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flamebringer0 · 7 months

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About Nightwing Powers

Wow it turns out you can attach titles to posts, awesome. I will now make another post.

It always drove me kind of crazy how Nightwing powers are presented in canon. I think it drives a lot of people crazy because I've seen more than one person's headcanon adjustments to them. So here is my contribution to that genre.

Some Nightwings have perceptual abilities that other dragons -- other Nightwings and members of other tribes -- lack. One is the ability to read minds, the other is the ability to see the future.

All Nightwings develop both future sight and mind reading in the egg. The mind of a fetus can't integrate any of this information, and most will lose both abilities long before learning to understand what they mean. The dragonet's third eye closes, so to speak, within hours after hatching, and will stay that way for the rest of their life. For unclear reasons, the loss of these abilities is prevented by exposure to the light of a full moon immediately after hatching.

Nightwings always hatch at night, at least if the eggs are exposed to the sky. Those who hatch under a full moon retain the ability either to read minds or see the future, whereas those who hatch under two or three full moons retain both. The presence of these abilities also causes the development of silver scales on the face. A mind reader has a silver scale at the outer corner of each eye, whereas a prophet has a silver scale in the center of the forehead.

[Image ID: Two simplistic line drawings of a dragon's head. These drawings are identical with each other aside from the placement of specific scales, which are highlighted in white. The left drawing is labeled "mind reading" and shows two crescent-shaped scales at the corners of the dragon's eyes. The right drawing is labeled "prophecy" and shows an eye-shaped scale in the center of the dragon's forehead. /.End ID]

The appearance of the silver scales correlates with the strength of the ability. A larger, rounder scale indicates greater power.

[Image ID: Five simplistic line drawings of a dragon's head. These drawings are identical with each other, and with the drawings in the previous image, except in the placement of specific scales. The first drawing is labeled "Starflight" and has no highlighted scales. The second is labeled "Fatespeaker" and has two crescent shaped scales near the eyes. These scales are very thin, much thinner than those of the drawing that was labeled "mind reading". The third is labeled "Clearsight" and has a single scale in the center of the forehead. This scale is large and perfectly round. The fourth is labeled "Moonwatcher" and has three scales: two at the corners of the eyes, and one in the center of the forehead. These scales are shaped identically to those of the "mind reading" and "prophecy" drawings from the previous image. The last drawing is labeled "Darkstalker" and has three scales: two at the corners of the eyes, and one in the center of the forehead. All of these scales are large and perfectly round. /.End ID]

A dragon hatched under three full moons inevitably has the most powerful prophecy and mind reading. Other than that, it's unclear what exactly makes the abilities of one Nightwing stronger than those of another.

Raw power isn't the whole story, though. Clearsight is the greatest prophet of all time, but she isn't the most powerful prophet of all time (or even the most powerful in her immediate friend group). It just turns out that a dragon who diligently works on her abilities will have a certain advantage over one who believes he is already the most powerful and has an inevitable destiny.

It may not be immediately obvious what it would mean for someone to be "more" or "less" powerful at mind reading or prophecy, but there are two relevant metrics: clarity, and control. I think the names are self-explanatory, but just in case, here's a metaphor. If you imagine Nightwing powers as a flashlight shining into a dark room, clarity is the brightness of the bulb, and control is how easily one can direct the beam. These metrics are not really independent: weakly empowered Nightwings will be weak in both aspects, and strongly empowered Nightwings will be strong in both aspects. For those in the middle, who make up the majority, clarity is more developed than control.

The strongest prophets can direct their vision down many different paths, examining the futures that cascade out of intricate chains of decisions, possibly centuries into the future. The weakest prophets have occasional, muddled impressions that a certain decision in their immediate future might lead to something good or bad. In between are the average prophets, who have clear visions, but little ability to control when they occur or what they are about.

Similarly, the strongest mind readers can root around in another dragon's mind and examine any fact, belief or memory they're interested in, whereas the weakest may have a vague impression of the most immediate, intense feelings of whomever they're around. Average mind readers can clearly read the surface thoughts of other dragons, but can't probe arbitrary mental structures without somehow activating them -- by inducing the target to actively reminisce about a memory or some such thing.

