The Moon Being Illuminated By Light Reflected Off The Earth During The Total Eclipse [OC]

Dorothy Adamson (British, 1894 - 1934): Goats (1934) (via The Athenaeum)

crag wyvern. extremely intelligent and has a very friendly disposition, but most people think of it as ugly and ominous

skipping day 26 bc i can't for the life of me come up w an answer

unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 27: it's getting dark out. does your kintype sleep, wake up, or PANIC??

the fauns wind down at night. after a long day of running and jumping and climbing, sleep is a strong possibility, all cuddled up in a pile of friends until first light.

sleepyhead sets up camp and sleeps by the fire. their sleep is light, since they can't afford to completely let their guard down. let's hope it's restful.

Wexler Films, Science of Light, 1960′s

Territory, and What it Is to Be a Dragon

That last essay I reblogged got me thinking about what being dragon really means to me, what the core of it is, so here I am writing.

(Obviously my experiences of draconity and what it means to be a dragon are not going to be universal. When I say "dragon" in this post, I mean specifically my species of dragon; I just don't know what we call ourselves in our own tongue, so I only have dragon to call it.)

Disclaimer aside:

What is it to be a dragon?

Dragon is many things, many small things that come together to form a larger picture. Or at least, that's how dragon-in-human-skin is.

Flight, for one. Flight is the first thing I remember wanting so badly that it hurt all the way down to the core of my bones. What is there to say about it? It's home, it's life; a grounded dragon is a dead dragon. Flight is hard work, yes, but the sky is where we are safest, where the only thing that can touch us is another dragon, and it's difficult for even them to approach unnoticed. Hunting from above is the safest and most effective way to do it. Patrolling the territory is easiest when one doesn't have to contend with any obstacles but the currents of the wind.

I have to concur with Rook (@/words-of-wolf) in that aforementioned essay; the violence in me does not come from the hunt, it comes from the territory. Dragons are viciously territorial creatures, more often than not willing to die for our claim, our lair, our hoard. But the hunt... the hunt is swift, and lethal, and does not strike dragonbrain as particularly violent. A hunt isn't a fight. I don't know whether dragon!me thought of my prey as beings capable of fear and pain; we were sort of sapient (enough so to have names, at least), but only sort of.

Territory, though. Territory is core to being dragon, for me. A dragon needs to claim things and places as mine, and it will, whether or not that claim is appropriate. Much like a parrot, if it doesn't have an appropriate outlet, it will make an inappropriate one (and sometimes it will do so even if it is given an appropriate outlet - despite having an actual territory my brain likes to claim any room I spend a significant amount of time in as mine, even if it's technically shared space, and I've almost lashed out at a coworker for the crime of turning the fan off in my room when it was just as much his room as mine). There is a certain amount of possessiveness to a dragon that is inescapable.

My mother often questions why dragons hoard gold. I can talk about courting behaviors, I can talk about how it theoretically proves you're able to protect something precious to a mate, but in the end, the answer is simply because we must. Hoard is core to us, as much as allogrooming is to a primate or hunting is to a cat. My hoard serves no purpose now; I have no other dragons to court even if I wanted to. But still I am driven to hoard nonetheless, just as a cat is driven to hunt no matter whether it's actually hungry or not. Dragonbrain only sort of cares about why territory and hoard are important, how they feed and protect and offer mating opportunities. It just knows that they are important, and that it will fight to the death to defend them - why only sort of matters.

This is, I think, a lot of where my draconic pride comes from. Draconic pride is something we talk about in draconic spaces with some regularity; whatever the kind of dragon, there's more often than not some amount of pride and vanity associated with being a dragon, any kind of dragon. It's instinctive for many of us. It's probably culturally learned for all of us. But there is also a sense of natural pride that comes with this is mine, none can take it from me, I think. Pride, too, is core to draconity, in all its flawed glory, but it is integrally tied with these things, and perhaps that's why it's so core to draconity. (Perhaps that's why it's so common as well - I've rarely met a dragon who isn't some degree of territorial.)

unhinged thirty days of otherkin challenge, day 23: you hear a scratching noise around the corner. What does your kintype do?

the fauns check it out, no hesitation or caution! <3

sleepyhead puts a hand on the hilt of their sword, and waits a moment to see if the source comes into view. no use getting yourself into trouble if you can avoid it, and boy, does sleepyhead want to avoid it.

re: cat otherhearted type

the matter is not as settled as i wanted to believe orz. i think it's time i accepted it as a para-type instead of trying to stuff it into one label or the other. ✌️

my fictionkintype is psychological in nature, so it's a bit funny to me that i talk about it in metaphysical terms.

in reality, i shaped the identity of [sleepyhead]. but i think about it as a past life that helped to shape me. i may not have that holy courage, but the soul lives on in me.

www. the way the sun shines through the leaves dot com