currently rereading wings of fire for the first time in years and realizing that the jade winglet arc is SO compelling to me. we just spent the whole first arc unraveling the idea of destiny and fate and telling kids that they can choose their own paths, only to be told hey actually there ARE people who can see the future and there are predestined paths and you kind of go hmm okay. and then by the end of the arc and with the addition of darkstalker we see cycles form with these characters over and over: foeslayer, a bookish nightwing, falls in love with arctic, a tortured kind of evil icewing. then clearsight, a bookish nightwing, falls in love with darkstalker, a tortured kind of evil half icewing. and so we see this and we see moon and winter set up as a couple and we think oh okay moon, a bookish nightwing, will fall in love with winter, a tortured kind of evil icewing but he will reveal that he’s not THAT evil and that’s how the cycle will break. the pattern stays intact. and you see how everyone fits into the roles from darkstalker - fathom and turtle, kinkajou and listener, even peril and whiteout in a lot of ways. but ultimately, moon breaks this and chooses qibli, the only person from the jade winglet that doesn’t quite fit, since clearsight never had another pyhrrian love interest and there’s not anyone in darkstalker that fills the role platonically, either. but the thing is that we read qibli’s book and realize that winter isn’t darkstalker at all; it’s qibli. qibli spends the whole book confronting his similarities to darkstalker, using anemone’s bracelets to (accidentally) bring harm to his own kingdom, considering how he would use his own magic, logically agreeing with darkstalker, etc. and yeah that’s super obvious i’m not making revelations here, and him choosing not to take darkstalkers animus deal is also an obvious way of saying that he isn’t like darkstalker, actually, and he can do better and make better choices. and on a slightly less obvious level, him choosing that is breaking the cycle that goes long before his time, arguably before arctic even. but what’s really fascinating to me is that the books almost imply that he would have been the same as darkstalker if he was born with animus magic, instead of getting it from someone else. because losing your soul to animus magic seems to come less from the power itself and more from the feelings of superiority and power you gain from it, and these feelings are the only thing that really truly set qibli and darkstalker apart, it stands to reason that qibli as a natural born animus would be very similar to darkstalker. so ultimately that raises the question of: DID moon break the cycle by choosing qibli, a character very similar to darkstalker to the end? would it be breaking the cycle if she chose winter, who parallels arctic till the end of the arc as he fights with moon and is otherwise hostile? and, if both options are part of a longer pattern, was moon, in fact, following a predestined path no matter what? was her fate always going to be upholding that cycle? fascinating. its so fascinating.