In the old days, back when Nightwings understood where their powers came from, it was quite common for ambitious parents to try to time the conception of their eggs so that they would hatch under the full moon(s). For a single full moon, this is almost pointless: the quickest of the three moons cycles through its phases in just a few weeks, and the variation in the incubation period for a Nightwing egg is great enough that it can't be reliably timed to any specific moon phase. For two and three moon nights, this practice is more meaningful, but only in the very general sense that someone who doesn't conceive an egg roughly a year before the brightest night definitely won't have any thrice-moonborn dragonets, whereas someone who does, might.

Some seers would also offer advice about how to do this. For the most part, this advice was snake oil; only the most powerful seers could decide to have a vision about a particular egg's future. Even among the few who could, it would be extremely difficult to see and articulate all the subtle factors that lead an egg to hatch after a longer or shorter incubation, and most of them would be far outside the ability of the parents to really control anyway.

More unscrupulous parents would occasionally try to break an egg open under the full moons, regardless of whether the dragonet was ready to hatch on their own. This practice has never been successful, as hatching in this way disrupts the delicate developmental process needed for the dragonet to retain their power. It is also quite dangerous, and many of the dragonets who were subject to this simply died.

Foeslayer and Arctic didn't do any of this, incidentally. They just got lucky. Or they got unlucky. Depending on which of them you ask.

Speaking of Foeslayer and Arctic's kids, Whiteout has both Nightwing powers. It's not because she hatched one day after the brightest night, though. Hatching a day after a full moon doesn't grant any power. It's actually a manifestation of synesthesia. Synesthesia causes sensory modalities that are unrelated in most people to correlate in a specific way. Whiteout, like all Nightwings who hatched under no full moons, lost direct access to her abilities shortly after hatching. However, she's still able to use them indirectly via synesthetic influence on her other senses. This is why she describes Clearsight as "azure on the inside": to her, Clearsight's thought patterns are azure in a fairly literal sense.

Another Nightwing whose power manifests in an unusual way is Flame. I mean, Flame isn't actually a Nightwing, but he has a semi-recent Nightwing ancestor. That's why he has a forked tongue, unlike other Skywings, and why he has darker scales than any other Skywing. And he hatched under a full moon, so he can read minds. But since his Nightwing ancestry is slight, his power is extremely weak. It's so weak that he has never become consciously aware of it, and most of the time, it doesn't really affect anything. But if someone thinks really hard about him, he senses it. This is why he's the only dragon Moon has ever met who can tell when someone's looking into his mind. It's a very weak form of the same two-way communication she uses to talk to Darkstalker.

In the year 5000, Nightwings have largely lost access to their powers, since they no longer allow their eggs to hatch under the moonlight. Contrary to what Moon thinks, this isn't because they're afraid of hatching another Darkstalker. After all, if it were specifically desired to avoid hatching eggs under the full moons, we would expect to see some kind of active prohibition, or at least some sort of legend about the terrible consequences of doing so. What actually happened is that the Nightwings' new home prevented them from hatching eggs in moonlight, and after a few generations with no mind readers and no prophets, the dragons started to believe their own abilities were legendary or allegorical.

Despite the Nightwings' present powerlessness, belief in their abilities persists. The Nightwings encourage these rumors, and also train their dragonets to imitate the power they lack. This training mostly consists of cold reading and theatrics, not unlike the techniques human con artists use to simulate psychic powers. However, they also leverage the one sensory ability that Nightwings still have over all* other dragons: an extremely strong sense of smell. Most dragons are aware that Nightwings smell better than members of other tribes, but they don't grasp that they may leak private information through subtle odors that only Nightwings can perceive. By examining the smell of another dragon's body, modern Nightwing "seers" and "mind readers" deduce information in a way that is easily mistaken for magic by the uninitiated.

Darkstalker is highly scandalised by this practice when he wakes up, not least because he has an Icewing-tier nose and can't do it.

Now that Nightwings are living in the rainforest, it's likely that their extrasensory abilities will start to become more common again. Unfortunately, their only connection to the ancient techniques for controlling those abilities turned out to be evil and was sent to gay baby jail. It will likely fall on Moonwatcher to begin the process of re-developing these practices and teaching them to a new generation of Nightwing dragonets.

