Well hello there, Reader,
Sorry I was absent from your inbox last week. I was a bit busy prepping for a medical procedure. 😷 Then playing phone tag for 7 hours when I tried to figure out why it had been canceled. (F*cking unless AI! 🤬) Then it got rescheduled with a different doctor hours later, with no explanation.
Anyways, Reader, with the recent mass exodus from Wattpad to AO3 (Archive of Our Own) due to censorship and all the drama surrounding it, I stumbled upon a thread about dragon shifters. And a quick search of “dragon” on AO3 found no less than 300K stories.
Needless to say, dragons are super popular.
But is our fondness and fascination for these scaly beasts new? Some might claim so, but they’d be wrong. Because from myth to folklore, these winged wyverns have clawed their way into the heart of our stories from the very beginning.
So here’s 4 ways to include them in your next story with this brief guide to Dragon Fiction:
Dragon Riders
From the series that defined the subgenre, the Dragonriders of Pern brings us the badass fantasy mounts of the sky. Some dragon mounts are brutal, merciless weapons of war. In Fourth Wing, they’re enigmatic and wiser than humans could ever hope to be, forming singular bonds with their riders.
Some are gentle, misunderstood creatures beneath their terrifying exteriors, such as in How to Train Your Dragon. And others are the legacy and privilege of only a select few. Gifted to them upon their birth, like in House of the Dragon.
Dragon Tamers
Stories that focus on characters who breed, collect, discover, befriend, command, and/or train dragons. Their reasons for doing so can vary wildly, from combat to transport of goods to magical familiar to amazing exotic pet.
In this type of fiction, the size of the dragons varies the most, from the massive rideable variety featured in A Song of Ice and Fire to the shoulder-sized Sylvie in The Beginning After the End. There’s also stories like How to Train Your Dragon that showcase the entire spectrum of dragon options from rideable to house cat.
My own webnovel ExSpelled features more than a few tamable dragons and dragon-adjacent hybrid creatures such as the Volcanis Pyrostoat. A lizard/weasel with shingle-like scales that appear to glow like molten lava.
Weredragons
A dragon shifter who can change between their human and dragon forms. These characters often have strong dragon traits even while in their human forms and tend to be protective, courageous, and magically gifted.
In Russian folklore, dragons called zmeys were believed to assume human form and even mate with the humans they encountered. Even when in human guise, the zmeys were said to retain draconic features.
There are many different directions you can go with your weredragon/dragon shifter character. From Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, who turns into a massive green-fire-breathing beast of terror. To Sisu in Raya and the Last Dragon, who gains human form through the possession of an ancestral gem.
In Spirited Away, the character Haku appears as a tween boy, but later he’s revealed to be the river spirit Nigihayami Kohaku Nushi. In a dramatic visual sequence, Haku transforms into a majestic cloud-gray Eastern dragon with a flowing greenish mane.
Humanoid Dragons
A humanoid, dragon-like species where everything from wings and scales to tails and fiery breath is on the table.
You could go with the classic Dragonborn from Dungeons & Dragons and Baldur’s Gate, or go more croc-like as they did for Rak Wraithraiser in Tower of God.
Or make things really complicated and diversify by gender, like in the game Fire Emblem, where male Manaketes get all the draconic features like fangs, slit pupils, and claws, but the ladies basically look like elves.
The Light Novel That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime goes this route too, with the Dragonewt males having long lizard muzzles, horns, tails, and wings, but the females being cute anime girls with little wings and maybe tiny horns.
The Dragokin in my webnovel They Only Come at Night are based on Eastern-style dragons, so they have antlers, manes, and matching tail tufts. They have a mostly humanoid appearance other than having slit-pupil eyes and draconic features.
ell, Reader, I hope this brief guide to Dragon Fiction helps your next scaly endeavor. Until next time, this is your friendly neighborhood storytelling Kat wishing you a wonderfully creative weekend.
Your cohort in storytelling,
Kat Vancil
🐱
PS 👉 Fun Fact: In Greek Mythology Ophiogenis were believed to be the draconic descendants of a drakon that mated with a human woman. It was said male members of this race could cure people of snake bites by stroking the affected area.
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Author Delaney Rain
Cozy MM Monster Romances
I'm an author writing MM monster romances on the cuddly side of the spectrum. Subscribe and join over 2,000+ newsletter readers receiving book news as it happens! |
