Qinter, amazing or terrible?
Greetings, Dragons of Pyrrhia & Pantala!
Today I come bearing a blog about one of the most divisive ships in wings of fire, Qinter. Before we can discuss Qinter specifically though, we must discuss shipping as a whole.
Shipping is generally defined as where the fandom of a piece of media feel as though two or more characters from that piece of media should be together in a romantic context. Ships often lead to the production of lots of fan work (especially fan fiction and fan art). Ships can be either canon, partially canon or non canon, depending on how much material for the ship there is in the source.
Qibli first appears in book 5 as a member of the outclaws and shows a family sort of love and protectiveness towards Thorn, who at the time, was the leader of the outclaws. In turn, she showed similar feelings toward him. Qibli was well known for his snarky and good-natured humor, which often infuriated Winter (further contributing to the Qinter ship). This male SandWing dragonet was also known for the ragged scar across his snout and also the small, dark freckles scattered across it on his sandy beige coloured scales.
Now for Winter. He is an ex-prince of the IceWings, son of Narwhal and Tundra and sibling of Icicle and Hailstorm. He too, was introduced first in book five. He was described as an entitled, snobby and selfish dragon, however throughout the books he becomes slightly more down-to-earth, especially after finally realizing that his ranking did not define him. However, we notice that in the first few books starring him, he seems to judge everyone around him immensely, likely projecting how he was treated as a Prince.
Ok, so with that out ofthe way, we can move on to the main focus of today, Qinter! Qinter is the pretty popular ship between Qibli and Winter in Wings of Fire. A lot of Wings of Fire fans alrady believe Qibli and Winter are on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, so it's not a terribly far off jump for Qibli and Winter to have been shipped together. Out of the Qinter faniction I have personally read, it seems as though their dynamic would be an 'opposites attract' sort of thing.
For and against!
Details supporting Qinter
- Qibli and Winter are depicted to be teasing each other numerous times throughout the series, and oftentimes this is a tactic that Tui is known for when writing canon ships. Non-shippers have argued that this could merely be a friendship dynamic, but this is the sort of thing where it’s different depending on what angle you’re perceiving it from.
- In this section of Moon Rising, Qibli is shown to actually be seeking out attention/frienship with Winter: ‘Sunny had given him an easy way to get out of sharing Winter’s cave, but he wasn’t taking it. He actually wanted to be Winter’s clawmate, although she couldn’t see why. It wasn’t quite that Qibli liked him, but it was a bit that Qibli wanted Winter to like him.” This can definitely be interpreted as a hint towards the Qinter ship being canon.
- “ I’m coming with you. To rescue your little SandWing friend or whatever.” In my opinion, that is definitely evidence toward Winter caring about Qibli. On it’s own it may just seem like a friendship thing, but when its also paired with all the other evidence which has been compiled, it says a lot more.
Details against Qinter
- Moon existing. In an interview posted in a Deviantart journal, it says this: “She [Tui, the author] wasn’t sure who to pick [for Moon] until writing Book 10, but ended up picking Qibli because she feels nice guys should get the girl.” This is essentially a moot point for Qinter.
- Overall a lot of points that say Qinter is canon can also be flipped around as them being mere friends, so overall as previously mentioned, it depends on how you look at it.
- Overall, throughout the books Moon is shown to have more blatantly romantic interactions with Qibli as opposed to Winter and his interactions with Moonwatcher.
Are Winter and Qibli meant to be? Or would Qibli be better off with Moon? Don't forget to tell me what you think down below!
Hope everyone's day is going well!
Winged Wishes,
Isabella Laurier