#dragon fly writes

[theprissythumbelina]

I can't tell if my dragon worldbuilding has gone too far when I start reading scientific papers on bat wig morphology and comparing them to bird morphology.

[stuck-in-jelly]

My favorite ongoing background thing with Corvus is the fact he prefers to travel by horse but yet is constantly put in a postion where everyone around him is like “but the giant cats/dragons are much faster!”

And he just has to begrudgingly accept he may never have the luxury of riding a normal horse again

[d8tl55c]

oh boy !! ! ! ! !!! ! thANK y0u all for the kind words on my last art posts. you all get it and i was/still am so happy about it

as promised, here's some close-ups of the comic for image quality's sake, and other screenshots i rescued from the community whiteboard (and something else)

first up another sketch of mystery gender-ambiguous being. (please send me more name ideas for them if you got one- i like to hear em! (reminder it's the side character that appeared for <10 seconds in AvM Ep. 30))

a few fav scenes

emotional support cwab

they weren't meant for this purpose exactly, but i do have countless "fluffy sticks" loose in my notes and homework sheets from the school years.

papery critter.

even when i wasn't confident in fur or feathers, they helped me practice posing and create some satisfying gradients/flowing poses. (im a sucker for good tail poses) (oh yay! i found a good pic...)

and finally, little sneak peak for you for reading so far ;3

i realized that whiteboardfox is pretty great for my working needs. simple and to the point and all. feels nice with the mouse and the tablet.

so i started hashing out a big project idea just to see if it holds up and

[

several hours later ...

]

oh

oh man

it's a little bigger than i expected

<next>

[lustyargonianmaid]

@emahriel blew me away with this portrait of maeve moonsong, i literally cannot stop staring at it. she looks sooo ethereal aaahhhhhh! 2 weeks until bg3 💜😭

[fatedroses]

Adventurer Zenos and G'raha cause I had to draw my silly guys. I just enjoy the idea of Zenos hanging out with fellow bookworms and being begrudgingly (though occasionally willingly) helpful.

[junoniadoesart]

Colored headshot concepts for the MC of that original dragon universe I talked about awhile back (the one with Tiamat), now with the placeholder name Dragons of the Deep.

So far I have it that the MC’s adoptive name is Fontaine Anouilh and her birth name is Tabni Lāsimu. She eventually winds up going by Fontaine Lāsimu.

Top left corner is based on one of those singing bass toys that I thought looked cool, not a real fish. Top right is based on mahi-mahi/dolphinfish. Bottom left is based on yellow-winged flying fish. Bottom right is based on sailfish. Right now I’m leaning sailfish or mahi.

Fontaine’s design overall (I do have a fullbody sketch done even if it’s a little out of date) is based on flying fish and marlin in terms of her wing shape, fins, lil nose, etc, with the classic four-legged dragon body plan.

[rhaenin-time]

I just wish those fans of House of the Flying Viper would stick to their own tags and make it clear they're referring to fan fic, and not canon. It's making things so confusing.

I mean this one:

[pinehutch]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤

Thank you for tagging me!

I should be honest: I am not much of a fic writer. This isn't self-effacing; I've been reading fic since the early aughts but only have 10 works on ao3. One of them is a poem. One of them is a few hundred words of something I've never finished.

That said, fic is important to me for a lot of reasons, but one is that in 2016 I started following a tumblr for a Dragon Age fic exchange, and in 2017 I wrote the first fiction I'd written in almost 20 years. I had been struggling to write poetry for about 10 years before that, too, and fic writing was part of my path back to writing at all.

This isn't to say that I think fanfic is valueless unless it results in 'original' writing; every story happens in context, and we all know how the lines between fanwork and original work blur, both in fan spaces and in commercial ones. But my particular, personal fondness for fic is because it gave me a path back to the first best thing of my life, which was language, and what we do with it.

With that said, my personal top five (links in titles):

Fundamental Forces (or, Root Causes)

Literally my first fic. This was when I remembered that writing can be fun. It's Dragon Age fic, femHawke/Varric. It's also written with a focus on Hawke's POV, a thing I think I pulled off quite well and have never attempted again. It's very silly. It features a 40-year-old and a 35-year-old being profoundly bad at emotional honesty. I riff on turnips for a while. It has a happy ending, which should surprise no one.

She breathed in through her nose and her eyes fluttered shut. “Kiss me, you idiot. Before they think I’m horrified.” Their first kiss. Quick and mostly chaste and part of a joke. She thought it was fitting.

Chapter Last

This is also T-rated Hawke/Varric, written for the same exchange, a year later. It's about near-misses, and trying again, and not being able to pick up where you left off, and it's stumbling back onto the path later, unexpectedly, and after having found another way. It is about stories, and why we do them.

It's fic of the games, of course, but in a way it's also fic-of-fic: there's a novella that's both a tie-in novel and a diegetic book in the Dragon Age setting, and it was printed irl the summer before I wrote this fic.

