francessart

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light, life

the original idea for this drawing didnt exactly come through (the sunflowers were going to be pointed at him cause he's light/life/etc) but i mean, i think it looks okay just as random art? so not a total loss??

also i am mad because i made a time lapse of this and it refused to export and was then lost to the void. time to break the evil ipad for its crimes.

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we're obsessed with silly quizzes that tell us what character we're like and what dessert we'd be because we want to know who we are

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so thats what zane stands for

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okay. i dont like. ship it ship it. but i lowkey ship it in a nya-was-small-lloyds-child-crush-that-he-still-mildly-has way.

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part 1/3 of my skin to scale au fic

au summary: to leave the first realm, the ninja have to turn into dragons which is a painful and irreversible process

Part I

The boy reached back, trying to feel the skin beneath the loose folds of his shirt. He fingered the knobs gingerly, trying to feel for the texture, though his elbow was high in the air and wavering awkwardly as he did. Of course the place was right between his shoulder blades, the hardest place to reach.

There. He stopped. Lightly he felt again. Yes, there. Scaly, beyond doubt. 

He touched the rough patch a moment longer before pulling his hand up and out, right to his hair just above his forehead. His brow furrowed in focus as he rubbed with both his hands, finally focusing in from general feeling to making small circles above his temples. He wasn’t sure, but possibly there were little raised symmetrical bits. Maybe. 

“Kai,” said a quiet voice behind him.

He turned. There was really no explanation for how those increasingly clawlike feet made no sound on the sandy earth, but there you were, you could never hear Jay coming. Kai pulled his hands down quickly, a little guilty without reason.

“It’ll happen faster than you want,” Jay said. His bright blue eyes that seemed to always focus too much on you matched the scales on his face that slowly but surely had been overtaking his freckles lately. “Is it bothering you?”

“No,” Kai sighed, “I’m just impatient, you know that already. And it won’t happen too fast. We want to get home, don’t we?”

The desert silence slid by, calm and cool in the predawn mist.

“Right,” Jay answered at length, steady and sad. 

Kai sighed, hanging his head dramatically and causing his unkempt, long-grown hair to flop over his dark brown eyes. “Please, lighten up,” he groaned. “You can fly. You can fly. And we’re going home as soon as we all change. Life’s not all bad.”

Jay still looked distant, but then he turned his gaze to meet Kai abruptly. “Thank you,” he said. “I know.”

He turned, the horned bottom tips of his wide blue and yellow wings scuffing the sand in two neat lines as he went. Kai watched him go and sighed, sitting down dejected on a scrap of battered wood.

Behind him loomed shadowy the bulk of a ruined half ship; beside him were scattered remnants and fragments of boards and sharp metal and glass all beginning to sift down in the soft sand; beyond that was only the haze of the horizon, the monochrome landscape, the vague suggestion of the steep upward-jutting rock pillars that were now filmed in lavender mist. 

He was on the outside of camp; the others were all on the other side of the ship’s hull in a slightly protected area where they had built it up. Usually he was never one to slip away by himself, but lately… lately he’d been feeling like a bit of an outsider. It was more lonely to be with them, sometimes, than to be by himself. Not one of them as they changed and he didn’t. Not left out, more as if they weren’t themselves and he was the only one left.

“Maybe that’s what ‘claim’ meant,” he mumbled, mulling again for the hundredth time the words of the dragon to the child. It will bring you home but change you, free you as it claims you. The boy’s white-gold eyes had snapped as he stood, facing them only partly, telling them from what their point of view sounded like only a deep deep putting resonance coming quiet from the thick-scaled red throat. Are you afraid?

Cole had said “Heck, no” and now Kai could scarcely recognize him as the same soul. Zane had solemnly, almost reverently, shaken his head and he too was more knob and scale than anything. Kai had said boldly, “I’m not afraid,” and though not fast enough, he felt, it was happening to him. 

