Masterharper Robinton and his Bronze firelizard Zair. For you dragon fans out there if you're really into modern dragon riders books, check out Pern. It's the place most your fave lore bits started!

Robinton here is my favorite character! Not only is he an incredible musician and composer, he's also a really stand up human being. Great teacher, good friend, my husband ... Oops did I say that aloud lol.

Dragonriders of Pern won my fanart poll for this month! Check my page for future polls and have a say in what I draw next!

RAMOTH'S SPECIAL GIANT BLANKIE. must draw immediately. for reference Ramoth is a golden dragon around 145 feet long

Man, there was a time when I was big into Dragonriders of Pern roleplay. And, weirdly, the Neopets forum was a big place for this to happen.

Mostly it was just Hatching roleplays, bc of course people want to roleplay your very special four-dimensional lizard choosing you as their Very Special Person. I only ran a couple, where it was as gender-neutral as it could be while staying technically canon compliant (...if you're not familiar with Pern sexism... boy I could talk about that for ages).

But anyway, one time I ran a Hatching, and... a lot of people only wanted to get the (gender-appropriate for their character) Best kind of dragon. Gold for girls, bronze for boys. It's stupid.

I had a green dragon (the "worst" - ie smallest, most agile, but also lowest "ranked" - kind of dragon) choose this one person. They tried to ignore it. They kind of kick it away. They want the gold hatchlings, so they refuse to bond with this dragon I have given them. Another player who has not been chosen shows kindness to the baby, and the dragon bonds with them instead.

There was a gold egg that session (there were always gold eggs up for grabs in Neopets Hatching RPs, you'd do different numbers of other eggs, but there was always at least one gold). It just didn't hatch. That candidate never got a dragon.

I think I remember them angrily messaging me afterwards. It was hilarious.

i was a voracious reader in my youth

I wanted to keep drawing some pern dragon stuff because I'm now writing a full AU set in weyr but I didn't want to put this stuff on my main blog or patreon due to it being basically for my own reference, though i felt others would like it too! so here is My Take On Dragon Wings By Type...

It's no secret I love drawing bird wings and prefer them a lot over traditional dragon wings. Growing up, I read the pern books featuring cover art of dragonfly-like wings with lots of little translucent panels, which I always loved. So I thought I'd try to nail down some wing shapes & structures by blending those two things i like together. I am aware dragons fly by telekinesis but I prefer a more realistic type of creature design so I will be choosing to ignore that fact. I do not care about strict canon compliance but I do like to keep some of that framework there as well, for fun.

The wing is made up of three main sails, as well as a propatagium sail (in front of the elbow). They are relatively polymorphic and can expand or contract to an extent to change the shape of the wing in response to flight demands, like the wing of an airliner. The trailing edge can expand and the slots between the spars of the 1st wingsail can deepen or become shallower (where those are a feature). The main structural matrix is opaque, while the membranous 'sails' are translucent and let light through like stained glass. These are a bilayer of membrane with air sandwiched between, which forms part of the air sac & respiratory system.

It makes sense for the original engineers of dragons to diversify dragon wing types by colour so that when fighting Thread, there's a dragon for every conceivable aerial job.

[individual descriptions under the cut]

Queens have the longest wings, though the largest bronzes can rival them for surface area. Gold wings are high endurance - a queen can fly further than any other dragon in active level flight, leaving even the swiftest bronzes behind if they can't muster up the energy reserves to catch her. She is an effective flier at all elevations and can pass very low over terrain without issue as well; she is an expert at taking advantage of the ground effect, where extra lift is generated within one half of a wingspan above land. This way, she can pass low below the main wings fighting Thread to catch any stragglers without expending too much energy. However, she is not very agile and may need a bit of a run-up or cliff-edge to get airborne.

Bronzes are suited for command positions during Threadfall, rising highest and maintaining that altitude effortlessly by soaring on thermals. From this vantage point they can easily survey the wings of riders below and make tactical decisions to direct the tide of battle. They have the size and stamina to chase queens, but might find it difficult to keep up on the flat, so they continually select for fitter hatchlings as only the best manage to mate. It takes a very clever and agile bronze to catch a green, if they are so inclined.

Browns are swift, highly agile, and the fastest vertical fliers, ideal for diving through the Thread mass from top to bottom while the other types pass horizontally. During earlier Passes, browns were capable of using their speed to catch queens, but as queen & bronze endurance gradually increased, browns struggle to keep up if they haven't managed to immediately catch their mate in the starting scrum, which is unlikely due to the bulkier bronze dragons being able to shove the browns aside.

Blues are fast on the flat and nicely manoeuvrable, with enough endurance to last a full Threadfall. Good all-rounders with a characteristic vertical take-off, they work best in the horizontal plane in battle but really they can do a little bit of everything. They often beat browns to catch greens, being very precise in flight and almost as manoeuvrable as their green mates.

Greens make up for their low stamina with their extreme manoeuvrability. Their short and elliptical wings let them turn on a dime, hover, and even fly backwards if they are sufficiently skilled. They have the fastest wingbeats, flying with a distinct thrumming sound. Of all the types they are least likely to be hit by a stray Thread, but they tire easily on the flat and have no soaring ability at all, often tapping out midway through battle in favour of replacements. In battle, greens excel at catching odd and skewed clumps of Thread that don't fall as predicted, or ones that are missed by the other riders. Green mating flights are a whole different beast to gold mating flights, where extreme aerial acrobatics are favoured instead of endurance and altitude, and these flights may be over within seconds. You need to be able to withstand a Lot of G-force to be a green rider.

