#here be dragons

[nekomori-art]

Let sleeping dragons lie | Print available here

[ID: Illustration depicting a Chinese dragon curled up in a meadow, surrounded by little wildflowers.]

[staff]

tumblr tuesday: dragons!

In honor of yesterday's Appreciate A Dragon Day, here's a post appreciating your appreciation of dragons.*

*(This post was largely brought to you by the Flight Rising fandom. Congratulations, Flight Rising fandom. Well played).

@antimonycarver:

@seasaltshrimp:

@fuulikoo-art:

@danneroni:

@fr-mayaohmu:

@runkpori:

@goannafr:

@blodwyrm:

@dani-m-art:

@owleics-fr:

@empireants-draw

@tamberella:

@ametat-arts:

@itslanners:

@macabrecabra:

@bootlegsnake:

@silis-fr:

@mmmerchedesi:

@artofthatcommonbird:

@nahvithedragon:

@wizardpotions:

@meesefr:

@rhvpsodos-fr:

[rowynnellis]

‘Golden’ The year of the Dragon drawn near. Another illustration for the Here be Dragons by Ralph Whitlock illustration project. I’m so excited to see this book renewed with all my illustrations 🥰

[jasminetwil]

Happy Lunar New Year, fellow goblins!

Today (10th February) officially marks the first day in accordance with the lunar calendar. This year belongs to the Wood Dragon. 🪵🌳🐉 💖

Those born under the only mythical animal zodiac sign are said to be charismatic, intelligent, confident, and ambitious. They are natural born leaders who are innately lucky and gifted, but may become arrogant due to their skills. This can lead to setbacks and failures if they are not careful.

Wood Dragons in particular are characterised for being full of energy, passion and dedication. They have dreams of changing the world and are good at coming up with innovative ideas and implementing them.

Wishing all of us the very best year to come, and may the Wood Dragon bring us lots of happiness and positive change in these turbulent times. 💖

[greencheekconure27]

Hot take

[erithel]

These are some of the main characters from the pirate novel I'm writing called "Here Be Dragons."

"Jules had expected adventure when he boarded the pirate ship Firebird in an attempt to escape his former life - but he never could have anticipated that adventure would involve strange lights in the sky and a path that would lead him beyond the borders of the world he knew."

[angelswithscalywings]

Adine fanart by stercore_murum.

[writeforfandoms]

Wild Mountain Thyme 2

Find the series masterlist

You and Ezra continue your hunt for a wild dragon nest.

Warnings: swearing, Ezra is an ass, talk of nest raiding.

Word count: 1.2k

Eventual Ezra x f!reader

Ezra wasn't sure he had ever had a partner so green. Oh, sure, she came wearing a pack. But she was so… bright. She had smiled, easy as anything, before she had even met him. She had such energy about her.

Or. Well. She had, until he'd gone and opened his mouth and let his own anger dampen her light.

Oh, he was sure she had asked to go along on an expedition, but that hadn't meant his. It wasn't her fault, exactly, that his employer decided to saddle him with a useless tourist of a partner. And after sleeping on the matter, Ezra felt… almost bad. Almost. Not quite actually bad, but close enough to it that he resolved to talk to her today.

Hopefully she wouldn't get herself killed, at least.

He sighed to himself and stretched out, pushing the sleeping bag down with his feet. At least the weather was supposed to cooperate - neither blistering hot nor bitterly cold, with lots of sunshine on the horizon. And the hike would be pretty, if remote.

Resolved to be a bit nicer and keep his ire aimed at his employer, Ezra crawled out of his tent and stood, shaking out his limbs. He looked over to her tent to gauge if she was awake yet.

And found her gone instead.

"Hells and damnation!"

–

You had woken early, a combination of nerves and being determined to not be late and hold back the hiking. You had slept off some of your mood, but not all of it.

And then you checked, and your partner for the next few days was still dead asleep. You could see his outline in his tent, could faintly hear him snoring. Your temper flared again, and you walked it off. You took care of your morning routine and then took a quick walk around. It’s not like you were going far, and you weren’t going to interact with people. Honestly, you weren’t entirely clueless, or dumb.