Jay had hesitated and looking at him you knew how his heart felt. He wasn’t afraid of changing, he wanted home as much as everyone else. It was the permanence that he didn’t like.

That was then, five days ago, and now he was resigned. And very, very different.

Though they all were. Before you had four boys, ‘older teenagers’ they classed themselves, rather an average group. Tall and wiry, looking strong but somewhat hollow from being stranded and starved for so long, with bright eyes nonetheless and capable, scarred hands. Now there was only one that still matched that description, and even Kai wasn’t entirely normal-looking by now. Oddly strained, stretched-looking humps in his back and hands starting to subtly change shape, his skin gaining a burnished red hue in slow shades; nothing striking as yet but it was starting.

Then Jay. Similar, only with blue and yellow, at first, and now he was decidedly half dragon. His feet had flattened and elongated, starting to look more like rough, knobby talons in some infantile state. His hair was parted differently now, tucked around and behind the thick, hard horns curving up and back, and alongside each horn was a thin feeler, almost like an antennae. The bones of his face were slowly forming and raising, just half a degree. His fingers were becoming longer and knuckly, and he fidgeted with them from time to time as he always had. And of course the wings. The flaps of thick skin and scale. Kai was certainly jealous there.

Cole was farther along and just enough was human about his appearance to make him look strange, misplaced. Nearly the shape of a dragon but still in the lines of a human. His shoulders had grown wider to accommodate the broad and powerful wings of an earth dragon; his face pushed out trying to find the jawline of the beast; elbows and knees and tail and horns made him seem like a puppy with too many limbs, too big of paws. His scruffy and uncut black hair was constantly slipping over his forehead and eyes—his eyes which had simultaneously become darker and brighter, larger and smaller—his eyes in which you learned the shifting was pain. They were the same dark warm brown but streaks of olive and orange spread out like cracks or rivers from his slitting pupils. And nearly all of him was covered in hard, almost scabby scales, except patches on his face and arms which made him look incomplete, mottled. 

Ice dragons apparently made for a much smoother and sleeker change, or maybe it was just Zane. Either way, he looked nearly flawless going between flesh and ice, as if he’d been made for it. The long scales of white didn’t change his already pale color too terribly much, and the harder angular lines of his face took well to the streaks of grey and blue that followed them.

Kai sighed restlessly and stood. He might as well go to the others.

Before he quite turned the corner there was a scuffling heard from the camp, then a heavy soft rush of air, then above the wall of shipwreck rose the white wings flapping, heaving wind and mist beneath them. Zane’s eyes were pale, clear, strained. He rose to the eclipse-darkened sun, his silhouette strange. He left.

Kai shook the sand-dust from his hair and continued on, the knobs between his shoulders itching tight with impatience. He rubbed them, hoping to untense them a little, but didn’t think anything of the leaving.

Around the red-burning fire were Jay with his blue and yellow wings outstretched, the small child Wu who was prodding the embers with a stick, and Cole huddled up a little ways back. Kai looked twice at him. He wasn’t certain, but he seemed a little taller, bigger, even when sitting curled up to sleep. His dark, veined wings were wrapped around him limply.

Wu turned first. “Kai, I’m hungry,” he said. “Did you find any food?”

“No, sorry,” Kai said thoughtlessly. He sat down in between the two.

“We should leave soon,” the boy murmured, staring at, past Kai. “In the next few days.”

“Because of food?” Kai asked.

Wu only looked, then suddenly shrugged and returned to the fire. Flakes shattered from the porcelain logs as he stabbed at them.

“Well, if it’s been five days already and none of us is dragon yet, how are we going to leave so soon?” Kai persisted. “Maybe the other three can manage to fly and carry you, but what about me?”

There was empty desert morning for an answer. Eventually he sighed again.

“Where’d Zane go, by the way?” he asked a minute later.

Momentary quiet as if each expected the other to answer. 

“He didn’t say,” answered Wu. “Probably just a flight.”

“I can’t blame him,” complained Kai.

