YMMV / Flight Rising

• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Crops up from time to time. However, the site's admins have no desire to enforce canon in dragon bios and other player-created lore (they only care if it breaks site content rules), so the fandom's dislike is often much less vitriolic than in some other fanbases; there's a site culture of players having whatever headcanons they want and ignoring site lore when it suits them.
  • Plague seems to get hit with this more than other Flights, due to more zombie aesthetics creeping into their official site skins over time despite the Plaguebringer canonically hating the undead (because they failed at surviving). There's also some amount of players disliking lore interpretations of "survival of the fittest," too, with many players taking a more Darwinian interpretation of "this means the Plague Flight favours dragons who are well-adapted regardless of how physically strong they are" over the common site lore interpretation of "this means the Plague Flight favours dragons who are physically powerful."
  • Whether the Exaltation mechanic or Baldwin reducing familiars kills the dragon or familiar in question. Site lore is that it definitely doesn't in either case, but that doesn't stop some players from enjoying darker interpretations of the mechanics. As of July 11, 2023, the text for transmuting familiars has been changed to reducing a familiar's "gift" instead, making it far more clearer that familiars aren't being shoved into the cauldron.
• Fan Nickname: All of the deities have them, usually something along the lines of (element)mom/dad. A non-comprehensive list:
  • Light has Glittermom or Glittermama.
  • Wind has Hot Dad or Noodledad.
  • Arcane has Spacedad or Space Pope.
  • Earth has Earthdad, Rockdad, Poprock, or Landlord.
  • Lightning has Bossman, Bossdad (or just "The Boss").
  • Shadow has Shadowmama or Droolmama.
  • Nature has Beardmomma, Glademama, or Ladybeard.
  • Fire has Mather.
  • Ice has Icepop or Popsicle.
  • Water has Tidepapa or Tidepotato.
  • Plague has Plaguemother or Sick Mom.
• Fanon: Plague Flight is often associated with the undead by users, likely because of its association with disease and rot coupled with their deity looking like a diseased corpse. However, the Plaguebringer has been confirmed by Word of God to hate the undead due to their failure to survive and inability to adapt to their surroundings. While there are canonical zombie hydra dragons, they're formed by dragons that were created by Light Flight's deity.
• Friendly Fandoms: Unsurprisingly, due to similar settings, many users are or were Wings of Fire fans, and Warrior Cats by way of WoF being Friendly Fandoms with them as well. Regarding other pet sites, there's a lot of userbase overlap with Dragon Cave and Lioden.
• I Knew It!: When ancient breeds were announced many players suspected that Gaolers (early ice dragons similar to tundra dragons) would be among them due to their appearance in short stories. Not only did Gaolers end up being an ancient breed, they are the first such breed to be released.
• Memetic Mutation: There's enough to fit their own page.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Imperial breed's encyclopedia entry became this with the revelation of Emperors. These undead abominations are created when the corpses of several Imperial dragons are in close proximity, fusing together and becoming a mindless monstrosity that drains elemental energy and destroys everything. Not only do they have multiple heads, but each head wields the powers of the original dragon fused with the Emperor. These things can get so colossal and powerful that the deities themselves may need to step in and fight.
    • Worse still, as one story from the Bounty of the Elements event lore reveals, the deceased Imperials making up Emperors don't seem to be aware of the senseless destruction they are causing, with the snippet told from one head's perspective believing itself to just be innocently playing with the other heads of the Imperials it's mistaking to be its siblings.
    • Oh, and the Emperor mentioned above? As of the Map Update, it’s visibly wandering around the Light Flight’s territory.
  • Combining this trope with Body Horror and Funny Moments, the FR users like to Photoshop their dragons or the deities into some kind of Eldritch Abomination. Here are a bunch of examples, courtesy of FR user Arlo, and a compilation of these "abomination threads" is right here.
  • The description on the Behemoth Lance. "Dragons not of the water flight are unable to discern what manner of creature this spearhead came from. Those of the water flight will not speak of it."
  • The Plague flight is a more up-front source of nightmare fuel if you don't particularly dig diseases and carrion. The center of the plague territory is essentially a giant crater filled with a soup of virulent diseases, the borders are apparently alive and are starting to spread, one location requires a constant stream of magi to prevent the lingering effects of a superweapon from going wild, and they're apparently working on bio-weapons that some believe are on the level of a god.
  • The new item drop system that was previously added in Dustcarve Dig made it so that players can receive certain holiday items from more tasks and activities on the site, including exalting dragons. So what happened when dragons were exalted during Sunparched Prowl 2021, a meat-themed holiday? Players had the chance to randomly receive an edible slab of meat after exalting a dragon. While exalting doesn't actually kill dragons, a lot of players still found it incredibly morbid or just downright hilarious since some users already joke about "making soup ingredients" out of exalted dragons whenever they go to the Plaguebringer anyway.
• Popular with Furries: Many users are in or adjacent to the Furry Fandom. It's not surprising, considering the site is based around designing Civilized Animal dragon characters.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Egg rot, which was so unpopular among the playerbase that it was eventually removed from the site altogether. If you went a day or more without incubating your eggs, there was a chance that one or more of the eggs would die. While eggs will no longer die no matter how long you leave the nest unattended, there are a few remnants of the egg rot mechanic still onsite: going to someone else's nest page will show "x/x Eggs Healthy", the account settings page still has the "Eggs Discarded" counter, and one of the jigsaw puzzles◊ shows a Shadow nest with four healthy eggs and one dead egg.
  • Eye types. The rarer eye types initially being entirely a matter of luck rather than effort, as well as users being unable (or at least extremely unlikely) to get them on older dragons, left a sour taste with many users. It's telling that nearly three years after the system was implemented, there was a 100+ page forum thread in the Suggestions forum all but begging for any other way to get these kinds of eye types besides random breeding chance. This mechanic was hated so much that, after just under three years, the site's staff made buyable vials for every eye type that was once breeding-only.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Players with different playstyles will occasionally butt heads and call other playstyles the "wrong" way to play. Some common fracture lines include the Exaltation mechanic, dragon naming conventions, whether the Coliseum is fun or not, Generation One collectors vs. breeding project fans, and "pretty" dragon breeders vs. "chaotic" dragon breeders.
• Tear Jerker: Pretty much everything surrounding the Pillar of the World. The Dragonhome description stands out especially. (Bonus for being the only area description that isn't a general description of the area.)
  The Earthshaker stood alone at the plinth, alone at his altar, a singular figure to match the Pillar he was charged to maintain. Yet not to his task did he watch, for his moist eyes saw only the diminishing shapes of his siblings, gone, on the southern horizon, never to return...
• Ugly Cute: Many of the dragons. Common culprits include Snappers in general (especially the male pose), genes that are sometimes charitably called "situational" like Gembond, Crackle, Slime, Sludge, and Smirch, and more clashing combinations of colors (affectionally called "eyeburner dragons").
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Despite the name of the Gaoler breed being an actual word, an archaic spelling of the word "jailer" to be precise, many users on the forums admit to pronouncing it "gow-ler."

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