shipfishwrites

[shipfishwrites]

wow, gorgeous!

A gaggle of Jade Dragons for RustlingLeaves for this year's Temeraire Summer Exchange! Since they also asked for sketches, here's me trying to figure out how to draw Jade Dragons:

The wings are inspired by the common swift (Apus apus); they have a fast, dynamic flight which would match a Jade's.

This also means that the "arm" part of the wing is shorter than the "finger" part, which would mean that the wings are rather long when folded up. That also matches the description of Jade Dragons having dragging wings when walking.

I pondered either giving them a short mane or some frills or nothing and then went with a short mane.

For the horns I went with simple antler-like ones in adult dragons, they take a moment to grow though. The fifth dragon (the one landing) is a young dragon and therefore has more nub-like horns. (On that note: the fourth dragon is supposed to be old and therefore more grey in appearance than the others.)

Since dragons do apparently have external ears, I gave the Jades small ears to be more aerodynamic.

The colours of the Jades were inspired by this dagger ^^

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canon compliant (derogatory)

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omg so cuuute!!

Tiny icons for Discord of two of my favourite lads.

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love the idea of big wings they have to inflate!!

working on it…….. the silly tongue is bc I think fire lizards should be omnivorous and eat pollen and honey along with meat, insects, and eggs. and a tongue like this is good for lapping up egg and honey. you’ll notice that i’m still neglecting the wings because i can’t decide on them.

i was thinking about doing a thing with layered insect-like wings. but i couldn’t figure it out so they went in the garbage. here's a gif of one opening and closing its wings. if i went with this i would have it be that they have to dry and pump up their wings like a recently-metamorphosized butterfly after hatching

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What in the good goddamn is "hangbutt syndrome"?????

it's a silly name for a certain way of drawing dragon or other fantasy creature wings! I've seen a funny little comic about it but i can't find it, random pics will have to do

see how this wonderful ASOIAF art has the wing tucking in and connecting to the body forward of the hips? imagine the animal with weight and note where the most mass is, in the chest and in the legs. but the wing (which is the opposite of weight, it's what gives lift) only counteracts the weight of the chest because it doesn't cover the legs.

the animal would be dragging its butt through the air bc (unless it had truly titanic back muscles to keep that area rigid) it's not being lifted at all!

compare this to my oc Brumm, originally illustrated by artist Drakanecia, whose wing membrane extends past his hips to his tail. if anything he has hangface problems.

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Working out my design for pernese dragons, playing with some ideas and things I've seen and heard on here too ^^

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oh i like it when the human and the wher are interacting. hell yeah tack!!!

now that the dragon hatching is over, we're having a member-run wher clutch! so I had to whip up an eligible chaser real quick lol. Meet Sibonakaliso "Boni/Beads" and Black Akalisk, a traveling healer duo that juuust so happen to be in town for the duration of the runs. The winner of the first run gets picked tomorrow so 🤞 good luck to all the chasers!

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5 dabloons to the first person to draw me a differential morphology sheet of all five colors where it's not the metallics with the most ornamented or derived morphology

I Am Not Kidding

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Okay, for the hell of things, getting the opinion of the fandom on the topic of dragon coloration. Because goddamnit we all have our thoughts on the matter and what are polls for if not figuring out where fandoms lie?

For the purposes of this you have four options-

Minimalist Canon-Certain: The chromatophores utilized by dragonkin produce only yellow, blue, brown, and black so far as colors, with all colors being formed of some combination of the above and all dragonkin only producing those appropriate to their rank. This is as close as possible to what canon probably is, but offers the lowest color range options.

Minimalist Red-Addition: This one adds the production of red and orange tones that make getting the chocolate browns mentioned in the DLG easier, but otherwise is the same as the one prior.

Maximalist Canon-Certain: Again the chromatophores produce only yellow, blue, brown, and black, but this category supposes that dragonkin are capable of producing any color in group but merely preferentially produce those appropriate to their rank. This would allow for things like green-toned blues or more khaki-toned greens.

Maximalist Red-Addition: Again, just like the one above but with the addition of red and orange production. This would allow for purple-toned blues or rose golds.

So! With these in front of you-

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Another Pernese dragon? Well how could I not get revenge for art done of my wher with one?

Seaforth here belongs to @ciameth, she's a very pretty Green, I love her lobed wings!

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btw i did a proof of concept. ignore how the eyes hover over the chest. concept: proofed. (this is from the clan leader selection screen where randomized cats are rolled)

clangen for pern dragons SHOULD be a thing, as suggested by @threadfall . i know clangen itself is pretty open to digging. the sprite sheets are publicly available and you're even encouraged to add your own to your own game and help make new ones for the actual game. so like, making a dragonshaped sprite would be pretty easy i think, but it would be a lot of work to adapt all the various layers for the new shape!

i have zero idea how any of the actual systems of the game work -- but it seems like it would be trivial to do things like rename the patrol mechanic sweeps or w/e. the problem there is that there's approximately one billion outcomes so you'd have to write like, at least a dozen to not bore yourself to tears going on patrol and getting the same outcomes

the romancing and mating mechanic would need the most work, probably... like in terms of actual programming. again i have zero idea how it works

but it's possible... i know it is...