Wu almost laughed at him. “Your wings are coming, Kai,” he assured him in his baby voice. Then a little shy pause. “Can I ride when they do?”

Kai smiled. “Sure.”

Then soon his smile faded as the silence grew back. Something was odd, off, different in it. He couldn’t figure out what.

i shall post p2 next saturday :>

(i would absolutely love feedback if anyone wanna say smth)

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yooooo yessss i had a feeling that was you!! thanks! the fic is 3 parts so i'll put the first one up tomorrowww

*glances around*

*leans across table*

so i have this au

when the ninja were trapped in the first realm the only way to get back was to become dragons themselves. and it hurts a lot and they cant change back. and i wrote a fic. i love it very much sir.

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YO WAIT YOU DO?? SMALL WORLD

I dont have an ao3 but i can put the fic on hereee

*glances around*

*leans across table*

so i have this au

when the ninja were trapped in the first realm the only way to get back was to become dragons themselves. and it hurts a lot and they cant change back. and i wrote a fic. i love it very much sir.

[francessart]

*glances around*

*leans across table*

so i have this au

when the ninja were trapped in the first realm the only way to get back was to become dragons themselves. and it hurts a lot and they cant change back. and i wrote a fic. i love it very much sir.

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a page explaining one of my favorite headcanons!!

ik the idea of him having oni/dragon features is popular and i have a lil bit of a different take on it (well. not really? but he like always hides em instead of acting like theyre normal)

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dont wake up

i used to be the biggest llorumi shipper but on this rewatch im rethinking my thinking

think i found a brush i like btw

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some lil ninjas i drew while trying to figure out what brushes i like

does anyone else even know what a collect call is anymore? or why it was relevant?

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i draw robots sometimes

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Since we're talking about Oni recently I wanna mention something that I find interesting

The Oni that we see in March of the Oni, don't they look... sickly to you?

Baggy skin that is practically hanging off of them, all throughout their bodies. This is strange, isn't it? It's especially interesting considering the other Oni we see, Mystake:

See her? She's perfectly healthy! And we can't say this is age because of the fact that she's probably just as old as the rest of the Oni. She was around all the way back before Ninjago was created and was hired to assassinate the First Spinjitzu Master. Meaning that she was most likely one of the stronger Oni at the time.

This isn't just something Mystake has either, Garmadon also doesn't have this bagginess!

So the question is, what caused these Oni to become so sickly, so unhealthy? They're powerful, able to spread destruction through a giant mist. Isn't that odd though, that they're able to do this? I mean, Garmadon and Mystake don't as far as we've seen.

My theory is because the Oni have embraced destruction fully.

Looking back at what we see of the Oni prior to their introduction in Season 10, we see that they have made multiple things. The temple, the masks, the stronghold in the first realm. Do you see a pattern here?

THEY CREATE!

They make temples, structures, and build civilizations! Sure the purpose is for war but it's still creation! They make things, they do the very opposite of what they apparently embody. They even carve pictures into their walls, making maps and telling stories, they clearly weren't just purely beings of destruction. They had a system of hierarchy based on the Oni masks being worn by Warlords.

The Oni most likely lost the war against the dragons, based on the fact that they had to flee their home realm and that there's not a single sign of one in Season 9. Now what would a war mongering species do in response to defeat?

Simple, become more powerful.

And they did! They can destroy realms now! They have become purely beings of destruction, yet they're sickly, why?

Because they don't have balance.

Their own destruction is most likely hurting them. Oni that create and have it as part of their lives, like Mystake and Garmadon(prior to being resurrected), are healthy. They have some semblance of balance and that keeps their bodies from being overloaded with destruction.

The rest of the Oni though have obsessed themselves with destruction to the point where they're destroying themselves.

Thank you for reading this if you did (:

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I don’t know if I’ve told you. But I love oni. 

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here a scene from season 10 that i mostly drew for the height difference hc

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here some oni

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i wonder how many people ive seen and not realized ive seen them before