"Ministrations," part 3 of my king/knight illustration series 😁
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Peter Solarz

Kaledo Art

if i look back, i am lost
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dirt enthusiast
noise dept.
Misplaced Lens Cap
Today's Document
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

shark vs the universe
Three Goblin Art
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
NASA

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

JVL

izzy's playlists!
Acquired Stardust

oozey mess
RMH

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@owlbearstare
"Ministrations," part 3 of my king/knight illustration series 😁
i genuinely think that it's so so valuable to have stories about people that have done horrible things existing. and getting better. and worse. forgiven and resented. seeing their crimes age with them, their weight shifting, shrinking, growing. is it redemption? further corruption? is it just existence?
you lived, now what? is i think one of the more interesting questions we can pose with fiction, and i think it's maybe one of the powerful vehicles for conveying the notion that there is no point at which you stop being a person. the most unforgivable irreparable harms are caused by people making choices. and we will make bad ones and keep making them. you're not immune. no one you love is immune.
and crucially, we don't necessarily build a better world by defining criterion for forgiveness, redemption, punishment, penance. forgiveness is relational and as much about the person who has been harmed as it is about the culprit. punishment's effect is rarely improvement. societally, our ideas of redemption and penance are firmly rooted in legalistic notions of judgement — whether based on human morals or divine — where personhood and worthiness are contingent on ticking off boxes that we could argue endlessly about redefining and relitigating.
if you move the story out of that frame, though, it's not a story about "making it up." its a story about living. it's a story about making choices. it's about reflecting on the ones you've made. it's about their impact on your relationships, your sense of self. and i think that inherently has value.
you're going to fuck up. you're going to do something bad. you're going to hurt someone. you might be forgiven for it. you might carry it with you forever. you'll always be the person who did that, so long as you live. but you're going to live. you have not become a different category of person condemned to non-existence. you still have choices to make. you get to keep making them. that's the point.
Renaer
Been thinking too much about my world's dragon rider culture and their big sassy pterodactyls pretending to be dragons, called Wyverns or Twintail dragons to distinguish them from the many smaller species of dragon adjacent creatures that inhabit their world. They are largely considered the closest to mythical dragons that many attempted to create at the dawn of magic, as they are large enough to bear riders and can (with the help of those riders) breath something approximating fire.
However, since they're relatively fragile owing to their hollow bones and no real natural armor they are mostly retained and supported by local infrastructure for their message carrying and dignitary transport capabilites over their utility in warfare- though it's not unheard of.
They're also quite sensitive creatures, not quite fully sapient but certainly more intelligent than the average beast, and if they don't feel inclined to commit to a job there is only so much even their riders can do to direct them given the size difference. And the teeth.
I've put way too much thought into designing a saddle that could be used in flight and on the ground, and on the back of a creature so much larger than it's rider. Much less one that's also usable at various angles in between, depending on the individual dragon's preferences for walking. Some dragons are open to their rider's inputs than others, but most have a preferred stance and will not be swayed from it when on the ground and seems to have a lot to do with the dragon's personality and social hierarchy in addition to simple physical variation between individual dragons.
These guys are born from eggs and are about cat sized on hatching, with some rider enclaves raising them in creches but most immediately give over their raising to their future rider. Usually a teen to young adult at the time, since the average lifespan of a dragon is about 40 years, this is a lifetime commitment for both dragon and rider. They grow to about mastiff sized within their first year, and then horse sized by 3 or 4 years old and begin their flight training with the introduction of harness and the permanent holes for a saddle are pierced in the wings behind the shoulders. A difficult to define bond is born between the dragon and their rider as they grow together and cemented by flying together as adults when the dragon is ~5 years old and riderless dragons will typically go mad or feral rather than obey anyone but their original rider.
While their growth plateaus at about 15-20 and the average lifespan is only 40 years, up to 60 years is not uncommon with tales told of oldsters getting up to a legendary 100 years! But since they never truly stop growing after about 50 most cannot fly anymore and slow elderly metabolisms mean they spend their days sunbathing and sleeping through twilight years under the attention of loving elderly keepers.
Steve Puttrich (American), The Woods, 2026, Oil - Love enters as light, threading the woods, becoming water underfoot.
commission for @hitheeprithee, his minecraft OC Xylem! thank you for commissioning me 💙
commission info/contacts commission tag headshot | half-body | full-body
meow-meows @mrachniy
i was told that Changeling: The Dreaming has selkies so i revived my old oc from college ;0; his name is leonidas and. i think he's in the first stage of bedlam bc he only leaves the water like once every few days. he just likes SWIMMIN
Saint of the Scarlet Bloom by seok young choi
Nothin' like a summer day in hell
Tbh I don't understand anyone who denies their favorite character's flaws and acts like they've never done anything wrong when that is like consistently the most interesting part of any character ever
Gaurav Gupta “Siren Rising”
Flexible feather armor
🪽 Miscreations_us on IG
"i want them to make each other worse" i want them to have an impact on each other that's hard to define as objectively good or bad but is still sure to change the trajectory of their lives and alter their very being on a fundamental level forever
M I D G A R D II by Raphael Lacoste
The real reason your sapient dragon character needs a "rider":
Dragons on the wing are vulnerable to being mobbed by smaller, more agile flyers, particularly in your large rear blind spot, like a bird of prey being mobbed by crows. Having a human armed with a long spear perched on your back helps to dissuade anyone from getting any funny ideas.
Breath weapons are impressive enough on the ground, but in flight they're really only good for strafing stationary targets; trying to use your breath weapon in an aerial dogfight is a good way to get fire up your nose. A real fight calls for sterner measures – and, concomitantly, a crew to aim and reload the cannons.
In today's competitive world, it's not enough to devour a flock of sheep and call it a day if you want to keep your edge. You're accompanied at all times by a qualified personal alchemist tasked with carefully regulating your internal furnace to ensure peak performance, and sometimes you even listen to them.
No dragon of any quality would be caught dead without their valet. It's not as though you can announce your numerous long-winded titles yourself when introductions are called for, can you? You suppose next you'll be expected to pick up the spoils of your conquests yourself, like a common brigand. Perish the thought!