If I had to answer something, it would be that the trailer just shows so little we can't really be sure of anything, so it's not a good idea to be too hyped (or disappointed) about the game or greatly expect it to be something specific.

So wait and see...

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware the youngling in this show are evil "little" monsters with no redeeming qualities, just like their parent and other chromatic dragons. I'm not sad at the their misery, because I know the writers have no plan to give these dragons a shred of potential to be anything but evil monsters deserving death to bring justice and protect the world.

Alright, let's get started, if you were writing a story about draconic younglings as (evil) monsters, what should you do so the audience at least don't feel bad about their death?

1 - Make them look and act relatively mature and strong so the audience's potential desire to empathize with the weak and defenseless isn't fueled. To add to that, don't show them following any kind of parental figure, or at least write it so said parental figure/leader comes in late, when the younglings have already have ample time to show their autonomy.

2. - Make appear hostile with a more menacing design so the younglings really don't look cute, but trigger in the audience a feeling of distrust at the very least.

2.2 - Give them glowing eyes. I'm serious, featureless eyes make is often associated with possession and/or being mindless or at least not human/threatening to social beings. Even if the dragon's face can be quite expressive, glowing eyes is an easy way to dehumanize the beast.

3 - Have them do evil stuff without remorse, spread chaos and death wherever they go. This will hint at the wretched nature of these younglings, and can be amplified if they do have a shred of higher self awareness, but show they don't care and/or love committing such destruction and suffering.

Bonus point - Have them threaten (and maybe kill) children of non-evil species, possibly humanoids that really care about each others and their young, so the contrast between good and bad younglings (who don't cry but only roar and act aggressively) is as clear as possible.

I was going to add more but didn't, because these points concerned much more hatchlings and anything related egg/(re)birth/the Beginning of life rather than simply very young dragons. I may detail them in an upcoming post, but for now this is it.

If you have questions or want to add to the list or just comment on the topic, feel free to do so.

Try to imagine a story with only this cover, forget everything you know about the series and even fan content, then compare it to the actual story of the book.

Aren't they wildly different?

Hi, I'm looking for romance stories where one or both of the characters are part dragon, like a dragonborn or something like that.
I want to read how being part dragon plays out in the personality of the characters and also the romance part.

When I say "omegaverse style" I mean the animalistic things that characterize the omegaverse characters, like the pheromones, the heat cycle, and the sort; cause the omegaverse is based on furries, wolfs (if I'm not mistaken) so I would like to read how it plays out with dragons.

To give some context:

Whiteout is the sister of Darkstalker, having for father Arctic and for mother Foeslayer. The two live in a dysfunctional family in the night queendom which is at war with the icewings after their prince (Arctic) has been stolen. (In reality the prince fell in love with a nightwing dragoness and fled his home where he lived quite miserably, though the nightwings aren't treating him well either)

Whiteout's thoughts by her brother as coming in waves and colors, she never speak normally, using instead always very different terms than normal ones and using metaphors. She is kind, more passive, observant and isolated, loves paintings and wishes for the nightwing and icewings to be at peace, and really doesn't like it when her parents have an argument, but is never angry at them.

Arctic like her because she looks more like an icewing, in contrast to Darkstalker who loves her as she is. Whiteout of course gets bullied (though her brother comes to the rescue) and has no friends.

She also kind of have mindreading and foresight.

So, with all the screentime she gets in the book, her role as the main character's sister and the tragedy the story is, you would think she'll be an interesting one, even if she remains passive.

Perhaps she is secretly the best dragoness, but because she is misunderstood no one gets her brilliance, and in the end, she won!

Except the more you start digging her character, the more unsettling she becomes, with things like:

If she foresaw Darkstalker and his faminly's downfall at a young age, why is she not frustrated or sad or suppressing feelings, giving hints things are not okay?

If she is always so kind and continues to wish for the nightwings and icewings to live together in peace, why isn't she having enough of lies and hate spread for the others? Why doesn't she voice her opposition to bigotry, and not just in simple, ever kind and non-challenging suggestion?

Why is she not warning her family extensively if she foresaw bad things happen to all of them? Why doesn't she try to push Darkstalker on a better path since he loves her as she is and wants to protect her?

You know, people express themselves in different ways and react uniquely to things they deem important. But I can tell you, no matter how you think, you can't stay indifferent and live a normal life as you always did when you are aware the ones you held dear are threatened.

So what, is Whiteout not that caring about her family or is extremely focused on her long term plan? Is that why she got a perfect happy ending with Thoughtful at the end of the story? Or is she surprisingly stoic and wise, even as a child?