How had Ezra referred to you yesterday? Green? Yeah, something like that.

Heaving an aggravated sigh, you kicked a rock off the trail into the woods, pouting. Just a little. It wasn’t fair, you hadn’t done anything wrong. And yet Ezra hated you, clearly.

All you’d wanted was to come on this trip. You’d wanted this for years, had practiced and gone on hikes and done as much research as you could…

Well. If you had to prove to that ass that you could do it, you would. You didn’t need his approval. You didn’t need his help. Hell, maybe you’d end up helping him. That would shut his mouth.

You meandered back to camp and blinked when you found Ezra up and glowering at you.

"Where exactly did you wander off to?"

You snorted. "Had to do my morning stuff. We're still in a public campground, I didn't do anything crazy."

"We are trying not to draw attention to ourselves, Channel Rat, I do hope you realize."

You smiled, though you knew it didn't reach your eyes. "We are drawing more attention from you standing here scolding me than from my quick walk." Not waiting for his response, you walked past him and went to break down your tent and finish packing for the day.

Uncomfortable silence fell between the two of you again, all the way through you shouldering your pack.

"Are we leaving the car here?"

"Yes, we're on foot for the rest of the way." Ezra cleared his throat, fingers fiddling with the straps of his pack for a few moments. "We're headed this way today." He looked like he wanted to say more, then he shook his head and started walking. You fell in behind him.

He didn't set a harsh pace, content apparently to walk easily and steadily. You started off on an actual trail, but didn't stay on it for long. Within a few hours, Ezra was breaking off from the trail, heading through the woods.

And you followed him. You didn't like the guy, but you watched where he stepped.

There were more dangers out here than just dragons, after all.

Around lunch time, Ezra finally broke the silence.

"Why did you ask to come along on this little venture?" He glanced at you as he uncapped his water bottle.

You paused for a moment, grateful you were chewing. That gave you a few moments to consider your reply. "Research," is what you said. "I've done what research I can but so little is known on wild nests."

Ezra stopped and lowered his water bottle, gaze shrewd. "You are aware of what we are doing out here, yes? Because I am not here for research."

You rolled your eyes. "Yes, yes, we're nest raiding," you agreed, flapping a hand negligently. "I'm well aware of what's going to happen here. Like I said. I knew what I was getting into out here."

Ezra nodded. "Well, then, long as we've got that cleared up," he agreed, a little more cheerful. "Still, this is an unusual line of work, or research, for… someone of means."

You laughed. You couldn't help it. "Oh, don't worry about that," you said, still grinning. "That's my business."

"Fair enough." He shrugged and capped his water bottle again before he started off. You set off after him, shaking your head.

He was an odd one. But then, so were you. It was rather fitting.

The scenery was beautiful, at least. Wild and with no people in sight, not since you'd left the trail behind. You tried to map as you went, taking note of interesting rocks or trees, but you knew that you'd get helplessly lost before long.

There was no lack of wildlife, either. Rabbits darted away from the pair of you. Squirrels chittered as you passed below their trees. Birds chirped and sang to each other, flitting around finding food.

Honestly, it was perhaps the most peaceful thing you had ever seen in your life, marred only by the unfriendly brown-haired menace ahead of you.

"Channel rat," he called back to you after a while. "Come join me up here."

Curious, you quickened your steps to pull up even with him. He nodded to some bushes ahead of you.

"What do you make of that?"

You frowned, not moving closer but tipping your head to try to get a better idea of what you were looking at. "It's a bush. Looks torn up." You shrugged. "What's special about it?"

Ezra huffed, sounding annoyed. "That is not just a torn up bush," he groused. "That is a sign of dragon hunting. Look at the bush more closely - see where it got caught? Those cracked branches? And the roots, see how they're comin' up out of the ground?"

You nodded slowly, looking at it with more caution. You could see what he had seen, now. "How long ago, do you think?"

Ezra shrugged, reaching up to scratch the scruff along his jaw. "Hard to say. Recent enough that we're in the right area." He stalked ahead of you again, muttering under his breath. You just caught the words "untrained" and "useless".

