#luthyx

Personally, I’m in favor of redesigning her. Her design annoys me so much and anything would be an improvement.

Same here! They were definitely thinking only of making her look like Toothless’s girlfriend when they could’ve done so many cool things with her. My disappointment grows when I see other dragons with a Night Fury-like build, like the Sand Wraith and Wooly Howl: both similar and distinctive. While listing out appearance traits that one draft of the “Finding Another Way” redesign has, I realized that most of them were the exact opposite of what they’d done to her: longer, pointier muzzle, larger spines permanently split down the middle, longer claws, more apparent “fingers” on the wings...

The one thing I’m happy about her design is that it inspired so many artists to make their own redesigns, and each one I’ve seen yet is beautiful, imaginative, unique, and gorgeous. If some of these people end up working in character design posts in the future, we’re in good hands.

luthyx replied to your post “So while I do want to include elements of the third movie into...”

I’d say redesign. I’ve redesigned the Light Furies myself for the purpose of a RP forum and it’s made me much more pleased with the species as a whole. Also, I’d be happy to make a quick concept sketch for you if you can provide me a good enough description! I love dragon designing, and though I haven’t been reading the fic (lack of spare time, alas) I’d be happy to lend a hand!

Oh, thank you for the offer! I’m afraid I wouldn’t feel right accepting your offer, though, since I wouldn’t have a way to repay you. I’m  really anxious about paying for stuff online outside of business websites, and I’m awful at writing for other people’s specifications, so I can’t really offer to trade you a fanfic in exchange for your art. But your offer really made my day, so thank you!

[slides in] Holy hell, I absolutely love these anthros and the aspect notes. Do you mind if I use these in my lore? If I ever post the lore anywhere, I'll make sure to give you proper credit!

Oh right! The Shaggy meme! That’s where I heard it from! Thank you for the reminder! :D

on a scale of 1-10 how intimidating am I?

Our next aro-spec creator is @luthyx​, who also goes by Petrichlorine and MUSE-42. They’re better known on this blog for sharing snippets from an in-progress work called Sanction the Skies, celebrating all things a-spec and dragon!

Luthyx is a transmasculine, agender aro-ace creative with mental illnesses, specialising in speculative fiction and digital art, the latter both original and fancontent (primarily for How to Train Your Dragon). You can find their gorgeous art on their DeviantArt account and their writing at @sanctiontheskies​, currently featuring artwork, maps and a wealth of worldbuilding and characterisation teasers. Lastly, if you enjoy Flight Rising, you can check out their dragons under the name Luthyx!

With us Luthyx talks their confidence in their aromanticism, the need to live an authentic life on their terms, the way their characters and worlds become part of them, and writing spec fic as an aro. Their determination to craft and make as they need sparkles in every word and dragon scale, so please let’s give them all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

My tale is a fairly straightforward one. By the time I was of the age that most people started experiencing their first crushes, I’d moved to a different state and begun taking an online school, free of the peer pressure that lies ever-present in most traditional classrooms.

Even then, as I began to develop my skills and passion for writing, I’d already begun to see the influence of the omnipresent Romantic Subplot. It was everywhere: books, film, music, poems. I couldn’t so much as flip on the radio without hearing a disillusioned, autotuned cry for help healing a broken heart. I hated it. I still do.

It quickly became apparent to me that I wasn’t like the others. Every once and a while, my mom would drag me to her church, where I’d be forced to endure the company of undisciplined tween boys and catty, Twilight-obsessed girls. It was the girls especially that caught my attention: the sheer passion and fervency with which they discussed who they found hot, what Hogwarts house they were in, and their critiques and praise of The Hunger Games. I found it absurd to objectify people, fantasy or real, like that.

I think this was probably about the time I began to realize that I was agender, too, but that’s a story for another day. Thankfully, I’d already become a headstrong, independent teenager, and I was proud to say that I was different, that my interests were in something that, in my head, was much more important and much more intense than those of others my age.

I can’t recall the first time I heard the term aromantic or the first day that I applied it to myself. I think, deep down, I always knew, and I’ve always been astoundingly proud of it. To me, romance isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of things, but just another life experience I haven’t had, like owning fourteen chihuahuas or going on a warm summer vacation to the Middle East. Not everybody wants to experience those things, and society is completely fine with it - I see no reason as to why they should feel differently about romantic relationships, but I suppose they do. Dealing with the fallout of that bias is their problem.

I am me, and the me I know will not be held down by stereotypes, will not conform to any sort of life script I am handed, will not feel sorrow or remorse for a single experience lost. I’m here for a good time, and my idea of a good time involves doing what I love. Romance is not on that list.

Hello! First time submitting here, so I apologize if I’m doing anything wrong.