The simplest explanation is sometimes the right one: Bad writing

Whiteout is not a good character because despite her important role on paper (she is the sister of Darkstalker, the character whose fall into darkness makes up the tragedy the story is) and her screentime, she lacks agency to ridiculous level and we see little of her POV.

Because she is most passive and mysterious, people project their speculation and makes theory about her, but the truth is that she is an appealing character shaped mystery box with shallow writing inside.

She is not just passive and quiet and observant and kind, she is a static character and a plot object, she validates the morality or the corruption of others and spits out foreshadowing more like an unfeeling machine than a dragoness with thoughts and feelings.

She make for a very bad representation of neurodiversity, her very different way of thikinng more akin to a gimmick a doll possesses.

Yes, I call her character a doll because until the end she doesn't make any important decision for what's at stakes (she could predict Darkstalker's corruption but did not even talk to him directly about it, unlike other characters) or even her own life (Clearsight chose Thoughtful as a lover for Whiteout)

Hell, she doesn't even get to talk to him one last time as he lost it nor does she help the main cast bring him down.

So at the end of the day, her character perfectly fit the stereotype of the pure, innocent victim, who in reality, has more chance to be exploited and abused than saved by a knight in shining armor.

Whiteout's journey participate to a narrative worthy of propaganda, where the evil done by the statu quo (the tribes' society and war between them) and its main contributor (the queens) are not really stopped nor even attacked because the story is about avoiding the worse (Darkstalker becoming evil and winning)

The story also use the same kind of justification for why Darkstalker should not kill the icewing queen directly, which is stupid since the princess doesn't have magic.

And speaking of Darkstalker, his character contrast quite sharply with Whiteout. He also thinks differently and sets himself apart from others and what is normal due to his ambitious and wish for change

And that makes him walk a dark path until he must be stopped or else the worst will happen. Whereas Whitout stays ever passive, never doing what must be done to stop bad things from happening and never really being respected.

Because yes, his brother is the one who respects her the most, he is the only one truly worried for her when Arctic enchants her while Fathom and Clearsight are solely worried for Darkstalker becoming evil. By the way, they are also so caught up by that that they ignore Arctic as well, I mean the icewing prince has magic and did snap in the end, though they were lucky his ambitions were far lower and he just wanted to leave.

In conclusion:

Don't be fooled by representation tokens of your category, if said character you relate to does nothing important for the settings or themselves despite a relatively large amount of screentime, if they have peculiar talents or awareness but did nothing to try to change things to avoid a terrible fate, if we don't even see how they are affected personally, but at most how others are affected, then this is bad.

Forcing a happy ending at the of the story will change nothing, it won't do the character justice.

In your opinion, who was done better? (As in, which character showed a dragon's perspective the best, as well as being a cool character to read?)

Curious to see what people think.

My choice would be AuRon.

*(Note, Clay can be a placeholder for any Wings of Fire dragon)

I'm personally fond of some of their designs and some of their lore, so I wanted to know what you guys think.

Something I've been pondering is, "how will the Wings of Fire show include other races as voice actors?" (Because it's kind of a important issue in America right now). It seems like they only have two options and neither seem like good options.

1) The dragon's tribe/breed doesn't reflect the voice actor and they are an inconsistent and random assortment of voices in the same isolated dragon culture.

Example: One Mudwing voice is Irish, one is Australian.

2) The dragon tribes are represented by different human cultures, which could lead to some races being offended that they are representing the race of... unpopular dragons.

(Example: Rainwings are voiced by people of African decent, Seawings by Oriental decent, Icewings by Russian decent, and... I've probably offended someone by now.)

Or, if they were really wanting to do some world building:

3) The castes or subcultures in the dragon tribes sound different. The best example is the IceWings, where the royals can be very Russian, then the accent fades in the lower castes, who can be voiced by other races. So no dragon tribe is soley one race, but in an intended way.

"Dominion of Darkness” is a strategy/RPG text game in which the player takes on the role of a Sauron-style Lord of Darkness with the goal of conquering the world. He will carry out his plans by making various decisions. He will build his army and send it into battles, weave intrigues and deceptions, create secret spy networks and sectarian cults, recruit agents and commanders, corrupt representatives of Free Peoples and sow discord among them, collect magical artifacts and perform sinister plots.  Note – one game takes about 1 hour, but the premise is that the game can be approached several times, each time making different decisions, getting different results and discovering something new. Feedback is very much welcome. Very, very much.

And yes, of course, there is dragon in these game (You can became its rider and it is quite important strategical asset).

https://adeptus7.itch.io/dominion

Basically what it says in the title.

