Wings of Fire Rants

Clay

What can I say about Clay?

Clay is just... Clay.

In short, Clay is a wholesome bean that would die for his friends without a moment's hesitation. He's very genuine and trustworthy, although can be a bit slow academically at times. He's also in a serious romantic relationship with food. If he was in a Harry Potter house, it would be Hufflepuff. Or maybe Gryffindor...

I don't really know what to say for Clay. There's nothing excessively remarkable about him, other than the fact that his mother sold him for a cow.

Yeah, and you thought your parents were bad.

He has a decent enough character arc; when he tries to become the monster Kestrel wants him to be, he finds he physically cannot. I think it's more of an arc of self discovery than self development, and it's pretty okay.

But overall, Clay is kinda mid.

He's pretty simple. Simple minded, simple personality, simply designed. There's nothing wrong with simple characters, but I personally prefer the more complex ones, like Darkstalker or Albatross. Now that I think about it, I may just have a preference for insane ones...

Clay made a lot of sense to be the first protagonist that we meet in Wings of Fire, though, because he has a very heroic thought process. Like, he's one of the dragonets that was interested in saving the world ever since the very beginning, while it took some of the others a little bit longer to care. Having a naturally heroic character to kick off the series was good because if we didn't, it would feel a bit more like the Dragonets of Destiny were the villains.

I don't think that made much sense, so let me explain.

People are very used to having the main characters in stories have some heroic qualities in them. If "The Dragonet Prophecy" was from the POV of someone like Tsunami instead of Clay, we would see a lot less "Let's save the world and help each other!" and a lot more of "I'm the only important one worth worrying about." This is because someone like Tsunami is a lot more narcissistic than someone like Clay.

The first character in the DoD that we see explored kind of sets our mindset on what the DoD is like. The first character in books series that each have a book from different POVs in each book are usually the "leader/older sibling," so the first DoD character we see sets the path for the others because it's already assumed that they have a "leader/older sibling" type of role.

Like, Clay sets the path for the others because he's seen as their older brother, so if he's interested in saving the world, the others are much more likely to follow suit than if it was Sunny or something. 

So if Tsunami was the main character in the first book, she would be the one setting the path, and it's likely that she would make the others have a more self-centered mindset (not to say that Tsunami is selfish, per se, but she just prioritizes herself and her friends over others most of the time).

So since Clay has this "Save the world" philosophy, it was only a matter of time before the others also adopted this philosophy since they all look up to him. If they all looked up to Tsunami in the same way, everyone would have ended up with a "Save ourselves" philosophy, which in turn kind of makes the dragonets look like the bad guys.

I know this makes zero sense lmfao-

Idk I guess if I can't find anything obvious enough about a character to talk about, I'm more likely to overanalyze the little I do have into weird confuddled messes like this.

All you need to know is that though I believe that Clay is pretty meh, he's also important to the series, and it was important that he was the main character in the first book.

Okay next dragon-