DeathBringer thoughts, opinions and criticisms
I want to like DeathBringer as a character. When he's not with glory he can be a very interesting character. Given that I'm taking Tui's word in good faith and he is indeed meant to be around Glory's age, this would imply he is a prodigy for his age, that he has done a lot of things most dragons his age have not done or are unable to do. That is a very cool idea to think about.
However, this NEVER gets brought up or utilized and it comes across more like Tui had TOO many plans for DB, but just fumbled hard to make any of them work to the point she had to shove them aside for a winglet instead of a main line book! This winglet does fix the age situation I think, that's what I heard I haven't read it BECAUSE IT IS NOT THAT READILY AVAILABLE WITHOUT PIRATING.
Hell, I don't even like the ship that much, the Glorybasket ship, and yes I'm one who prefers that name over any other shipname for them, GloryBringer sounds cool, but as an apparently rare enjoyer of the scavenger book, I liked the Murder basket name, it's funny and cute? And I bet he prays to the moons that no one finds out about the nickname. And honestly the book wasn't that bad, most people don't seem to like it because dragons took a back seat in the book and I think that's ok! We knew about the humans existing in the world of wings of fire and finally got an idea of how their society works and I actually think that's cool as a lore buff.
As for why I don't like the ship, it's not because of the weird age mistake that happened, or the fact that he was originally sent to kill Glory and his friends. It's actually because once he's with her, he is just a simp. There is no more personality, he's just a simp. And yeah he could have been secretly a dorky assassin all along but we don't get to see that prior to them getting together, do we? Nope, not really, he's more charismatic and sassy if anything. He does nothing that plot relevant afterwards, and it's just disappointing, given they could have been a power couple that put the SASS in asSASSin.
Honestly just wasted potential over all, giving all the build up only to throw him aside like that and downgrade him. Not to mention ignoring that he is one of many nightwings who killed and hurt other dragons only for it to be forgotten and ignored with Mastermind taking the fall as the Nightwings' scapegoat. Like he was a prodigy assassin who killed and maybe tortured who knows about many dragons prior to meeting glory and all the other nightwings get punished sorta (mostly mainly only Mastermind overall) but he gets a free pass cause he's the queen's boyfriend?
Also another reason I don't like the ship is that with how simpy he is, but also how Glory seems mostly disinterested, it feels very very one sided. I've seen people throw the "but glory hides her emotions!" argument at the wall, but like ... Not really? She's more blunt and straight forward about her emotions, if she likes something she'll let you know, and if she doesn't, you also most definitely know. And she had moments of being sweet and loving to her found-family, if she liked and truly liked Deathbringer back, even if she wasn't very interested in open/public displays of affection, we'd know and have her being generally sweeter and nicer to her supposed boyfriend.
Instead it comes across as not wanting the dumb love sick idiot basicly get himself killed for him, even though he's supposed to be a very capable assassin who could handle himself just fine and would be the number one dragon to guard her overall, especially compared to the rainwings who still aren't 100% sold on the idea of hurting another dragon even if that's the best case scenario. Literally we see this in the book that they aren't still fully ready to be proper guards for queen and she decided to bench her best option.
And at worst she seems kinda actually annoyed by her advances and hasn't gotten around to telling him off yet. I don't think it's a good look that THIS is how it comes across to at least readers. At least one scene where they aren't in the public eye and her returning the advances or being more openly affectionate with him would have been nice. The idea they SUPPOSEDLY have a dragonet together in the future (Firefly) isn't confirmation as that's only implied to be in a few timelines, not all and comes across as a nod to the fan ship at best.
Like the ship doesn't bode well to me and I think is written horridly. End of the story.
As for his appearance, I like it. He's a blue toned/hued whatever Nightwing. I personally think nightwings can be any cooler, but are normally dark, often near black hues of those colors, like how crows and ravens under the right light are actually very colorful and pretty to look at. Yes, blues, greens and purples may be the most common colors, but other colors CAN exists and do so, often with white freckles being the most common to exist marking.
For the record, I think the opposite exists for icewing, being they can also be almost any color but a pale, pastel near white shade of so.
But yeah I think only one other Nightwing that's blue like this vibrantly exists, and people like to assume she's a hybrid, which I hate to death given how proud nightwings are of being Nightwing historically, I feel like intertribe couples are rare and shouldn't be the first thing to consider when a dragon looks "weird" than what's status quo. Biodiversity exists, and so do genetic mutations that exist independently of a dragon being a hybrid. A dragon doesn't need to be a hybrid to look weird or different than what we've seen a tribe to look like.
Like for example a white Nightwing can just be albino, and a black icewing could just be melanistic.
