secret, the last time Morrowseer is seen, he's in a volcano minutes away from erupting. Although the characters in-series treat him as being dead, some fans believe that he could have escaped the volcano. It's worth noting that Morrowseer's literal corpse shows up in Winter Turning.
  • There are similar arguments for the survivals of Blister and Burn in The Brightest Night and Whirlpool in The Lost Heir. This was also actually the reason why "The Dragonet Prophecy" has a line about the cracked fragments of the prophecy SkyWing's egg shell; test readers were all assuming she didn't really die.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the beginning of "The Hidden Kingdom", Glory protests Tsunami wanting to be a RainWing queen, stating that "You cannot have a SeaWing as queen of the RainWings." Later, not only does Glory become the RainWing queen, but also queen of the NightWings.
• Ho Yay:
  • Winter and Qibli in book 10. There are far too many examples to count, but the crowning moment has to be when Qibli remarks that they will likely end up married... and his mother nonchalantly takes him seriously.
  • Turtle and Umber. They were roommates and good friends to the point that Turtle referred to Umber as a brother. Plus, there's the fact that Umber is actually gay.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: The Snowfox/Snowflake ship is known as Kindred Spirits.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The NightWings are basically an entire tribe of this. Sure they were vicious and amoral, but that mostly because they were living on an active volcano that was slowly killing the entire tribe. Special mention to Battlewinner, given her condition, and how she knew that she would never get to see the home she had fought for so long and Fierceteeth, who spent her whole life in the volcano in the shadow of her brother's role as The Chosen One, and gets a Sympathetic P.O.V. in "Prisoners". And then there's Mastermind, who might have been one of the worst of them he tortured RainWings For Science!, but he loses Farsight, Starflight's respect for him that he desires so much, and everything he's worked for his whole life, and ends up imprisoned in a quicksand pit to the point of near death only to be thrown back in again, for an indefinite amount of time.
  • Icicle, who, despite her questionable beliefs is genuinely horrified at the thought of losing Hailstorm, to the point of "burning her scales in lava" just so she won't fall asleep and have to face Queen Scarlet. She's clearly breaking down at the thought of falling asleep due to the RainWings' tranquilizer darts and thus failing everything, and the whole thing ends with her being placed at the bottom of the seventh circle as well as some other undetermined punishment.
  • Also Flame, who is be cruel to the other alternates and arrogant about being irreplaceable, but is definitely sympathetic for how he was separated from his mother for years, gruesomely injured by Viper, and sent away to Jade Mountain Academy just when he had a chance to be with his mother again, where he is hated by everyone for being part of the Talons of Peace despite how he hates them and wants nothing to do with them. He's shown to be angry and miserable to the point of wishing he used the bomb just so someone would notice him.
• Les Yay:
  • Moonwatcher and Kinkajou develop a strong friendship over the course of book 6. Kinkajou briefly gets mad at Moon for being a mind-reader and a seer and not telling anyone about about it, but she forgives Moon rather easily, which is somewhat reminiscent of a couple getting in a fight. They don't have too much interaction besides book 6 due to Kinkajou getting Put on a Bus due to her injury, but that's all that was needed to convince fans.
  • After Sunny and Fatespeaker meet, they find out that they have lots of things in common and hit off rather well, becoming friends, and Glory comments that they have "twin souls". While Sunny/Fatespeaker is largely seen as a Take a Third Option to the Sunny/Starflight/Fatespeaker Love Triangle, it's still a possibility.
  • In the first few chapters of The Hive Queen, Cricket gushes over Sundew and how amazing she is, and genuinely believes that Sundew is a good and kind dragon under her tough and prickly exterior, which can easily be interpreted as Cricket having a crush on Sundew. It helps that Sundew is a lesbian.
• LGBT Fanbase: There's a surprisingly large amount of LGBT fans, especially after several LGBT characters and relationships were shown (Umber, Anemone, Snowfox, Snowflake, Burnet, Silverspot, Sundew, and Willow).
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Hoo boy...
  • Tsunami, for having the least seen love interest of the protagonists. She’s been shipped with Clay, Glory, Starflight, Sunny, Whirlpool...
  • Starflight, for the whole Sunny/Fatespeaker thing.
  • Sunny, who doesn’t even have a canon love interest.
    • A lot of people who don’t ship Sunnyflight either ship her with Smolder or Meerkat.
  • Winter seems to generate tension with everyone he interacts with.
  • Turtle and Kinkajou, due to the rather out of nowhere way they hooked up. To say nothing of Anenome.
  • And Moon, who has been shipped with Qibli, Winter, Turtle, Darkstalker Kinkajou, Peril...
