#wcrb

A few months ago I thought to myself, “I did a Zuko Dragon when I started watercolor, and in my brief foray into markers… should I do another one now that I have started experimenting with gouache?”

Such thoughts cannot be un-thought.

“Reflection” - a fanart for @notpotable’s amazing fic Where Clouds Roll By.

a reader sent me FANARRRTTT !!!

please behold! the imgur link is here, the artist is UncreativeUsername, and they obviously saved all their creativity for their craft because look at these!

It's dragon!Zuko from my fic, and he's sooooo beautifully done!

look at that shading in the sketch, and his shadow arcing below him! the beautiful bone structure of his face! the musculature of the wing shoulder!!

and in the color piece, the way his scar glows in the moonlight, the clouded, damaged eye, and the waves of grass in the nighttime oasis, all give it such a melancholy feel. the texturing of his body is incredibly beautiful.

please heap accolades upon the artist!

It's been an incredibly long time since I've done (or had anything to share for) a WIP Wednesday. But what's a fistful of years between neighbors and friends?

"Where Clouds Roll By" is what started happening when something in my brain decided that it needed to see Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender turned into a dragon BUT have an absolute miserable time of it. :D

Or, as described by one reader:

It is a canon divergence AU beginning at the Siege of the North, I am pleased to announce that Yue Lives (AND I plan to have her enjoy a continued presence in the story as it goes on), and is, so far, nonstop Zuko Torment (said with love), or rather, the trope of Involuntary Animal Transformation that leans heavily on the body horror and dysmorphia/dysphoria of transformation. It features, additionally, me casting grave doubt on certain aspects of the show's worldbuilding and fixing some of the more senseless parts - such as Appa's saddle. did you know that according to the wiki, they secured the saddle by "braiding Appa's fur through holes in the sides"??? Completely absurd.

It is the fifth-longest fic in the dragon!Zuko tag currently at 116k words (I would estimate myself at about a third of the way through the story so far)! And I will finish this fic unless death takes me first: so far my pace appears to be 4-6 months to produce 15-25k words that end up being divided into two chapters. It's gonna take me awhile lol.

It also is login-locked on AO3 due to all the ai-scraping issues, and it's been login-locked from Chapter 1, so it hasn't had the same visibility that other AtLA fics have had. But that's okay! I've gotten wonderfully kind feedback from readers, and I'm so grateful for every comment. <3 <3 <3 <3

ALSO ALSO I can only barely belive that IT. HAS. FANART. I have been emotionally obliterated by people's response to this work!!

Lastly, I also am astounded that I've been working on this for two years. Good gourd. Here's to another two or three, lmaooo~

Anyway, here's wonderwall the fic!

These pics may be spoilers? I guess? They're mostly just me trying to size zuko.

(oh shit I forgot one earlier)

this last one is why I came to post, though, lol: I received a wonderful fic comment (tbh I have received an unprecedented number of wonderful fic comments), mentioning zuko needed a way to talk, like calligraphy with his tail, or the dragon telepathy other fics use for convenience - I do have a plan, but all I could think of in response to that comment was the cat with the talking button saying "MAD." :D

I’ve drawn this guy once before, but this time I actually tried to be accurate:

…Zuko is mostly a glossy black… all serpentine, and scaled. He has kind of laughably short, scrawny little legs ending in clawed feet, in front and back pairs spaced improbably far from each other on his long body…. Katara can see that each dark scale is edged with a narrow crescent of gold. He also has two wings…

A close up -

And just for fun…

…when light touches him, the shining edges of each scale, little fingernails of gold, gleam like an expanse of stars in a moonless night sky..

…tilting a paper a little to make it ~shiny~

Made with water based ink markers, inkings pens, and gel pens.