*Actually, Seawings can smell nearly as well. But only underwater.

#ok i think that's all the thoughts i had about that #turned out to be more than i expected honestly #wings of fire #wof #wof headcanon #headcanon #wof nightwing #nightwing #wof clearsight #clearsight #wof darkstalker #darkstalker #wof whiteout #whiteout #wof moonwatcher #moonwatcher #wof flame #flame

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threegunbrainrot · 1 year

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i dont have any trigun mutuals so i'm just gonna ramble my thoughts into the infinite void of tumblr. and im sure others have touched on this same topic but

it almost seems like vash is getting softer with every new installment of trigun? like incredibly consistently and incredibly specifically.

let me explain.

i'll start with tristamp and work backwards; the tristamp vash we all know and love there is incredibly adverse to violence.

more often than not he ACTIVELY refuses to fight and just WON'T draw his gun. this post loosely counted the amount of bullets that he shot throughout all of season 1, and almost ALL of them (like to an insane degree) were dished out against knives, who vash knew was strong enough to take the hit.

the few times vash does draw his gun against a human in tristamp, it's as a blunt force weapon (against the badlads gang and livio, for example) or to disarm others/save someone with ricochet (like shooting the punisher before wolfwood can kill livio).

he just doesn't shoot people. at ALL.

then if we look at 98 trigun, things change drastically.

here, vash isn't afraid to hurt people a little if it means more will be saved in the end. of course he never kills, but he actually shoots people here. not only that...

he holds a casual, sarcastic conversation while pointing his weapon at people.

he constantly shoots at limbs to immobilize people, fires warning shots extremely close to peoples' vitals, and performs several very insane trick shots throughout the show to wound those with armor.

tristamp vash wouldn't even draw, but 98 struts around firing warning shots into the sky and singing about bloodshed for intimidation! i'm not sure there's a single episode where he doesn't shoot someone at least once.

...so what about trimax, then?

(PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD)

he is so. shockingly. violent.

of course he never kills. of course he's still trying to save people, but there's this anger in him that i was completely taken off-guard by reading for the first time.

tristamp vash is so soft he's painful to watch. 98 vash makes a heartbreaking effort to be as silly and nonthreatening as possible, constantly making himself out to be the fool. but trimax?

he's... literally grief-stricken and out for revenge. explicit revenge. he's angry and he's hurt and he lays his intentions out so clearly. he's making THREATS.

seriously:

hunting legato. HUNTING him.

it's not even a matter of drawing his weapon anymore. he does it constantly, and fires just as much. never to kill, but he doesn't joke around the way 98 vash does. the most he'll offer is a sunny smile to reassure others and nothing more.

i'm not that far into the manga, either. i'm sure there's countless more (and probably better) panels to convey this side of trimax vash, but i suppose it also says something that i've found so many panels depicting this so early on.

but the progression of vash's personality is fascinating regardless.

from a tortured, angry loner desperately trying to cling to his morals for rem's sake

to an equally devastated man who devotes himself so completely to acting the role of the fool

and finally to the sad, chronically depressed shell of a person in tristamp who refuses to so much as draw his weapon.

#trigun #trigun stampede spoilers #tristamp spoilers #trigun 1998 spoilers #trigun 1998 #trigun 98 spoilers #trimax spoilers #trigun maximum #trigun maximum spoilers #vash #vash the stampede #ok god just trying to cover my bases with all those tags #the last thing i wanna do is spoil anyone #this is such an incredible series and i want everyone to enjoy it in its purest form #but yeah i could ramble about the different vashes aaaaaaaalllll day #i kinda wanna compare all the ww's too cuz even if the differences arent so violently distinct theyre like twice as intricate #but vash's relationship to violence over the years is the most fascinating thing. he's so quick to fire in trimax and 98 for the safety of #others- both with wildly different mental states behind those bullets- but tristamp just. doesnt. Period.#tho admittedly this s1 tristamp has kind of turned out to be the prequel. i wonder if he'll be quicker to the punch in s2 #anyway god gonna stop rambling now. this post was mostly just for me anyway cuz i wanted to put my thoughts in order #ill be surprised if this goes anywhere #trigun spoilers

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