  • Qibli. He’s been shipped with Moon, Winter, Umber, Ostrich...
  • Umber, for being one of the confirmed LGBT dragons, as well as one of the few MudWings to get focus. So far, he's been shipped with Winter, Qibli, Turtle, and Flame.
• Love to Hate: Oddly enough, Scarlet proves to be this for rather fitting reasons. Yes she's a psychotic monster who will make others suffer just to watch them squirm, yes she twisted her adoptive daughter into a killer, and yes she tricked the dragonets of prophecy into thinking she decapitated Glory. But she's a dragon! Any self-respecting fan of Smaug or Dungeons & Dragons will know this is par for the course for any self-respecting red dragon.
• Memetic Bystander: Most of the background dragons (Coconut, Liana, Herring) are popular with the fandom. A NightWing accidentally pictured without a face on the cover of The Dark Secret also has somewhat of a following.
• Moe: Auklet, Cliff, Peacemaker, and Bumblebee for being cute dragonets.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Crane is one of Clay’s sisters who gets killed in the war. There is also a MudWing queen from Darkstalker’s time named Crane, causing a lot of fans to joke that Crane got reincarnated into a queen.
  • "We are not calling it magical death spit!" ^Explanation A line uttered by Glory in The Lost Heir after Sunny refers to her venom as "magical death spit".
  • Everyone x Therapy ^Explanation Due to various issues that the main cast have, a common joke is that the real OTP of the series is everyone getting therapy.
  • Moonsnake ^Explanation When the cover of the Moon Rising Graphic Novel was revealed, many fans immediately noticed the awkward-looking thickness and length of Moon’s tail. Memes, jokes, and even fanmade animations comparing Moon to a snake followed quickly.
• Never Live It Down: Glory's venom was described as 'magical death spit' in exactly one scene, and sure, her response was an overreaction, but canonically, there's no indication that anyone ever called it that again, or that Glory would have snapped at every usage. However, in fanon, everyone calls it magical death spit, all the time, and it's guaranteed to get a rise out of Glory.
• Nightmare Fuel. Oh, there's a lot of it here. So much so that it now has its own page.
• No Yay: Readers are generally not fans of the fact that Whirlpool planned to marry Anenome as she is two years old and he is a grown adult. They're really not happy with his backup plan to marry her younger sister, a newborn dragonet.
• One True Threesome: Qibli/Winter/Moon is known as "Qinterwatcher".
• Popular with Furries: This is a book series with dragons as protagonists in their own unique world while humans are a background factor. It would be more surprising if it wasn't popular with them.
• Romantic Plot Tumor:
  • The first four books tended to have the protagonist fall in love or befriend someone that ends up being their love interest along their journey. Clay/Peril is pretty well liked and plot-relevant, but the others have a Broken Base, not helped by the tendency of these loves to have a personality pattern of "I like you, you are different than anyone I've met before, and I'd love to help you even if it means defying my tribe".
  • Several people got tired of the "who will Moon choose?" subplot considering it dragged on for five books and never really advanced, despite constantly being mentioned. To make it worse, in Darkness of Dragons it had a tendency to get in the way of the interactions of interesting fan-favorite duo, Winter and Qibli.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Anyone involved in a relationship with a main character will get this as some point. The only exceptions seem to be Clay and Peril and Sundew and Willow.
  • Peacemaker in canon is a happy, playful, sweet, strawberry-loving dragonet who shows no resemblance or sign of his past self... but some speculate.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: "Cobranami", a ship between Tsunami and Cobra Lily (a minor character from The Poison Jungle, is mildly popular. Both characters have never interacted and don't even live on the same continent.
  • For that matter, “Sunkat”, (Sunny and Meerkat), as the two characters have never interacted, yet have quite a significant shipping fanbase.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • The debate between Winterwatcher(Moonwatcher/Winter) shippers and Moonbli(Moonwatcher/Qibli) shippers, which was always destined to happen as their love triangle was one of the main focuses early on in the second arc. Ever since Moon Rising's release in 2014, the debate between the two factions has been intense, with lots of arguing over who "deserves" Moon, with Winterwatcher fans saying that Winter's done a lot for Moon and his love for her is what inspires him to be a better dragon, while Moonbli say that Qibli is much kinder towards Moon than Winter is and would make her happier. When Darkness of Dragons was released and Moon ended up choosing Qibli, this only served in making the debate even more heated than it already was, with Moonbli shippers rejoicing and Winterwatcher shippers crying foul. While the debate has thankfully died down a lot since the release of Darkness of Dragons in 2017, it still stands to this day.
