She woke with a jolt, clutching the white silken sheets so tightly that her claws tore through the fabric. Gripped, suddenly, by the feeling that she was clawing for life, the young dragon bolted out of bed and tumbled into the wooden wheelchair next to it.
Clinging to the frame, she summoned up what magic she could muster and shoved herself over to the wide window across the room. Unsteady claws clutched at the lock, and finally she slammed it open, collapsing on the sill to gasp in sweet, pure summer night air.
She lay there with her head on the windowsill for a moment, her chest heaving, but panic still welled up and choked the air from her throat. Something was changing inside her. Insides shifting, energy awakening, and – at the same time – beginning to slip away.
With every breath she took, the clock was ticking down. Sands in the hourglass falling. And when they ran out...
They called it the Change, in those books she'd spent so many long days poring over. Every dragon went through it. As their innate magical energy grows and grows, it becomes too strong to be contained within their body and they begin to emit their aura. For most young dragons, it was a time of celebration.
For her, it was a death sentence.
Cynder Shadowfall was fourteen years old, just two months and ten days left until her hatchday. They'd stopped celebrating those long ago, when it became clear she wasn't going to be some miracle child who fought off the sickness. There was no reason to rejoice another year closer to her death.
But she still kept track of every day. The years and now months left that she had to live. It was morbid, she knew, but she couldn't help it.
The child's disease. The hatchday killer, the aura-eater. Aurus, that name that had always haunted her, reminding her that she would never grow up.
Fifteen years. That was her sentence. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Looking, now, to be right on time. Because the stronger Cynder grew, the weaker she became. With every passing year, it took a little more out of her. Until her fifteenth hatchday, when magic would course through her veins, and then...
Cynder would be no more.
Gathering her strength, the young dragon lifted her head and gazed around the luxurious room that had been her home for the past fifteen years. Her eyes lingered on each spot, taking it all in. It was truly the best any dragon could ask for.
The walls were lined with marble, so pure and polished she could nearly see her reflection in it, the floors with plush carpet soft enough to sleep on. Darkwood furniture – a luxury harvested from distant dangerous forests – filled every corner. In the winter, she could roll down into the lowered area and sit by the tall, tall fireplace with a book in paw.
As long as she stayed in this room, she never needed to ask for anything. She had a pool of crystalline water to bathe in, and a rounded bed covered in plush furs much too large for her lean frame, and all the latest toys to amuse herself with, and dozens of servants to meet her every smallest need.
But she would die in this place.
Cynder loved her parents very much. They were doting and kind, always looking out for her, always worrying over her safety. But she didn't get to see them very much; as leaders in the upper echelons of society, there was so much to do. And not much time for a daughter who didn't have any left.
She knew why they kept her locked up here, why they only let her outside after twilight, when Shadowfall Sanctuary's gates were locked. And then, only with a guard attending. She was weak and small, and it wouldn't be very difficult at all to hurt a girl like her.
But she wished, more than anything else, that they would just give her the one thing she'd always wanted...
Cynder's gaze turned back to the window, the stars peering down through a glimmering veil. They twinkled happily above the city, which lay dark and silent except for a few candlelit windows.
High up in her third-story room, Cynder imagined silhouettes in those windows looking back at her. When she was little, she'd play games, casting shadows over the candle in a silent message to far-off friends. But behind the glass, the dark rooms were always empty.
Warfang... The City of Wonder, the Dragon City. The last stronghold against the darkness. For so long, she'd watched over it from above, seeing mornings dawn and light fade, the streets filling and emptying, and leaving her alone. Would she ever have a chance to leave it?
Even just for a moment... Just to walk by the river she could see over the wall, curving off through the trees into places far beyond.
Maybe she'd never get to find out where those places were, but that didn't matter so much. Just a chance to breathe cool air, to sit in fresh, warm grass, to close her eyes and think clearly without the din of the city encroaching on her thoughts.
Peace. Just a moment of peace, a day out there. That was all Cynder wanted. She would gladly die here in this room for that one small wish she'd been dreaming of for so long. Would that day ever come...?
But she knew, staring at the walls of the city that had been both home and prison her whole life, the approaching stormclouds that blotted out the stars she wished upon, that she would never leave this place.
---
First chapter finally uploaded, been sitting on it for a bit now. Just waiting for chapter 2 to be be beta’d. Let’s get this party started.
Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up an’ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DC’s animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males don’t/can’t/shouldn’t like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that it’s popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titans— two million viewers for new episodes will do that— and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.
To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.
In a nutshell, it’s much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.
This is why children’s toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits they’ve decided to use is “boys versus girls”.
Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? That’s market segregation in action.
The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; they’re viewed as “stealing” the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully “owns” it.
This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? It’s not just artificial, it’s deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying “this is the ways it’s always been” or “this is just what the market wants”, they’re lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.
(Interestingly, the reverse isn’t always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collector’s market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)
Paul Dini, a writer/producer said this on a podcast:
“ That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, it’s like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’—this is the network talking—’one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as boys, but right there.’”