But! Onto the subject at hand. A while back, I made mention here (via ask) that I was working on a book series about dragons that had two ace/aro protagonists, who are now pictured above. I’m finally ready to start working a lot more on the book and to engage in my blog more, so I’m starting by posting here!

The novels take place in the world of Vahaar, a continent of magic and gods. On Vahaar, dragons are the dominant species, and humans don’t exist. The magic that dragons wield - unoriginally named Elements - is basic and clunky. You can’t conjure up demons or shoot lightning, but you can manipulate the basic threads of the world, such as fire, air, earth, rot, so on and so forth. The Elements you have are based upon the elements your parents had.

Four large kingdoms dominate the continent, and they’re where the action happens. As of right now, there’s been a war raging for about three hundred years between the oldest kingdom and the youngest, and some people are starting to get tired of all the fighting. Much of the plot revolves around secret puppetmasters and the vying for control, but I can’t say much else without spoilers.

The two protagonists, pictured above, are Invictus and Hadratu. Invictus (bottom right) is an incredible rarity in the dragon world: a dragon with no Elements. Elements are the reason why every dragon looks unique, and they’re also what cause dragons to grow wings, so not having them is really, really damn sucky. Secondly, most regions have superstitions regarding Elementless dragons. Needless to say, Invictus has had a really crappy life thus far. She’s quiet, more intelligent than she shows, and considerably cowardly.

Hadratu (top left) is a young hunter from a tiny swamp town. They eschew many of the conventions of society: a warm bed, gender, all manners of caution, that sort of thing. Though Hadratu’s had more luck in life than Invictus, they’re still kept under the iron heel of their aunt, Splintervine, who may be more than a little unstable.

After a freak storm blows through and completely destroys Invictus’s home, she finds herself on Hadratu’s doorstep, and the two quickly get swept up in a plot of godly games and subterfuge.

That’s all I can say for now! You can find more on these two over at @sanctiontheskies. I’m not too active over on there yet, but I plan on doing so soon, and I might also consider running an Ask the Characters sort-of deal with these two (and maybe some other major characters, too). Toodles!

Thank you so much for sharing with us such a fabulous submission, @luthyx! There’s nothing wrong with sharing your creative awesome with this blog!

Your dragons are adorable! I love the texture work in the eyes and their distinct and contrasting looks.

You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into your worldbuilding and magic, and I am always here for fantasy plots that are about ending wars and politics. Hadratu sounds like a dragon after my own heart (such a yay for eschewing gender, something I’d love to see fantasy do far more often than it does). It’s so nice to see characters here that are so much more than being a-spec, characters that are well-drawn and complex with personality and history.

I’ll say that I’m loving the combination of dragons and human cultural elements you’ve got going. I’m curious to see how the framing of dragons shapes and changes some of those elements we take for granted.

Thank you so much for the fabulous words! I think most of us know the feeling of being a Frustrated Aro who just wants to exist in narrative, and I really hope this blog leads to folks more easily finding that sense of place in others’ worlds.

I don’t know if other aro creatives have this experience, but as writer of fiction where nearly everybody is aro, I’ve also found it difficult to find an audience for my aro-specific works (when compared to my very occasional and long-ago forays into romance narratives, which have found readers without my much trying). So if this blog helps aro storytellers get in touch with the aros in desperate want of representation, that will be an amazing thing to me.

As an agender aro-ace fantasy reader myself who thinks dragons are awesome, please share with us your work when you’re ready to do so. If folks have complete works, snippets, teasers, accompanying art–whatever it is, please share! Let us salivate over the good things to come! I am always after zero-romance fantasy, ye gods. “Dragons” and “occasional divine intervention” is just good icing atop an already delicious-sounding cake!

I do apologise for the problem with PMing - I disabled them for this account, so that will be the reason why you’re having problems. Not because I don’t like talking to awesome people (I actually really do!) but because I have multiple blogs and I find it tough to keep up with everything from my chronic finger/wrist/shoulder pain. It’s easier for me if I can keep PM conversations to just my mutuals on my personal/main account, given that I struggle just to keep up with them, too.

I suppose I’m explaining it here so folks know that if I say I’ll do something and it doesn’t happen, or if things go unresponded to, chances are very high it’s from pain. I spent Sunday and Monday with my wrist splinted again because my brain decided that my Easter needed to come with extra pain. The piece I’ve been wanting to write about Clariel still only exists inside my head! Today, maybe?

(If folks really want to talk to me about something, I’m happy to give out my personal account on request, if you ask off-anon. I don’t have it linked because I’d prefer not to have my family and some offline-connected folks access my personal Tumblr, but if you’re neither and I can determine this, that’s not a problem.)