  • To a lesser scale, Sunnyflight(Sunny/Starflight) versus Starspeaker(Fatespeaker/Starflight). While Starflight had a crush on Sunny during the first arc, a possible romance between him and Fatespeaker was heavily teased. Thus, this led to the inevitable and caused many fights between shippers. The Brightest Night only made this worse, as Sunny rejects Starflight due to only seeing him as a brother and trying to persuade him to pursue Fatespeaker instead. The arguments only served to get bigger from there, and even though it's not as big as it was back in the day, there's still an evident divide between Sunnyflight and Starspeaker shippers.
• Shocking Moments: The last few chapters of The Dark Secret. Where to start? Starflight manages to arrange his own escape but returns with Glory and an army of RainWings to free the captives. The volcano threatens to erupt and kill all the NightWings. Starlight manages to convince the NightWings to accept Glory's rule in exchange for being allowed to live in the rainforest. Morrowseer reveals that the prophecy was faked before being burned alive in the volcano eruption, and Starflight is blinded and almost killed. All in the last few chapters.
• Squick:
  • Whirlpool, a grown adult dragon, is perfectly willing to marry Anemone, who is two years old, in order to become king. When she understandably refuses, he just says that he'll marry Auklet, a newborn dragonet, instead. This enrages Anemone so much that she ends up killing him.
  • Darkstalker transforming a NightWing into his ex-girlfriend is generally met with this reaction both in-universe and outside of it.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The second arc had a pretty serious Broken Base for a number of reasons. The third arc won back fans that didn't like the previous arc and was well-received for its unique worldbuilding, well-written characters, and for having an LGBT protagonist^note previous LGBT characters had played only minor roles in the story.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Pyrite and Ruby's personalities being erased from existence, and The Reveal that they're actually Hailstorm and Tourmaline respectively, qualifies.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Dark Secret: Starflight is separated from the other dragons for the entire book, though this is downplayed as he gets to visit their dreams and see their character development throughout the book. This wouldn't be particularly noticeable on its own, but...
  • The Brightest Night has some decent world-building and development for Sunny at the heavy expense of all the major characters being sidelined until the last few chapters since Sunny is separated from them in chapter 1.
    • This is also the second book in a row this happens, meaning we get little to no character interaction from the main 5 from the beginning of book 3 to the end of book 5, which is pretty ironic considering the theme of unity and friendship.
    • Additionally, this also makes book 3 the last time in the series that Clay, Tsunami, and Glory have a direct role in the plot for more than a few chapters, making them an example of this.
  • Winter, in books 8-9 as unfortunately his decision to leave his tribe and help save the world with Moon and Qibli ends up being fairly meaningless to everyone but himself.
  • Carnelian is a relatively standard character from a tribe we rarely see (the others being Peril and royalty), and Soar seems to be this as well. As such it can be a little disappointing that we don't get to actually see much of how the SkyWing tribe operates when Carnelian dies (itself an example of this) and Soar turns out to be a disguised RainWing. The only other SkyWing of particular note, Sky, doesn't even live with the SkyWings due to being abandoned by his mother Kestrel shortly after his birth. Averted for Sky come Dragonslayer, where he's revealed to be alive and gets his time to shine. It's even implied at the very end that he'll show up in the main series in some form.
    • Sure enough, he shows up in The Dangerous Gift.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In general, each protagonist only getting one POV book means we don't get to peek in their brains much after their Character Development in their first book.
  • We never actually get to see Starflight (or his friends for that matter) react to his blindness, thanks to Brightest Night focusing on Sunny's adventures away from the group.
  • After Moon Rising, we don't get to see much of the Jade Mountain academy, despite it already being an intriguing concept. This is part of the reason the Darkstalker plot isn't particularly well liked.
  • Apparently Moon is Morrowseer's daughter, and has no idea what he's done. This isn't really explored at all, despite the fact that Moon knows about their connection.
  • In The Dangerous Gift, some readers are a little annoyed that the discussion during the queen's council meeting about the scavengers being sentient and about who would represent their tribes on Pantala isn't shown.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Starflight might be a bit obnoxious in book 2 but not only is he generally right, but he’s only doing it to keep everyone alive, which can make Tsunami’s anger towards him seem a bit shallow.
  • Downplayed with Blister, but her status as The Dreaded Big Bad seems a little off when compared to Burn, who starts the series by throwing a dragon egg off of a cliff. Blister is certainly horrible, but nothing she does is worse than what Burn does.