Cartoon network and Warner brothers deliberately made the conscious decision to dumb down their female characters because they want to push female viewers away. In fact, Tower Prep was cancelled because it had too many female viewers because the writers made too many well written female characters.
So shitty representation of girls isn’t something that just happens. It’s the result of deliberate planning just so the execs can make more money.
And it’s not just cartoon network. I mean, why do you think Nick fucked over Korra so badly? Remember them telling Bryke they didn’t want a female Avatar? Why do you think there are no Korra figurines or action figures?
Can confirm.
YJ getting cancelled “because girls liked it” isn’t a conspiracy theory.
It’s been the word through the grapevine in the industry for YEARS.
DC didn’t want to market it to girls when that wasn’t the intended audience so they just cancelled it instead.
I’m pretty sure the Tron legacy cartoon had this “problem” as well which was why it was put in a 2am slot and then cancelled for lack of views.
Cartoon Network/Warner Bros does this shit ALL THE TIME
Older post, but I highly encourage it! Try out the weirdest stuff! Try things you think would never work in the real world because this is your world and if you say (insert political system believed to not work) works then it does
Here’s a list of Society and Government types I’ve stolen directly from the worldbuilding section of some rulebooks:
Anarchy: the social conscience maintains order, but there are no laws
Athenian Democracy: Every citizen can vote on every new law
Representative Democracy: Elected representatives form a congress or government
Clan: Pretty much whoever is older is in charge, traditions are strongly adhered to, and society as a whole is split cross many tribes that are generally similar (and usually allied) but with their own quirks and traditions
Caste: A lot like a Clan structure, but each clan has a set role in society that usually renders them co-dependent. These Castes usually follow a social heirarchy
Dictatorship: One person controls everything, and they will later pass the right to rule to someone else, whether by inheritance, election, duelling, or some other method. Not all dictatorships are bad, especially if they are formed in times of crisis or rebellion, but even those started with the best intentions may quickly corrupt.
Plutocracy: Whoever has money is in charge.
Technocracy: A group of scientists and engineers have complete control and do everything they can to run the country at maximum efficiency. The more competent they are, the more likely this is to be viewed as a good thing.
Thaumocracy: Like a technocracy, but run by a science-like form of magic (like wizards and arcanists rather than shamans and witches)
Theocracy: The Church controls everything, and their religious law is civil law. Whether this religion is real, is fake but knows it, or believes its own lies is up to you.
Corporate State: Powerful mercantile organisations have taken control of entire regions. This is a lot like a Technocracy, but with a corporate structure and a focus on maximum profitability (and no-one else is going to set them a minimum wage)
Feudal: A lot like a dictatorship, but subsidiary lords are assigned their own local power and can enforce their own law without notifying the larger state.
***VARIATIONS***
Bureaucracy: Government runs very slowly and the public has effectively no control. There is a lot of red tape and taxation is high.
Colony: Government is dependent on a mother society
Cybercracy: A computer system is the state administrator. Hopefully the programmers did a good job…
Matriarchy: Positions of authority are female-exclusive.
Meritocracy: Positions of authority require rigorous testing to qualify for.
Military Government: The Military control everything, usually but not always totalitarian
Monarchy: The person in charge may call themselves king or queen, but fundamentally this is either a dictatorship or a feudal society.
Oligarchy: A small organisation is in control, and it elects its own members.
Patriarchy: like a matriarchy, but for guys. what a novel idea
Sanctuary: A society that protects the people other societies hunt (that may be considered criminals or terrorists by other nations)
Socialist: The government directly manages the economy, education is easy to get, the government intervenes to get everyone possible a job. This is likely to collapse quickly without good technology or magic to assist it.
Subjugated: The society as a whole is completely controlled by an outside force.
Utopia: A perfect society where everyone is satisfied and nothing sinister is happening behind the scenes we swear.
Finish Channeler. | Oops, I got distracted by another project and took a long break. That probably wasn’t happening anyway.
Continue Remnants. | Didn’t finish Channeler.
Finish some unfinished Phoenix stories. | I didn’t, but I tried (it became gay and got out of control), and wrote a few short ones.
Actual book? | I wasn’t really planning on it, but I came up with an opening line I like.
Six more arts. | 18 arts and 16 sketches/attempts. I’m happy enough.
Stream sometimes. | Didn’t. Probably giving up until I move.
I don’t know what this year holds yet. The state I’m frozen in may finally break. I want to finish Channeler if I can, and keep drawing, go back to streaming someday when I’m capable. I always want to give old stories I dropped the endings they deserve, and to keep trying to be a good person.
Beyond that, for now, I’ll take it as it comes. This year I don’t need resolutions. I just need to stay afloat a little longer.
Ever since I learnt bout angel tiers as a kid I always wanted to draw em all but only now did i get around to it-
Wanted to have it where they progressively get more abstract and inhuman the higher the tier goes cause who doesnt love a lil cosmic horror? I also took some liberties with the descriptions of all the angels cause lotta them kind of overlap and sound similar.
I did a lot of art this year, but as I’m finishing up the final image I’ll be posting in 2021, here is (excluding some too-long comics) everything I didn’t have the time to complete.