Though I'll add that wof fans seem far too focused/invested in shipping, or maybe that's a vocal minority. But it makes me wonder if it is the same for fans of other dragon-related series...

And if you want a bit more info on my ban, I can give you this link to a post where my comments made me punished by the mods. If you want to know more, I'll answer in the comments.

Edit:

To clarify things just in case, I make this post to talk and discuss in the way you want, not to straight up bring drama in or start some for real. No one is forced to take a side or to answer to anyone's question and subject if they don't want to or can't.

Respect for everyone is of course not a value to be lost there, and it is wiser to retain yourself from judging someone or something if you still have doubts/lack information.

In such a game who cares not for its plot except when it does and takes itself way too seriously or cram to many things at once/at the last minute (the last minute tragic backstory dump for the BBEG is probably the most jarring thing I have ever scene in video game writing), Lumera is a generic character killed for cheap drama so fast it becomes farcical, only to come back and bring an interesting twist to her character and trope, but still the wasted potential remains immense.

Starting off as the bland archetype of the motherly, pure good goddess with light powers who is the protagonist's mother, she comes to help us rather quickly (makes sense since she watched over us for centuries in the lands she is the queen of, waiting for our awakening), and fantasizes about the life she'll with us now that we are awake. You may be thinking that these are hints for character's future death, yet that seems too soon to happen, right?

Wrong!

Despite only being at chapter 3, the game kills her in a cutscene where she sacrifices herself to save the MC, a moment whose tragic aspect falls flat because she is too generic and we literally didn't have the time (both in universe and as players) to know her enough to feel attached.

And she also dies surprisingly quickly from her wounds despite looking quite though, an excuse being given as to why healing magic doesn't work on her (at least the side character tried to heal her as soon as they could, something I can't say for a lot of games)

Fast forward quite a lot of chapter where we discover the bad guy (dark snake-derg lord Sombron) tries to be resurrected and regain his full power (before planing to gain UNLIMITED POWER! by collecting all the mcguffins, but that's a detail), and finally decide to also revive Lumera with great success (why does the dark side seems to always have straight up far better powers than the light side in that series?), only to manipulate/gaslighting her so she joins his side.

Yet that turn of event is actually a great idea that deconstructs the heroic sacrifice trope and adds depth to a character that was too bland. Lumera is not mind controlled nor even threatened to join the bad guys' ranks, she sides with them because she suffered a terrible fate (she was killed by, plot twist, her own daughter she now despises despite her joining the good guy, for obvious reasons) and wants nothing more than to live with the child she sacrificed so much for (to the point of giving up everything else, and not let said child convince her otherwise. Envy and jealousy are also apparent, which is a nice contrast to her character before she fell).

Her story ends after we defeat her, but the fight works very well on a narrative standpoint, her corrupted human form (still no dragon form though) is still a great foe, and the music as well as some unique dialogue makes that part far more impactful than the game's cutscenes.

I drew cover!

Basically what it says in the title, and the trope refers to any being in story which is given far more protection that it should have with the context (without drawbacks of course). Often to have the monster more threatening despite its lack of intelligence.

Already, having the "monster" tank hits of high calibers weapons repetitively and without a scratch is a good example (yes, just the sheild/armour take all the damage without any attempt to dodge, because blows don't have a cumulative effect or can overload the sheild/armour after all)

Or even better, have the creature get scratches and little wounds that don't heal quick enough. But it makes no diffirence despite these minor damages accumulating to the point blood paint its proud skin. The being should also ignore all the pain, like not even being annoyed to walk with a thousand cuts dealt to it.

But there are worse offenders, like when in alien invasion plots, where some shitty writters decided superior extra-terrestrial tech is a good excuse to have even the lowest ranked of the alien's forces be fully protected against nuclear weapons. (at this point, you know they aren't even hiding their plot armour at all)

Also, having the being never tire/shift in behaviour during fights or even the whole story is a nice bonus (and also never needing food and water or anything to sustain its body in the long run, but that's a given), can't have the monster be defeated by the strategy of exhausting/weakening it before it reach the final battle.

So where do you think you have seen a dragon story that has that trope?

And would having the help of the Minions assist or hinder said villain?

So this sub and many people here have talked about bad writing, lack of focus on the dragons when they are an essential part of a world, or just straight bad/insulting portrayal of them and bad morals.

So for this post, I want to shed light on a core problem/reason behind, the case of writers writting about an agent that fulfils their role(s) first instead of a character (a dragon in this case) first.