  • Starflight again in book 8. Yes, maybe keeping an eye on and mistrusting Peril somewhat is justified. She's the Dragon who sets everything they touch on fire, she's killed several thousand prisoners already (including relatives and friends of some of the students (Hailstorm for one) as far as they know), and she was previously the loyal servant of the crazy Queen that just threw a decapitated head at them and vowed to kill all the Dragonets. On top of that, the students actively fear her and several are inquiring about ways to kill her. Is hurting her feelings really worse than risking the unstable student being murdered or murdering someone should things go south?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • In book 5, one of Sunny's defining character traits is her ability to sympathize with or at least try to understand every dragon she meets (Peril, Camel, Preyhunter, Smolder, even Addax, her kidnapper), which makes it a little jarring when she's extremely harsh on Stonemover for his despairing attitude. Sure, giving up instead of helping people who need you is bad, but Sunny is much less understanding of his circumstances than people who have actively tried to kill her— circumstances which include being used as a weapon in an unending, pointless war, and being literally unable to move due to being turned to stone.
  • In book 6, Sora is framed in a sympathetic light where accidentally killing other dragons to avenge Crane means it's okay for her to go on the run and live another day, especially because Icicle killing her would only serve to continue the Cycle of Revenge. Granted she's remorseful about her actions and even willing to die for her crime, it doesn't change that she's guilty of second-degree-murder, with two innocent dragons on her head, and Tamarin's been bodily injured. In the least, she does need to answer for her actions with a fair trial.
  • Opal's creation of the Gift of Vision is treated as smart and heroic, although magically forcing children ^note child queens are quite common in Pyrrhia to live up to her personal moral standards and replacing their dreams with often-traumatic visions from the perspectives of torturers, war refugees, and abuse victims (which conveniently somehow always make recipients less paranoid, not more)...and doing it in secret, with absolutely no oversight from anyone to ensure she is acting appropriately...comes off as really creepy. Sure, Opal is well-intentioned, but what if she wasn't? What makes her so trustworthy that people should just accept her desire to talk alone with their children? How does making people nicer justify indocrinating them? At the very least, Opal's fear of royal dragons who she could blow up with a thought comes off as disturbingly self-pitying.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Leaf from Dragonslayer is generally criticized for being bland and having little personality, especially compared to Wren and Ivy, who are much more interesting.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite being a children's series, there are moments where it really isn't (to get a good idea, the prologue of the very first book featured two deaths, including one of an unborn dragonet). Along with some very graphic and bloody deaths and deformations, the series grapples with themes of war, discrimination, and even genocide.
• The Woobie:
  • Osprey from book one lost his ability to fly (in the Sky Kingdom during the war no less) and had to give up all his treasure to the Queen in exchange for food. Then he’s thrown from a height for boring the Queen. The one dragon that wants to save him is the one that incinerates everything and everyone she touches.
  • Anenome in book two. Her mother brushes off concerns that she’ll lose her soul. Her ludicrously awful teacher wants to marry her to become royalty and no one seems to sympathize or even talk to her about her father being recently killed, her sisters being murdered, someone trying to kill her, etc.
  • Starflight, especially from book 4 onwards.
  • Hailstorm. His brain and body are changed into a clumsy SkyWing for TWO YEARS, causing a major identity crisis.
  • Fathom. He finds out he's an extremely rare animus dragon, to his delight. His life goes well until the Royal SeaWing Massacre, when his grandfather and mentor Albatross, goes insane as a cost of using his animus powers too much, and kills most of his family, including Fathom's parents and cousins. He ends up with PTSD and fears using his powers of fear that he'll go insane like his grandfather did. Then he's sent to the Night Kingdom with his friend Indigo to teach Darkstalker to control his animus powers. Darkstalker becomes more and more deranged, and Fathom, along with his other friend Clearsight, is forced to put Darkstalker to sleep forever and trap him deep inside a mountain to stop him. Despite Fathom getting a happy ending, he's still traumatized by everything he's gone through.
  • Sora. Her older sister is killed in battle, traumatizing her and leading her to kill her sister's killer by setting off a bomb in Jade Mountain, causing the deaths of Bigtail and Carnelian, as well as severely injuring Tamarin. Later, after a failed attempt to kill her target, Moon finds everything out and Sora is forced to go on the run alongside her brother Umber. To make it worse, she accidentally killed two dragons, and feels an intense amount of guilt for it.
  • Stonemover. He's an animus, and as such, is forced to make tunnels connecting the Night, Sand, and Rain Kingdoms. He later meets Thorn, and develops a relationship with her. He feels bad for what he's done and leaves, leaving Thorn and their unborn dragonet. He flees, sheltering under Jade Mountain and enchants his scales to slowly turn into stone. He stays under there for six years, with his only company being Dinner, a fox he enchanted to bring him food. He would later get to meet his daughter, reunite with Thorn (though they had both moved on), and get a bit more company. However, he's very scared of using his animus powers and feels like it's a curse, and when Darkstalker offers to heal his scales, he turns it down.

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