My Wings of fire Fanfic Fanpage

Why I love Peace and Its Shadow

If you haven't already guessed by the description and my numerous comments I am just a tad bit obsessed with Peace and Its Shadow.

BUT, it's for good reasons, which I will explain here.

1. Fully embracing Peacemaker not being Darkstalker:

Most Peacemaker fanfics I have read have Peacemaker and Darkstalker fused emotionally in some way or sometimes basically be one and the same downplaying the fact Peacemaker should be a totally separate entity un-bound by the sins of Darkstalker. Good examples of this are Wings of Fire: Revenant by VexVamp and Finding Peace by Warrior of Spectra. Which, while both are absolutely amazing fanfics that I too cherish, both combine Peacemaker and Darkstalker at some point and both have Peace take the sins of Darkstalker on their back to some degree. 

This is contrasted with PAIS where from the get go Darkstalker is introduced as a ghost that follows and communicates with Peacemaker showing the separation to not just the reader but also to Peacemaker and Darkstalker as characters in the story. Peacemaker does not struggle with guilt nor ghostly feelings related to the one he replaced. Rather, Peace struggles with hiding this forbidden pact and the preconceived notions of those who still him as Darkstalker a being who must be suppressed at all costs.

2. Focus on relationships (and prejudice) instead of defeating a unifying evil:

To put some context before I speak since 'Darkstalker being a ghost' and 'no unifying evil' is... uh a wild thing to say. In PAIS it is a major plot point that Darkstalker has his rage and emotions in general suppressed to a high degree. It is through this emotional suppression Darkstalker is able to peer into the mirror for once in his life and develop regret over his actions.(go see Darkstalkers Character facts in Strawberries and Darkness)

Got it? Continuing on now

PAIS has no big bad. All conflict comes from the cracks in the foundation of peace that the Wings of Fire world now sits on mostly coming from prejudice. By removing the big bad Ghosty focuses and examines the cracks in the foundation the hero's left. And he does that by shoving all those problems right into Peacemakers face. Prejudice: Peacmaker is the only night-rain hybrid in the village; a supposed "abomination" to the Nightwing pride. Race is a significant part of WOF society and hybrids have only recently begun to make a place for themselves. Violence: around halfway through the first part the secret assasin a dragon(well dragons) deemed responsible for a set of unsolved murders around Pyrithia. One was already revealed to be a broken dragon lashing out against those who were mean believing them to be unchangeable and now Peacmaker tracks the secound one who he suspects targets Peace out of vengeance. Finally how could we forget Peacemaker's birth: from the very beginning Peacemaker was suppressed. First, from the words that drew his birth, putting him into a haze of bliss and love of strawberries. Then, form the jade winglet who saw a single path and aggressively forced him down that path compromising their ideals of freedom all to suppress Darkstalker. With all these problems the story has a different more real kind of intensity to it that resonated with me.

4. Peacemaker's motivations and character

Peacemaker in this story has more emphasis on negative characteristics. While Peacemaker still is a foil to Darkstalker like most stories. Unlike most of those stories Peacemaker has negative characteristics. To begin, Peacemaker's main struggle is with a crumbling mental state that if un-adressed will lead to Peacemaker giving up on life. The opposite to Darkstalker where through egocentrism he willingly blinded himself to the path to salvation that was handed to him and instead drove his friends to betray him for the best of everyone else. This duality between the two also enhances Peacemaker's struggle with identity. Despite being opposite to Darkstalker, the sheer magnitude of Darkstalker's actions bind Peacemaker to the shadow of his actions to the despair of Peacemaker. To put it in Peacmaker's own words:

 "It doesn't matter what the answer is...once they find out where it came from...forget about the tenseness, it becomes hate. They hate this thing."

"because to them if those are the same scales...it's the same dragon"

I also love how the author made young Peace act more akin to Pyrite but, with the ability to slowly breakfree of the constrains of the enchant. Starting out by only comprehending happiness and only eating strawberries he slowly begins to feel more emotions. The most important emotion being fear. The emotion Peacemaker first learned. Then the incident happened fully breaking the emotionally restrains allowing Peacemaker to feel depressed for the first time in his life.

The part I like the most about Peacemaker is what he desires most: Peace and Freedom. For his entire childhood Peacemaker had peace. He had friends who could always distract him and an extended familly who gave him a path. He a happy ending seemingly perfect on the surface. But, it was shattered the moment Peacemaker put on that earing. Now Peacemaker seeks to create a place similar what he had for himself and so far it's... going decently. But, Peacemaker is also reflective. As the story goes on Peacemaker realizes the one flaw in his perfect ending: He was on a leash while being told he was free. Thus, Peacemaker also wants "A life that I desire of my choosing with control finally belonging to me and no one else". Those two desires of Peace and Freedom guide him down a path that has both the potential to ruin Peacemaker, but also to allow Peacemaker ascend with that knowledge to understand and solve the cracks in the foundation he was born of.  

5. The shorts on Strawberries and Darkness

For viewer interaction having an entirely separate story based on side thoughts is absolutely perfect. There is additonal facts on characters, sides stories, and a place where we can ask the author stuff. It's amazing dsajflkjdsal;kfjdsalfjdsfdsajlfdsa.

I really like this story lmao.