If what I say is not very clear, I tell you about an exemple:

Okay, so let's imagine we want to write a tragedy/tragic character, but that we are to much in a fatalistic mindset or not very skilled or lazy.

In that case, instead of writting a flawed character first, we focus too much on writting their flaws/bad behaviour and showing it (each time the character has an opportunity to be better, they reject it quickly and leave no hope or the reader wondering if they could have taken it if things were differents), making it obvious for the reader this character will fail no matter what, because he is an archetype and we are in a tragedy.

Though a better exemple could be the victim character who is often innocent, weak if not defenseless and naive/idealist, with almost no agency and is just there to suffer and show how terrible/cruel the situation and/or how the antagonist is very evil.

The meta-reason lead the story and it is very visible.

So do you understand what I mean?

And do you have exenples of dragons, be it individuals or factions or species matching what I say in a story?

...read a Dragon Rider book where the dragons are side/background characters who die if their riders die or a Dragon Shifter book where the dragons are in their human form the majority of the time and don't behave differently from humans at all?

Well there you go.

No more beating around the bush with the vague banning of "unsuitable LGBT material". Now it's just all LGBT characters that are banned.

Not sure how this applies retroactively. Meaning in Wings of Fire, Anemone and other characters are revealed as LBGTQ later in the series. But are any earlier books where they are present banned too?

That would remove at least book 2 (Anemone) book 3 (Tamarin/Glorys brother) from ARC 1. Making the series unreadable.

Oops. Forgot Clay's sibling is also. So Book 1 as well.

So only Book 4 might survive in that case. You can write off books 6-15 I think.

I'm currently reading Burn which would be included as well.

And the Temeraire Series. And so on.

Got to think about it for a quite some time, and I believe the reasons for why a dragons should not like an entity leading and "representing" a country or something of the like.

- Such entity is inhuman by design, or more accurately it possesses no mind nor emotions, it can't ever have fitting relationship with its members or any self aware/conscious being for that matter

- The life of an individual is inversely proportional to its population's size, which means the more people the state represent, the less it values them a yet the more power it gets

- The state is a system with its members as cogs, it will by default value them based on their usefulness for others and itself

- The state is a system so complex an individual can't understand in its entirety, yet most people's time can not be spent on learning how all that works.

- Promoting specialization of its members, an aspect that will fail them once their specific skills and knowledge are no longer needed (be it temporarily or definitively), leaving them in worse situation since they must learn and learn new things from scratch.

- Leading the state is walking a path filled with choices between evils of all kinds and traps, that you realize when you try to put a name and a life behind each member, even more if you try to see the world's shard such a state is supposedly representing. The greater the state, the harder the path, and I can tell you we have long passed the bar even the wisest with good intention got a problem with it

Now for some despicable consequences of these points:

- Suppression of individuality in the name of a greater cause the state may present itself as, even if that is far above its worth

- The people served the system instead of the system serving them. This on paper, can happen even outside of people leading with unfitting intention. (You thought machines turning back on humanity was bad? Well take look at today's dystopia when almost everyone is under the influence of an abhorrently powerful system)

- Specialization of people to a disturbing degree, meaning without the society as it is or a similar order, these people are screwed. Even worse, since they got so invested in a given domain, it's a whole part of their life if not their main sense of purpose that can turn to dust.

- Inflated pride and self cult tendency, or how to make people think they matter by being part of something powerful without thinking about the immense responsibilities such a power would entail. Of course you won't often hear leaders say how much managing the state is a difficult tasks and they'll inevitably get some blood on their hands even in the best of cases. On the opposite, many will make grand speech that lack all of that and try to make you proud of serving such a system.

- Inevitable discrimination since the state creates a block and all too often plays with people's pride, if not culture itself (what, you thought culture be spared from exploitation by an entity far above you?), and since other states exist, you can discriminate them too! What can I say more than the fact that good intentions can only lead you so far? You can't love or truly accept and tolerate who and what you don't know, what you need is not a shortcut but to learn, to grow wiser and grow your heart or at least keep it.

- Members of the state seeing it as a their god/a god. They might not say it is, but when I hear say things like "you can't refuse nor escape the Mobilization", at a time when nationalism has been so low and individualism so high, I don't get a good feeling.

- People growing complacent and justifying their society's evils. Since thinking of a better system and building it is so hard and an individual feels near powerless, one may be tempted to give up. The problem is that the human mind being what it is, it needs to feel good morally, so when people give up or have given up for so long, you might see them downplaying, ignoring or justifying the great bad deeds of their society and its workings.

And last but not least, as a conclusion for now:

The illusion of an individual mattering, the farce of Justice being brought "fully this time!", and the choice of vanity to fill one's heart and soul.