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Pern has to be so fucking loud. Because we're told that firelizards hum at births. Firelizard hatchings, dragon hatchings, human births, horse births, doesn't fucking matter. And we're given no reason to believe this was engineered out of them, given Sorka was warned of her starting labor by loud humming and dragon hatchlings watching through the window.

If there are dragonkin in the immediate area, you know when someone or thing is giving birth, and may damn well know who or what. Especially in the fucking Weyrs, where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.

Weyrfolk must be able to sleep through anything.

"Weyr of the White" Loosely inspired by one of my favorite book series' growing up, the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne (And now Todd) McCaffrey. If you're not familiar, I can't possibly recommend it enough for a unique dash of 90s/00s sci-fi/fantasy. 

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern Cover Art by Michael Whelan

Patreon commissions from March!

When a Pern fan procrastinates…

8th/9th pass Weyr leadership

Between the red lines every cell is one year, otherwise they’re just roughly proportional. I have no clue who this helps, but I had fun with it!

Reading Pern fic and realizing that it's always queen riders or future queen rider Mary Sue type characters who here all dragons and I am now desperate for a green rider with the ability. I know in canon it's rare and has to do with bloodlines and is a women only talent that's maybe twice in a generation. We got Lessa and Ariana (? the gal in Renegades who has such a bad time she avoids dragons) and maaaaybe Moreta (it's been a long time since I read that one). But if it's going to crop up in fanfic and RP constantly, I want to see someone that everybody pins all these expectations onto and they end up riding green to the dismay of all but them. (I love greens, second best dragons to me, only topped by blues which seem to be the only dragon an ace person can ride, but the culture around them and the way their riders are treated is fascinating.) If the green rider in question was a trans man maybe no problems there or nothing would change (though that's a story I'd be interested to read in general, a trans man in canon Pern society riding green, which had to have happened at least twice in their 2k year history). But if you had someone who was being brought up and expected to ride gold and she gets a "crappy" green, the political fallout alone would be fascinating.

Man I wish I had the stamina to write longer fics. I have so many ideas for Pern stuff (most of them horrible; I am somewhat disappointed that purity culture in fandom spaces has kept people from exploring and digging down into the real canon implications that were always present in the books; I understand not wanting to do that on a personal level, but it's disappointing that a lot of writers will avoid it solely for fear of purity assholes coming after them). If Anne herself was allowed to write really shitty attempts at confronting some of this stuff (looking at you, Skies of Pern, ugh) why aren't fans allowed to tackle it honestly and better instead of just pretending it doesn't happen? But on the flip side, where's the exploration of queerness in it’s entirety from fan writers? I've seen trans women green riders and of course lots of gay men, but where my ace blue riders and lesbians and trans men and so many others be at? Aaaanyway....

This became a tangent. tleadr: it's been like 60 years of fanfic and I'm bored of the same old runaway rich girl who hears all dragons becoming a queen rider stories. XD Nothing against that sort of self indulgence, everyone gets to write that kind of wish fulfillment. :) I'm just bored and I wanna read something new but don't have the energy to write it, alas.

harperhall protagonists my darlings

while I was doing the wings lineup I wanted to draw the dragons attached to them, so i did. while giving my take on body types for each colour..

keel depth depends largely on how active the flight pattern is (i.e how frequently do the wings beat). the books always emphasised that the hindlegs are disproportionately long, so here I have them especially big on blues and greens because these dragons are small enough to get airborne from a simple leap into the air from the ground. whereas the larger types need a takeoff roll to generate lift over their wings so their legs are more suitable for running, and their flight types compensate well for the extra weight & drag of long legs. given that the canon build is 'horselike' i tried to fit that in, with wrists halfway up the foreleg.

i gave them a little vertical stabiliser on the tail just for spice hehe. this should decrease in size as the dragon's length increases but w/e i forgot to reflect that in the drawing. completely halfassed the metallic colouring too but u get the idea. i also drew saddles and forgot to colour them lol

head shapes can vary within dragon colour rank, here are just some examples of facial diversity, though neck length is largely constrained by flight type. longer, leaner, and more flexible bodies are less stable in the air and less able to withstand the forces of really agile flight, so the most agile greens tend to be short and stocky, with short stiff tails and thick necks. by comparison, the bronzes and queens have long tails, long bodies, and very long necks (useful for grabbing your mate in flight).

if anyone would be interested in the lineart for these to use as bases?? idk let me know. yes u can redraw the blue's tail.

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14yo Petey was completely obsessed with Dragonriders of Pern, so grown up Petey was very excited to discover there's a klance au for it!

Bronzerider Keith and Bluerider Lance w/ their dragons Red and Blue, who, thankfully, are far more self-aware than their riders. From @wittyy-name amazing klance au, Tilting Skies (rated Explicit, so please mind the tags guys).

I like to think all the dragons of Pern are not just the same design different color/size, but all unique. I think it's suggested in the books that dragons of different colors have different body types and strengths. I see Blue as a water dragon, so I tried to bring in elements of the ocean into her. Red is very much a powerful fire dragon.