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i really like this plot! i would love to see this!

i want to write a "closeted trans pernese candidate impresses a dragon of a color that only impresses their (hidden/partially denied) gender" story but in like, a "the horrors of being suddenly and forcibly outed in front of an enormous crowd of people when you hadn't even fully acknowledged your gender to yourself" way rather than a "nice, I got a cool gender-affirming dragon" way. the "nice, I got a cool gender-affirming dragon" moment happens, but not after like, minimum 6 months of the gruelling process of trying to speedrun self acceptance because they're making their dragon sad.

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Random: This is a pro-Jora and Nemorth blog, none the least because we’re never shown Jora doing anything in any way wrong aside from getting drunk at a celebratory dinner, and the people who tell us how awful she was are the same lot treating her (at best) severe fear of heights as a moral failing, so my also-terrified-of-heights ass is not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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while i don't know python either, i do generally feel pretty good about replacing assets without changing the system logic and i THINK (big think energy) some of those things could be snuck in that way, like your example with mentors. not all of them though. clutching in particular would have to be an entirely new mechanic in my mind -- gold flights are political, and the politics of it play into clangen's core mission to be a story generator.

for sprites, yeah it would be a ton of work, but i think it would just function without additional programming. the game just references a particular part of a set of files, if you change what's there, new sprite. i wonder if you can turn off some of those overlays or possibilities? i think trialing it would be interesting. my lining/drawing skills aren't fantastic but i can pixel ok, i should trial with one of each growth stage.

much to ponder.

clangen for pern dragons SHOULD be a thing, as suggested by @threadfall . i know clangen itself is pretty open to digging. the sprite sheets are publicly available and you're even encouraged to add your own to your own game and help make new ones for the actual game. so like, making a dragonshaped sprite would be pretty easy i think, but it would be a lot of work to adapt all the various layers for the new shape!

i have zero idea how any of the actual systems of the game work -- but it seems like it would be trivial to do things like rename the patrol mechanic sweeps or w/e. the problem there is that there's approximately one billion outcomes so you'd have to write like, at least a dozen to not bore yourself to tears going on patrol and getting the same outcomes

the romancing and mating mechanic would need the most work, probably... like in terms of actual programming. again i have zero idea how it works

but it's possible... i know it is...

[shipfishwrites]

oh i'm big into this.

my hc for how pernese dragon names are created is that a dragon doesn't actually have a name until they find their rider, and the name is created as their two minds are intertwining. they come essentially from sentence-mixing of bits and pieces of the rider's various memories as they all rush past their dragon's brain, with a -th on the end.

i like to think that the "th" is actually a sort of artifact, a ghost record passed along from generation to generation- a tiny, tiny speck-of-a-spark from the very first dragon to hatch.

[shipfishwrites]

Made a thing

After some lore rambling here on tumblr and on a Pern discord about Fifth Pass and Pernese religion etc I decided to just make a dedicated server

Pern: Fifth Pass is a community focused on worldbuilding and digging deep into all the holes and unused potential in Anne McCaffrey's canon Pern. This is the place to pour out all your headcanons about native species of Pern or the inner workings of Smithcraft and all the other stuff that did not make sense or was not mentioned in the books at all. Sociology, geology, herpetology and all other kinds of -logy nerds welcome!

Why Fifth Pass though?

Because I'm a sucker for bleak scary settings and the First Long Interval/Fifth Pass is a period of pernese history with huge worldbuilding potential.At the presumed end of the Fourth Interval the Red Star passed by but Thread never came. Unlike the Ninth Pass era, there was no precedent for this, and Pern was led to believe that they were finally free from Thread. Instead of scrambling for supply reserves and recovering from yet another Pass, they had an extra 250 years of prosperity and development of a scale not seen since Landing. It would be a true Golden Age.

And the Fifth Pass would catch them completely unprepared. Realistically, it should be the worst Pass in history in terms of death toll.

This time period provides a perfect chance to expand pernese lore far beyond what the McCaffreys have written, with the bonus of the Fifth Pass being potentially so destructive that any developments could slip back into the same state we know from canon.

In addition, once enough lore has accumulated, I am hoping to launch a roleplay taking place during the Fifth Pass, or potentially a sort of fanmade guidebook to inspire other roleplay groups.

[shipfishwrites]

clangen for pern dragons SHOULD be a thing, as suggested by @threadfall . i know clangen itself is pretty open to digging. the sprite sheets are publicly available and you're even encouraged to add your own to your own game and help make new ones for the actual game. so like, making a dragonshaped sprite would be pretty easy i think, but it would be a lot of work to adapt all the various layers for the new shape!

i have zero idea how any of the actual systems of the game work -- but it seems like it would be trivial to do things like rename the patrol mechanic sweeps or w/e. the problem there is that there's approximately one billion outcomes so you'd have to write like, at least a dozen to not bore yourself to tears going on patrol and getting the same outcomes

the romancing and mating mechanic would need the most work, probably... like in terms of actual programming. again i have zero idea how it works

but it's possible... i know it is...