A potent mixture of humiliation and rage pricked at your eyes, clogging up your throat. You breathed through it, closing your eyes tightly. You needed this. You needed this. You couldn't just march off now, no matter how much you wanted to.

So you waited until the rage had calmed a little. And then trudged after him.

[artist-ellen]

Lung Tien Lien

Another notable dragon the team meets in China is Lien. A rare albino Celestial. A respected scholar, devoted to her Prince, but essentially shunned for her coloring: white being extremely unlucky and many believed her to be a devastating death omen.

I am the artist!!! Don’t repost without permission & credit! Thank you! Come visit me over on: https://instagram.com/ellen.artistic

[redrcs]

Where the monsters hide

White Plumed Honeyeater on a dragon's head

On my travels at Lake Benanee

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: When Yue is fifteen, a Fire Nation prince comes looking for the avatar.

Author: @shanastoryteller

Note from submitter: This is my fav atla fic of all time

[talefoundryshow]

Do you have a favorite example of humans and giant monsters working together?

Watch the rest of the video here!

[sofiadragon]

Ever find a larger bill in the laundry that you thought you lost or spent? I feel like that. The tiny little slash fic website from the early 00s that I read "If you are prepared" on is long gone, all links broken, but I found it over on Walking the Plank, which is somehow still operational. I found it and I'm about to completely ruin my emotional state for the next several days by re-reading it.

If You are Prepared

I sure hope this is the dark, intense journey through deep lore pre-OotP Harry Potter that I think it is. I so hope this is the fic I think it is. I reposted a work of mine on AO3 and spotted a reference to the online slash fic magazine Swish and Flick while I was cutting and pasting the old rtf into chapters. That got me to googling around looking to see if there was any trace of it left after 22 or so years. Found a screencap with some links to different stories and... I know this title. It lept out at me, through a screencap taken of a half-busted wayback machine archived webpage from 2003-2004. It jogged memories two decades old.

Go ahead. I dare you to read it. First chapter is Snape's POV:

At the first sight of the Muggle neighbourhood I’m reminded of one of the reasons I became a Death Eater so long ago. I feel nauseous and I can scarcely resist taking out my wand and casting a growth spell on their perfectly cut grass. I hurry up the stone walk way, amusing myself in imagining the look on the Muggles’ faces were they ever to see my garden. I knock three times on the oak door.

[booktineus]

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros | Empyrean #1

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a great book. It’s a really easy-to-read fantasy with interesting characters and a slowburn enemies to lovers romance. And DRAGONS 🐉

If you’re new to fantasy or struggle with some of the complex writing and world-building that can be found in high/ epic fantasy, this is a great fantasy gateway book. The writing eases you into the world, focusing more on the characters first before introducing bigger fantasy plot points near the end.

Speaking of the end, those last few chapters were AMAZING.

“So why not five stars, Bec?” you might be asking.

A few small things that stopped this from being a full five-star read for me.

The biggest thing was more of a me problem than a book problem.

I struggle to get into books that have a lot of hype. Usually I let them sit on my TBR collecting dust for a while and wait for the hype to pass and my mood to be right before reading them. Obviously, that’s not possible for a read-along. Thankfully, once I got to the dragons, I was able to get out of my head and fully emerge myself in the story.

The second thing was some of the romance stuff.

I’m a sucker for the romance tropes in this book, and I did enjoy the romance overall, but there were just some angsty scenes and moments that I almost wanted to skim over to get back to other storylines.

This book also made me realise that while I don’t bat an eye at earth-shattering orgasm metaphors in contemporary romances, I don’t like when they become literal in fantasy 😅

The final thing is I just wanted more fantasy.

I wanted to see more of the world and conflict outside the College. More epic battles, interesting lore, and questions of morality.

After that ending, I’m 99.99% certain Iron Flame is going to deliver ALL of that so BRING ON NOVEMBER.

Thank you to Tandem Collective Global for having me as part of the readalong, and Hachette Aus for sending me a copy of the book to read 😊

[greencheekconure27]

The tiny creature that dwells on the back of my notepad sends his regards.

[erithel]

OC's from my pirate novel, Marek and Jules.