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@dragonaday-fr day 16: someone else's dragon. Here's @tinygryphon-58570's Nilas

#tundras #dragonaday2023

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Everyone look at my handsome boy

#imperials #handsome!!!

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haven’t drawn a dragon in a while, figured i’d draw one of my first beloved aethers, Trout

#a good name tbh #aethers

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I feel like when it comes to the Dusthide debate, a lot of people seem to misinterpret the main point of Ancients as both a game element and a product.

A big part of Flight Rising is dress-up. While users can argue on what the sole draw of FR is (dragons themselves, breeding, the Dominance system, etc), it's generally agreed that the dress-up aspect is one with a lot of care and resources put into it, and is therefore very important to site gameplay. Dress-up keeps getting updated with new apparel, and if there is to be a new dragon breed, it needs every piece of apparel re-drawn on it. This takes time. A lot of time. Gaps between dragons (now known as Moderns) stretch for years at a time.

Ancients were initially created as a way to fill in these time gaps between Moderns, and the easiest way to do that was to release dragons without apparel. However, this is a game that puts a lot of emphasis on dragon dress-up. Imagine if Obelisks were released without any coded apparel. You'd just have a naked dragon missing a huge element of the game, and for most players, there's no fun in that.

This is where the second point of Ancients comes in: because the appeal of clothing is gone, there has to be some kind of compromise. So... if Ancients can't wear apparel, then they are no longer restrained by the requirements for apparel (1 head/4 legs/2 wings)...

which means that they can break the modern mold freely! You can have a dragon with no legs, or six. Or with two heads, or no head. And now that you don't have to worry about apparel clipping, the tertiary genes can go wild! There is room for customization that apparel can't fulfill - you could give it extra wings, or a jellyfish head, or giant tree horns, or you could give it nothing at all as tertiary genes are optional, and it wouldn't matter because there's no apparel to be drawn around it!

Ancients are supposed to be a trade-off. There's no selling point to a dragon without clothing on the Dragons With Clothing Game, but there is a selling point to a dragon with, say, 13 legs, no wings and no tail. It doesn't wear apparel, because it physically can't, and it makes use of this function in creative ways. The inability to wear apparel is justified by the Ancient's unique proportions.

And this is where the criticisms for Dusthides and other 'basic' Ancients stems from: if your Ancient dragon is just the 1 head/4 legs/2 wings setup, then is it really an Ancient or a Modern you can't dress up? You could have the wildest, gaudiest, 15-limb tertiary gene on a Dusthide and it wouldn't matter, because tertiaries are optional and aren't a permanent part of the dragon that would inhibit the usage of apparel.

If a dragon doesn't have a justifiable reason to not wear apparel, then there's no reason for it being an Ancient.

No amount of linebreaking tertiaries will be able to hide the fact that some dragons seem to be created only for the first, initial purpose: just to tide people over until a better, 'real' dragon is created.

And that's just disappointing.

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revenge on @avemarts of Daybreak!

#wildclaws

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Fancy lad Manchineel, one of my pearl cerdae. Lore under the cut. He's one of the first dragons I'm writing for and it's been really fun.

Named after the Manchineel tree, also known as poison guava. It is one of the few sources of the alkaloid Physostigmine, the cure for Belladonna poisoning.

Manchineel developed an auto immune disorder in his youth which claimed his back legs. Being as toxic as he is, and frail as he was, unable to keep up with his siblings, he was raised in solitude. It is well known that pearl cerdae who have made a pact are immune to poison, but hatchlings must produce their pearl before they can form a pact. Manchineel's frailness prevented him from producing a pearl long enough for the sickness to take hold. By the time he was ready to form a pact, his back legs were rendered numb and immobile. The legs were amputated and custom prosthetics were fitted. He takes things slow since his legs aren't as agile as the rest of the herds'.

The time he spent interacting with healers left a great impression on him. Determined to help others, as they had helped him, he pursued medicine, yet he didn't expect to need these skills so soon. News of his predicament had travelled around amongst the cerdae and a new couple of parents sought his help in aiding their hatchling's recovery. Belladonna, a young cerdae, looked just as frail as he once did. Manchineel spent all hours of the day tending to her. He'd make sure she gathered enough strength to produce a pearl before her body sustained long term injuries.

After she had succesfully formed her pact, she'd follow him around like a mirrorlet, eager to learn and to help. To be continued~

#pearl cerdae #pearlcatchers

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love drawing beastes. one of my favorite hobbies

#imperials

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wait wait wait we could have. meridian and chorus.

#flight rising #scribes #guardians #dusthides

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butch lesbian former sailor beast. really good suggestion from the replies: meridian.

#scribes #flight rising #dusthides #water flight #polls

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i think my biggest problem with the concept of ancients isn't even that they can't wear clothes... i understand the whole logistical problem that is solving. a necessary sacrifice. it's jsut that i SIMPLY do not agree that moderns "couldn't" have linebreaking terts. i just dont agree that it's a problem that it would clip with apparel like, fundamentally. we're already dealing with shirts that clip through entire wings as a necessary and long-standing suspension of disbelief, i think it'll be ok if some fans stick out of a hat or whatever. if they are saying that they have to be unique to ancients in order to make ancients more special to make up for their lack of apparel well i dont like that!! anyway obviously they can do whatever they want on their website and some day they might give moderns (another) line-breaking tert (spines/gembond/sparkle...), it's rly not impossible, i think this ire is mostly directed at all the comments PLAYERS make towards others about how it could NEVER HAPPEN!!! because of CLIPPING!! i think we'll get past that some day. hopefully

#yeah idk the clipping argument feels so silly sometimes #bc its like oh the terts can break any lines we cant have any clipping on moderns #dont look at the existing line breaking terts and also sorry abt multigaze in general lmao

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a variety of scries for this neat little dude. his name is either shanty or chorus, havent decided yet. hes a rough former-sailor, he looks like if you made a shark a butch dyke, he traveled to dragonhome with his partner (who i dont have a dragon for yet, but theyre a mage at the highland sanctum). his tert is avocado which is kinda hard to work with but i'll find it

#flight rising #dusthides

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im back to flight rising <3 really enjoying water themed guardians right now.. my user is hallstars!! please add me if you'd like

#omg obsessed with the m pose #guardians

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does anyone want these imps? i dont want these imps. free imps.

#THEYRE BEAUTIFUL #imperials

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I drew a random bipedal tundra with a fluffy belly :3 happy tundra tuesday !!!

#tundras

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and i was abt to switch to digging

#scribes

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an accent i thought was never printed / sold is on the auction house right now and its after i closed my account so i cant give it to marmairo

#speaking #DAMN #marmairo #damn it.