*falls over at the gorgeousness of pretty pretty princess f!Rhaegar and Arthur* I sweeeeaaar, all of you are conspiring to get me to write more Reversal B-Track + Knight of Stars, and it’s working!
Arthur first, like he is in Rhaella’s mind, because DAYUM. That high collar, white to contrast his Dornish complexion, hello? (I mean, sure, House Dayne also has white and purple as its colors.)
His little sweat drop of panic, bless this poor conflicted man who can probably feel Daemon’s laser stare of death from across the room. He can be the responsible adult here, right? Right? (Until Rhaella works her charms.)
Hair the perfect length to fall into his eyes so he can brush it away? (And so Rhaella can daydream about brushing it away?) With that little bit of curl? Can you blame the girl?
Okay, okay, onto Rhaegar/Rhaella. Love a soft/loose braid with some framing pieces. (Also a very convenient length for someone *ahem* Arthur *ahem* to gently brush behind her ear.) A moment of silence for all the would-be suitors in the room, including her cousins, whose hearts are primed to be broken.
The soft blues and silvers (and dragon-y patterns) of her shawl(? or dress itself) matching her beloved dragon A+++++. I feel like Rhaella has at least 5 gowns in variations on the starry-night-sky theme because why wouldn’t you?
Yes to the gorgeous dragon necklace. I love the idea of it belonging to Alyssa, and Daemon gifting her his mother’s necklace. It’s such a pretty design. (And the way the teardrop earrings match, a little splash of Targaryen colors.)
The sorcery you’ve got going on with her expression is next level. She has those soft eyes (those lashes!) and smile, and clearly she’s daydreaming, and still there’s this trademark Rhaegar melancholy behind it. The awareness that what she wants isn’t at all what the king would accept, because Dorne was until recently an enemy state and even now it’s an uneasy peace.
Can’t stop staring at her eyes. Would gladly get lost in them 10/10 times.
(I also am not an expert in period-appropriate styles, but I do enjoy a nice, demure set of gloves. So many uses! So many power plays available depending on her mood!)
I am so tickled, btw, that it was one of my AUs that sucked you in! I always expect anyone who stumbles across one of them to go “WTF is this” if they lack the broader Resonant context. And honestly, some of the most fun I have is writing the AUs because there are no rules, we do what we want. Arthur in the Dance and Rhaegar is in love with him? Why not!
All the love for sharing this beautiful piece with us!
Gaze in wonder upon the glory of @benigncharybdis’s art of the warlock dragon egg clutchmates from Veteran AU–Shadow, Qelebrys, and Ātsiāzma–fully grown.
Okay, now that we’ve gazed, I can devolve into raptures.
First off, their expressions! 🥹 Qelebrys’s sweet, regal face as she gazes at her boys. Shadow’s playful sidelong glance at Ātsiāzma, as though to say “hey, wanna race after we’ve finished posing for this?” Ātsiāzma’s adorable head duck and happy expression in the presence of his favorite creatures in all the realm (after Jon).
As always, in love with the variations between them all, from their chest scale/plate patterns to how their horns, spikes, and fins manifest.
The sleekness of Qelebrys’s webbing/fins, which are her dominant feature. Her cheekbone fins are GORGEOUS and her nose spike is the cutest. What a pretty lady!
The veins of silver through Qelebrys’s hide form her silver-tipped scales is so beautiful. She of the Starry-Night Sky indeed.
I’m sorry, Shadow’s little claw-fingers curled back? I don’t know why he’s doing it, but it is TOO CUTE. The way that he and Qelebrys are slightly more like one another, in that he also has a fair bit of finning going on, and their horns are almost twins. It feel like he has the most “combat-like” build of them? With the extra plating, which is a very neat touch, and is probably something that the Valyrians bred into certain lines of dragons.
Also his longer neck, and the way the plates transition to bronze. Love it. And the bronze of his wings looks SO GOOD.
Ātsiāzma! Ātsiāzma and his many spikes and flaps and ridges, truly giving off those weirwood tree vibes. I don’t know if it was the intention, but some of the features also give off a sort of fungal feel, which is also neat touch. I love that his horns and spikes are both the most elaborate and the most chaotic. (And! His lower face spikes/horns share some similarity with Shadow’s, which is a fun way to tie them together.)
Aww, his big, prominent brow ridge and deep-set eyes. I love the two-toned effect you have, where the top of his nose and the inner part of his brow has the dark red coloring. It must look so striking when viewed front-on!
As always, holy dragon anatomy. I feel like with your art, I get such a clear lesson/reminder each time in how the fingers/elbows/shoulders translate to wings. Like. I can look at a wing and see an arm. And it’s also a wing! Which is how wings work! But it feels like sorcery!
Unrelated: how is Shadow always the sweetest boy in the world? Honestly, they’re all great snapshots of their personality/aesthetic: pretty/regal (Qelebrys), sweet/playful (Shadow), and goofy/socially-awkward (Ātsiāzma).
Such a wonderful treat to get to enjoy this art, thank you so much for sharing it with me!
This one popped in my mind a while ago and refused to leave. I don’t even know how it works, I just read it in an old comic Spirou and, apparently, people believed that cologne had healing effects back then. I guess it was a little like smelling salts?
At least Hyrule had a decent skin care once in his life.
setting up a tiny detail in one chapter to pay it off in the next few chapters feels sooo devious like oooh i can’t wait to write the small little reference here that 70% of readers will miss but 30% of readers will cheer for
it feels so good loading the gun when you’re Chekhov
I saw some weird ass conspiracy video thing today of like ‘we were never meant to have access to yeast, that was cultivated in a lab and it harms us’ bullshit and I was like well first off there’s no such thing as 'meant to’ and second of all um? the long history of acquiring yeast from beer foam stretching so far back ??????
….you can acquire yeast FROM THE AIR.
If you want to make sourdough started from scratch, the process is 'mix water, flour, and maybe sugar if you’ve got it, then WHIP IN AS MUCH AIR AS YOU CAN’ and let it sit. And this works. Because there’s yeast there. In the air.
Not only is there yeast in the air, it’s on a bunch of fruits, too. Ever rubbed a blueberry, plum, or grape, and it was slightly darker underneath? That thin film is wild yeasts. There is also yeasts that live on human skin (and not just pathogenic ones!). We are never without yeasts.
You do not have access to yeast; yeast has access to you.
ALT