What I'm proud of, with this story, is character voice. Whenever I share any Varric-voice writing, even years later, people always say very generous things. Varric's also a writer, canonically, and I had fun mimicking 'his' style in passages of this, and trying to keep in mind how his writing and his inner narration would align and diverge. (Lots of Dragon Age fans are understandably thirsty about Varric; I think I've always found him relatable, in many ways, and it didn't occur to me to thirst. But I love him.)

I don't love the structure; I chaptered this, and way more than I needed to. I'd love to rewrite it, someday, but I also think it's good for me to sit with the awareness of its imperfections and the knowledge that people have loved it anyway.

Afterimage (there are two colours)

The Magnus Archives fic, E-rated. Basira/Daisy. This was meant to be a single installment in a series - I think I have a 20,000 word 'outline' in my gdocs, still, but I'm unlikely to ever finish it. The point of this story is self-indulgent, purple-prose, dreamy smut. Wanting the thing and having it, but not keeping it.

This was baby's first E-rated fic ever written. I have no explanation for this, either.

Transformative Work

Written for the 2022 OFMD Big Bang with @mia-ugly. Mostly Frenchie/Jim, a bit Jim/Oluwande, a bit Frenchie/Oluwande, a light sprinkling of polycule potential.

Transformative Work is my favourite thing I've posted to ao3 for three reasons.

It's 40k! I never finish longer works, so 40k is a big deal to me.

I think it's actually brilliant. Clever as hell, at minimum. But mostly brilliant.

It's collaborative!

Writing has always been a solitary thing for me; one of the things I love about Mia is how we can get on a wavelength about a story. (This is mostly a them trick: they're an excellent collaborator and instigator, in general.) I wasn't at my best when we were writing this, dealing with undiagnosed health issues and workplace burnout and an accumulation of grief, but it was beautiful and joyful work, in the end.

Also, I think it is almost exactly what we wanted it to be, and that is such a high.

Number 5 is a bit of a cop-out but still:

Remember when I said "we all know how the lines between fanwork and original work blur"? This is a poem I started writing when Succession 4.3, "Connor's Wedding" aired. I was in a worst spot than I had been the previous year, health-wise, grief-wise.

The title of this poem, "My Father's Dead and I Feel Old," comes out of Connor Roy's mouth in the episode. I had to pause the episode and just get pummeled by that perfect, simple line of iambs. I was a wreck, just generally. Yeah, man, my father is dead and I do feel old! That sort of thing. (The aforementioned health issue? Still not identified or addressed when this aired in spring 2023, btw. My brain was not braining well.)

But there were words for it. I was off work on medical leave at the time. I had just made the transition from crying like it was a full-time job to sleeping like it was a full-time job. The sleep wasn't helping. The crying hadn't helped, either. It wasn't something people could help. But words, and what we do with them - that helped.

Anyway, I'm actually quite proud of this poem, both as an original piece of poetry and as fanwork. It's not on ao3 for reasons including 'I haven't gotten around to it' and 'I don't know if this is sufficiently transformative, by the invisible guidelines I've just set for myself.'

Thank you for sending this to me, it was a lovely thing to think about on my Friday eve! <3

[ohdragonflyohdragonburnthemdown]

Updates for the end of the year

Ok, so I realized a few weeks back that Oh Dragon Fly will turn a year old in two days. As in I started posting it a year ago. While doing so I realized I have been writing on this story for two years… which wow…

So I decided for 2024 you will get two updates. One will be as usual on the 24th, while the other will come on the 31st of December.

I have enough of a puffer to be easily able to do this, while also dealing with all the stress of the next few months.

So yeah…stay tuned for the next week and a half!

[silvashapeshifter]

🫴

have this bat dragon drawn on Clip Studio Paint yesterday

[cosmic-walkers]

people who hate wolf hall will be so loud and even their critiques are weird. some of these history tudor bloggers do a little too much like if you don't like it fine but idk be normal

[sylvancastor]

My finale review: not enough Aegon.

Also that it was bad, but what else is new.

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

working on a gifset and can i just say phia saban the ACTRESS THAT YOU ARE:

the sharp fucking turn when he's like wubuwbwu its a lieeee, the withering looks she gave him. it was excellent.

[justalittlelogophile]

🧡🔥Dragon🔥🧡

I was asked the other day

If I was waiting around for a Prince Charming

With a crooked grin, I just shook my head

“Hardly. I’d much rather befriend the dragon.”

~Po

[deckofmanyaces]

Its not goodbye, its see you later 🥲

We're taking a much-needed break to rest and plan for the next few arcs ♠️

We'll be sharing one-shots from different podcasts featuring the cast, so there's still loads of great material for you to enjoy! 💚

See you in January! 💜

[chradi]

Nothing matters anymore, I finally had a dream where I was a shape-shifting dragon that had to fight other dragons.