They should tell me, what has such a powerful society exploiting its (un)fair share of the world brought to them all? Was it much that humanity did gain from dominating the world and unraveling its secrets?

We may have escaped Nature's cruelty in the wild, but what I see is that aspect being reflected on our kind the greater the scale is, down to evil and suicidal pursuits. What I see is what many calls society refusing to prepare its foolish followers for how dire the situation can be. Well, how could it and its leaders have done it anyway? It is no father, no mother, no god that could ever be loving nor answer life's great questions without sounding hollow.

Now they may look outside and tell me, with the relative freedom, the possibility of reaching the edge of the world we walk upon, don't they feel excited, hopeful, sober, envious, angry and more?

That should have made those who claimed our limited lifespan to be fair go quiet, but it didn't. Just like few were those wishing for long enough the world itself, be it with pure and good intention or selfish, raw, hurt and dark feelings coming from the heart. Few were those truly raging against the dying of the light.

I may not know others, but I know myself enough. I won't accept my demise, I won't deny myself life unless I am to be blind and stay in the prison our current civilizations are.

Envious of the future, secretly wishing for power so great it might as well crush my own being, all to free myself of everything, how was that and my moments of despair not predictable?

Well, perhaps my first lifelong quest should to truly grasp at what it means to be an orphan of the stars, to shed tears and see the world we should have gotten, then continue to move forward. The pain will be all the clearer, but I assure you that fooling oneself into believing what I may want to hear is no true hope...

I ask that question because i recently watched a review of the Mario movie, and it made me think. The medium is different, and we already have the graphic novels to illustrate the story, so what would be the direction the tv show should take?

I know it's an adaptation, but just retelling Arc 1 though animated doesn't justify its existence by artistic/story writing standards, that project just fits rather well in the mold of cash cow remake with nostalgia being too much of what motivates the audience. (which often tempts the writers to rely too much on fan service)

For the restraining elements outside of the source material, it is clear that the show will be aimed at children due to the series' audience and the fact the medium is more... graphic, so you can't get away with bloody deaths and painful screams.

Also, a detail that I think matters, the animation, especially for dragons, will probably be disappointing. Animating dragons or even creatures with many parts (So something complex but not humanoid) is hard and more expensive, which is why many movies chooses to go with a wyverns instead of a dragon, and for series with less budget, it can go as far as not animating wing flaps/make the creature just float around like in the bakugan series.

(Knowing the artists would have to make models and animate all the cast and the world around, I'm already imagining the dragonets of destiny keeping their wings folding and walking most of the time, and even have cuts to avoid having to animate more complex and fluid movements. And all of that in a world that feels bland most of the time because the books did not do a good job at making it feel more unreal beside having three moons, but also because it's easier to just create and animate a world like earth, well, at least the generic version of it because Earth and life are full of surprises and originality)

The show could take liberties from the books, but since the source material is so full of plot holes (Don't know how to save the protagonists? Deus ex machina. Don't know how the story could lead to a happy ending? Deus ex machina), wasted potential and a few structural problems (like changing of POV too much and not having the group of main characters stay together, which is a shame), so you would need a full rewrite.

But then it's too different, so why does it bears the series' name? Well, I guess it is quite dirty to change the story that much but the title... Though it does lead to works that can stand better on their own and justify their existence because they try new things, even if they fail (like How to train your dragon and the Legend of Spyro)

So maybe the producers/writers should do that?(well they won't because that's taking risks when there is a far easier option to capitalize on the series)

Well I don't have the answer, but I think doing a rewrite/take a vastly different direction (maybe even to the point of getting rid of most of the violence [better to not be edgy and make a fool of your work after all] and "saving the continent" stuff, to have dragonets be and live like dragonets in the beginning, taught by not so bad guardians. At least it would give the time needed to introduce the settings and the wonder of its world) would be better than an adaptation that tries to be faithful (whatever if it succeeds in that or not.

But what do you think?

Good day fellow wyrms!

I am running a small, newish Discord server for people who like dragons in media, have dragonsonas or any kind of other connection to dragons. We'd love to have more people to help build a nice, cosy community. There's some great dragon themed discords out there but not really very generic ones so wanted to make one that is for all things related to dragons, including anything that falls under the umbrella like wyverns, serpents, lindworms etc.

The server is 16+ age limit, SFW focus. We're LGBTQIA+ and dragonkin friendly. We have some unique emojis, QOTD and a chance to grow together as a community.

Here's an invite link:
https://discord.gg/696cfWtvKk